FortressCraft Evolved News

Different days can provide wildly inconsistent amounts of work. Some days I can get half a dozen new machines in. Other days, I can spend looking at one line of code and end up achiving nothing. This month has been one of the latter months; after the end-to-end playthrough that took about a month for P20, this month has been a consolidation of all the new things. And just a couple of shiny toys for everyone. The handbook has also received a ton of love - if there's any entries for non-obvious machines missing, please let me know!

• Launch the Railgun to unlock the GPS (Adventures Pack)
  
• Use Hive Brains to craft Hive Agitators to get more Resin. (Adventures Pack)
  
• Use AntiGrav-tubes to move vertically without risk of dying.
  
• Colour-coded Freight Tracks (Adventures Pack)
  
• Advanced Teleporters! (Adventures Pack)
  
• Context Help overhaul
  
• Massive performance improvements to threaded work.
  
• Added a 14-page handbook entry, covering the complete game, from your first steps until the RailGun. Feedback wanted!
  

The Adventures Pack is planned for release in P23 next month; my work until then will pretty much be polishing and fixing issues with that, as opposed to adding anything new.

• Altered HBAO to be dynamic based on framerate; this should heavily improve framerate for 1440p and 4k users.
  
• Fixed a performance issue on Fabulous and above when many Airlocks were nearby.
  
• Performance improvements to animated plants
  
• Performance improvement to ConstructoBots when not visible.
  
• Fixed Instancing on a large number of plants
  
• Fixed a potential issue where plants clearing themselves up would massively overload the Build Orders.
  
• Tunnel Nukers will now delay and re-try explosions on successive frames as opposed to locking the mob thread up.
  
• Item simulation has been spread out over a number of ticks, and should use approximately 500% less CPU time.
  
• Significant memory and performance improvements disk queuing. This should alleviate a number of microstuttering bugs, as well as improve worst-case memory usage.
  
• Fixed an issue where exiting the game shortly after running around in a new world could cause a long exit queue time.
  
• Plants now smartly request segment saves, as opposed to forcing save too often
  
• Tunnel Nukers should now try a little harder to pre-page their segment
  
• Tracking of orphaned Build Orders and executed Build Orders
  
• Made ArchiveManagement Lock a non-blocking call, meaning no long gaps where SegmentRequests can't be serviced. TL;DR, a queue is much smaller than it used to be.
  
• Optimisation of Shifting and Population, reducing the worst-case scenario from ~180,000ms down to 80ms. This is not a typo.
  
• Teleporting should be virtually instant for single-players now
  
• Complete rework and new caching system for the GetSegment code; this is an exceptionally risky change, but should provide enormous performance benefits.
  
• Fixed performance issue with Electric Lights when inside rooms
  
• Reduced Good from 10 segment draw distance to 8 segment draw distance, to see if any issues from this thread are resolved : https://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/1760230157503109103/?ctp=3
  

• Added ToneMapping and EyeAdaptation. I don't like the look, so it's disabled by default. When Bloom is off, this turns on, adding to the 'low contrast' look. Simply type
  
  enter /detail bloom enter enter
• Medbay now ticks longer, to avoid any timing hiccups on busy worlds
  
• Heists now attempt to inject power boosters and ampules to the player's suit inventory first if slots are free
  
• Heists now have a configurable limit for injection so you can prevent them from injecting beyond a defined inventory quantity - enables stocking you with a handful of the essentials when you pass by
  
• Tweak to heists to support all suit items for all your clumsy suit replacement needs :D
  
• Repeat button should now work again on the Manufacturing Plant
  
• Paintable variants of blocks should now be placeable if the base block is craftable.
  
• Blueprints requiring DLC packs will now be colour-coded in the Manufacturing Plant.
  
• Researched/Available counts on the Progression screen are now actually correct.
  
• Removed a large number of archaic Console commands, meaning that the help is readable again
  

• Altered HBAO system so color-bleeding is modulated by depth. TL;DR you won't see weird glowing blocks within the fog.
  
• Fog distance is now much more dependent on detail and bake amount, giving a significant draw advantage to higher detail settings.
  
• CC plants rendering improved
  
• Fixed GPS readout
  
• GPS now goes offline if the CPH is destroyed on Important CPH mode.
  
• Fixed CCCCC rendering
  
• Fixed Toxic plant rendering
  
• Fixed animated plants in CC
  
• Advanced Teleporter should now work correctly networked (TY MadVandal)
  
• Fixed TryExtract to stop taking additional items after it has one and it's an ItemSingle (Ty Pacasa)
  
• RecalculateAvailableStackHeight(bool periodicCheck) modified to allow clients to visually update when periodicCheck is true.
  

