The Last Plague: Blight News

Thanks for checking out the game and reporting all the issues you've been seeing! This update fixes up a bunch of big and small issue and introduces a format change to the chunk saving and network transmission to speed things up for slower connections to reduce artifacts and whatnot. See full notes below, and please continue to report any weirdness you see!

Please make sure you and your friends all update to this version so you can keep playing together!

Balance:

• Slightly reduced hostile creature count at night
  
• Increased hunger/thirst levels when respawning to make it a bit easier to get to camp and continue surviving
  
• Removed bedroll given on respawn
  

Fixes:

• Fixed error case in the game's world that causes joining clients to error out and then eventually time out
  
• Fixed item repair interaction breaking when complete in certain cases
  
• Fixed item repair not working at all on clients
  
• Fixed item repair on grinding wheel stand not working
  
• Fixed crafting animation breaking if last small stone breaks with more recipes queued
  
• Fixed "unexpected error" when the game autosaves after waking up if there is at least one other player in the game
  
• Fixed copper alembic not being placeable
  
• Fixed host autosaving before all players have been transitioned to awake state, causing any loads from that save to think the client players are asleep with regards to showing nearby item labels and other functions
  
• Fixed some various error cases with a tool when harvesting
  
• Fixed missing physics information for hand cart wheels and rims causing them to disappear when dropped and subsequently corrupting any subsequent save
  
• Fixed error when attempting to place buildings rapidly on clients before the host acknowledges a correct placement
  
• Fixed conversation dialogs not behaving properly in certain paths, for example not being able to give slime sample to Elric due to repeating initial message
  
• Fixed missing translation for news title on the main menu screen
  
• Fixed double processing of items in item inventories placed on the ground like the backpack, sometimes causing errors when items fully decay
  
• Fixed lying down sometimes starting and stopping immediately causing a lengthy animation if you are just at the edge of the range of the bedroll
  
• Fixed Blight clouds not being reflected in the water
  
• Fixed some text in buttons wrapping weirdly in other languages
  

Performance:

• Greatly reduced amount of update network messages sent to client players for container buildings like the rain catcher or soaking basin
  

Other changes:

• Reduced chunk texture mapping resolution by 0.5x to vastly reduce chunk size when being saved to disk and sent over the network. Chunks were around 1mb each before, now around 0.3mb. Old saves should still function fine, existing chunks will be resized to be smaller when re-saved. Should help with some texture artifacts appearing on the terrain with certain connection speeds
  
• Added version checking when querying games from friends so that you can only join games that are the same version. v0.7.1 clients will be blocked from joining v0.7.2 games but won't get an obvious message
  
• Added extra timeout duration for joining a game if there is a lot of data to load, should reduce the instances of timeout messages when trying to join a game
  
• Timeout settings for regular requests and join requests are now in the game's settings file
  
• Added button that links to a form to allow you to request playtest access for your friends
  

Quick update to fix a few critical issues discovered recently, thanks for the reports!

Fixes:

• Fixed game state breaking when clicking on the tool selector in a crafting list recipe if you have more than one valid tool for the recipe
  
• Fixed crafting animation getting stuck permanently after crafting mud mortar using dirt, clay and water, requiring a save reload
  

After a solid 5 months of work, the co-op multiplayer is now finally ready for testing with a wider audience! It was written from scratch with many of the game's logic needing to be reworked to factor in host and client game instance concepts.

Gameplay wise nothing has really changed much since the last updates in April. Almost all work has gone into getting multiplayer working smoothly. One exception was the hostile creature AI, it's been reworked a bit to add an aggressiveness factor that slowly increases as the creatures get more infected day by day. A lot more work still needs to be done on the AI of course, it will come with time.

Note: Single-player is disabled in the current playtest to emphasize co-op testing, please use the "Co-op multiplayer" button on the main menu to host or join a game. Don't worry though, single-player is still the main focus for the game and will come back for the release!

