The Last Plague: Blight News

[p]Hey everyone, wanted to give you all some details on the awaited Q2 update. It's getting very close to completion but still needs a bit of time for polish, testing and final fixes. Given that Canada Day lines up with the end of this month (July 1st), I wanted to make sure an update this size has the time to be fully ready with minimal game-breaking issues, with resources available afterwards to make sure. A lot has been reworked and changed to support injuries, the new weather and advanced building systems.[/p][p][/p][p]With all that, I'm aiming to get the Q2 update out July 14th, 2025. I apologize that it's not really hitting the Q2 timeframe as originally planned, but it will be worth the wait to make sure things are as solid as can be![/p][p][/p][p]I'll try to get a smaller update out before then with a few fixes and UX improvements between now and then.[/p][p][/p][p]Here's an example of what will be possible with the new building system:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Thanks for your patience! It will be worth the wait.[/p]

Another set of fixes and improvements for the game! One fairly big change is a reworked sun position calculation across multiple frames to reduce amount of shadow "flickering" seen when the position is updated every frame. A completely new cloud rendering system was added as a result of this new sun position change to make sure the shadows continue to look right.

Additions:

• Reworked sun position to only be set every few frames rather than every frame to reduce amount of flickering you may see around the edges of the shadows, especially at lower settings
  
• Reworked cloud shadow rendering to take the new sun positioning into account
  
• Added ability to chop up dead logs to receive scrap wood
  
• Added new input to switch between top-down and third-person perspectives (only with keyboard/mouse, default key: H)
  
• Added smoked fish recipes
  

Fixes:

• Fixed third-person mode field of view (FOV) being incorrectly zoomed out after the character customization update (v0.10.0)
  
• Fixed wrong terrain height calculation near chunk borders that would cause terrain levelling to creates spikes along these borders
  
• Fixed smoked item tooltips showing "hardening" percentage instead of smoked percentage
  
• Fixed female character dress behavior when walking
  
• Fixed creatures getting into a state where they run around the player without being able to hit them
  
• Fixed potential hang when starting or loading a game with large view distance on MacOS
  

Performance:

• Removed superfluous texture sampling calls in terrain rendering to increase framerate a small amount
  

Balance:

• Reduced stamina cost when using shovels
  

Other changes:

• Increased environmental brightness in various cloudy conditions
  
• Increased sky brightness below the horizon (if on a mountain or hill)
  

More fixes and requested changes in this regular update while work continues on some of the big Q2 update features!

Additions:

• Finally added ability to break up all large rocks/boulders with a pickaxe
  
• Added new grass anti-aliasing graphics setting that greatly reduces "twinkling" of grass and other foliage as the camera moves around slowly. Note that this setting adds a decent performance impact due to the removal of a rendering optimization step related to grass-based surfaces
  

Fixes:

• Fixed long-standing issue of the anti-aliasing setting not being loaded properly on game start-up
  
• Fixed floor lengths not being updated to work with the new snap-to-grid distance increase for beams/walls
  
• Fixed fish not triggering fish traps as much as they should
  
• Removed "rabbit remains" for fish when they decay
  
• Reduced bonus stack size for hearth furnace slots to avoid situations where you can't add enough fuel to complete the smelt
  
• Fixed infinite splash effect when creatures die in fairly shallow water
  
• Added speed reduction when the character is approaching a target position for an interaction such as piloting a raft to avoid jittering at the center
  
• Fixed being able to walk into a raft's storage area to push it across the water
  
• Fixed fish not properly passing on their infection level to their resulting meat items in certain cases
  

Balance:

• Removed spawn chance of hostile creatures near camp at night
  
• Greatly reduced chance hostile creatures wandering near camp
  

Other changes:

• Increased depth that posts can be placed in water to better allow for protection against hostile creatures
  
• Reworked creature disease state to be set when they spawn rather than when they die. Won't change things much now but will better set up the game for breeding animals and whatnot later on
  
• Reworked how the far-away terrain is rendered to no longer rely on stencil masks but still nicely blend between it and the nearby detailed terrain
  

Adding a few fixes and requested quality of life changes in this small update. As always, greatly appreciate your feedback and bug reports! Glad you are enjoying the recent big update! Really excited to see the rest of the roadmap fulfilled this year.

