Voxel Eras News

[h2]Update Discount![/h2][p]November 28th to December 5th, grab Voxel Eras for 15% off![/p][p]I'll be continuing to keep Voxel Eras at its current price and discount price for the foreseeable future, and I'll announce in advance when and how that will change. [/p][p][/p][p]If you are waiting for the best deal, this is as good as it gets![/p][p]Anyways, onto the update.[/p][p][/p][p]It's been busy, busy, busy![/p][p]I've been spending a lot of time working on improving modding support, filling out machines, and generally just trying to make the game feel better to play.[/p][p][/p][p]I intended for this update to be v1.4 (the Steam Era update, sometime December), but instead I broke it into 2 updates, v1.3.2 and v1.4, since I had a lot of things I wanted to address while also having a slipping timeline.[/p][p][/p][p]Since development took longer than an engineer estimated (who could have guessed?), I'm falling behind and will need to cut my scopes a bit shorter for v1.4. I do want to still introduce the Steam Era with a holiday update before the end of 2025, so we'll see what I manage to put together between now and then.[/p][p][/p][p]I've got a bunch of things left on my growing todo list, so I'm hoping to eventually chop that down in early 2026 while I finish fixing up the biggest issues in the game engine left (multiplayer sync bandwidth, adding dedicated servers, lighting performance / quality).[/p][p][/p][p]So, thanks for your patience while I continue to work away on Voxel Eras! I'm looking forward to all the mods people will make - let me know on Discord or Steam Discussions if you run into any issues or have any questions![/p][p][/p][p]Anyways, onto the patch notes![/p][p][/p][h2]New[/h2]

• [p]Assembler - Long requested, and finally delivered, the Assembler allows you to automate many more of the "higher tier" secondaries with the power of Clockwork.[/p]
• [p]Vacuum - Similarly long requested, and finally delivered, the Vacuum completes the trio of machines needed for full tree farm automation by allowing you to collect dropped items.[/p]
• [p]Workshop Mods - New in-game Steam Workshop support for modding, allowing you to easily manage and share your mods! This includes improving server cached mods as well as ZIP support.[/p]
• [p]Raw Item Cost - Hovering a crafting recipe while pressing Shift will now show the base cost to craft an item in the current crafter. So Assemblers show Assembler cost, and the Anvil shows the Anvil cost.[/p]
• [p]Pipe Filtering - You can now allow or deny up to 3 item types for each insert side of a pipe.[/p]
• [p]Added a skin preview in the main menu and skin upload menu.[/p]
• [p]Added Emergency Mod Menu to recover from invalid mod configs.[/p]
• [p]Added Lathe sound.[/p]
• [p]Added a new "Crafter" category and moved some machines into it.[/p]
• [p]Added minor sound variation to drive you less insane with a bunch of hammers next to your head.[/p]
• [p]Added "WINIT_UNIX_BACKEND" environment variable that can be set to "x11" or "wayland". This may resolve the Steam Overlay not appearing on Linux for some systems.[/p]
• [p]Exiting a world now has confirmation so you don't lose your save.[/p]
• [p]Overwriting an existing save now requires confirmation so you don't accidentally override a save (please, I don't want to hear sad stories of saves disappearing, it breaks my heart :( ).[/p]

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• [p]Crafting Small Bronze Gears in the Anvil will now produce 3 instead of 6 gears (use the Assembler).[/p]
• [p]Joining a server will no longer automatically download the mods, and instead prompt the user for what choices they'd like to make regarding the issue(s) listed.[/p]
• [p]Replaced fire icons to be pixel art instead of... madness.[/p]
• [p]Updated machine input, output, and fuel icons to bring them up to speed with other textures.[/p]
• [p]The Bender and Lathe are now rotatable, and no longer have all faces as "front".[/p]
• [p]Dropping half a stack in another slot now deselects the slot.[/p]
• [p]Changed startup background track to be Progress instead of Windswept.[/p]
• [p]Many minor UI changes, I ended up reworking a lot of the system menu systems and some extras.[/p]