[h2]How Co-op works:[/h2]



Getting started:

• One player can "host" a game for their friends to join. Starting a game is similar to starting a new single-player game, but with a few more options. Currently single-player games and multiplayer games are separate - a single-player game can't be converted to multiplayer and vise versa. This may change in the future
  
• The host can choose between it being private or discoverable to Steam friends, along with an optional password. There is no ability to host a public game at this time
• Other friends can launch the game and then see the host's game show up in the "Join Game" menu if it's not set to private. If the game is private, the host needs to select "Invite Friend to Game" in the main menu when ingame. Needs the Steam overlay to be enabled.
  
• Current max players is 4, this may go up in the future as the performance is tuned
  

Gameplay:

• Sleep is still required to refill energy, so all players need to sleep at the same time to speed-up the 8 hours properly. Sleeping will always take 8 hours in co-op regardless of energy level
  
• Speeding up various interaction like crafting or chopping is unfortunately not possible in co-op, so it may be a bit tedious. The interaction times will be tweaked during the testing phase
  
• Creatures aren't scaled up to account for more players, but hunger and thirst requirements are implicitly scaled, so be aware. 4 players would require quite a bit of water and food if all at the same camp
  
• Each player will have randomly chosen colors for their player character's clothing for slightly easier differentiation. This is just a temporary measure, there will be customizable characters in the game's release
  
• The objective system has been changed a bit to handle multiple players. Some tasks like placing or building structures are shared amongst players, others like collecting certain items have to be done per player. The tasks will tweaked as testing continues
  
• There is no friendly fire
  
• There is only one main save for co-op games, you can't save to different slots like in single-player games. The host needs to click "Save and Exit Game" to save the game before shutting it down for others
  
• After dying you can respawn and this will place you at the world's starting area again but with low hunger/thirst and low condition hatchet. The respawning system will be enhanced in the future so that there is an option to force a reload of an older save if any player dies (probably exclusive to the more realistic gameplay setting)
  

Some things to note:

• This co-op implementation was written from scratch and is still very new so bugs are likely to be found, especially in networking setups with large packet loss chance or large latency due to physical distance
  
• Co-op is host/client exclusive right now. One player needs to host and play the game for others to be able to connect. Dedicated servers will come later
  
• The underlying networking is done via Steam Networking Sockets with Steam Datagram Relay. Basically this means that when a player joins a game, they connect to Steam first, Steam routes the traffic to the host via the Steam internal network. The host will receive data and respond via the same network. This means that one game won't see any direct connections or IP addresses of connecting players. Read more here: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1433-AD20-F11D-B71E (see section named "What about games that use Steam Networking APIs?")
  
• Performance on the host computer may be lower depending on your CPU. There is extra load on the host due to handling connections, relaying messages to all clients, and simulating more of the world at the same time compared to single-player, especially if there are 4 players all in different parts of the world
  
• Most of the internal testing was done with 2 player co-op setups, there may be undiscovered issues present when more than two players are present
  
• To reduce bandwidth and facilitate faster game joining, less of the world is loaded around each player. You may notice parts of the world pop in as you get close to the edges of what's currently loaded. This will be worked on in the future
  

Other changes:

• Updated Unity version to 2021.3.30f1
  
• Finally fixed the crashes in the Mac version of the game! There was a Unity setting in the Mac build that was causing instability, turned it off and haven't seen a single crash during testing
  
• Linux default Graphics API was set to Vulkan as performance seems better. Please report any issues you may see!
  

Head to the Discord server to discuss any issues you may see with co-op!
https://discord.gg/P3nAV7UJWX

Another batch of bug fixes in this update thanks to all the great feedback!

This will be the last update for the demo, focus will shift now onto the remaining work needed for early access release later this year. The demo on Steam will shut off Monday April 17th. Really appreciate everyone's time trying the game out and providing your feedback!

The playtest/alpha build will stay up but won't be updated until close to release.

