Patch 12! Since FortressCraft left Early Access, there have now been 12 major content patches. This one is perhaps the smallest, but has a huge amount of underlying tech changes. I'm genuinely sad to say that there's no new machines in this patch - but read to the end for a little gift that should make almost everyone happy! The two major foci of this patch have been performance (yeah - again!) and networking.

Performance

I've now ported the game to Unity 5.4 This introduces a number of engine improvements, including vastly improve thread usage for lighting and culling - this alone could see a huge performance boost on computers with a relatively weak CPUs. On top of that, I've spent a huge chunk of time implementing a technique known as Instanced Rendering. This is one we used extensively on FortressCraft on the Xbox, and Unity 5.4 finally gives me access to this! Simply put, in Unity 5.3, I had to do thousands of "Draw an ingot here, draw an ingot here, draw an ingot here" With Instanced Rendering, all of those individual calls are turned into a single "Draw 3 ingots here, here and here" I've expanded this paradigm, so every single ingot you see here in this picture is done in a single draw call!
This has reduced the number of drawcalls in my test scene from well over 9,000 to less than a thousand. This has effective trebled my framerate in a busy base - let me know how it does for you! Fingers crossed that moving to Unity 5.4 hasn't introduced any NEW issues but... well, we'll see!

Networking

Despite being asked on a daily basis when multiplayer will be added, it's been working since about October 2015. This patch gives a bunch of new tools for dedicated servers. If you just join them, then the main thing you should notice is that network players firing glowsticks should now sync up - I didn't get a chance to sync grappling hooks and plasma cannons, but the infrastructure is there to expand it. Full RCON Support Specifically designed for Linux Dedicated servers, FortressCraft now supports the industry-standard RCON protocol. Once connected, you can use any of the existing server commands.

• Quit
• Rate
• Chat
• InventorySearch
• QuietSearch
• Inventory
• Report
• Mobs
• Items

Fully configurable servers Added support for FIRSTRUN.INI and SERVEROVERRIDES.INI. There's 2 files used to configure Dedicated Servers. Both of them live in the server executable folder, so they are per-instance, if you decided to run more than 1 server on a given computer. The game ships with a pair of example files that should be reasonably straightforwards. These files are NOT accessible when using a professionally-hosted server, and are expected to be written to and generated by the hosting company. FIRSTRUN.INI contains server name, difficulty and other single-use settings. Edit this file and then run the server to configure your world. THESE SETTINGS ARE NOT CHANGEABLE. SERVEROVERRIDES.INI allows you to uniquely override the server settings on a per-instance basis. This includes RCON port and password, server port and maximum players. These are designed for the hosting company to configure. Dedicated servers cannot alter the MAXPLAYERS except by editing this file. Both of these files can be located in the Default folder.

Public servers!

A trio of changes have happened here; the first person to join a fresh dedicated server will be marked as the Admin of that server; that admin can then promote people; Guests can only view, Builders can Build (and delete, and place explosives... be careful), and Admins can promote. If you just want to go back to previous patch's behaviour then use /autopromote command. Once you've configured your admins and builders, you can bravely use SetPublic - this will list your server PUBLICALLY for EVERY FortressCraft player to see. I've had very little feedback or testing on this, despite it being implemented a few weeks ago - please backup your world regularly, and treat the SetPublic command as really dangerous to use - it will leave your IP public and there is every chance that people can grief your world. I have put both client and server protection about doing this, but people can be sneaky buggers. Be careful out there! I've also added support for steam:// and +join - this should allow people to scrape the server list and make clickable join links. steam://254200%20+join%20123.123.123.123:12345;

Balance changes

I have been listening to players (NOTE : CONSTRUCTIVE AND USEFUL FEEDBACK ALWAYS WELCOME!) regarding balance and play issues, and these are the relevant crib notes:

• Massively reduced cost of all Particle system components apart from Filter.
• Increased cost of Filter.
• These two changes should make it a 'bit' more expensive for a full multi-filter setup, but way cheaper for your first one. It's still the most efficient to have 16 filters -> 4 compressors -> 1 storage.
• Greatly reduced cost of Hard Rock Grinders.
• Geothermal build cost reduced to 80% of previous. The cost of heat pipes remains the same.