• Added Techno Anti-Gravity Lift for Frozen Factory Owners
  
• Added Rainbow Anti-Gravity Lift for Dapper owners
  
• Added Predator Anti-Gravity Lift for Adventure Pack owners
  
• Added Basic and Regular Corner Conveyors
  
• Added Basic and Regular Conveyor Crafters!
  
• Added Hive Agitators - build within 32m of a Hive and feed with power to cause the nearest hivemind to grow. (Adventures Pack only)
  
• Added MK4 turret as a multi-block upgrade from MK3s, using Purple (Boss/Perfect) eyes and some Alloyed Blocks. Yes, the turret from the trailer has been redone, made to work, and been made public. Sorry it took so long.
  

• An enormous amount of translation and handbook work from Zebra + co.
  
• Updated Mass Storage Controller and CryoSpawner handbook entries.
  
• Updated Energy Grommet handbook entry.
  
• Added full handbook entries and guides for all 7 of the Mass Storage machines.
  
• Loads of Handbook entries added and updated. Too many to list. Did I miss one?
  
• Added Tools handbook entry, explaining all of the tools. This was submitted by a community member, but I haven't got a note as to who! Thank you, mysterious stranger.
  
• Updated a number of handbook entries for clarity.
  
• Ensures the machine 'hint' was displayed in the crafting interface
  
• Updated a large number of machine's descriptions and hints.
  
• Handbook fixes to AmpuleCrafters, Attack Scanners and Base Scanners
  
• Welcome and First Night Handbook entries no longer display after 200 Base Rating.
  
• Added context-sensitive subtitle to Handbook entries
  
• Research Panel no longer always inserts itself as the Selected Machine in the Contextual Help Handler
  
• Fixed an issue with the Contextual Help handler, due to the Translation team renamingUnknown_Materials to unknown materials.
  
• Removed the unnecessary numbers from the short 'Contextual Help' page list.
  

• Dust in rooms will no longer be present if the room is correctly filtered.
  
• Fixed all NonHelp console commands (so /coords works again!)
  
• Macerator no longer incorrectly lists power
  
• MagmaBore correctly displays power needs
  
• Fixed invisible StockPort on initial build
  
• Fixed AutoUpgrader with down slopes/corners
  
• Resolved log spam due to error with slopes on delete
  
• Fix to UI redraw spam for freight cart stations.
  
• Fixes display of stacks of >1 million
  
• Fixes cube stacks max stack size not being obeyed in Hardcore Inventory
  .
  
• Fixed an issue with Advanced Teleporters when a network client.
  
• CargoLifts that attempt to spawn into overloaded segments will now fail gracefully and try again.
  
• Added QueueLength readout to the Server Monitor - if this is regularly at or over 200, your machine is beginning to struggle to keep up.
  
• Implemented a Fix where MSIO ports were causing an exception when non-stackable items were used.
  
• Fixed MSIO issue with ItemSingles
  
• Railgun is now marked as part of the Adventures Pack.
  
• Verified issues with CryoSleeping with no issues
• Melters will re-awaken fluid even if it can't move.
  
• Alloyed Assemblers are no longer part of Frozen Factory DLC (oops)
  
• Researching an Unknown Material will now correctly display the information about researching it again.
  
• Advanced Teleporters now available to Adventures Pack/Patreons - they do not work Networked currently, tho single-player should be just fine.
  
• Added RailGun stat tracking
  
• Fixed Scrap Track Junction rendering
  
• Fixed a hopper exploit
  
• Player will no longer be sent to look for Biomass once they have a Geothermal Plant.
  
• Crystal and Lithium 'search' missions no longer trigger once you have Solar Panels
  
• ARTHER PTG and Biomass 'comments' are also predicated appropriately.
  
• Fixed Tutorial message sizes
  
• Removed Copper Wire cost from Slopes, meaning a direct conversion is now available from regular Straights.
  

