Boundless News

Hello folks,

Release 228 is here! Windows, Latticing, and Beacon Maps all await.

The new Window panes are designed to slot together in whichever configuration you choose, with plain, ornate and decorative styles all ready to be placed throughout your beacons. These are crafted via the Refinery, and all can be tinted to allow for a variety of shades.

The window’s patterns will tessellate together intelligently, so any panes which connect will create a consistent visual shape however you place them. These act in a similar way to signs, but with increased transparency. We can’t wait to see what citizens can do with these - and judging from what we’ve seen on the Testing branch it’s going to be a great addition.

The new chisel boon ‘Latticeworker’ is going to be another significant change. With this, blocks are now able to be altered into lattice frames. Any block that can currently be chiselled can be used in this way. These will start life as a (say it slowly with me) Tetra-hemi-hexa-cron. Further chiselling will cycle through four different diameters of the arms, allowing for even more variety. Then use your standard Square and Bevel Chisels to add and remove the arms.

These will add a totally new angle to builds of all sizes - some of the more imaginative uses we’ve seen so far include ladders, strip lighting, and decorative art installations. This system will allow for a whole new layer of subtlety in building, with more intricate shapes open to citizens. We’ve seen some awesome uses of these on Testing (you can see some in Jiivita’s customary excellent video below!)

The final major change for this update is the addition of a 2D beacon map. This is a top-down view of the beacon you’re currently in, which will appear on-screen whenever builder mode is active. This plot map will visualise the local Beacons, Settlements, Guild alignment, and Reserved Plots - The map is helpful for spotting plots flagged as roads which will split your Beacon out of a Settlement.

The forum has full patch notes and a video summary, courtesy of Jiivita;

https://forum.playboundless.com/t/release-229-is-here-windows-latticing-and-beacon-maps-are-go/34736

Thanks all, enjoy!

Greetings Citizens!

We have another great update to Boundless for you today as we release the second wave of Farming content! In this release we’ve introduced Decorative Crops, Beacon Boundaries, and some super helpful filters in the Knowledge and elsewhere.



The new Crops are;

• Imperial Harlequin
  
• Ancestor’s Blade
  
• Ornamental Oortweed
  
• Trailing Starblossom
  
• Sentinel’s Crest
  

These can be planted throughout your Beacons (as long as the correct growing conditions are met), just like any other Crop. Prestige Crops will eventually wither and die, removing the extra Prestige they give - so you’ll need to keep a good eye on your Crops and replace them regularly to benefit from their Prestige boosts. To craft most of these, you’ll need to use drops from the regular farmed crops. Sentinel’s Crest, however, will be harvested from Meteorites on Elemental Worlds.

We’ve also expanded the protection afforded to Beacons in Boundless. Upon reaching 10k Prestige, a horizontal boundary will now be automatically reserved around the outside of your Beacon. Other Players will be unable to claim these without specific Permissions, granted by the new title of ‘Surveyor’.

This will allow Players to plan their larger Builds as they expand, and will mitigate disputes over bordering Settlements. When multiple Beacons meet and Reserved Plots overlap, the Plots with the oldest claim have authority. For those who wish to disable this, the option will be accessible within the Beacon Control menu. For example, a typical use case here would be if you were looking to building a road network.

It’s a seemingly small change, but the new filter and search system within the game’s menus should make things a whole lot easier - from Crafting to going shopping for Ingredients, the ability to search for specific Items within the game’s various menus should come in very handy.

Of course, we’ve got all the usual fixes and quality of life updates in here too, and the full patch notes have all the details - I’ll link to those as soon as they’re final. Enjoy the new-look farming everyone, and please share your screenshots with us as always!

Greetings Citizens!

We have another great update to Boundless for you today as we release the second wave of Farming content! In this release we’ve introduced Decorative Crops, Beacon Boundaries, and some super helpful filters in the Knowledge and elsewhere.



The new Crops are;

• Imperial Harlequin
  
• Ancestor’s Blade
  
• Ornamental Oortweed
  
• Trailing Starblossom
  
• Sentinel’s Crest
  

These can be planted throughout your Beacons (as long as the correct growing conditions are met), just like any other Crop. Prestige Crops will eventually wither and die, removing the extra Prestige they give - so you’ll need to keep a good eye on your Crops and replace them regularly to benefit from their Prestige boosts. To craft most of these, you’ll need to use drops from the regular farmed crops. Sentinel’s Crest, however, will be harvested from Meteorites on Elemental Worlds.

We’ve also expanded the protection afforded to Beacons in Boundless. Upon reaching 10k Prestige, a horizontal boundary will now be automatically reserved around the outside of your Beacon. Other Players will be unable to claim these without specific Permissions, granted by the new title of ‘Surveyor’.

This will allow Players to plan their larger Builds as they expand, and will mitigate disputes over bordering Settlements. When multiple Beacons meet and Reserved Plots overlap, the Plots with the oldest claim have authority. For those who wish to disable this, the option will be accessible within the Beacon Control menu. For example, a typical use case here would be if you were looking to building a road network.

It’s a seemingly small change, but the new filter and search system within the game’s menus should make things a whole lot easier - from Crafting to going shopping for Ingredients, the ability to search for specific Items within the game’s various menus should come in very handy.

Of course, we’ve got all the usual fixes and quality of life updates in here too, and the full patch notes have all the details - I’ll link to those as soon as they’re final. Enjoy the new-look farming everyone, and please share your screenshots with us as always!

Greetings, Citizens

The day we’ve all been waiting for is here - the Harvest Era is upon us! This is by some distance our most significant single update to Boundless since release, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with you all. Some of you will have been experimenting with the features in our public testing build, but for those who aren’t familiar with what the Harvest Era brings, let’s recap...

