Please restart Steam to make sure you get the latest version of Boundless. If the update happens whilst Steam is open it’s unlikely you’ll get the latest version.
Overview:
New worlds.
Release Notes:
Art + Animation + Assets:
Day/Night Cycles:
Each world has been given a lighting colour ‘identity’ in line with the materials found on that planet so that the players can recognise the world they play on by looking at the sky.
Home worlds have a currently a vibrant ‘earth-like’ sun rise, mid-day and sunset colour parameters. i.e. A bold and warm red sun rise followed by a rich blue day colouring and ending on a vibrant purple sunset. More variations will come in the future.
The elemental world sky is in line with the gem colour it inhabits. The sunrise and set has complimentary hues.
Metal worlds are visually styled to the alloy colours found on the planet and are tonally richer in light and darkness to signify a level up in difficulty.
Coal worlds are filled with dusky golden and dirty desaturated hues contrasting bright sun rises and sets.
The day and night cycles have also had a visual polish pass to accurately convey the strength of luminescence in the light levels in all the sky quadrants throughout the 24 hours to portray the sun rising and setting in each world.
This work creates a consistency in the art style to tie in the Boundless universe to each world inhabited.
Customisable Characters - Stand out from the crowd!:
You can now customise your character’s appearance by selecting their gender, skin colour, eye colour, height and head shape.
Many more head customisations, wearables, and body paints options are coming.
The assets are still in development.
Crafting + Resources + Equipment:
Balanced block health values across the full universe.
Increased the amount of Copper and Iron needed to craft tools an weapons to be more consistent with Alloy recipes.
Made Warp Augments be crafted in the Workbench, so that it is possible to make them on starting worlds.
Warp and portal costs rebalanced for the new universe structure. Costs are broadly similar to what they were for journeys around the starting worlds, but get progressively more expensive on high tier worlds. This is to allow portal networks to be affordable, but not ubiquitous, and to make higher tier worlds more of an event to travel to.
Creatures + Combat + Characters:
Elemental creatures have elemental particle effects attached to them. BURN!
XP awarded for creature kills is scaled based on your damage, tanking, and healing contributions.
Reviving Players will now reward XP.
XP rewards for Objectives, Crafting and Chiselling have greatly improved.
Changed fall damage to feel a tad more “realistic” (no more jumping out of a plane and only taking 15% health off). Different materials will also now change the amount of damage you take on impact, for example, landing on Sand will reduce the damage taken compared to Igneous Rock.
Added Atmospheric hazards into the game which will add more challenge for citizens exploring high tier worlds. To counteract this, new recipes for atmospheric shielding food have been added to the game. (Or take the skills.)
We have increased drops for single players or smaller groups taking on meteorites. Players were not being adequately rewarded for their solo efforts. Taking on meteorites in larger groups still yields more drops. Hopefully we have struck the right balance.
IMPORTANT: Please share feedback on all the balance changes.
Sanctum + Tutorial + Objectives + Progression:
Allow new characters in the tutorial to open the warp to an already added friend that is currently online on the world in the sky. Friends on other worlds cannot be warped to as part of the tutorial.
New characters can now choose a platform-friend (added during the character creation) to start on the same world. This works even if the friend character is offline, going to the last world they were on. This is restricted currently to lush/coal/metal worlds (worlds without dangerous atmospheres) that are of tier 1,2,3 or 4 only to avoid people spawning into a world they will likely die very very quickly on. In conjunction with warping to a friend from the tutorial when they are online, this should let new characters often start directly next to their friend when starting the game.
Allow users to delete their active character whilst within the sanctum, allowing users to “restart the game” without having to first get an alt character to swap to delete their primary. Deleting the active character will immediately return the player to the create-character flow.
New Citizens will now receive more Cubits as a reward for levelling up, this should help players at the start of the game explore the many options in the exchange sooner. The total number of Cubits awarded has remained constant.
Cleanse points will now also be rewarded at every level to aid Citizens experiment with new builds in the Skills tree. 1 cleanse point is awarded per level up to level 50.
Changed sanctum start hall lighting to better match in world colours.
GUI + HUD:
Added the new colour names to match the new 255 palette colours from last release.
Added X (or R3 on a PS4 controller) to drop items from the inventory.
Footer bar legend in menus now switches lines periodically to allow us to show more buttons (and deal with longer wording after localisation).
Can now see online players on the world-in-the-sky. Is semi-real time updating every 2 to 3 seconds and will show character names and user-name information if accessible (Steam friends on Steam, or all PS4 users on PS4).
Many improvements to the planet-marker logic so that you will see many more markers on the planet, and when there are too many to render, more intelligently select which to show based on distance to the totem-reticule instead of it seemingly randomly popping markers in and out. Also increased the selection radius so it's less fiddly to look at a marker.
Planet marker icons updated so that player locations are circles, beacons and settlements squares, and saved locations little pins with an associated Tip shown when you look at a planet with a totem to explain them.
Controls changes:
Added change control popup so players can see what they are about to unbind and click cancel or ok.
Added PS4 pad bindings (press a button on the pad to switch to showing controls for a PS4 controller).
Added new setting “Accept mouse movement when rebinding”.
Moved controls settings into the controls tab.
Don’t allow players to unbind some key controls (escape/up/down/left/right/select) in the GUI.
Bug fixes:
Fixed Z-fighting/precision issues in lava rendering to match water behaviour.
Fix issues with the skill-light being turned off whilst the player is still in darkness if very-nearby (e.g. diagonally across a blocked off corner of a tunnel) there is bright sunlight.
Fixed the scaling on some tier 5 exploration Feats.
Fixed cuttletrunk vacuum audio effect not stopping.
Fix “Add Platform Friends” from character-select screen to actually work, instead of doing nothing until you press it again after the timeout.
Fix not gathering information on friend account names correctly in the various friends lists.