Hooked up auto track colorer to the track pieces in the scene
Adds the color lighting update code for non-entity track pieces
Added ILightingDataUserInterface - this interface is attached to GOs to receive network lighting data updates
Added LightingDataOrderManager to pass the lighting updates to GOs on the unity thread
Added TrackAutoColor - a script that uses this interface to receive lighting updates for track color updates
Deleting cubes now check if they are tracks and queues a scan of the local track to determine if a freight connection was broken and will automatically trigger a grid reset
Added more verbose logging in FreightCartMob for some mystery errors recently reported to try to track down the source
Adds an error state for FreightCarts for when they can't find a place to offload excess (primarily to sync clients)
Adds necessary networking to support transmission of lighting data updates to clients
Adds AP DLC check and added tag for crafted items
Adds one way track to the AP DLC cube build check as they're of no use to players without the DLC (hidden to avoid confusion)
Adds depots and their cart contents to the freight system monitor grid display
Carts now tell depots if they can't navigate to them so they can tell the player there's something wrong
Blast furnaces no longer hint that they can connect to mass storage (they cant!)
Stations now only error for grids of 2 nodes (3 is minimum valid)
Junctions color by grid ID
Passes the entrydirection through to TrackPiece on create to cache for easy iteration

If you have a burning desire or feature or change you want in, then you're running out of time to persuade me and others -

https://www.reddit.com/r/FCE/comments/8h00yn/what_next/

Current top candidates are Conveyor Corners, the MK4 turret and anti-grav ladders.

These days, of course, it's impossible to ship anything without breaking something, despite the tireless work of the testing crew, telling me how broken I've made anything - so therefore, have a tiny patch!

• Fixed endless 'Base Destroyed' message, which was due to the new UI
  
• Reduced cost of Upgrade Cargo Lifts to be more in line with P20 costs.
  
• Freight Carts research should now be correctly gated behind Adventures Pack or Patreon access
  
• Fixed erroneous "Please purchase the Adventurers pack to continue" to people who have just built the MagmaBore.
  

Patch 22 goals:

• Corner Conveyors
  
• Advanced Teleporters
  
• MK4 Turret
  
• GPS
  

As well as continued polish, placeholder machines removed, and optimisation. See you next month! (Or, you know, sooner on the Forums, Twitter or Discord)

This month has been almost entirely focused on the new Freight Carts, and a complete, end-to-end playthrough of the entire game, networked, from the very start, right until the building, testing and firing of the new Rail Gun.

Note : The Freight Carts are not currently available. You can build the 'Scrap' tier of carts, but anything higher than that will currently, incorrectly, open up the Dapper DLC page! Sorry.

• New main UI!
  
• Use Signs to name your rooms!
  
• All T2 crafting completely reworked to be similar to T1, and much more understandable to boot!
  
• Loads of Frozen Factory improvements and rebalances
  
• Freight Carts!
  
• Suit Inventory now auto-uses Ampules and Boosters
  

• Robot Herb Arms should now collect plants and hand them off to hoppers correctly.
  
• Robots should now do a 180 degree turn after servicing Hydro Bays or Storage Hoppers.
  
• Linked up all Orbital Railgun missions
  
• Orbital Railgun no longer uses ~47,000 Alloyed Machines Blocks to make, but will instead make ~1,700 Ultimate Upgrade Modules. This is still around 700k bars of each of the sub-types, but should be much easier to actually manage.
  
• Increased Ore Freighter carrying capacity by 4x, halved their speed, giving an effective 2x boost over previous.
  
  • Scrap Ore Freighters now carry 50
    
  • Basic Ore Freighters now carry 500
    
  • Fast Ore Freighters now carry 500
    
  • Large Ore Freighters now carry 1000
    
  • Bulk Ore Freighters now carry 1000
    
• Ore Freighters now show their carried ore correctly.
  
  
  
  
• Stations auto-name to the first freight item added if they don't have a name
  
• Carts now turn around at one-ways if they approach them from the wrong side and properly trigger a nav refresh
  
• SetErrorState now properly handles null interface case
  
• FreightCart error colours are now more specific
  
  • Freight Cart error colours:
    
  • Yellow - Offloading Excess
    
  • Cyan - Parking at Depot
    
  • Magenta - Station Full
    
  • Red - Nav Error
    
• Freight Cart Junctions of glory and win.
  
  

Just remember, the Adventures Pack is planned to be released within 1-3 months, depending on things, but if you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT WAIT, then you can become a Patreon and get immediate access, as well as supporting development of the game.

• Added Titanium Housings and Titanium Housing Crafter
  
• Added Gold Foil and Gold Foil Crafter
  
• Added Secondary Upgrade Module Crafter and Secondary Upgrade Modules
  
• Added Alloyed Upgrade Module Crafter and Alloyed Upgrade Modules
  
• Added Ultimate Upgrade Module Crafter and Ultimate Upgrade Modules
  
• Replaced all self-crafts that used Gold Wire with Gold Foil, 5 times less.
  
• Replaced all self-crafts that used Titanium Plates with Titanium Housing, 6 times less.
  