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• [p]Linux no longer will stare back from the abyss when you go fullscreen on some configurations (v2).[/p]
• [p]Outdated or temporarily invalid swapchains will no longer crash the game.[/p]
• [p]Tutorial hotkeys are now based on the actual bindings instead of the game's defaults.[/p]
• [p]Joining a server with mods should no longer timeout or overflow your connection.[/p]
• [p]Auto saves will no longer pause clients to wait for the server to resume to reduce clock issues.[/p]
• [p]Tweaked game clock to be more responsive.[/p]
• [p]The server list no longer gaslights you, as it now actually saves instead of doing nothing, ever.[/p]
• [p]Linux should no longer have a "pop" on startup.[/p]
• [p]Overwriting a save when using Proton no longer crashes, as well as now displaying any errors.[/p]
• [p]Swapping graphics cards on Linux no longer crashes on Wayland. Wayland, please, let me control the window and cursor like a normal desktop environment.....[/p]

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• [p]Breaking Path Change - All file paths in scripts have been replaced, no longer requiring your mod folder name, as well as allowing you to reference other mod assets regardless of where your mod is located.[/p]
• [p]Breaking Mod Definition Change - Mods have a different TOML config now, and will need to be fixed for your mod to load.[/p]
• [p]Breaking Setup Change - Added new "load_info" parameter to setup. It provides things like basic date time, as well as the game mod version (v1.2, v1.3...) to support seasonal events and multi version support.[/p]
• [p]Added proper auto mod load order sorting, before it somehow did it through.. randomness...?[/p]
• [p]Added ZIP support for mods, servers providing "Folder" mods will automatically create a ZIP to send to players instead.[/p]
• [p]Sounds can now be .ogg, which is the new recommended format due to sound quality and load times being better for lower file sizes, it's just better.[/p]
• [p]Added In-Game debug log, please check your mod errors :P[/p]
• [p]Added VSCode code snippets to help with common events and types.[/p]
• [p]Sounds can now be hot reloaded (cooler than I expected).[/p]
• [p]The Array MetaData type now works.[/p]
• [p]Many APIs have changed, I tried to break all the things I wanted to at once for Workshop support, so I hope you'll forgive me >_>, it's really not that bad though.[/p]

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• [p]Staying on the Personalization Select, Personalization Upload, or Mod Upload for too long will result in your game crashing. (UGC texture refreshing is under cooked)[/p]
• [p]Pipes drop items when filters are updated, regardless of if it was required or not.[/p]

[h3]
Subject: Welcome to the SimCore Family![/h3][p]We thank you for your continued participation in the - Voxel Eras - simulation environment program. Your feedback is greatly appreciated! We take pride in our ability to deliver quality experiences with the help of our users as we take on new frontiers - together.[/p][p][/p][p]As a reminder: For your own safety, and the safety of those around you, make sure to report digital hallucinations to your assigned SimCore Agent within 12 hours of an incident. Thank you for your cooperation.[/p][p][/p][p]SimCore, The Better Way to Live[/p]

[h3]Hey everyone![/h3][p]It seems people are enjoying the update, and I wanted to clean up some rough edges before moving onto the bigger changes that will likely be v1.4.[/p][p]
Mostly focused on making working with everything feel a bit better, as well as giving some extra modding capability, so if you had some issues before I hope I've at least addressed some of them![/p][p][/p][h2]New[/h2]

• [p]Mod Clearly Ore, this is a demo mod for texture packs and asset overrides, it makes it clear which ore is which.[/p]
• [p]Inventory shift clicking! You can now shift click items to move them between inventories.[/p]
• [p]Crafting shift clicking! You can now shift click while crafting to mass craft.[/p]
• [p]Pickup Log, when grabbing items they're now listed on the left side of the screen.[/p]

