The moment you've all been waiting for here at Code}{atch! v0.5.5 is live and ready for your downloading pleasure.

We worked pretty hard on this release, and spent a lot of time cleaning up bugs, optimizing the code and clearing up technical debt. This isn't just a back-end update however,

We've also designed and implemented some new content for you to enjoy.

We have included:

The New Tileset: It's sleek, mysterious, monolithic and practically iridescent, it's the "Alien Hull" tileset.

The New Utility: Colonists on Atlas are now fitted with Paint Lasers and are able to demarcate their bases, vehicles, other players, themselves and other non-block objects.

The New Monster: What mysteries does Atlas hold? Many, and one has been discovered by colonists recently that is as ferocious as it is fast! The Flying Eyeball, so known by many colonists, flaps its bat-like wings and is able to heat up the air between the colonist and itself, forming a ray of heat scorching its target alive. Be wary, while they may be small, they are often numerous, and quite pesky.

Check it out here with the Official Trailer!

http://youtu.be/42vmu-II3cc

Several other changes have been made to the game as well, including refactoring a few systems, tweaks to the terrain and menus.

A lot of time this month was spent on chasing down memory leaks, and beefing up multiplayer performance and other serious performance issues. We here at Code}{atch want to give everyone an awesome experience playing our games, and strive to deliver as smooth of a product as possible.

Another thing we've spent a lot of time on is reintegrating QA and the reorganizing of our release schedule, so we can do more quality releases for you, more often.

Read more about the game's changes here:


When the player joins a game, the game data should be streamed over time instead of sent all at once.
-This allows smoother handling of larger batches of data

Added the ability when starting a new game, the player can define what seed will be used to generate terrain.
-This allows popular seeds to be saved and regenerated elsewhere and shared.

Creative mode has been reintroduced into the game!
-Players will now no longer encounter enemies when playing in creative mode
-Players will have infinite resources upon spawning

New Utility Introduced: The Paint Laser
-Allows players to apply a custom color to various items
- Blocks
- Craftables
- The VAT
- Other Players
- Themselves

-User is able to scroll through a hue slider by holding ctrl and using the mouse wheel while the paint gun is equipped

Terrain is now deformed when explosions occur.

The Lobby menu is currently disabled

Cleaned up major bugs to do with:

- Terrain generation
- Placement Holograms
- Creative Mode
- Trees

A large variety of other bug fixes have been implemented, creating a more stable release

Changes to the UI have been brought in:

- Changes include making the UI event-based, and thus allowing for faster, smoother performance
- Streamlined the menus before launching into a game
- Adjusted the settings menu within the game
- Disabled the lobby menu temporarily

New Monster Introduced: The Flying Eyeball

- Small, agile flying monster
- Fast attack, often comes in pairs or groups
- Fires hot energy beam from its eye

Various optimization issues dealt with have helped increase performance

New Tileset Introduced: Alien Hull

Skill System has been refactored and tweaked



Happy Gaming,

-Will

- See more at: http://starforge.typepad.com/#sthash.TXXOxokI.dpuf