Hi everybody, I hope you've all had a lovely holiday period! We're back today with a somewhat larger than usual update! Without too much ado, here's what's new:

Features

• Sandbox Mode!

  
  We've finally added a proper sandbox mode to the game! Any game can be converted to or from sandbox mode at any time, from the "Settings" tab of the MMO's launcher. If you're in sandbox mode, you can buy stuff even if you have no money to pay for it. And that's all! Play whichever way you prefer; either in or out of sandbox mode. Sandbox mode is available for all games (including new and old games) once you've completed the initial tutorial in at least one game.

• Configurable Level Power Progression!

  
  Power progression has been completely rewritten. Previously, we used a linear power growth which caused players to gain too much power at low levels, and too little at high levels. Now power growth is exponential, with by default a 30% increase in power at each new level. And better, you can configure that growth amount yourself, from the Design interface!

• New Buildings!

  
  Adds a new suite of 'Sylvan'-themed functional buildings!

• New Old Buildings!

  
  A bunch of our older building models have been remodelled in this update! Same design and size, but now with stylish new triangles!

Changes

• NPCs Must Be Accessible!

  
  NPCs can now only be placed onto walkable ground; it's no longer allowed to place them inside walls or other places where players can't actually reach them.

• Monster Zones Must Be Accessible!

  
  Monster zones can no longer be placed on mountains, or other areas where players aren't allowed to walk.

• Hey Buddy, Do You Like to Type?

  
  Improved the typing experience by adding improved handling of arrow keys and adding support for control-A to select all text in a field (command-A on Mac).

• Blocked Building Notifications!

  
  There's now an on-screen notification if you've placed objects such that a building's entrance has been blocked and players can't figure out how to get inside. (the obstructions around some buildings are currently a bit larger than you'd expect, so it was easy to have this happen accidentally. Now there's at least a notification when that has happened! We're doing some more work toward making obstructions more closely match the shape of a building's footprint, but in the meantime this warning at least lets you know that things are placed too close together!)

• VIP Streamer Triggers Later

  
  Adjusted the trigger for the VIP streamer event to happen when your first subscriber joins, instead of when you reach version 1.0.0. This makes it less likely that an enthusiastic builder will miss their Streamer event because they didn't immediately place a starting point after reaching version 1.0.0.

• Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

  
  A single run of network pipes (either cables or fibers) can now be placed across twice the distance, and may contain ten times as many curves as before.

Performance

• Notable CPU performance improvements to the general maintenance of character attributes (health, mana, etc) (big improvements to locality for the data cache)
• Variable "tick rate" for characters on the map lets the simulation spend less time simulating characters who are just travelling and more on characters who are in combat. This makes a reasonably large performance boost especially at high simulation speeds!
• Optimised the engine's handling of MSAA render targets, which provides a small GPU speed boost for anyone with any kind of anti-aliasing enabled (either MSAA or SMAA)

Localisation

• Added a lot more number and money formatting options, and separated them from language selection! So if you want to play in English but using Euros as currency but with the Euro symbol printed to the left of the number, that's now an option!
• Vastly improved the text drawn inside UI meters, for languages with longer label strings.

Smaller Changes

• Spruced up various UI widgets, most notably combo boxes and tooltip windows.
• Tweaks to the window open/close visual effect.

Bug Fixes

• If a party drops to only one player remaining in it, the party now is correctly disbanded.
• When a party is disbanding for any reason, disband immediately; don't make everyone join up in formation first.
• In the "submit save to devs" interface, the "Upload" button is now disabled until you type something into the 'description' dialog. I have too many submitted saves and no clue what people wanted me to look at in them! :sadface:
• Fixed walls and turrets not visibly rezzing in during the initial load sequence.
• Fixed a terrain "overpainting" bug which could result in tiny slivers of a terrain type remaining in a region which couldn't be erased.
• Fixed a crash during game shutdown if at the moment of shutdown one of the game's subscribers happened to be considering travelling from their current region, through a second region, and then back into their current region again in order to reach a destination.
• Fixed a crash loading extremely old saves (from before March 2020) which were in the middle of the VIP Streamer event.
• Fixed player AI around dealing with quest-giving NPCs in multi-level regions, where they were deciding whether or not to pick up quests assuming that the quests would be of the multi-level region's lowest level, instead of looking at the actual levels of the quests.
• When the user destroys a road which AI are walking on, the AI now recalculate their path, instead of YOLOing their way straight over mountains and other obstacles to go to their intended destination.
• Fixed a crash which could sometimes happen after destroying a mountain pass or a flight path between regions if the game wasn't paused.
• Fixed a subtle bug which could very rarely teleport players dozens of kilometers across the map (often entirely *off* the map), when the game was running at a very fast simulation speed.
• Fixed a bug which could cause one duelist to think that the duel had begun a few seconds before the other duelist, and get a couple free hits in before their opponent would react.