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• [p]Pipes now display a guide when configuring, showing which side is which with a respective shape and color.[/p]
• [p]The slot selection and interactable icons have been replaced to be less obtuse.[/p]
• [p]The "Flip" indicator now only appears when building, similar to the interactable indicator when not building.[/p]
• [p]Reduced render distance max from 24 to 16, as people love to crank this setting before putting it back down, bloating saves and destroying FPS.[/p]
• [p]Similarly the "Omega" and "Galactic" lighting distances have been disabled (but still available), as these currently just chew GPUs.[/p]
• [p]Grass and plants now sway slightly.[/p]
• [p]Pressing Q in the inventory will now clear the selected slot.[/p]
• [p]Machine input slots now ensure the items inserted are valid input items.[/p]
• [p]Pipe colliders have been changed to the inner 0.5m^3 cube until I fix the collision properly.[/p]

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• [p]Pipes now show the correct directions in the configuration menu. Gaslight, gate keep, girl boss.[/p]
• [p]Item and player models should now have reduced or remove "hair" / visual artifacts.[/p]
• [p]Saw blade now has the expected texture with Carbon Steel markings, I saved to the wrong folder.[/p]
• [p]Removed some unused assets.[/p]
• [p]Flore now provides 2x stone with the Clockwork Drill, in line with breaking by hand.[/p]
• [p]Pipes now support machines that push more than 1 item stacks, they output 1 at a time.[/p]
• [p]The game should no longer fail to launch if the "ext_extended_dynamic_state3" Vulkan extension (used for MSAA via rasterization samples), however 1x MSAA will always be applied.[/p]
• [p]On Linux, borderless fullscreen should no longer result in a black image on some configurations.[/p]

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• [p]Inventory transfers have been broken, again, this is a small change to make shift click work.[/p]
• [p]Adding an asset via "override" will replace an existing asset, allowing texture packs or overriding of existing content.[/p]
• [p]Basic dependency resolution / ordering, ensuring the above override has needed assets loaded.[/p]
• [p]New API "get_item_recipes", which provides the recipes an item is used in.[/p]
• [p]New API "get_container_keys", which provides all key names for the provided MetaDataContainer.[/p]
• [p]New API "get_crafter_processable", which provides all items a crafter can process.[/p]
• [p]New API "is_crafter_processable", which indicates if the provided item can be used by the crafter.[/p]
• [p]New API "click_held", which indicates if left click is held on a UI element.[/p]

[h3]Hey everyone :)[/h3][p]If you're in the Discord or read Dev Log 1, you may already know Voxel Eras has been getting moved from using OpenGL, to Vulkan, which has been a bit of a journey, but we're here![/p][p][/p][p]After being left in the custom game engine trenches for a few months, I decided I'm giving you all a fraction of the suffering, so you're getting a bunch of new parts you'll need to make, as well as machines to make them in.[/p][p][/p][h3]So, grab a bucket of plates, and bolt yourself in, it's update trailer time![/h3][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]Quickly before getting into the patch notes, I want to briefly talk about future content.[/p][h3]Future Content[/h3][p]Looking forward, v1.4 will likely contain some part of the Steam Era, some additional Clockwork machines, stairs, in world water, and a rework of Carbon Steel (to be harder to obtain of course).[/p][p][/p][p]If I push it, I'd like to have the update out by December in time for some sort of holiday update, we'll see how far I end up getting by then.[/p][p][/p][p]Anyways, TO THE WALL OF PATCH NOTES WITH THEE![/p][p][/p][h2]New[/h2]

