[Game] Exile v0.4.0b

[Mantar]

Announcing the release of Exile v0.4.0!

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72m45MbtgcY

This is a major milestone release, resulting from about three years worth of work in our development branch. The game has been extended, polished, fixed, and some parts have been rebuilt from the ground up. It should be a much more polished and stable experience than ever before.

Changelog:
- Widespread seasonal changes and effects, applied out to draw distance
- A tutorial to introduce new players to the game
- Many new biomes, trees, and plants
- More complex plant growth and soil tracking
- More intelligent animals, including the new Chichasa bird
- Harsh weather can be exhausting to travel in
- Dramatic new lava effects and behavior
- New food recipes including breads, vinegar, and more
- New crafting system based off rubenwardy's crafting mod
- Crafting "spots" replaced with surface requirements or placed tools
- More in-world construction and materials
- Fewer bottlenecks in the crafting tech tree
- Chairs to let you rest while sitting upright
- New spawn system designed for Exile's specific needs
- Three-button control scheme to reduce accidental clicks
- Player settings and UI themes

And lots more besides!

As mentioned above, we suggest creating a new map. Existing maps will work, but will have to be scanned into the new system, and will still lack a couple of (mostly cosmetic) things. Instructions to perform the scan are included.9

For mod authors: We have renamed the minimal mod to prevent collisions with other games and mods, our version is now called exile_game. A minimal mod is located in the utilities folder, and can be installed to provide compatibility for mods that aren't updated.

Get the new release from the content browser, or download it at :
https://content.minetest.net/packages/Mantar/exile/

[Wuzzy]

Congratulations on this major release!

(Did you forget to update the thread title and ContentDB screenshots?)

[Mantar]

Yes, I did forget the title, oops! The new screenshots are also approved and show up on CDB now.

We'll probably do a small point release soon with some minor additions and fixes.

[Mantar]

A minor point release is out, 0.4.0a:

• A new font for Exile, inspired by ancient Greek inscriptions
• Backpacks remember their slot and return to it if possible
• No wayfinder juggling on Luanti 5.16+
• Animal carcasses drop a the correct spot
• Fix explosive cane plant growth
• Misc fixes and improvements

Available on ContentDB:
https://content.luanti.org/packages/Mantar/exile/

[Mantar]

And here's v0.4.0b
* Add the ability to graft logs and leaves onto living trees
* Fixes for the font, fish, ice/snow melted by players, & health effect list

[Squarebeard1]

Wonderful. Time to use what I've learnd with Bear Grylls, Riddick and Madmax again

[nazalassa]

Is Gemedi supposed to be cana? While it looks like cana, I can't use it on a spinning wheel.

[Mantar]

Gemedi is one of the cane plants, but it's not the same as cana. Cana is the king of the fibrous plants, because it can be retted and spun into actual thread, which is an uncommon trait.

Look for swampy areas, you should be able to find some cana. You can plant seeds or plant cuttings of cana to make your own local cana farm, it just needs wet ground. I either dig down to one layer above bedrock, or if that's too deep, just dig up the surface and place a layer of rammed earth (or something else solid) to keep the water from draining away from my cana bed.

[Wizard Of mkdir]

Congratulations to all the contributors on the new release, I've only played it for a bit and it's already amazing to see how far the game has come compared to the early version when I first started playing. The season changes are just awesome.

However I'm a bit confused about the wet soil mechanics. I've been seeing a lot of water (compared to old versions, see first screenshot) collecting in the riverbeds, I assume it seeps out of the wet soil nodes, so I thought that the water seepage speed was increased. Also I noticed that wet soil nodes now collect near the limestone bedrock, actually forming a water table, which is cool. So I tried to dig a well into the soil (second screenshot), however I have gotten no liquid water at all in over 10 days even though there were a lot of wet nodes. Is there some limitation that prevents wells like this in the game from being effective?

[Mantar]

The water movement isn't exactly faster, but it is more widespread (going all the way to the horizon instead of being centered on the player) and more effective (touching a lot more nodes every time it ticks over than the ABM could afford to) so we had to alter it a bit.

In early versions we directly replicated the ABM's behavior, but this was too much. Water seeped out everywhere; rains would result in floods pouring down mountainsides destroying all the plants, players had to make their bases waterproof to prevent flooding, players who stayed in caves could have it turn into a dark, flooded deathtrap, it was crazy!
So we settled on a "water pressure" limit, which means you need two or three wet nodes stacked in order to force one out. This means the well in the bottom picture is too dry to work.
It's advisable to cover the well, too, to slow evaporation, because that works just as efficiently.

[Wizard Of mkdir]

That is interesting, the pressure limit definitely makes sense. The mapchunk shepherd definitely makes a difference in how dynamic the environment is, really a great innovation for the game.

The well is covered under a thatch roof and trap doors. I will see if it will produce water in a wetter season, I dug it in the tail end of the season of Birth.

[Wizard Of mkdir]

New well location with deeper soil, a lot of water already (and this is in the season of thirst with no rain in 10 days or so). The new water mechanics actually make these viable, as long as you get the right location. Really great how the water table forms naturally from the simple water movement rules, and also that it's naturally finite. Now we just need some well mechanisms to get the water out of the well.