Necesse News

Instead of the usual update this week, I'm super happy to announce that v0.20 will go to stable on the 11th of September, in exactly one week! It's been a long time coming and there has been a lot of changes to almost all aspects of the game.

Even if you've been playing on the experimental branch, there will still be some new features to look forward to for this release. You can see a small teaser for one of them in the gif below.

Of course, the updates won't stop with this release and this is just one of the milestones through early access. More on that next Friday.

There are still a bunch of work to do and things to iron out for next Friday, so I'm going to get back to it. Thank you for playing, sharing and giving feedback on the game. It helps me a lot!

To get this update, you have to opt in inside your library:
Necesse -> Properties -> Betas -> Select 0.20.x in dropdown.
It's recommended to back up your saves when playing on the experimental version. Especially when loading a save using a newer version. You can do so in-game on the load menu.

A quick reminder that there's an official Discord server, where you can post suggestions, bugs, or just talk with other players and the developer. Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/FAFgrKD

Another update that's mostly focused on polish, balance and fixes. I also took the time to create a few new cosmetic items and a new zombie variation for snow caves.

I'm still hard at work and spending most of my time on the 0.20 release. There are quite a bit to be done still. Mostly updating marketing material, new achievements, stats, music and some surprise content.

See a full changelog below.



[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Additions:[/h3]
Added function tooltips to some furniture objects.
Added small icon to spawn island in world map.
Added small glow to Cry Flake mobs.
Added Trapper Zombie, appears in snow caves.
Added Trapper Hat cosmetic item, chance to drop from Trapper Zombie.
Added a bunch more death messages to some of the more generic mobs.
Added Horse Mask costume set, rare reward for settlement quests.

[h3]Changes/misc:[/h3]
Made debris particles when hitting tiles/objects more visible.
Updated and polished a bunch of mob textures missing head bobbing and death particles.
Removed resolution warning above 1080p since zooming is now a feature.
Increased corner skipping range slightly.
Reaper boss will now be more aggressive when there are more players present.
Reduced armor of Ancient Vulture slightly.
Reworks settlement quest rewards, decreasing

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]
Fixed Pirate AI errors on main menu level.
Fixed vampires, void apprentices and ninjas only attacking once before moving again.
Fixed some rare crashes related to entity lists.
Fixed rare Cave Mole related crash.
Fixed Reaper boss spawning with decreased health when more than 1 player is present.
Fixed traps sometimes not hitting players that has slightly higher ping.
Fixed projectiles sometimes getting stuck in the air in multiplayer.

And a bunch of other smaller changes and fixes.
You might have to restart Steam to get the update.

To get this update, you have to opt in inside your library:
Necesse -> Properties -> Betas -> Select 0.20.x in dropdown.
It's recommended to back up your saves when playing on the experimental version. Especially when loading a save using a newer version. You can do so in-game on the load menu.

A quick reminder that there's an official Discord server, where you can post suggestions, bugs, or just talk with other players and the developer. Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/FAFgrKD

This weeks update has a bunch more polish and balance changes together with a few additional features.

I spent a bit of time improving movement, especially when trying to move into tight areas like doors etc. The result is something that resembles step-up in platformer or 3D games, but for top-down. You can see how it works in the GIF below, where all I'm doing is moving left. This combined with the auto door introduced a few weeks ago should give a much smoother feel to movement in the game.

Even though I would love to reach full controller support for 0.20 release, I've started to realize the scope of this. Although playing with a controller feels decent at the moment there's still a lot to work on, like menuing and control tips. That being said, everything else is looking good for 0.20 and I'm aiming for a release in the first half of September.

See a full changelog below.



[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Additions:[/h3]
Added movement corner skipping.
Added control for moving toward the mouse when held down.

[h3]Changes/misc:[/h3]
Updated Steam controller support with new actions and added official PS4 controller configuration.
Updated explosion particle animation.
Updated a bunch of flame and smoke particle animations.
Changed most particles to use new particle system.
Reduced health of Pirates not spawned by captain to 100.
Rewrote Pirate AI, making them more consistent.
Right-clicking trinkets will now be much smarter and replace other trinkets that overlap.
Tweaked a bunch of AI values to make it more polished.
Reworked all remaining AI using old system to new behaviour tree system.
Reduced the spawn rate of dungeon mobs.
Hiding minimap will now be saved for next load.

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]
Fixed issue with mob abilities being triggered twice, causing things like double projectiles from pirates.
Fixed issue when loading mobs that have max health based on buffs.

