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Patch 16 : FortressCraft Re-imagined.

If you don't read anything else, read this bit

You need to remove -force-dx9 from your launch parameters - the game NO LONGER supports DX9. Thanks Unity!

Patch 16 - Reinventing yourself isn't just for Madonna.

I may disagree with some of you. I may argue with some of you. But I absolutely do listen to all of you. Many of the reviews of this game are wrong, idiotic or abusive. Such is the nature of a free forum. The ones that are not can be split into two types; Positive, or complaining about the lack of a Tutorial. Therefore, Patch 16 is the culmination of two major areas of focus.

New Players

I've gotten half a dozen people to play the game for the first time, streaming it to me and my channel, whilst I watched, made notes, and shouted at the screen how anyone could not understand everything perfectly. The end result has been a *huge* amount of work - the game now explains things many more things to new players, makes MANY less assumptions and, I hope, all of this without pissing off experienced players by treating them like children.

Tutorial, UI and New Player changes

The game will now prompt you to have more than 5 torches placed in the world when it's nighttime
You're no longer instructed to Terraform the Cold Cavern before you're ready
Ore Smelter Storage Hopper now has unique mission
Player will also be directed to correctly set permissions on starting Storage Hopper.
The CPH is now warmer, and being near it should make you happier.
You can no longer die of heat or cold when the game is paused, and power won't be used up either.
You can no longer die of heat or cold when exiting the game.
ARTHER will no longer simulate during paused.
Holo-tutorial now has mission readout
HotBar now indicates key presses slightly better
HotBar now indicates F keys to select tabs.
Suit Power Panel now reacts in a much more visible way to player actions, and flashes red when nearly out of power.
Game no longer tells you to increase your threat when all Overminds are dead.
Game no longer asks for a threat scanner when all Overminds are dead.
SpiderBot is no longer present before you build a SpiderBot base, and will be summoned the first time it's made.
Daytime is now 10 degrees warmer than it was, meaning much reduced suit usage during the daytime. For those of you who missed it, you were supposed to spend the day on the surface, where it's warmer, and the night-time underground; as it's warmer there than the surface during the night. This seems to have passed a lot of people by!
Time of Day locked to 'sunrise' during the tutorial
Moved DropShip another 16m away
Tutorial now has much more detailed pop up hints
Rapid mode now gives you enough resources to automate your base immediately.
Contextual help now correctly takes user to the previously-completed scan
Unknown scans now have a differently-coloured material on the scanner
Tin and Copper Handbook entries now tell the player to use an Ore Extractor.
SuperDig hint now ALWAYS shows for the first time, with Rubble afterwards
Improved hint on Torches (They keep you warm, you know)
Ore Scanner now has the 'Press X for Build Gun' prompt on it for new players.
"Extract or Smelt Tin/Copper" now says "Automate Tin/Copper Extraction"
Construct a Lab mission recommendation now comes before Iron.
Improved formattting on Video Tutorial Page
Mission Report changed from 5/15/60 mins to 15/30/60 mins
Mission Report frequency dropped substantially for new bases
Mission completion now supports optional pop up dialogue.
SuperBuild mission has been improved, and relies on the user watching the super-build-tutorial-video.
Basic Laser Power Transmitters now have significantly more streamline and simple readouts.
Suit Battery MK1 now requires Lithium scanning before it's available.
Holobase prompts are now delayed until the user has a suitably large base.
Fixed Basic Mining Upgrades 1 description.
Vein size result scan is slower and more readable now.
Many important progression steps now have tutorial pop-ups, currently guiding the player to their Iron setup.
CPH now burns resources twice as quickly (Power Per Second should remain the same)
Vastly improved error messages when the player fails to build
New hints for unscanned items in the world.

For current players, you'll notice a change when you start your next new world (or venture TOO far in an existing one)

The entire surface has been redone. This includes a triatic/split complimentary colour scheme for all things, new dynamic sky rendering, new sun shafts, new fog system, new dust system and surface flora. It's been a busy month.

The new rendering tech also gave me a chance to implement surface biomes; you should now be able to locate 8 separate surface biomes, each with their own unique plant life. Plant life has no use in this patch; over the next couple of months, I will be implementing farming and breeding mechanics. You can harvest them for funsies and watch them regrow, however.