• Replaced all self-crafts that used Fortified PCBs with Secondary Upgrade Modules, 5 times less.
  
• This should make things much simpler for T2 crafts. Everything should be 'about' the same cost.
  
• Apologies that this may affect a few automation setups :(
  
• Hid a number of items until slightly later in the game, so players can't research things they can't make.
  
• Added Basic Conveyor Belt Crafting machines
  
• Added Conveyor Belt Crafting machines
  
• MK5 Induction kits are no longer used as a crafting ingredient. Instead you'll use UltimateUpgradeModules, each of which costs about 10% of the resources of a previous MK5 Induction Kit.
  
• Titanium Housing Crafter PPS reduced to 25
  
• Secondary Upgrade Module PPS increased to 150
  
• Secondary Upgrade Module no longer required Primary PCBs (this reduces the cost of Alloyed Machine Blocks by 30 Tin bars per block)
  
• Reduced Chrome and Moly cost in Chromed and Magnetic Block Assemblers
  
• Reduced a number of RP costs for early-game items
  
• Increased Research Value of Copper Ore
  
• Added ScrapTrack Crafter
  
• Added MinecartTrack Crafter
  
• Many FF recipes now use the higher-tier Overclocked Clocks, which were sorely underused.
  

• New 'heavy machine cracks the ground' effect
  

• Basic and Regular Conveyors can now be made immune to the effects of Cold and Toxic gases by building them inside an appropriately-classed room.
  
• Signs next to Generic Room Controllers will now specifically name the room - you can use this to help newbies to your server understand things, or to remind you what on earth you had planned...
  
• Many more optimisations to fluid
  
• Players will no longer have a shadow when riding a minecart
  
• Players should no longer clip into Stations whilst riding minecarts.
  
• Decorative Blocks should no longer be cleared by WorkFloor Excavators.
  
• Teleporting will now cause a clear-up of memory allocation and outdated texture loads.
  
• Fixed issue where CompressDuringPlayOnly wouldn't submit folder for archival under certain circumstances
  (You can use CompressDuringPlay or CompressOnExit for now to ensure backups are made.)
  
• Room Vaporators now support 256m^3, up from 192m^3
  
  
  
  
• Lancers and Melters are now 2x the speed on Rapid.
  
• Massive rework of the threaded fluid system. Now substantially better!
  
• Fluid Pipes can now change colour appropriately. This change was far harder than this sentence makes out.
  
• Destroying an OSC will no longer leave the OET in a really broken state. You WILL lose all the power tho - be more sure before hitting BOOM.
  
• Trenchers should now correctly page in target drill segment
  
• Healing Ampules are no longer used if you're dead. #bitlate
  
• Increased size of Organic Power Storage once more.
  
• Melters should now correctly support Freezon Boosting
  
• Freezon-Booster Ablators and Liquifiers now cover a much larger range.
  
• Lancers and Melters now have double range (18/26) when Freezon Boosted, as well as the increased clearance rate.
  
• Increased CryoMine radius by 25%
  
• Logistics Falcors will no longer service adjacent beacons.
  
• Overclocked Clocks now use 5 Clocks, not 1.
  
• All Overclocked use now reduced to 20%
  
• Added a new suit item that doesn't do anything other than have a really pretty drop object with a big light on it. Useful in Clumsy Mode, but not elsewhere.
  
• Improved Lens Polisher readout - it takes ALL lenses, btw!
  
• RayGun unlock now pushed before Labs
  
• Power cost for Rail Checking on Cargo Lifts is massively reduced, and doesn't change, regardless of fitted lift.
  
• Medbay range increased to 10 metres.
  
• All Ampules and Power Boosters now fit into the Suit Inventory.
  
• All items now droppable. ALL items now droppable.
  
• Assembly Line Machines are now 3x faster on Rapid.
  
• Ampules stored in your Suit inventory will automatically trigger when at
• Power Boosters stored in your Suit inventory will automatically trigger when ARTHER is at
• OET Charge now displayed with an ETA properly.
  

• Directional Hoppers cannot offload to Multiblock machines. I can't work out a good fix for this.
  

