Project Existence - Multiplayer Sandbox News

We had to reset the world, but your inventories should be safe.
Everyone should start in the same location, but there are still confusingly similar regions. This will be removed with the next patch !

- Fixed an issue where players would spawn under the map
- Improved player log-in and fixed multiple issues related to this
- Removed the ability to buy the same recipe multiple times
- Interaction prompts are now cleared when an item is destroyed/removed
- Added more items to the new build mode (we're gradually moving away from you having to press B to place items, more to come!)
- Removed the portals between regions
- Set power requirements for the transformer and smelter
- Fixed an issue with the inital set up screen when using machinery
- Changed the color of copper ore (the ingots are still the same, we'll change it soon!)
- Fixed the text message when mining copper ore
- Added a marker for the copper mine
- Fixed an issue with frame freezes after using machinery
- Added boxes! They're super fun!

A tear in the fabric of time and space has appeared in the world. Proceed with caution.

Servers are now LIVE!

There are still some issues that we are working on, but the world is mostly stable. The portals are disabled between regions for now, this should be fixed later today.

Update 0.1.54

Features:

• Introducing the first version of our new build menu! Press Q for building and F for destroying structures.
  
• The wood burner is your power source, fill this up with wood to power your new machines!
  
• Power poles are what you use to connect your machines to the power source. These have limited range (15m) so make sure you place a few of these down if you need to power something far away!
  
• The transformer and smelter are new machines that let you automatically craft items! If you have the recipe and ingredients for an item, fill these bad boys up and then go about your day. No more slaving away at the workbench!
  
• The mining drill lets you extract iron and copper from mines that you can find around the town.
  
• There are new recipes for crafting (you can buy these at Bob's hardware store)
  
• There is now a robot in the world. It doesn't do anything... yet... be nice to it.
  

Fixes:

• Performance improvements! Loading into the world is now much much smoother
  
• Updated the start screen UI
  
• Fixed an issue where interaction and name labels would show up for all players
  
• Improved the selection of objects that can be interacted with (you should be able to choose between items that are very close to each other more easily now)
  

NOTE: Because of the issues we had over the weekend, the world had to be reset. We try not to remove any of your hard work, but since we are still early in development I just want you to be prepared for losing items randomly! As time goes on this will happen less and less, but you have been warned!

Thanks again for being patient and sticking with us!

- Arctic Theory Team

As you may well know, the Project Existence servers were shut down for maintenance yesterday. We're working hard on getting them back up so I wanted to explain a bit what is happening behind the scenes. To begin with, I wanted to go over how we've been doing things since going into early access. There's a limit to how much you can prepare, so our philosophy has always been:

• Release the feature
  
• Measure the impact
  
• Fix what is broken
  

This was working great when we went into early access! A bunch of people jumped into the game while we were like hawks jumping on issues and fixing them as they came up. Things then evolved to a point where we were actually stressing some of our cooler systems and technology that we're actively working on.

Some of the issues that have been popping up made us realize we needed to upgrade how our world database works. This means we had to update our tools and development environment in order to run stress tests easily and get more detailed information when players encounter errors, which gives us the opportunity to debug these more efficiently.

This has been more time consuming than we expected, so as soon as we see that we have this running smoothly, the servers will be back up! As for what this massive update entails, we are be introducing some new crafting and automation mechanics - but a large chunk of it are things in the backend that you as a player won't see or notice for now. This doesn't mean we have cool stuff coming, but this update is going to be essential for what comes next!

Before, everyone was playing in "instances" of the world (basically duplicates of the same region) and players were able to move between them through portals. What we're working on now is a new and improved version that still supports these instances, but adds the ability for us to segment a larger world into smaller pieces.

Our next goal is to expand the world and give players a massive, continuous environment to explore and exist in. The technology behind this is very clever (I think so, anyway), so I want to do a full dev blog on exactly how this works and why it's cool when the time comes. For now, thanks to everyone that has been patient with us and continue to show interest and support!

If you want to stay updated on our progress, follow us on twitter and join the Discord where we post frequent announcements and can easily answer any questions or concerns you might have.

- Arctic Theory development team

Hey everyone! Our servers will be shut down temporarily today, Monday 9th November, in order to address some issues we had over the weekend with players being unable to connect.

If you want to stay updated or have any questions for the team, come join us on Discord! Discord makes it easy for us to post frequently about server status and new updates, as well as help you guys with any issues or troubleshooting that might be needed.

Thanks for all the patience and support!