This one isn’t really that large in what it changes, all told, but the thing that it changes is pretty fundamental: wooden platforms and player-placed crates no longer float in the sky. They wood platforms will still hang against any sort of background wall, but in the surface areas they are now useless.
This changes… quite a bit. Especially really early in the game, when you don’t have ride the lightning yet. It also really makes the exterior areas feel more distinct from the undergrounds and interiors, which is something we always strive for.
Along with this, crates and wooden platforms now float when underwater. So you can deploy a crate and then stand on it to escape from a deep watery grave. But you can no longer effectively put a wooden platform under water at all, because you can’t stand on it while it rises, and when it reaches the top it’s probably too high to help you if you needed it in the first place. So beware!
There were also fixes for a couple of big bugs with the new population code in the prior version. One was apparently tanking performance on some machines/savegames, and another was causing bosses to not spawn sometimes, or things like icicle leapers in the desert even when it wasn’t time to migrate yet, etc.
We’re also getting closer on the guardian powers and the various lightweight citybuilding components that go along with that. The last of the images for that mode (for 1.0, anyway) are now in place, and that’s why this version takes a bit longer to download. The guardian powers aren’t accessible in the game yet, but hopefully by Tuesday we’ll have the first of them in there for you to play with.
More to come soon. Enjoy!
This is a standard update that you can download through the
in-game updater itself, if you already have 0.500 or later. When you
launch the game, you’ll see the notice of the update having been found
if you’re connected to the Internet at the time. If you don’t have 0.500 or later, you can download that here.