And a bunch of other smaller changes and fixes.
You might have to restart Steam to get the update.

To get this update, you have to opt in inside your library:
Necesse -> Properties -> Betas -> Select 0.20.x in dropdown.
It's recommended to back up your saves when playing on the experimental version. Especially when loading a save using a newer version. You can do so in-game on the load menu.

A quick reminder that there's an official Discord server, where you can post suggestions, bugs, or just talk with other players and the developer. Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/FAFgrKD

Even though this weeks update doesn't add any new features, it has got a lot of improvements. A new particle system that performs a lot better than the previous one. The improvements will mainly be seen with a lot of particles on screen. I was able to have more than 10,000 dynamic particles popping in and out only dropping FPS by about 20%. This would have completely broken the previous system and will allow for scaling further into the future when more crazy effects are introduced.

Other than particles I've updated a lot of older textures that didn't fit with the style of the game together with a few balance changes.

See a full changelog below.



[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Changes/misc:[/h3]
Reworked particle system, optimizing and allowing more many more particles at once.
Updated Lightning Hammer attack animation.
Improved wall render performance some more.
Updated rock lever texture.
Updated settlement flag texture.
Updated boat textures.
Updated some object textures that were missing shadows.
Setting summon focus is now more forgiving, accepting small misses.
Updated glass bottle texture.
Updated TNT texture.
Updated carpet textures.
Reworked carpets making them connect to any adjacent carpet.
Updated alchemy table texture.
Updated a bunch of item textures to fit game style better.
Rebalanced some numbers on Reaper boss. Making it harder to dodge.
Decreased ramp up time and increased damage of Death Ripper.
Increased duration of building potion.
Updated Vampire bat texture and fixed missing death particles.
Updated texture and increased damage of Genie Lamp.
Updated Shadow Bolt, Blood Bolt and Blood Volley textures.
Updated Leather Armor textures.

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]
Fixed settlers attacking bosses if they're angry.
Fixed issue with particle edge rendering.
Fixed mute on focus loss sometimes not working.
Fixed desert cave water having blue waves.
Fixes region pathfinding sometimes causing server errors.
Fixed chasers getting stuck on corners when moving directly to target.

And a bunch of other smaller changes and fixes.
You might have to restart Steam to get the update.

To get this update, you have to opt in inside your library:
Necesse -> Properties -> Betas -> Select 0.20.x in dropdown.
It's recommended to back up your saves when playing on the experimental version. Especially when loading a save using a newer version. You can do so in-game on the load menu.

A quick reminder that there's an official Discord server, where you can post suggestions, bugs, or just talk with other players and the developer. Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/FAFgrKD


Even though performance isn't the biggest issue in Necesse, I spent some time this week working on it. It resulted in some major improvements to some specific areas of the rendering engine, which is used throughout the entire game. The improvements will mostly be noticed on mid and high-end computers, where I saw an increase of 50% to 200% in FPS (or even higher) on the systems I tested.

This update also includes another big quality of life feature: auto open/close doors. It works by simply trying to walk through a door, and if you have it enabled you will open and close it automatically when you're through. This new system also replaces existing door openers, like settlers and pirates.

Lastly, there are a bunch of balance changes and polish as usual.

See a full changelog below.



[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Additions:[/h3]
Added door auto open/close. Can be toggled in quickbar.
Added don't show again checkbox to EA notice.
Added animations for holding iron and gold lamps.

[h3]Changes/misc:[/h3]
Major performance improvements to tile and terrain rendering.
Major performance improvements to weather rendering.
Improvements to a bunch of other rendering like cave rocks, walls, wires.
Improved level loading of entities etc.
Updated Ostrich mob texture slightly.
Reduced greater health potion to heal 75 instead.
It's now no longer possible to "attack" with banners.
Active buffs are now sorted instead of showing in random order.
Reworked Force of Wind to be more consistent between when moving and standing still.
Changed zoom level setting to be a slider.
Updated Lightning Hammer texture.
Updated Farming Scythe texture.
Increased size of Wood and Void Boomerang.
Changed settings back button to cancel to make it more obvious you're discarding changes.

[h3]Fixes:[/h3]
Fixed issue with FPS counter when running above 1000 FPS.
Fixed backed up worlds not changing their identifier, which is used in client caches and a few other places.
Fixed smart mining setting sometimes not saving properly.

And a bunch of other smaller changes and fixes.
You might have to restart Steam to get the update.