Terraforming, farming, and towns

Terraforming received a solid update fixing a number bugs, but more importantly adding a way to quickly flatten out large patches of land. This is fun not only as one of the many steps of building the perfect village, but also to make way for farming.

Farming added a number of new concepts including tilling, planting, watering, water containers, and basic containers. This also brought up one of the first challenges of running a near infinite world without actually simulating a million square miles all at once. I actually cheated a bit on the planting system and may go back to change it some day. Currently it stores whenever it was last awake in the world, then when returned to it calculates how it should have grown since your last visit based on the current time. That means that any farm not currently visible is not using up any computer resources. Towns on the other hand operate in real time no matter where you are in the world.

I'm still just getting started with towns though their methods of storing data globally has come together nicely and will play into the bigger picture once a few more things make their way in.

Currently we have gatherers, crafters, and a trader operating on a new money based system of barter and upgrades. These provide a limited alternative to harvesting and crafting everything by yourself. Most buildings are more importantly planned to work as prerequisites and provide utilitarian benefits to more high tech buildings, but I'll post more about that when more of it is in and working.

Just recently we've also seen the addition of 26 new decorative items, as well as the ability to color and label signposts and storage chests, something that was repeatedly requested for by the community.

Once the larger benefits of towns start to take shape I will be aiming to implement the first steps of multiplayer with hopes to have a working system before the Christmas season is upon us.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support of Solace Crafting! And special big thanks to everyone reporting bugs and joining in our daily discussions on our Discord server.