• [p]Tutorial - A short introductory tutorial has been added.[/p]
• [p]Rods - A new crafting component, made from ingots.[/p]
• [p]Screws - A new crafting component, made from rods.[/p]
• [p]Rings - A new crafting component, made from rods.[/p]
• [p]More Plates and Gears - More variants of these crafting components have been added to match the other new components.[/p]
• [p]Hammer - A clockwork machine that can make plates automatically.[/p]
• [p]Bender - A clockwork machine that can make rings and tubes automatically.[/p]
• [p]Lathe - A clockwork machine that can make rods, and screws / bolts automatically.[/p]
• [p]Trash Can - Disposer of the unwanted, can destroy items.[/p]
• [p]Slabs - Up down, vertical or horizontal, slabs for Stone, Stone Brick, and Oak Plank have been added.... Can someone tell Mojang vertical slabs aren't that hard?[/p]
• [p]Toggle - A wiring mod (which is disabled by default) component allows you to interact with it to toggle if it outputs signal or not.[/p]
• [p]Piston - A wiring mod component that pushes the blocks in front of it, as well as pull if configured to do so. This is more of a last minute "fun" addition that'll get more polish in the future, like the rest of the wiring mod.[/p]
• [p]Buttons - A wiring mod component that when interacted with stays on for a short duration.[/p]

[h2]Graphics[/h2]

• [p]Moved away from OpenGL to Vulkan - Graphics requirements have changed, you will now need a Vulkan compatible graphics card to play Voxel Eras. Vulkan 1.2 devices with extended feature sets, or Vulkan 1.3+ devices should be able to run the game.[/p]
• [p]Antialiasing - Added a graphics option for antialiasing, which helps increase clarity on edges of objects.[/p]
• [p]Anisotropic Filtering - Added a graphics option for anisotropic filtering, which helps increase clarity of textures at grazing angles.[/p]
• [p]Improved Dithering - The appearance of dithered transparency has been greatly improved, and is further enhanced by the antialiasing setting.[/p]
• [p]Lighting Smoothness - If you want a bit more of a "retro crunch", or are running games on a potato, turning this setting down will sharpen the lighting, as well as reduce the amount of samples needed to keep the lighting from looking noisy.[/p]
• [p]Skybox Rework - The skybox now has a sun, as well as different blending to the horizon.[/p]

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• [p]All Textures Are Now Animatable - Previously this was a feature restricted to voxels, however, now all textures respond to having an animation file provided with a texture.[/p]
• [p]BREAKING: Voxel Textures Reworked - Voxel definitions now must provide a loaded texture's identifier instead of the path to the texture, this was done for universal texture animation.[/p]
• [p]BREAKING: Texture Animation TOML Changed - The array field "frames" has been renamed "frame_layout", and a new field has been added, "frames", which specifies how many frames are in the animation.[/p]
• [p]Shaders can now be hot reloaded.[/p]
• [p]Textures can now be marked to have linear or cubic interpolation (as opposed to the default, nearest)[/p]
• [p]A generic "clockwork_crafter" helper has been added[/p]
• [p]Game state now has a new "is_readonly" property... this is effectively "is_client" but I didn't name it that because you shouldn't use it for that! It's used by prediction to not cause side effects.[/p]
• [p]A new PostProcessing system exists, however currently does nothing outside of base game.[/p]

[h2]Music[/h2]

• [p]New track First Sparks[/p]
• [p]New track Starting The Revolution[/p]
• [p]New track Workshop[/p]
• [p]New track Increase The Output[/p]
• [p]New track Current Bliss[/p]
• [p]New track Greater Visions[/p]

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

• [p]The Chopper now takes 8 instead of 12 seconds to chop a tree, no longer cuts non tree logs, and properly resets progress on completing an operation.[/p]
• [p]The Grinder's cost is now 2 Clockwork Cores, 2 Carbon Steel Tubes, and 3 Carbon Steel gears, as opposed to 1 core, 3 tubes, and 2 gears.[/p]
• [p]The Clockwork Drill now costs 4 Oak Planks, 1 Pig Iron Gear, and 2 Pig Iron Plates, as opposed to 4 planks, 4 Wooden Gears, and 8 Pig Iron Ingots.[/p]
• [p]The Winder now costs 3 Clockwork Cores, 3 Wrought Iron Geras, and 8 Wrought Iron Plates, as opposed to 1 core, 1 Carbon Steel Tube, and 2 Carbon Steel Gears.[/p]
• [p]The Planter now costs 2 Clockwork Cores, 1 Carbon Steel Gear, and 4 Carbon Steel Tubes, as opposed to 2 cores, 2 gears, and 3 tubes.[/p]
• [p]Logs now burn for 8 seconds instead of 4, making them on par with the workbench plank recipe.[/p]