And, courtesy of Steveman0
Storage Hoppers now have a full UI. Remember we've got a workshop, and there's more and more mods appearing there! http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=254200&browsesort=trend§ion=readytouseitems 50 mods and counting!

Next Month!

Along with the usual slew of new machines, features, optimisations, balancing and feartures, I'll be starting to delve more seriously into the next DLC pack, tenatively entitled The Adventures Pack. Whilst the Frozen Factory extended the end-game, lots of people like to start new worlds. The Adventures Pack should give you new reasons to explore, new ways to tweak your worlds, and some... let's say interesting challenges. I'm hoping to get the Adventures Pack out within 2 months, but it could take as long as 4, dependings on what else ends up happening. Given that my job is full-time Indie dev, it can be remarkably unpredictable!

Known issues:

• HardRock Grinders that have only partially unloaded when the player quits will lose all non-offloaded ore.
• Grappling Hooks and player Laser shots aren't synced
• Typing /help/ as a client is just completely useless. Sorry.

And for the completionists amongst you:

Full notes

• Verified that Conveyor Mission cannot play sound effect repeatedly.
• Added server autojoining - by parsing the known server list, this means you can create a webpage with a clickable steam:// link - add "+join 123.123.123.123:12345;" as a launch parameter and the game will automatically try and join that server at startup.
• Fix to networked storage hopper interface
• Fix for crash in storage hopper interface
• Potential fix added for 'inventory duplication' on death in Clumsy mode.
• AutoPausing, Public. servers should now still register themselves with the central public server. BORED.
• AutoPause servers will now not awake when a client polls them for active player count - most important for public servers that will be polled a LOT. Cheers to Tarakesh for this one!
• Fixes to public server advertising - things I regret doing, #1. This.
• Fixes to storage hopper windows
• Massively reduced cost of all Particle system components apart from Filter.
• Increased cost of Filter.
• These two changes should make it a 'bit' more expensive for a full multi-filter setup, but way cheaper for your first one. It's still the most efficient to have 16 filters -> 4 compressors -> 1 storage.
• Greatly reduced cost of Hard Rock Grinders.
• Geothermal build cost reduced to 80% of previous. The cost of heat pipes remains the same.
• Fixed Don't Eat The Paste achievement. Game is now complete again.
• Just click on this. Many thanks to Steveman0! https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cqio_9OWEAAfabh.jpg:large
• Added server environment overrides; used primarily for hosted servers, this means no messing with ini files.
• Located issue where packetloss wasn't calculated for release builds.
• Stored most recent sent/received packet time stamps.
• Tracked Ping and Pong counts
• Mismatched Pongs are now treated as valid instead of not resetting heartbeat timeout.
• Greatly improved timeout message.
• Fixed an issue where server time could go negative, which really... REALLY.. .messed things up.
• Added instanced rendering to holobase and pings. Holobase instancing seems to be completely unreliable however. I have let Unity know.
• RCON passwords no longer are forced to lowercase.
• Fixed console spam and made ServerConsole messages correctly predicated.
• Added public servers! (you'll see them after your manually added servers)
• Added server console command setpublic
• Linux dedicated server support. Interface is ONLY via RCON. Untested. Quite a lot of code tho. Uh, lemme know!
• Fixes to a number of permission issues.
• This month is really boring.
• More work on permissions, RCON, dedicated servers and other tedious shennanigans
• Network servers should no longer get player's helmets and gender mixed up. Really.
• Dedicated Server uptime should work again. I broke it when optimising... something.
• AutoPausing Dedicated Servers should now unpause correctly
• [Patreon]Critters should no longer spawn inside heat conductant pipes, casting pipes or mass storage. This change also affects WorkFloor Excavators, which will no longer wipe out mass storage. Surprised no-one noticed that one!
• Ore Extractors now give Holobase Info in handbook.
• Refineries now give a description of their current recipe.
• Wrote a complete 'high frequency' network system
• Implemented networked GlowSticks via this syste,
• Improved Packet Loss readout to no longer list NaN - it'll just list that no packets have successfully left the Winsock Stack.
• Added Admin and Builder permissions; the first player to join a fresh Dedicated Server becomes the Admin. He must then promote players to Builders. Non-Builders cannot interact with the server in any fashion at all, apart from walking around. And looking.
• Only Builders and Admins can issue Build commands or Interface commands.
• All world modulation commands are now accessible to Admins only. This should include Admin/Builder/Whitelist promotion.
• Added AutoPromote command - this will automatically promotes all new clients to Builder.
• [Experimental]Added AutoPause command - this will automatically pause server simulation when there's no clients on there. I may consider extending this to drop all active segments and save ram.
• Rush Mode mission is now silent
• Added HELP to Dedicated Server command list, which lists all the other commands/
• Added RCON support for remotely administering Dedicated Servers. This should mean that Linux servers 'just work' now. I'm sure someone will write a specific RCON client, but until then, I've been using this : http://spelsajten.net/webrcon/
• RCON commands use all normal Dedicated Server commands.
• Added support for FIRSTRUN.INI and SERVEROVERRIDES.INI. There's 2 files used to configure Dedicated Servers. Both of them live in the server executable folder, so they are per-instance, if you decided to run more than 1 server on a given computer. The game ships with a pair of example files that should be reasonably straightforwards. These files are NOT accessible when using a professionally-hosted server, and are expected to be written to and generated by the hosting company. FIRSTRUN.INI contains server name, difficulty and other single-use settings. Edit this file and then run the server to configure your world. THESE SETTINGS ARE NOT CHANGEABLE. SERVEROVERRIDES.INI allows you to uniquely override the server settings on a per-instance basis. This includes RCON port and password, server port and maximum players. These are designed for the hosting company to configure. Dedicated servers cannot alter the MAXPLAYERS except by editing this file. Both of these files can be located in the Default folder.