Balance:

• Reduced time for distilling slime
  
• Changed cleared blight zone regrowth to be prevented if the area was cleared within the last two ingame days
  

Fixes:

• Fixed cooking/smelting progress being lost when loading a saved game
  
• Fixed clicking on an ingredient in building list not switching to the search tab properly in the crafting recipe list for proper filtering
  
• Fixed "Craft with..." while using a workbench preserving the workbench UI instead of closing it and opening normal crafting UI
  
• Fixed very rare error when taking apart support beams causing the taking apart animation to be stuck on the character
  
• Fixed error that happened in certain digging situations causing no dirt to be collected and the terrain not being modified
  
• Fixed ranged attack aim triggering when attempting to use buildings like a fire pit with a stone or spear held
  
• Fixed loose substance stockpiles like sand visually shrinking when more than 10kg is present
  
• Fixed bellows indicator not appearing when placing hearth furnace
  
• Fixed swamp mist effect showing up wrong in the distance and when behind transparent tree leaves
  
• Fixed terrain digging by hand causing handheld items to take damage
  

Other changes:

• Added speed-up ability to bergamot leaf application and also "Apply half" and "Apply all" context menu options
  
• Changed stockpile placement to move all items of that type in your inventory to the stockpile instead of just the one that was right-clicked
  
• Added grass flattening support to stockpiles
  
• Changed large sandstone chunk and resulting grinding wheel to be only handheld and not placeable in inventory
  
• Changed blighted zones to only show tall/wide cloud effects in village areas as originally intended, allowing more straightforward clearing of blighted zones in the wilderness even if they are very large
  
• Added combustibility to more wooden items like improvised spears and various tool handles
  
• Grass in forests and fields now also turn to dirt when run on over a long period of time
  
• Added "Build with..." context menu action to slime oil oleander leaf
  

Fixing a bunch of big and small issues in this update, some balance changes, and lastly enhancements in various areas to make the gameplay that much better. Thanks for playing and giving feedback! Hope you enjoy.

Balance:

• Greatly increased amount of quicklime produced by limestone burn piles
  
• Increased generation chance of slime
  
• Increased amount of slime oil distilled from slime
  
• Reduced material requirements for leaf roof, stone floor and stone walls
  
• Reduced burn time of oleander burn pile and made its clearing effect faster
  

Fixes:

• Hopefully fixed cause of missing terrain chunks that some have reported. Please let me know if you still see it!
  
• Fixed oleander burn pile not being destroyed after being burned
  
• Fixed UI for oleander burn pile showing an empty "Produces" section
  
• Fixed cleared areas of Blight coming back every day. The center of each Blight area needs to be cleared for it to stop growing
  
• Fixed oleander burn pile clearing not working properly if the area is unloaded for the duration of the burn
  
• Fixed toxic smoke particle effect not factoring in the fog when rendered
  
• Updated water generation in newly generated chunks to reduce jagged shorelines
  
• Fixed cases of the progress bar in the interaction UI (ex. "chopping...") from disappearing randomly
  
• Fixed mid-air projectiles breaking when they are restored after a game load
  
• Fixed lake/river container-filling to preserve initial click location when it starts so that mouse movement doesn't interrupt filling when the target point becomes too far
  
• Fixed water not being tagged correctly internally which would prevent things like projectiles causing a splash when hitting it, code to check building placement in water not working correctly, and click-to-move mode not working correctly on water
  
• Fixed thrown spears flying away too much after hitting the ground
  
• Fixed Bloomery collider being too tall to fit under rafters/roof
  

Performance:

• Disabling various physics-based checks for far away objects to slightly reduce CPU load
  

Visuals:

• Reworked UI for active interactions like "chopping..." to look a bit better
  

Other changes:

• Reworked throw attacks to feel a bit better: projectiles are much faster, the max range is a bit further, projectiles get launched at lower angles, and the spear throw animation orients the spear correctly during the throw
  
• Reworked interactions in click-once interaction mode to greatly reduce the amount of accidental melee attacks happening when trying to interact with things while holding an axe
  
• Allowed posts to be placed in shallow water
  
• Added speed-up possibility to the level ground interaction