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• [p]The Era Menu has been improved - While not perfect, it's far more descriptive and up to date with current content.[/p]
• [p]You can now specify a port when starting a server - Have fun :)[/p]
• [p]Selecting a quickbar slot now selects the slot itself - This is opposed to selecting the construct that is set in that slot.[/p]
• [p]Pipetting will now change the selected slot if one is selected - Which makes adding things to your quickbar much easier, where if no slot is selected you get the previous pipette behavior.[/p]
• [p]When building, you no longer are able to interact - Previously this required crouching, which isn't very intuitive.[/p]
• [p]Alloy Furnace Inputs Have Been Changed - Fuel is now required from the bottom, with all other sides accepting either of the input resources into either slot.[/p]
• [p]Pipes no longer need a Wrench to configure - This means the Wrench has been removed from the game, however, this in combination with the above building change makes this option far more appealing.[/p]
• [p]Pipe Configuration (previously Wrench) Insert Disable Extract UI has been flipped vertically, as it's more intuitive.[/p]
• [p]Pressing Modifier (Left Alt) now allows you to clear a quickbar slot.[/p]
• [p]Leaves have had their connection distance set to 3, this has been reduced to 2 to improve nearby tree decay.[/p]
• [p]You can now toggle fullscreen with F11.[/p]
• [p]Inserting into the grinder automatically is now limited to 5 items.[/p]
• [p]The Winder Extension now continuously spins when it has available energy, making it more clear that it is setup correctly.[/p]
• [p]GPU Override - You can now specify which GPU the game runs on in the settings menu. (Nerd note: It can be changed and applied without closing the game if you're not in a world!).[/p]
• [p]Asset reloads in some cases can now be recovered from with a "Try Again" button.[/p]
• [p]Machine audio distances have been reduced from a minimum of 3 meters, to 2, and a max of 15 meters, down to 12.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted FOV changing from sprinting to stay on at lower velocity, have a slightly higher max FOV, and behave better.[/p]
• [p]The terrain rate setting has been removed, as this is neither useful or helpful outside of preventing large server load (this will be fixed with multi threaded terrain generation).[/p]
• [p]Press Z to zoom in at what you're looking at![/p]
• [p]Winder top texture replaced with the more typical top face of clockwork machines, this was confusing as people expected this to be an automatic input, which it is not. I may revisit this.[/p]
• [p]Added Prediction Debug menu, which shows when player prediction does not match the server result. It is expected that prediction errors will be displayed during normal gameplay, these are currently (and may stay) unhandled in some cases.[/p]
• [p]This update introduces save format v6, with backwards compatibility for v5, and removes support for v3 and v4 saves.[/p]
• [p]Added Timing Debug menu, which shows client side CPU consumption per frame. This can help diagnose lag spikes or odd behavior.[/p]
• [p]Booster now can read signal through a solid block.[/p]
• [p]UI theming has been updated.[/p]
• [p]Mod issues when loading a world are now more clear.[/p]
• [p]Text boxes show more hints and useful info when no text is provided.[/p]
• [p]Hovering over some settings in the Settings menu will now provide additional information.[/p]
• [p]The inventory has been moved to the bottom of the build menu, moving the quickbar closer to the construct list.[/p]
• [p]Auto Pause when the game is unfocused has been disabled for now, as this causes more issues than it fixes at the moment.[/p]