Farming

Farming is, on a very reduced level, about sowing and harvesting different types of Crop. Of course, there’s more to the system than fields of wheat, and the Boundless version of farming has some very cool and unique angles that we think you’ll enjoy. Some of the things you’ll be able to cultivate include;

• Organic crops, including the classic Earthyams and Starberries, but also a set of new items. Some of these will grow from the ground, but others will grow from hanging vines, so think vertically when planning your farm!
  
• Inorganic fuel crops. Combustion Fraction and Kindling Mass can be cultivated in underground setups, grown away from the sunlight of the surface. These subterranean farms will need to be planned very differently from overground farms.
  
• Goo - when searching Gem or Lucent Exoworlds, players will be able to gather Kernels from Goo. These are then planted in, and will grow down from, a cave roof. Goo Pigments are harvested from these, If they have been planted in Gleam they'll even take on its colour. These are then used in Colour Sprays - a whole other system which we’ll discuss in a moment...
  

Of course, all this will need a new suite of tools, and the Harvest Era provides several new pieces of kit to try out. The Hand Tiller will become a constant companion above ground, preparing the soil for crops, and the two new Fertilisers will help increase the yield of said Crops.

There’s a lot more to farming than meets the eye - it’s easy to get started, as it’s simply a case of planting a seed and coming back later, but for those looking to optimise, there’s a lot more depth to be found. Locations will have to be carefully scouted out, and prepared for optimal performance. There are many modifiers in place which will affect the success and productivity of a farm, such as soil type, nearby vegetation, and proximity to water. The right combination of each of these will allow crops to grow faster and more abundantly, so green-fingered Citizens will have plenty of room for experimentation. There are also new Skills to build in farming, allowing characters to become specialists in this area of the game.

Irrigation is an important part of farming, whether that be water for above ground Crops, or Lava for some of the more exotic offerings. Now, what kind of a farming system will we have made without allowing you to plan for this? On that note, we’re very excited to unveil our next feature for this release...



Placeable Liquids

For the first time in Boundless, players will be able to manipulate and place water and lava in their builds. This obviously ties closely into the farming system, but it doesn’t end there. We’re looking forward to seeing spectacular water features in city centres, aqueducts set up to funnel water between sources, and even fiendish lava traps around your builds. There are a lot of possibilities here, making this is a pretty major addition to the Boundless universe.

This involved us essentially redesigning how fluids behave in the game, so you’ll come across far more flowing rivers, underwater caves, and so on in the worlds now. Water and Lava are collected with a new Forge Boon, ‘Liquid Breaker’, and are then available to be redeployed by the player. Water can also now be turned to Ice, and Lava to Igneous Rock, with the ‘Solidifier’ Boon - that has big implications for exploration on dangerous worlds.

We’ve also introduced some brand new liquids to the game, with Primordial Resin and Petrolim available to be harvested and used in Crafting. These are used for Fertilisers, and can also be solidified into Amber and Bitumen respectively.

Of course, that system left unchecked could easily be open to griefing, so placing liquids is restricted to Beacons only, and only for those which have been in place for longer than one hour.

Painting

Let’s go into more detail about that Goo we mentioned earlier, and the Colour Sprays that can be obtained via them. Once you’ve grown your Goo, you’ll be able to harvest Goo Pigments from them. If growing in Stone or Sponge, these will have their original tint, but planting them in Gleam will see them take on the colour of that Gleam.

Once you have one or more Goo Pigments, head to the brand new machine, the Pigment Processor, to mix them into Colour Sprays. These will have their own colour, but can be mixed together to create a new tint - there’s plenty of room for experimentation there.

These are then applied to blocks of natural materials, such as Wood, Rock, or Brick. This is a great way to add a dash of flair to your builds, and with such a wide range of colours to choose from, it’s a big addition to the Building and Farming side of Boundless. Colour Sprays can also be added to yet another new machine, the Spray Tinter, to colour large batches of blocks at once. Of course, all these are both Craftable and able to be traded, so although creating them is a skilled art, even beginner citizens will be able to repaint their Builds.



Lighting Rework

This one’s a little more technical, and those who want the full specs of what we’ve done will be able to find them in the release notes (on our official forum as always here and here) but essentially, we’ve reworked how material rendering works in the game. The upshot of this is that colours and textures will look a lot closer to their intended appearance, so some surfaces such as Glacier, Water, Metal, and Decorative Blocks will look extra cool now. It’s a great time to head out and explore the universe and see what spectacular sights await!

Naturally, we’ve also put out the usual wide range of bug fixes, quality of life changes, and general small tweaks - which can be found in the full release notes.

Thanks everyone, and enjoy the Harvest Era! Let us know how you get on, and be sure to share your best screenshots as you go!

Greetings Citizens

With the latest update to Boundless, we’ve got a collection of cool new content for you all to enjoy. The two main headlines are the new Buff Bombs, and some awesome new Forging effects.

Buff Bombs are a powerful addition to any fighting force. Three different enhancements are available, with Speed, Strength and Armour buffs all provided via these area-of-effect explosives.

The new Forging material, Venerable Gum, provides several new effects which Citizens can employ today. Firstly, Fists can now be bestowed with a ‘Power Grabber’ ranged auto-gathering effect, creating a super-efficient hunting Tool, or to grab precious Resources from afar.

Doors can now be set to automatically close or open once a Citizen has moved away using a Spanner with the Auto-Door trait, and last but not least, the Unchisel Boon will be a useful tool for Builders. This will reset any Block to its default state when struck. To create these, you’ll need to use the new Forging material, Venerable Gum. To obtain this, you’ll simply need a supply of Earthyams and the Gum Base.

Of course, this isn’t all we have in this update - head to the discussion board for the full patch notes, which feature a typically wide range of bug fixes and quality of life updates.

Thanks all, we’ll see you in there!