Performance has been another focus this month - the new rendering code means that I can now reduce the drawcalls and increase the GPU load massively, whilst reducing the CPU load. Previously, FortressCraft was probably around 10:1 for CPU/GPU - it'll be closer to 8:1 this month! But this new tech is really REALLY fast - I checked

71 million vertices @ 105 fps. However, if you ARE having performance issues, then there's a few commands you can try out.

Added 'detail instancing toggle' command, to disable all unnecessary instanced objects (grass, small rocks, stalactites)
added "detail instancing shadowforce" - forces shadow casting on all instanced objects
added "detail instancing shadowoff" - disables shadow casting on all instanced objects (very fast)
added "detail instancing shadowsmart" - smart shadowing on all instanced objects (default)

(Pic is a little old, the green is less bright now!) The change in visuals with the new tech, I think, speaks for itself.

I'm not done! But I do need a rest.

Next Month

Just a reminder that this is now the 16th free Content Patch since FortressCraft left Early Access, and I would like to especially thank the Patreons for their continued support. Without them, I would not be able to continue development of the game. If you're continuing to enjoy this game, 16 months after it was finished, then please, please, consider joining them. https://www.patreon.com/Fortresscraft So, on with the rest of the patch notes!

Polish and visual changes

New, procedural cloud system
Player now has a shadow
Completely new lighting system
Completely new plant rendering + harvestable plants
Completely new surface generation.
(It's amusing how 4 lines of patch notes can represent a few hundred hours of work.)
MK3 PSBs now use correct swirl shader for the battery charge sphere

Optimisation

PSB hulls are now instanced. Performance++

Conveyor Belts now use proper instancing. FAST.

Implemented generic auto-instancer

Minecart Straights are now rendered in a single draw call!

Hazard panel down from 1.5ms constant to 0.1ms with 0.4ms peaks.

Implemented procedural Instanced Rendering - performance gains are soon

Moved most type of plant onto PIR; this means they always render, they're incredibly cheap and fast, they use up no main thread time at all, they don't need to spend any raycast or vis time, and don't have to continually work out their own relative location. This has the potential to be really REALLY fast.

Fixed non-MPB instancer, improved performance

More work on using MPB to speed up plant rendering

Plants with childed lights no longer cause significant render load, and will cull appropriately.

Improved world generation speed

Improved unity-thread performance issues when you have thousands of dropped objects. PS, don't leave thousands of these around.

Quality of Life

HoloBase Frozen Conveyors are now blue
Holobase Blocked Conveyors do not go red until they're properly blocked.
Improved accuracy of block selection AND performance
Alien Plants no longer placeable in Survival (You will need to harvest seeds and plant them - Patch 17/18)
Ore Pings now return the distance of the closest result.
Ore Extractors not placed on ore give a much better readout
Ore Extractors now externally show power.
Fixed 3d Text shader to allow dynamic colourisation.
On Rapid mode, Coloured Ping is available instantly
SuperBuild feedback SFX
Moved to a less-obsolete version of cursor locking, potentially fixing numerous Linux and OSX mouse issues
It's no longer possible to click on the hotbar whilst the mouse is disabled
Blast Furnaces now show their PPS costs
Mission Report can no longer appear whilst a grappling hook is travelling, as it can kill you.
Mission Reports disabled entirely for Squishcore and Hardcore difficulties.
ARTHER will make a noise when he drops below 10% power
Reduced Particulate filtration costs to 75% of their previous value.
ARTHER Powerbar now slightly larger
CPH Compass now slightly bigger
Improved Research Assembler readout; lists power needed and correct state.
Build Gun now has a glow map to indicate current power; also animates on use.

Patreon-only/future stuff

Internally allocated Mutator #10 to Important CPH
Power Storage Blocks now drain when the CPH is destroyed. This should make this game much very interesting; loss of the CPH means at least 30 minutes before the next attack wave, but your entire stock of stored power will be depleted; your threat should have stabilised by the time the next wave arrives.
Implemented some basic OSHA mutator deaths. Don't stand in anything bright or dangerous-looking.
[spoiler]OHSA damage added to Macerators, PTGs and Lense'd LPTs[/spoiler]
As ever, Mutators are only available to Patreons. They'll become available to everyone in the Adventures Pack.