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• [p]Grabbing items now works in more situations.[/p]
• [p]The game clock has been changed (again) to improve stability of multiplayer, as well as general game feel.[/p]
• [p]Instant crafters should no longer make a sound when a craft was not completed, but a craft was attempted.[/p]
• [p]Removed Hatsune Miku from the slim model's default skin (she might still be hiding in your wifi)[/p]
• [p]Items that stack to 1 no longer display an item count[/p]
• [p]Commands now output to the chat again[/p]
• [p]The game will no longer crash if it fails to initialize Steam authentication (you can thank a recent Steam outage for this one)[/p]
• [p]Setting a quickbar slot in the Build Menu should now be much more consistent[/p]
• [p]Jumping should no longer cause glitching (coyote time prediction failure)[/p]

[p][/p][p]I wanted to talk a bit on how development of the game is going now that we're a few months into Early Access![/p][p][/p][p]I'd like to keep this as a running series where on occasion I talk more free form about things instead of as patch notes or announcements, so I hope you enjoy :)[/p][p][/p][p]First, thank you all for all of your feedback! I've been trying to keep track of it all, and I hope that you've maybe seen some of your own suggestions already making it in![/p][p][/p][p]I definitely would have preferred to spend a bit more time in development before launching, which many people have noted due to the game's shorter runtime. I don't think I could have picked a better time though, as Automation Fest was something I was not willing to miss, and seemingly that worked out.[/p][p][/p][p]One of the reasons I went forward with it regardless was that the game's engine was pretty far along in development, namely modding and multiplayer, so I still felt that left the game open enough to still be built on and enjoyed for those more willing to tinker.[/p][p][/p][p]I do want to briefly talk on pricing though, as I've heard a few mentions of it.[/p][p][/p][h2]Pricing[/h2][p]I launched Voxel Eras at $15 USD for a few reasons:[/p]

1. [p]Pricing must be a multiple of $5. It's the law.[/p]
2. [p]Pricing any higher would be asking for far too much for the current state of the game. A lot of the Early Access games I followed growing up started in the $10-$20 price range, so this felt like a good ceiling.[/p]
3. [p]At the same time, charging $10 feels like too little. As this is a somewhat niche genre, sales are going to be lower volume, and any discount at this price feels like I'm completely underselling the game in it's current state.[/p]
4. [p]I'd like to make developing Voxel Eras my full time job :)[/p]

