Allumeria 0.16 - Fishing up a Storm

Hey everyone! It's time for an update!

Specifically, the first major update since the game hit early access! It's my goal to regularly add new content to the game frequently, so this is the first of many. Since I spent so much time before 0.15 came out adding linear progression content I wanted to take a break from that and work on fleshing out the world and sandbox side of the game more. And for this past month that has involved working on the weather & atmosphere of the game, alongside expanding on the fishing system to take advantage of it.

I speak more about my thoughts in this post here.

Also - minor celebration

Someone just notified me that we hit Overwhelmingly Positive for the recent reviews! That is really cool! Thank you so much! I'm glad you all see my vision and are having fun with the game :) Truly, thank you <3

On to the update notes!

Weather

Added a new weather system to liven up the atmosphere of the game.

Global Weather

Global weather determines the "mood" of the current weather for all biomes. Then these biomes can choose how to react to it. With cheats on you can set the weather with /weather <string id>. The current global weather states are clear, rain and thunderstorm.

Local Weather

Local weather is how each individual biome chooses to interpret the "mood" set by the global weather. For example, rain in a snow biome will become snow, or a thunderstorm in the desert will become a sandstorm.

I have added tons of new properties and ways that the environment can be manipulated in order to make the weather as cool as possible. The whole system is modular and extensible so there is room for future weather events & types, both global and local, and modders should be able to hook into the system and add new stuff easily. Weather currently supports:

• Ambient particles (e.g. rain, snow)
• Ambient sounds
• Particles that spawn on the surfaces of blocks (e.g rain splashes)
• Variable cloud density
• Variable cloud turbulence (clouds go up and down in 3d etc)
• Fog density
• Atmosphere colours and control
• Lightning strikes
• Giving effects to the player

And this system can be extended by overriding the OnTick(PlayerEntity) method in LocalWeather to add more functionality.

Overview

Clear

• All 3 biomes treat this as a regular clear day

Rain

• It rains in the forest, you will hear frogs
• Lighter snow in the snow biome with some minor fog
• Light sand kicked up in the desert biome and wind sounds

Thunderstorm

• Forest: thunderstorm - thunder can be heard all around, the sky flashes and the clouds go crazy
• Snow: blizzard, dense fog, heavy snow & you will freeze to death without the right gear
• Desert: sandstorm, dense fog, sand particles and wind

Low Pass Filter Mode

I'm experimenting with a dynamic low pass filter for more realistic sound when swimming or underground. It might still have some issues so that's why I haven't enabled it by default, but you can test it by turning it on in settings and restarting the game. I think it sounds really cool.

Thoughts on Weather

I'm really happy with how the system turned out visually. It feels dripping with atmosphere and I love just walking around during a thunderstorm. It feels so cool. Mechanically, I think more could be done. I really wanted to make weather have more of a gameplay effect, but I didn't want to delay the update any more. The foundation is there now though, and new content can hook into the weather system from now on.

Fishing Overhaul

• overhauled the way fish loot is decided
• each fish now has its own weather, biome, fluid, depth and time requirements
• fishing logbook UI has been updated to show a list of all fish in a grid
• logbook now shows the requirements for catching the fish (biome etc)
• logbook now shows a trophy next to your record catch size, none = <50%, bronze = >50%, silver = >75% and gold = >90%
• these trophies are completely meaningless since it would be very time consuming to get all of them gold, but its a nice flex

New fish

• slapper - found in the forest during rain, very low damage but high knockback
• jellyfish - caught in the snow biome
• arctic char - caught in the snow biome
• pufferfish - caught in the snow biome, can be thrown at people to poison them
• neon tetra - caught in hotsprings
• mackerel icefish - caught in the snow biome
• arrow fish - caught in the snow biome and can be used as an arrow for weapons
• goldfish - sells for 1 gold
• the destroyer - tiny rare fish underground
• snow crate - not a fish but a crate you can get in the snow biome from fishing
• fish finger - caught in the desert
• soy sauce - caught in the desert
• ninja starfish - caught in the desert, used as a shuriken, more powerful than the strongest shuriken in 0.15
• ancient scale - an ancient scale used as a crafting material

Scale Armour

• this is an armour set crafted with cobalt and scales and sits in between cobalt and palladium in terms of defence
• also added the scale rod which allows you to catch even harder fish

Furniture and Decoration

• added hedge blocks, solid leaves that you cant walk through, can be made at the decoration station with any leaves
• made basic lamps as bright as torches by default
• added counters, they have an inset base and the top half can be painted
• added arctic crocus, can be found in the snow biome or grown using a watering can
• added desert flower, can be found in the desert or grown w/ watering can

• added marble blocks with 3 types
• marble stone
• marble block
• marble tiles
• marble can be found underground in new worlds, bought by the builder, or crafted

• added new marble furniture set
• marble chair
• marble table
• marble lamp
• marble counter
• marble door

Corner Stairs

Added corner stairs, currently these are manually placed

Go to settings > misc > advanced shape menu and turn it on to get the corner stair variants to appear

Tool Balancing

Reworked tool and material mining speed calculation

• the amount of hits required to break a block is now the material "hp" minus the tool value. for example, a pickaxe with a value of 5, will break a rock with a material hardness of 8 in 3 hits.(8-5).
• the "Material Level" works the same as before. (trying to mine a material of a higher level will not work at all)

Misc

• added some new random world names
• adjusted UI auto scale calculation to give a scaling of 5 on a 3072x1728 resolution
• adjusted click event for grabbing items in inventory to be on mouse down instead of mouse up to improve responsiveness when moving stuff very fast
• Quicksand spawns less and has a more distinguishable texture
• Split UI volume and Player volume into two separate channels

Fixes

• replaced Environment.Exit() with Game.Close() on main menu
• fixed quick healing consuming multiple potions
• fixed pebbles blocking auto-step up from a slab
• fixed some duplicate entires in the translation keys and missing ".desc" tags
• fixed crafting taking items from both chest inventory (for real this time)
• npc moved in messages no longer appear when joining a world

Save Format Update

0.16 adds a new chunk column table to the chunk database and keeps track of the heightmap of the terrain. This is useful for determining if something is above or below the surface efficiently. Because worlds created before 0.16 don't have this data stored, the game will automatically generate it for you when you load the world in 0.16 for the first time. It will probably take 5-10 seconds depending on your hardware.