Hey everyone,

The latest stable build 0.13 has just been released!

This update introduces new Bows and Arrows, Throwable Spears, Boars, Snakes and more! There’s a new game launcher, custom deferred translucency, new grass models, new terrain textures and new foliage items.

Animals can now be hunted with the new Bow and Arrows and Throwable Spears! You can hunt the existing and new animals on your island by charging and firing the new bow and spear. Larger animals will take multiple hits from projectiles to take down, whereas smaller animals can be picked off with less. Be careful as throwing or firing the new projectiles at solid materials like steel or rock will break the projectile! Killed animals won’t do anything for now, but hold onto them as a new skinning mechanic is coming very soon. All of the new item’s animations are also placeholders for now.

With the new bows and spears in this update it became apparent we needed a ‘charging’ mechanic. With the need for a few tweaks to the interacting system, we took the opportunity to incorporate a lot of changes that we’ve had the skeleton of for a while and have been waiting to implement and incorporate with the recent player animations. The entire interacting system has been improved. Interacting has been remapped to the same key as the [Pickup] key by default. This is to avoid confusion and prevent users from doing things like accidentally eating uncooked or poisonous food when trying to interact with objects. With the new changes if you accidentally pick an item up there’s no harm done. So now if an item is interactable you can press the [Pickup] like normal to pick it up or hold down the [Pickup] key to interact with it. A notorious bug has also been fixed that’s been around since the game was first released where you could continue to use an item on another even if you weren’t looking at it.

There’s been some work on the inventory in preparation for a new system. We’ve added individual inventory stack sizes for different types of items. So far only the arrows make use of this feature, allowing you to carry 24 arrows per slot at the moment. We added the ability to select free hands. This is a feature that was requested a while ago and is useful if you have a full inventory and don’t want to be running around with something in your hands. Your hands also act as an inventory slot now, able to hold 1 item. This means you can have a full inventory and 1 item in your hand. The inventory hotkeys can be a bit confusing at the moment with how items sort themselves in the inventory, but hotkey mechanics will soon be changing entirely.

The lighter has been removed as it ended up being an incompatible thorn with the new changes and there’s a new dedicated fire lighting system coming in the next update. Enjoy the easy fire starting for this update. It’s essentially the same as it was before, without a magical infinite lighter in your hand.

This update also addresses two concerns from community feedback - #1 Not being able to launch the game in DirectX 11.0 mode from the desktop and #2 Dropped items being thrown forward. The necessity for a new launcher was realised after it was brought to our attention that Steam would not show you the dialog prompting you to pick which graphics API you wanted if you were launching the game from the desktop or a separate shortcut outside of Steam. The issue has now been addressed with a custom game launcher. This launcher is separate to the Unity engine as the engine doesn’t support changing graphics API’s once launched. You can pick your graphics API and fullscreen mode in the launcher. More details are in the patch notes below.

There’s also overall performance improvements from our new deferred translucency implementation and a 20-30% reduction in draw calls which should help to balance out the need for more accurate physics calculations for the new projectiles.

That’s it for this update, have fun!

–
Stay Alive!
Beam Team

CHANGES

- Added new holding animation for larger objects.
- Added new grass quality setting toggle.
- Added polarising filter for more vibrant daytime sky.
- Added individual inventory stack sizes for different item types.
- Added additional notification if trying to place a construction with environmental obstructions.
- Added ability to navigate through items in an inventory slot.
- Added ability to select free hands by selecting empty inventory slot.
- Added ability to select free hands with the Tilde [~] key.
- Added ability to close crafting menu again with [C] key.
- Added ability to carry large objects like logs.
- Added missing colliders to prop trees and plants.
- Changed interacting to use the [Pickup] key.
- Changed crafting menu to stay on the crafting page you left.
- Improved dropping items from inventory and reduced throwing effect.
- Improved Watch animations - smoother with better viewing positions.
- Improved Ragdoll animals saving. Ragdolls now save bone positions to reduce flipping out on load.
- Restored unique colours for different crafting modes.
- Removed unnecessary structure proximity check for smaller constructions.
- Reduced ocean shore fade for more dynamic waves close to shore.
- Reduced GPU loads on main menu screen by locking to 30FPS.
- Removed Sharks regaining health.

BUG FIXES

- Fixed Alt+Tab destroying a depth texture and breaking fog and underwater effects.
- Fixed camera jitter after loading a game.
- Fixed artefacts from camp fire particles.
- Fixed artefact with fog clipping through ocean waves when floating.
- Fixed unnecessary Hobo Stove proximity checks.
- Fixed being able to use items on objects far away, chopping trees, etc.
- Fixed bug where interacting would think you were still looking at a container.
- Fixed a small possibility of not being able to craft when a shark was nearby.
- Fixed Sharks dissapearing from leaving a biome and not be saved correctly.
- Fixed Items being out of view while crouched.
- Fixed holding Items not following the camera when looking up or down.

NEW CONTENT

- Added new Bow and Arrow items!
The simple bow is intended for mid-range damage. It’s sighted with the cursor and bow sight for approximately 15 meters. Arrows will break if shot into hard surfaces like rock or steel.

- Added new Throwable Spear item!
The spear is intended for close to short range damage. Spears will break if shot into hard surfaces like rock or steel.

- Added new Snake animal!
The new snake will attack and inflict damage if you get too close. Watch where you step, avoid the long grass and listen out for any aggressive snake sounds when scavenging your island! The snake can’t be killed at the moment.

- Added better Crab intelligence!
Crab AI has been improved and they no longer have a "nest". Crabs can be found individually on shorelines and will behave much more naturally, exploring the island, avoiding the player …and whatever else crabs do. Crabs do not currently respawn so ration them carefully.

- Added new Boar animal!
Tiny wild boar can be found on larger islands. They are very shy and very quick!

- Added new Aiming mechanic!
When a fireable object like the new Bow or Spear are equipped, you can hold the secondary action button (right mouse click by default) to enter aiming mode. You then fire the item as normal with the left mouse button.

- Added new Pickup animation!
A small addition but helps with feedback so items aren’t just disappearing into the inventory.

- Added Deferred Translucency!
Previously we were rendering translucent objects in forward rendering. There was a significant overhead as translucent objects needed to be rendered separately for proper translucent lighting (as it is not supported natively by Unity) and then blended with the deferred objects. Now all translucency is rendered in deferred. All users get translucency now, so win-win. The translucency option has been removed as the performance impact is negligible.

- Added dedicated Game Launcher!
Due to player feedback about not being able to select DirectX versions when launching the game from desktop shortcuts, a custom game launcher has been added. The new launcher allows you pick the DirectX version for all scenarios, not only when launching from the Steam library. You can also pick the fullscreen mode you prefer. Exclusive mode is better for performance and users running SLI setups, however Alt+Tabbing is not supported under DirectX 11.0 with exclusive mode. The Borderless Window option is available for players who want to use DirectX 11.0 and need to stream or access background tasks with Alt+Tab. The old Steam launch options have been removed.

- New Grass models!
- New Ground Cover models!
- New Sand terrain texture!
- New Sand and Pebbles terrain texture!
- New Young Palm Tree plant model!
- New Potato Plant plant model!

DEV NOTES

- Reduced draw calls significantly, improving overall performance.
- Restored resolution and vsync options in game.
- Refactored and improved interacting backend.
- Character Spine IK is now more responsive.
- New hitbox system for animals.
- Improved Shark trigger detection.