[p][/p][p]Of course though, Voxel Eras has already been available for 15% off before, putting the lowest price at $12.75. For the foreseeable future, you'll find it for that price during most Steam sales as well as a few I setup myself..... idk, at some point.[/p][p][/p][p]Once I feel the game has enough content, I'll be increasing the price, at which point I'll announce ahead of time what it is and what the lowest price you'll find it at will be.[/p][p][/p][p]I'm keeping it simple. If you'd like the best deal, there you go.[/p][p][/p][p]About that content though... I should probably make some... Eventually.[/p][p][/p][p]On the Discord I've been sharing a lot of the development of the game, so now you get the months of fun screenshots :)[/p][p][/p][p]The big thing of course, is Voxel Eras is now on Vulkan (at least on experimental), and of course it wasn't simple, it's Vulkan.[/p][p][/p][p]The game's renderer was a bit scattered throughout the engine, so it was good timing to rewrite it regardless.[/p][p][/p][p]I had most of the renderer in the in-game client, so the main menu couldn't really render anything. I'd like to eventually try and do a main menu simulation akin to Factorio's, so of course keeping that in mind would be nice.[/p][p][/p][p]After all was said and done, the majority of the actual renderer now resides in a single, 4000 line long Rust file.[/p][p][/p][p]I even got a few new goodies![/p][p][/p][h2]Dithering[/h2][p]A complaint / complement I got a lot was about the game's transparency dithering. I agree in hindsight that my particular implementation sucked, but I did want to keep dithering.[/p][p][/p][p]Vulkan includes a built in feature called "Alpha to Coverage" which provides the same effect that I originally wanted while also not looking like garbage.[/p][p][/p][h2]MSAA[/h2][p]With the addition of MSAA to the game's renderer, you can clean up edges of objects, as well as increase the quality of the dithered transparency to be pretty good.[/p][p][/p][p]1x MSAA, 8x MSAA[/p][carousel][/carousel][p](These screenshots are a month after the first example...)[/p][p][/p][h2]Anisotropic Filtering[/h2][p]While I was at it I also added anisotropic filtering, which makes textures at grazing angles look quite a bit better, while also in some cases increasing FPS?[/p][p][/p][p]Anisotropic Off, 16x Anisotropic:[/p][carousel][/carousel][p][/p][h2]Configuring[/h2][p]Of course some of these come with the catch of turning them on / up roasts your GPU, so you'll be able to configure all of this.[/p][p][/p][p]You can now specify which GPU is the correct one as well, in case you've got something exotic.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Nerd[/h2][p]After spending this long working on this renderer, I would like to geek out for a moment.[/p][p][/p][p]The new renderer has the ability to be completely restarted, meaning you can change your graphics card, have the change apply, and be right at the settings menu again, all without the game closing. (Still working on making it work everywhere)[/p][p][/p][p]It's been very helpful for improving Intel Arc support, as my secondary GPU is an Intel Arc A750.[/p][p][/p][p]Sadly for Nvidia users though (the majority of Steam...) my primary GPU is a AMD Radeon RX 6600, so you're relegated to occasional testing on my laptop's Nvidia GTX 1660 TI MaxQ.[/p][p][/p][p]To add to it, I also made the renderer "bindless", meaning for a particular object I don't need to attach it's textures explicitly, as they're already available for all objects, which is pretty ergonomic due to how much control I get over it, as well as how simple the setup is.[/p][p][/p][p](What did you expect? A picture of thousands of lines of code?)[/p][p][/p][h2]Sun[/h2][p]There is a sun now[/p][p][/p][h2]Post Processing[/h2][p]I've been changing my approach to rendering quite a bit with the Vulkan rewrite, and post processing is part of that.[/p][p][/p][p]Voxel Eras uses deferred rendering, meaning I move the majority of answering "What color is this pixel?" to be figured out later, allowing it to avoid doing complex calculations for pixels you'll never see.[/p][p][/p][p]It does have the downside of a higher baseline cost, as well as difficulties for transparency support, however in this case it's worth it, and I have the transparency dithering I mentioned above to deal with transparency without much worry.[/p][p][/p][p]The client already used deferred rendering, but now it is something supported throughout the entire game, and it'll eventually have full modding support, so you'll be able to mess around with it as well.[/p][p][/p][p]It results in quite the interesting GPU profile:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]For real though, the game needs content, not just graphics.[/p][p][/p][p]It's been slow, Vulkan sucked, but it's starting to happen again![/p][p][/p][p]I'll be a bit rusty for a bit, so I'm focusing on some lower hanging fruit to start, like a trash can![/p][p][/p][h2]Trash Can[/h2][p]Ok, I know it's not the most exciting thing in the world, but at least it's useful.[/p][p][/p][p]If you want an "end goal", provide a full pipe on each side of it from your carbon steel factory.[/p][p][/p][h2]Slabs[/h2][p]Getting different shapes into the voxel renderer is something I'm going to need to do more of going forward for water, so starting with slabs felt like the right move.