Ore Density fixed on non-Rapid modes
Mobs that move outside of a Client's loaded frustum should no longer get lost in the ether.
Ore Smelter no longer gives any tutorial once the player has completed the game in a previous playthrough
Fixed rare crash in Mass Storage crates
New UI should fade appropriately.
Massively improved 'progress' indicator in Research Panel.
Hooked up 'Just keep scanning' achievement to when you hit 400/457 items in progression. I may change this to be harder.
Mynocks in a farm will no longer soak up lots of CPU time! This change will mostly only affect dual and quad core PCs.
All of the modifiers to plant growth speed should now apply correctly.
Fixed a generic issue with machines interacting with Assembly Line machines via the generic interface.
Fixed typo in Cost of MK3 Storage Ports
Fixed rare crash in Manufacturing Plants and Accessory Modules.
Railgun can now be fired more than once.
Railgun average, peak, ongoing and total firing stored and displayed.
CargoLifts should no longer get stuck forever after suffering from CryoPlasm or Sand
CargoLifts should be much more responsive for network clients.
Raygun now part of the Care Package.
Fixed issue where Dazzler would sulk if it couldn't find anything. Fun fact : 256 doesn't fit into a byte
Substantial improvements to smartness of fluid
Substantial improvements to performance of fluid
Segments with Cryo in them that haven't moved in a substantial timeframe will now freeze.
Falcor Bomber Radar is network synced
Falcor Beacons are network synced
Fixed threaded timing issue with CryoMap.
LOIC should now move under all circumstances.
Some fixes to the mission readout for the OET
Some fixes to TourCarts
Magma Storage now animates to show fullness.
MagmaBore readout switches across to Inferno Readout appropriately. Includes clients!
Fixed CryoMap machine display
Fixed CryoSpawner exploit
Network Freight fixes
Added Current Ride Cart debug
Added a new client comms stream to send world-wide data, even with the target machine isn't nearby.
Dropped items should no longer end up being visually in the wrong place.
Plenty of MagmaBore polish and fixes.
New top-UI
Teleport Mods should no longer punish you with pink
Locked TrackReservations to prevent thread clashing
Carts at request only hopper stations will automatically leave at the loading step
Made StationFull error state take precedence over OffloadingExcess - this should stop spamming of carts that are trying to offload at a full station
Freight cart depots should no longer report stations asking for carts of unknown tier
Freight stations on mass storage should have a popup box again
Doubled the penalty for carts passing through stations other than the destination
Carried out a bunch of graphical tweaks to all of the T4 Particulate filtration systems
[FreightCart]Suppressed some client spam for track reservations for FreightCartMob
Cleaned up the network reservation update for client FreightCartMob
Disabled the network updates of cart stats as that would be handled on mob creation and isn't needed each network update
Client freight carts can no longer shoot past a depot and derail while awaiting the server removal of the cart
FreightCartStations now force a UI refresh when a MS crate is registered (so MS connection is recognized)
Adds the abstract TrackPiece object for use in generic track tracing applications
Adds all necessary child TrackPieces for each existing track type with full navigation rules
Adds support to the AutoUpgrader to upgrade Scrap Track into standard Minecart Track
Fixes power requirement for AutoUpgrader to properly consume power for each upgrade
Freight Stations now flash red if there's an error
Ore Carts now show which ore they're carrying.
Freight Carts now utilise the Mass Storage colouring and texturing scheme, to show what they are carrying.
Fixed Overmind Guts hitbox + accidental achievement
Added error when Directional Hoppers are connected to offload to Multiblock machines.
Hiveminds will no longer be able to over-build and saturate orders.
Hiveminds now inter-react more strongly.
The punishment for nuking a hivemind is now about 4x worse. I'm tempted to reduce the amount of RP out there, in order to persuade people to go blow up hiveminds. Remember - hiveminds drop RP when blown up!
Fixed a number of issues regarding Hiveminds placing Mynocks onto Conveyors, that should now be resolved and improved substantially. You may spend a little more power on keeping conveyors clear now, tho.
Usable Item code now supports Suit Items
Hotbar counts now support Suit items.
Ampules are now correctly colour-coded by tier, starting with White at T0
Fixed the 'blip' of HODOR rocket noise when it loads.
Solar Panels are now 32x more efficient over the network
Ablators and Liquifiers should now correctly aim as network clients.
All Freight Carts and Ore Carts of all tiers now modelled
Lots and lots of Freight fixes
Lots of Freight fixes and improvements
Improved HEIST networking usage
All Spiderbot missions will no longer trigger when all overminds are dead
Added low-pass filter to Crystal Resonance, reducing some of the high frequencies at distance.
Fluid focus rebalanced to give priority to fluid near the player. When player isn't present, all fluid will tick equally.
Signs will now render faster
Improved Minecart track rendering
Freight Mod now part of the Adventures Pack! New, improved and improved!

Just a reminder - all of the Loading Screens in FortressCraft are supplied by the community - got an amazing pic you want in there? Let me know!