Hello castaways. We have finally added fully randomized biomes, which is a step towards one of the many optimizations changes the game is receiving next week.

Full changelog

New

• Runtime generated randomized biomes.
  
• Added a command to get yourself unstuck. You can open the terminal with ` and type `unstuck`.
  
• Added an additional blueprint trap to the blueprint system.
  
• Added lavender.
  
• Added optional background blur when you hover objects.
  

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue causing quests to not properly load sometimes. More apparent on low end devices.
  
• Fixed tanning station not recognizing animal hide correctly.
  
• Fixed compost bin node not showing on saves. This was an issue with the saved data, this means old saves won't still show. Need to build new bins.
  
• Fixed compost bin values displaying in very strange numbers sometimes.
  
• Fixed water collector not considering sleeping timelapse.
  

Quality of life

• Crafting discovered blueprints require high crafting level.
  
• Improved compost interaction: You can now use the crafted spade to scoop compost.
  
• Improved farming UI.
  
• Farming patches can develop pests.
  
• You can discover pesticides via blueprint system.
  
• You can discover fertilizer via blueprint system.
  
• Updated game logo.
  
• Water collector does not give stagnancy.
  

Notes

After profiling the current state of the game performance, we determined that most of the issues where because of high CPU usage. This was caused mainly by the high amount of objects that tick in our game, and our 60hz physics simulation that interacts with water in a large open world map.

We first toyed with the idea of reducing the simulation tick to 30hz, but since this reduced the quality of our water, we decided that this wasn't an option. Instead, we work towards adding a chunk-like system, where objects only update in the grids the player is in. This mean that objects in far away islands wont affect our performance and only relevant physics interactions for the player will be calculated.

This system is already in place, and is currently being tested. Doing this changes reduced our CPU usage by roughly 50%, and the game is no longer CPU bound. Next, we are going to work on improving the graphical performance and to give better quality settings options, so players with mid-range CPUs/GPUs can enjoy the game as well.

Happy surviving,
The project castaway team