The Last Plague: Blight News

Quick hotfix for an issue introduced in the update earlier today (V0.6.8)

Fixes:

• Fixed compass not showing up on the HUD beside the belt slot bar when held (only relevant for the more realistic mode)
  

Spent some time working on performance and graphical tweaks to allow for further view distances after the previous camera angle update. Fixed a bunch of inconsistencies with the distance fog, rendering transparent objects and effects.

There is a new view distance slider in the graphics settings, defaulting to 50% which is what the game was previously. Keep in mind that at 75% and above the game will need to load more chunks in the distance to show the objects there, this will cause a much greater load on the CPU while loading/unloading chunks during exploration. Let me know how performance is for you, I'd love to hear how the game performs!

Note: most of the game's shaders were replaced in this update to help accommodate the new fog rendering. There may be a few graphical issues from this migration, please let me know if you spot anything that looks weird.

Features:

• New view distance slider in graphics settings, allowing you to see more in the distance if your hardware can handle it
  
• New "Speed-up camera blur effect" checkbox in gameplay settings to allow disabling of the blur effect when speeding up time
  

Performance:

• Faster water reflection rendering - changed rendering pipeline a bit to avoid doing various setup processes to save a bit of time every frame
  
• Greatly reduced game logic CPU cost every frame - world generated objects like sticks and stones no longer take up processing power to update themselves, wetness from the rain is now handled in a much more optimized way. Also greatly reduced the processing time every frame needed for physics based objects. These optimizations will only be present for items in chunks generated after updating to this version
  
• More upfront memory use to pre-allocate a bunch of items/resources to make their creation during the first bits of gameplay faster
  
• Misc optimizations across the codebase to make things a tiny bit speedier
  

Visuals:

• Reworked distance fog rendering a bunch to fix up how transparent objects and particle effects look in the distance to be fully consistent
  
• Reworked skybox rendering to look better across various cloud density and time of day combinations
  
• Adjusted a few level of detail settings to avoid pop-in of trees and other objects
  

Fixes:

• Fixed missing attack cursor when holding a melee weapon like an axe or knife (issue introduced a few updates ago)
  
• Fixed crafting queue not stopping if forging on an anvil that breaks
  
• Fixed refresh rate not being stored and loaded properly when the game is launched again - note that non-default refresh rates only work on the "Exclusive fullscreen" setting
  

Other changes:

• Reduced generation of bushes that make a sound and slow you down in forests
  

Tons of exciting new features and improvements are part of this large update! Wanted to prioritize a bunch of the bigger community requests over the past few weeks, needed to do a ton of rendering updates and optimizations to get it all in. Excited to get this out and see what everyone thinks!

A few QoL features have been added that are new settings options in the gameplay settings screen. You can now change the camera angle to be lower to see more in the distance (has a small performance hit), you can enable speed-up functionality on almost all interactions like chopping or building, and you can enable "quick pickups" to make the picking up or gathering process instant.



Features:

• New camera angle gameplay setting - a slider that adjusts the camera angles ingame. The "higher" side is the old camera angles from before. Keep in mind, lower angles require more to be rendered in the distance and will result in poorer performance.
  
• Quick pickups - a new checkbox that allows instant pickup and gathering of items
  
• Speed-up all interactions - new dropdown setting with "off", "some" and "all" options. The default and previous level was "some" which includes crafting, harvesting, and repairing. The "all" option allows you to speed up things like chopping, building and taking apart buildings.
  
• Predator culling - killing predators enough will now prevent them from re-spawning in an area for a certain amount of time. This feature still needs a lot of testing and balance, please provide your feedback on how it's working!
  