Critters should correctly spawn all types. Have fun hunting down that rare Generic06!

Critters should no longer be collectable OR MACERATABLE DEAR GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

Trenchers that go OOP can no longer get stuck there

Removed the horrible Unity splash screen

Tweaked HBAO max distance

Fixed known issues with battery powerbars becoming crazy-bloomy

Fixed issues with Ini files filling up with crap.

Dedicated Servers are no longer forced to hardest mode, but instead obey the firstrun.ini located in Default folder underneath the executable. Tweak this to your heart's content before running a server for the first time. I will be adding per-server overrides next week, so you can have per-instance ports and world load preference

Increased power usage of ARC Smelters. Again.

Most plants now use an instanced shader for much more performance

Improved Frozen Factory Research help page. This should now guide players into the first machines they need.

Large Scale Vein Extraction is no longer available to the player until they have successfully used the Hard Rock Grinder.

Solar Panels are now instanced and should run much nicer.

Fixed many more broken particle systems.

All non-cube conveyor items now use instancing.

You can now unlock Whole Lotta Nope! as a network client

Patrons should now see Critters.

Improved Trencher readout when network client and out of power.

Massive rendering overhaul reducing drawcalls to about 1/4 of what was previous.

Cubes on conveyors, solar panels, lasers, bugs and torches are still NOT instanced, and there is more performance to gain there.

Lots of fixes to various particle emitters - let me know if you see particles just repeatedly animating on the spot. This is a unity bug I'm having to work around

Moved to Unity 5.4

Fixed BuildGuide particles

Fixed issue where ZipperMerges didn't bother to wait for CargoConversion.

A huge amount of Instanced Rendering additions

[ 2016-08-31 17:11:30 CET ] [ Original post ]