Bug Fixes

Fixed Cryo and Magma Rendering
Sunshafts now return when you return to the surface
Grooved Cement and Reinforced Concrete Blocks should no longer be overly bright (Existing blocks not altered, sorry)
Fixed re-entrancy crash with Grass
Upgrading SpiderBro should no longer leave him in a bad state.
Fixed SmartVis making Toxic Caverns a bit icky
Biomass veins should no long spawn outside of the Toxic Factory
ARTHER power bar working
Improved error logging for instanced errors
Fixed OET explosion sound effect at startup
Start sound fixed. Again.
Improved Error Logging for Instancer issues
Fixed the missing 7th CC plant

Multiplayer

Chat and InventorySearch now available non-admins

Significant reductions to network load of conveyors

Fixed missing Lab issue

One for Innomin8; Conveyor Updates reduced from 103 bytes/update to 69 or 89 bytes/update, with smart sending of data - that's 66.9% or 86% of the previous data size.

And the rest...

Scan effect can no longer get stuck in the world.
Fixed issue where a framedrop during the intro could cause the tutorial to disappear (!)
Fixed silly over-scaling of Coal Calories in CPH burning code when in easiest.
Deleting a machine with an attached completion mission will no longer repeat the mission by default.
Dropship smoke should now fade over time.
Ore Thief no longer directly refers to Storage Hopper, just Hopper.
New Injection Entities will auto-scan their innards.
Rocks and GlowTubes shouldn't drop incorrect crap now.
Large world clusters of objects now require left shift (they're correctly marked as Multiblocks)
Research Assembler now intelligently lists PCBs recipes.
World Select now defaults to "Create World" if you have no worlds.
Difficulty description now makes sense for Rapid mode
During the Tutorial, the game will indicate incorrect scans of previously-known items.
Sun location is locked during tutorial
Forcefield kick now much less harsh, with a little 'fail' sound effect
Generic Machine Panels now have an 'open' sound
Central Power Hub Panels now have an 'open' sound
Popup message panels now have an 'appear' sound
Holo Tutorial Conveyor Belts now animated
Holo Tutorial Laser Power Transmitter now animated
Holo Tutorials now last for 1800 seconds (up from 600)
"Unknown Block detected" is now on screen longer
Research Station now has large and obvious particle effect active when player has outstanding scans to process.
Fixed re-entrant call to System.Random from Terrain and LFGP threads
Your free coal is now added later on in progression
Improved Instancing logic; dropping and preventing object spawn.
Storage Hoppers now let you know that you can open up the Inventory!
Disabled GlowStick Shadows; they're simply not compatible with instanced objects :-(
Fixed Instanced Toggled Grass rendering
Improved Unity-side performance of LPTs
Fixed 'black intro' issue.
Improved LF load of flora
Grass on top of super-built machines will now wither away
Large performance increase to BlockPicker
Fixed low-stepping Item drops (Performance still A++)
Added 'flythru' command
Added 'detail instancing toggle' command, to disable all unnecessary instanced objects (grass, small rocks, stalactites)
New, procedural cloud system
added "detail instancing shadowforce" - forces shadow casting on all instanced objects
added "detail instancing shadowoff" - disables shadow casting on all instanced objects
added "detail instancing shadowsmart" - smart shadowing on all instanced objects (default)
Improved instancing drops and performance
Fix to Conveyor Belts instancing
Added rocks, boulders and stalactites.
Fixes to dedicated servers
Much more smarts on deciding when to instance objects
Stalactites!
Large Rocks!
Lots and lots more work on perlin gen and trees.
No bars/No Ore mission warning now based on having FOUND Tin and Copper, not on having NOT found them...
Added Organic Detritus description; added it to paste grinder
Improved intro sequence, much sooner to start now. This took all day!
Turbine Full Spent Fuel light now flashes
Turbines correctly dynamically load textures once more
Suit power no longer drains when game is paused.
Waving grass no longer sits in Forward rendering; draw order fixed
Glowsticks no longer PURE green/blue
Fixed jump in sunlight during joining new worlds
New Grass textures!
Grass no longer appears on scans or pings
Fixed Shadow casting on lower details
Fast/Fastest no longer have instanced grass
New Grass rendering (does not currently autoremove)
New biome scaling , substantially improved surface landscape feel
Performance fix on light checking <-this broke glowpods!
CPH spawn area now larger. Dropship to be moved tomorrow.
All plants now second pass. Grass still placeholder!
Improved vis culling on Instanced Objects/more intelligent placement
Further improvements to particle fog; more to come.
Further performance gains on UI (Glowing text appears to be expensive. Great)
Major performance fix on visibility culling
Performance fix on light checking
Torches now also craftable at the manufacturing plant
All Organic Recombination recipes now require Cryogenic Research (as opposed to being availble at the start of the game)
Much improved hints on completing scans
Added 7 new plants in total, one per biome
UnderGrump now harvestable
TriSeed now harvestable
Baubleberry now harvestable
TundraBreath now harvestable
Tweaked bright sunlight once more, down a little.
Reduced size of biomes slightly
Fixed issue with 'disappearing machines' on revisiting areas you've been along way from.
Added 4 more lock locations for the Magma Bore
Slimes now despawn if they failed to move into another segment within 60 seconds, freeing up their slot for another slime to spawn.
Advanced filters now correctly require Crystal Dynamics
Added glow modulation to PTGs, to show if they're working a little more nicely.
Wasp chance for High Quality loot now increases from 5% at 0 threat to 15% at 20,000 threat. Uncapped, so Threat Agitators will give a continual increase.
Added MK3 workfloor excavator.
Lancer and Melter fire can no longer be heard at an infinite distance
Base Report can no longer appear when using SteadiCam
Mobs can now correctly spawn around non-dedicated server hosts again

