FOUND — Update 0.4.59

(everything since 0.4.57)

This round brings a brand-new starting camp, a reworked quest line with some strange new encounters, a meteor that can fall on the island, much better weather in the distance and a long list of fixes from playtesting.

The new camp

You now start in a proper expedition camp: a 30 x 30 m square behind a metal fence, with the gate facing the island.

• Three big cabin tents with real rooms inside: a cot, a table, a chest and a lamp. The crew is split between them, and there is a bed for every player.
• Campfire with benches in the middle, now ringed with a low stone wall so you can't walk into the flames by accident. A cooking pot hangs over it on a tripod, with a counter and a grill next to it.
• Gate that you open with E and that closes at night.
• Generator with cables running along the fence: at night the floodlights come on and you hear it hum.
• Water tank and rain barrel, a bike rack (one bike per player), a photo board for your polaroids, and a pier behind the camp.
• Lie down in your bed with U.
• Animals and zombies don't come inside, and zombies don't spawn near the camp.
• The fence fades out from far away and at night, so it doesn't block the view.

Quests

The task list has been rebuilt from the start, and it now has someone to talk to.

• Camp chief Rıza waits just inside the gate. He hands out the early tasks one at a time: finish one, walk back and talk to him for the next. After that, tasks come in on their own.
• Some tasks are now packages with several parts you can tick off in any order (tools + tutorial, the grave trip). Others are in a set order: chop a tree, split the fallen trunk, then break a rock.
• First task: gather 15 stones and 17 sticks. Every stone and stick lying within reach glows, so they are easy to find.
• Graves are easy to spot (mound, cross, cloth). Dig one open with the shovel, or blow it open with dynamite. Holes dug side by side join into one pit, and your footprints now sit on the pit floor. What's inside is up to you to find out.
• You get a camera right at the start. Right-click looks through the viewfinder, and the photo comes out as a real polaroid you can pin on the camp's board. The thing you need to photograph is highlighted.
• Something strange can happen if you eat the wrong mushroom: dizziness, a stumble, a blackout… and then run. Something is following you, and if it sees you, it comes.
• After that: ride back to camp, pin your photo, hunt and cook, ride far from camp, then go to the nearest village.
• Clear a village: kill the zombies around it before the road to the dwarves opens.
• Before the dwarf king, short combat lessons: ground kick, flying kick, slide, sweep, and picking up and throwing a dwarf with G.
• Low on health? A "heal yourself" task shows up on its own.
• New small tasks: pee on a fire to put it out.
• Beating the boss shows a congratulations screen.
• The quest box is bigger and easier to read, and stays on screen while crafting.
• Old quest progress is reset once because the order changed.

The meteor

Some day a meteor comes down somewhere on the island. You see it fall from far away, with a glowing fiery trail, a roar, a flash and a shockwave. It leaves a huge black crater with fires around it, and it's marked on your map.

• The crater floor holds meteorite ore (needs an iron pickaxe).
• The meteor never lands on the camp, villages, story places, water or lava.
• Trees, rocks, grass and small landmarks inside the crater are wiped out, so nothing floats over the hole anymore. This includes the dry grass clumps in the desert.
• The burnt ground stays dark for good and no longer lightens as you walk up to it.
• Animals know about the crater and walk down into it properly.
• Lava streams stop at the crater edge instead of running through it.
• A short quest chain follows the impact: go to the crater and inspect what glows there.

Weather

• Rain from afar. Rainy areas now have a grey cloud ceiling, and you can see rain curtains falling in the distance, never over the sea.
• Clouds swell up when rain starts and stay that way until it stops. Snow comes from big, steady cloud banks and falls a bit more heavily.
• Far-away rain is paler.

The map

Lava streams and lava pools now show on the map as bright orange lines with a dark edge, so you can see where the lava runs before you get there.

Fire

• Burning animals run away much faster.
• Fire damage builds up smoothly instead of coming in small ticks.

Movement and bike

• The bike now starts uphill from a standstill, jumps higher, and leaves tyre tracks. You can't hold an item while riding.
• Falling trees stop at the camp fence.
• Footprints now land where your feet actually touch the ground and point the way you face. Steps are a bit longer.
• Climbing straight out of a kick or a slide no longer leaves you tilted.
• The bike can't ride up very steep mountain faces anymore, but handles medium slopes better.
• Animals walk a little faster with longer strides.

World

• Lava deltas (where lava meets water) are solid all the way through.
• Sulfur crystals sit on the ground and lean with the slope.
• Shorelines: water gets softer and lighter where it's shallow.
• Smoke from the meteor and fires is softer.
• Falling leaves: fewer, but spread across the forest.

Interface

• The whole in-game HUD was rebuilt: crosshair, damage direction, FPS, compass, key hints, quest box, hotbar, pop-ups and minimap. It looks the same, but it's sharper and much cheaper to draw.
• F1 panel (cheats): the quest you are on pulses, with a button to jump to it.

Performance

• New setting Grass detail: Full / Light. Light uses simpler blades and no far grass; in dense forest it saves around 2 ms of GPU time per frame.
• The terrain is drawn in 81 pieces, so off-screen ground is skipped (about 126k fewer triangles, same look).
• Several scripts that searched the whole scene every frame now don't. Script time per frame is roughly a third lower.

Small things

• Underwater, desert sandstorms and fog no longer show.
• The night vignette is lighter (only the corners darken).
• The bike rack is solid.
• Bullet holes no longer show up as black squares in some builds.
• A Ctrl slide leaves a natural groove in soft ground.
• Grass settings from old versions are reset once to the new defaults.
• You respawn fully warm.
• The camp gate's E no longer steals the key from items you are looking at.
• Cuts on a fallen trunk land on the right side.