[/p][p][/p][p]My mentality with shapes is that they cost the same, regardless of how much of the block they take up, as the extra inventory mess and thinking about costs for building should be simpler.[/p][p][/p][p]They currently have a couple of issues, like walking collision, light leaking, and placement difficulties, but I am very happy to have them![/p][p][/p][p]Oh, and, of course, you can have vertical slabs :)[/p][carousel][/carousel][p][/p][h2]Hammer[/h2][p]Automation? In an automation game?!?[/p][p][/p][p]I know, right?[/p][p][/p][p]Anyways, yes, I'm actually adding more things to do.[/p][p][/p][p]I wanted to make a general "clockwork crafter" utility that could be shared by a bunch of machines I'm going to start adding, which is part of why this took so long. (I didn't want to do it)[/p][p][/p][p]By recommendation, I'm going to try reducing the visual noise of the textures going forward to make the game a bit more readable. This was something I included as a pass over my work to add color variation in a much quicker way, and I do still use it for particular parts, but I'm using it far more sparingly.[/p][p][/p][p]I'm aiming to add a few more of these before 1.3 releases now that it's mostly art and sound.[/p][p][/p][p]We'll see how much I lean into being GregTech.[/p][p][/p][h2]Wiring (Toggle)[/h2][p]Some of you might not even know the game has some basic wiring, as the mod isn't enabled by default.[/p][p][/p][p]I'd like to eventually move the wiring mod into the base game, or at least enable it by default, but I've kept it like this in case I end up completely breaking it. For now though, I want to keep exploring where it could go, so I've added a new component.[/p][p][/p][p]It's a simple toggle switch you just interact with to activate, and you can hold it to toggle it repeatedly.[/p][carousel][/carousel][p][/p][h2]Zoom Key[/h2][p]For those of you who want to take pictures like the one above without turning your FOV all the way down, you now have a button![/p][p][/p][p]I've repeatedly brought my FOV setting all the way down to take screenshots, so having a button to do it without changing your settings is nice. [/p][p][/p][p]Thanks for being patient while I slowly chip away at the game.[/p][p][/p][p]It's been a bit of a roller coaster for me lately between my full time job, launching the game, my personal life, and the physical and mental stress that revolved around, and resulted from it.[/p][p][/p][p]I apologize in advance if you find it hard to get replies from me from time to time (or don't get a response at all).[/p][p][/p][p]I do read everything I can find over here on Steam, my Discord, as well as my YouTube channel, and I do my best to still try and address everything through some means such as announcements, patch notes, and my #rustacean channel in the Discord, but I know this system isn't perfect.[/p][p][/p][p]Some would call me a bit... unique, which impacts in how I interact, communicate, and process, resulting in me having more difficulties with things than I would care to admit, and they're not fantastic traits to have as a solo developer.[/p][p][/p][p]You, the reader, probably have some of the same traits, so I hope you'll forgive me because I'm going to continue to be a hot mess until the end of time, and you can't stop me.[/p][p][/p][p]Overall, even if progress is slower than I'd like, I'm pretty happy with how things are going.[/p][p][/p][p]Vulkan is starting to finally stabilize a bit, I'm pretty happy with the renderer improvements, and I'm glad to finally be back to making content again after so much engine work.[/p][p][/p][p]I hope to have another experimental out soon, with somewhere around 1-2 more of them before properly releasing v1.3.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you for your support, I'll be back again soon.[/p][p][/p][h3]Progress Awaits Your Return[/h3][p][/p][p]Destiny Hailstorm - Lead Developer[/p]

[p]Hey everyone! Still working on cleaning up Vulkan, however I'm pretty happy with how it has been going. With it beginning to wrap up, I'm pivoting back into content a bit more again, so I'm hoping to have more Stuff for experimental soon.[/p][p][/p][p]Enjoy :)[/p][p][/p][h2]New[/h2]

• [p]Trash Can, take care of unwanted items![/p]

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• [p]The skybox has returned, now with their sun. Say hi :)[/p]
• [p]GPU selection setting, in case your setup is a bit more exotic[/p]
• [p]MSAA now defaults to 4x instead of 8x (more reasonable default)[/p]
• [p]Build menu now has the inventory on the bottom, with the quickbar center. This menu still needs a complete redesign[/p]

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• [p]Intel Arc cards should now be able to launch the game[/p]
• [p]Lighting is now stable in the main menu again[/p]
• [p]The wrench now stacks to 1, as originally intended[/p]
• [p]Removed Hatsune Miku from the slim model's default skin (she might still be hiding in your wifi)[/p]
• [p]Personalization profile picture or skins now change as expected again in game[/p]

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• [p]Some newer Nvidia cards, mostly 3000+ series, may have compatibility issues still. If you experience this, please send me your Vulkan compatibility information![/p]