Fixes:

• Fixed ranged attack targeting in top-down mode - the target circle was behaving oddly when aiming higher than the character (ex. up a hill)
  
• Fixed ranged attack targeting in third-person mode - specifically for throwing stones, the angle calculation was done from the wrong point causing the stone to be thrown to the right
  
• Fixed in-inventory dead rabbits losing their inventory state when loading a save, causing their harvestable items to be empty when trying to harvest after being dropped
  
• Fixed internal error happening during nighttime due to missing fish spawn data
  

Additions:

• Added a migration of demo saves to the full game. This will only happen for players launching the full game the first time before any settings files are created to make sure the demo saves don't overwrite any full game saves
  
• Added stockpile support for charcoal, pebbles, and a new extra large stockpile added for thin trunks
  
• Added new game preferences storage system, currently saving whichever game customization options you set when starting a new game so that it will be re-shown the next time you try to start another custom difficulty game
  
• Added "kill" item action for live rabbits in your inventory
  

Other changes:

• Updated credits for character modelling
  
• Removed "experimental" from third-person control mode, it's fairly stable now!
  

The first major update of the year has finally arrived, just in time for the end of Q1! A ton of new and exciting features and improvements have been added to the game, a few still preliminary versions that will be improved over time. Even though this is a major update with a 0.x version increase, all old saved games should still be compatible. Please reach out if you see any issue with your saved games! And thank you for your patience, I know many of you were very excited about the update and were wondering if it was going to be delayed or not. Hope you enjoy!

[h2]New Features[/h2]

[h3]Character customization[/h3]

Added a preliminary character customization system at the start of new games, and also when pre-0.10.0 saves are loaded (this will happen only once). There aren't any more detailed customizations yet sadly but these will come in future updates! There also may be some animation issues after a big migration from the old character model, these will be fixed with time as well.

[h3]Game customization[/h3]

Added a much-requested game customization options for new games! You can customize a ton of settings like turning off the Blight (mostly), food decay speed, etc. For now, these settings can only be set at the start of a new game, but modifying them during the course of a game will potentially come later on.

[h3]Fishing with fish traps[/h3]

Fishing with simple fish traps is now possible in The Last Plague. You can catch multiple fish in the trap at a time, collect them and cook them. More active fishing with fishing rods will come in a future update.

[h3]Bows and arrows[/h3]

Finally added bow and arrow support for some more interesting ranged combat in the game. Currently bows and proper arrows can only found in cabins, with support for crafting them coming in later updates when the resources required are added to the game.

[h3]Melee/ranged toggle for spears[/h3]

Finally you will be able to use the spears as a longer range melee attack, as well as craft a flint-spearhead for a slightly more effective spear in the early game. Toggling between melee and ranged modes is possible with a new key bind (V and DPad-Right by default).

[h3]Ability to pick up creatures[/h3]

You can now choose to pick up trapped rabbits to be able to carry them back to a safer spot before harvesting them. Being able to drag larger creatures like coyotes will come later on.

[h2]Other Additions/Changes[/h2]

• Added selection outline brightness option
  
• Reworked player melee attack collision detection to be a lot more forgiving, factoring in highlight of enemies into the attack rather than always checking directly in front of the player character
  
• Added quiver container that only stores arrows, must be equipped on the belt to be able to provide the bow attack interaction with arrows
  
• Added long plank wall
  
• Increase support beam connection distance slightly to allow one more snap-to-grid position
  
• Added character outline to main inventory window with (currently unused) new chest, legs and feet slots
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Added detection of controller inputs at the start of the game that you can now turn off, in cases where controllers were added unwanted input like navigating up throughout the menus
  
• Fixed crafting recipes with multiple output items not preserving input condition percent properly