Are you here for the cat-tax?

[ 2017-01-31 20:37:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

FortressCraft Evolved!

ProjectorGames Developer

Digital Tribe Publisher

2015-11-09 Release

Indie Strategy Casual RPG Simulation Singleplayer Multiplayer Coop Tags

Game News Posts: 114

🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🕹️ Partial Controller Support

Mostly Positive (2578 reviews)

http://fortresscraft.com

Steam Store

The Game includes VR Support

Public Linux Depots:

FortressCraft Evolved Linux Content [1.94 G]

Available DLCs:

FortressCraft Evolved Dapper Indie Supporters Pack
FortressCraft Evolved: Skin Pack #1
FortressCraft Evolved: Frozen Factory Expansion
FortressCraft Evolved: Adventures Pack
FortressCraft Evolved: Skin Pack #2

FortressCraft Evolved’s Survival Mode is a unique-blend of Voxel Landscapes, Tower Defense, Crafting, Logistics, Exploration, Combat and Assembly lines. Players begin by crash-landing on a strange alien world, left with only a small handful of starting machines. Using hand-held scanners they must locate ore resources, place down Ore Extractors and Conveyors to automate the raw material back to the Smelter; take the fresh ingots through multi-machine assembly lines, followed by researching new technologies that help them explore thousands of meters below the planet's surface.

An advanced HoloBase allows players to keep an eye on their factory which they must defend against waves of alien attacks with multiple tiers of missile and energy turrets. To survive they must continue to develop new and unique power systems, from solar energy to Jet Turbines, culminating in crafting an Orbital Energy Transmitter thousands of cubic meters in size, to beam power off-planet, and start the next phase of the game.

And all this with an enormous draw-distance, scalable gameplay engine that is equally at home on high-end or low-end computers, and full multiplayer support! This does not even factor in all that you can do in the Creative Mode whose only limits are your time and imagination. With an array of Super Build Tools and a high-resolution Custom Detail Block Workshop players can build anything and on a massive scale unseen in other games.

Experience the largest worlds ever seen in any computer game - ever!
Create a futuristic mining operation consisting of thousands of huge machines.
Full Tower-Defense style combat in a voxel universe.
Use hi-tech machinery to locate and process resources from thousands of meters away.
Explore thousands of metres vertically, overcoming ever-more difficult challenges.
Official Texture Pack and Mod Pack support
State of the art lighting and shadowing, utilising high resolution maps for machinery and environment
Innovative“Build to Me” Feature to facilitate rapid, accurate building
Shareable Creative Schematics
Super Build Tools allowing instant creation of primitive shapes

MINIMAL SETUPOS: Ubuntu 14.04
Processor: Dual-Core 1.6ghz CPUMemory: 4096 MB RAM
Memory: 4096 MB RAM
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000/Nvidia G285/Radeon HD 5450 with 512mb of RAM
Storage: 5000 MB available spaceAdditional Notes: Additional features are available with 8 or 16 GB of RAM

💰 Games on Sale 💰

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