• Added a "camera cursor movement" gameplay option to control how much the camera moves as you move the mouse. Setting it to 0% will prevent all movement
  
• Added a blood spray effect when attacking creatures
  
• Added a progress bar above the player showing the strength of held-down attacks (since not everyone was aware of this before)
  

Performance:

• Removed useless physics events for items near bushes (ex. in forests) that was eating up CPU for no reason
  
• Reworked cloud rendering to be a bit more performant
  
• Increased performance of rain particle system greatly, but with the loss of rain drop effects on the water - will be added back later
  
• Enabled multi-threaded CPU-time rendering on the Windows build to increase performance when many objects on screen
  
• May be a performance hit from the new SSAO effects and new fog rendering system
  

Visuals:

• Better SSAO effect, but may have more of a performance impact - medium vs. high quality will have more of a difference now
  
• New fog effects written from the ground up to account for lower camera angles - still requires tweaks and updates to look better in the future
  
• Tweaked water rendering to look better at the shore when looking at an angle
  
• Adjusted rain rendering to look more consistent regardless of time of day
  
• Increased ambient light at night
  

Balance:

• Drastically decreased bear health
  
• Increased axe damage
  
• Reduced amount of iron ore drops generated near outcrops
  
• Increased pickaxe effectiveness
  
• Reduced material requirements for stick wattle walls
  
• Increased mud requirements for wattle & daub upgrade
  

Fixes:

• Fixed placing dirt with shovel not showing dirt on the terrain
  
• Fixed more repair menu refreshing inconsistencies
  
• Fixed wattle & daub wall being shorter than the wattle wall it upgrades from
  
• Fixed building process not showing clay bricks when building the clay brick based buildings
  
• Fixed stack overflow crash when moving an item from within a held leather bag into the hand-slot the bag is in
  
• Prevented case of double-click of a two handed container like a crucible or clay pot from mistakenly placing it into the inventory and emptying it
  
• Fixed issue where using a workbench and selecting a tool causing that tool to stay selected when opening the crafting menu elsewhere, making the recipe break in certain cases
  
• Fixed stockpiles from being placeable at far distances from the player
  
• Fixed fence posts from placeable with less than 4 sticks in inventory
  
• Fixed bronze anvil popping out from the clay mold when it's done hardening
  
• Fixed the autosave timer so that it factors in main menu time and paused time properly
  

Other changes:

• The speed-up process now adds a radial blur effect to the screen to better signify when time is sped up
  
• Bronze axe blades, saw blades, and bronze knife now are 50% condition out of the mold, and can now be sharpened up to 70% with a sandstone chunk
  
• Added a ranged attack cursor when holding a thrown item like a stone or spear
  
• Adjusted a few animations and events so that chopping and attacks are triggered at the exact right time
  
• Increased strength of the "smooth ground" option with the shovel
  
• Added "Repair..." context menu option for items that have a repair possible
  
• Reduced the disease exposure screen effect when eating lightly contaminated foods like rabbits. It now scales properly based on the level of infection from the food eaten
  

Another update with fixes and balance changes thanks to everyone's great feedback!

Balance:

• Greatly increased stick and long stick generation around groups of sparse trees
  
• Increased generation of pine branch drops across all trees
  
• Reduced starting infection level of all predators
  

Fixes:

• Fixed backpacks placed on the floor not showing their inventory when used
  
• Another attempt to fix fast-looking clouds in the water's reflection on some hardware
  
• Fixed held items not being placeable on floors/bridge by clicking near the character
  
• Hide toggled "show nearby items" labels during sleep
  
• Finally fixed long-standing issue where felled trees infinitely fall underneath the ground in rare cases
  
• Fixed large stones having shadows turned off when not that far from the camera
  
• Fixed repairing not working for taken-apart buildings after the previous update's fixes to the damaged building repair process
  
• Fixed missing hint text on the soaking basin to explain small stone or hammer requirement to take it apart
  
• Fixed item repair window not refreshing button state of other repair options when the first repair is completed
  
• Fixed leaf roof on four tall posts not protecting items on the ground from the rain
  
• Fixed floor placement colliding with the posts it is snapped to
  
• Fixed UI scale at 150% hiding the time control popup when the crafting UI is open
  
• Fixed grinding wheel stand icon position issue in repair menu when the grind wheel stand is used
  
• Prevented interactions like building or taking apart from damaging the held item if it's not a required tool, causing cases of a held small stone breaking when constructing a building that doesn't need it
  

Other changes:

• Reduced max fuel for mud brick kiln and reduced max stack sizes for mud brick kiln slots
  
• Added "can't pour" hint message for clay molds when holding molten copper
  
• Changed up starting hint text around attack controls by further explaining how holding the key down affects the attack
  
• Added new "Fires cast shadows" graphics setting that can turn off shadow casting from the fire pit to increase performance a decent amount
  
• Removed "start stockpile..." option for non-player inventory slots to remove potential item duplication exploit
  
• Stockpiles are now shown in the "highlight nearby items" state
  
• More consistent water reflection rendering and potential performance increase when MSAA is used
  
• Switched UI scale options to be in increments of 10% with a max of 150% instead of 175%
  
• Added weights to a few of the heavier objects like iron ore, ingots, and large stone
  
• New requirement for buildings like the fire pit to be only placeable on the terrain
  
• Renamed "Post" to "Medium Post" to reduce confusion during the tutorial and added the tall post as an optional completion criteria for the first task
  
• Updated shelter building tutorial task description to make tall post usage benefits more clear
  

Another bunch of bug fixes and quality of life changes in this update, thanks for all the reports! The building process should be a lot less error prone now with less incorrect collisions and proper state setting, and clay gathering should be a lot less finicky and quicker.

Fixes:

• Fixed rare issue where interacting with the UI a certain way causes all input to get locked and stops the character from being controlled and the main menu from being opened, forcing a hard exit of the game
  
• Fixed stick rafters incorrectly colliding with the support beams they should be connected to and preventing placement
  
• Fixed building system state tracking so that removing a diagonal support beam correctly refreshes the state and allows placing stick rafters in the new rectangular shape
  
• Fixed weird looking terrain ridges near lakes in the world generation. Will need to start a new game to get the fixed world generation
  
• Fixed repair UI not updating and resetting properly when a repair completes
  
• Fixed repair of fuel burning buildings like the fire pit from clearing out all fuel and extinguishing the fire
  
• Fixed fast moving clouds in the water's reflection on some hardware
  
• Fixed clay candle mold crafting recipe incorrectly outputting in the hardened version instead of soft version
  
• Fixed gates not moving if connected between posts or tall posts due to collision issues
  
• Fixed bedroll from being placeable on plank and stone floors
  
• Fixed missing recipes for melting hardened tallow back into liquid tallow, and smelting hardened copper and ingots back into molten copper
  
• Fixed accidental attack if weapon is equipped and you click on an NPC, potentially hitting them
  
• Fixed a bunch of missing and wrong map tiles for areas around lakes
  
• Fixed sounds like fire pit burning/cooking from being present on fire pits that aren't ignited or cooking when coming back to camp
  
• Fixed certain buildings like lean-to not allowing you to take them apart due to infinite walking from the character
  
• Fixed red/green outlines for post placement not showing up over the water
  
• Taking apart a roof piece will dump the materials below the roof to avoid them getting stuck up top
  
• Fixed broken run animation for Cloaked Figure
  
• Fixed missing repair functionality for walls and other non-hammer built buildings
  
• Fixed tutorial task text for hardening the clay bowl to be in the kiln instead of the fire
  

Other changes:

• Clay gathering is faster and less finicky, with more clay collected per gather
  
• Clay clumps drop if trying to gather clay from the ground and your inventory is full to avoid losing the clay
  
• Holding left shift + clicking the craft button now queues 5 recipes at a time to reduce the amount of clicks needed
  
• Changed player icon color and made larger to be more obvious on the map
  
• Reduced player-made map marker text size
  
• Allowed the escape key to close the crafting/building menu if the search field is focused but empty
  
• Gathering from the terrain doesn't stop if your character slides away due to a steep slope or item underneath
  
• Added stockpile support for pine branch
  
• Changed damage text color to be orange for player hits
  
• Adjusted a few shelter tutorial task descriptions to make things a bit clearer