Update 14.1 released! Improved Storage Management!

Hello Eco Citizens,
we're happy to announce the release of Update 14.1, a surprise minor update we opted for due to some of the changes being too big for a maintenance update. Migration for Update 14 worlds is fully supported.

After reviewing the feedback we received on some of the Quality of Life changes introduced in Update 14, we decided to rework the storage management to make it much more comfortable to use. The main addition in this Update is the ability to determine exactly which items any given storage can accept:

We also improved the search functionality, it now creates an uncollapsed view of all storages in range that contain the items searched for and hides away any items that weren't searched for. By clicking on the "Locate" button of a storage you can also directly jump to a specific storage in the regular view:

It is now also possible to easily hide storages from your view by filtering them based on their type, with the resulting view being saved per individual table. Hidden storages continue to work as configured and mass actions like "Consolidate" will only apply to the storages you can actually currently see in your view:

Storages now also show tags that provide information about the properties of a given storage container, for example the effects on the stack size for contained items or if it can or cannot accept carried items. Hovering over such tag will show a tooltip with extended information, removing the need for trial & error:

To round the changes off, you can now copy storage settings (Auto-Linking, Collapse State, Input / Output and Visibility), the storage type filter and (for storage containers) the configuration for accepted items and paste it onto any other (storage) object with two new buttons to the right of the text filter.

Baking & Cooking:

• Changed: The Baking Skill Book no longer requires Geology Research Paper Modern as an ingredient, but the ingredient cost of Gathering Research Paper Advanced increased from 2 to 5.

• Changed: The Cooking Skill Book no longer requires Dendrology Research Paper Modern as an ingredient, but the ingredient cost of Gathering Research Paper Advanced increased from 2 to 5.

• Changed: The Bakery Oven is now crafted by Masonry and had its room tier requirement decreased from 2.8 to 1.8. It's ingredient cost of Bricks was changed to Clay.

• Changed: The Cast Iron Stove is now crafted by Blacksmith and had its room tier requirement decreased from 2.8 to 1.8. It no longer requires lumber as an ingredient and it's ingredient cost of 8 Iron Bars was changed to 12 Iron Plates.

Hunting:

• Changed: The hit points of alligators were decreased from 7 to 6.

• Changed: The hit points of wolves were increased from 4 to 5.5.

• Changed: The chance of wolves to attack players was decreased from 90% to 60%.

• Changed: The unprovoked attack distance of wolves was decreased from 15 to 9 blocks.

• Changed: The headshot multiplier was decreased from 1.5 to 1.4.

• Changed: The "Deadeye" talent now provides a +80% modifier to the headshot multiplier, resulting in a total multiplier of 2.2.

• Changed: The "Power Shot" talent now provides a +30% modifier to all damage instead of a static damage increase of +1.

Repairs:

• Changed: Durability decay when using Whetstone for repairs was increased from 3% to 4%.

• Changed: Durability decay when using Sharpening Steel for repairs was increased from 0,5% to 2%.

• Changed: Durability decay when using Polishing Paste for repairs was decreased from 1% to 0,5%.

• Changed: The labor cost of Sharpening Steel was increased from 60 to 220.

• Changed: The labor cost of Polishing Paste was increased from 120 to 360.

• Changed: The ingredient costs of Polishing Paste were increased from 3 Silica and 1 Lubricant to 15 Silica and 5 Lubricant.

• Changed: The yield of Sharpening Steel was increased from 1 to 8.

• Changed: The yield of Polishing Paste was increased from 1 to 8.

Other Changes:

• Added: New recipes for "Recycled Boards" and "Recycled Charcoal Steel".

• Changed: The Advanced Agriculture Research Paper no longer requires spoiled food as an ingredient.

• Changed: Trophies now require Polishing Paste as an ingredient.

• Changed: The "Iron" salvage material for Metal Rudders was decreased from 8 to 2.

• Changed: The salvage materials for all wood logs were changed from 0.25 Bio Residue to 0.08 Bio Residue and 0.17 Wood Scrap.

• Changed: The experience gain for crafting several Shipwright recipes was increased.

• Changed: The amount of wild wheat spawned on world generation was increased, it should now be more similar to the amount of wild corn spawned.

• Fixed: The labor cost of Primitive Backpacks was set to 1, it is now the same as for Basic Backpacks.

• Fixed: Kites required general labour instead of tailoring labour.

• Added: Support for [c]abs(a)[/c], [c]ceil(a)[/c], [c]clamp(a, min, max)[/c], [c]floor(a)[/c], [c]max(a, b)[/c], [c]min(a, b)[/c], [c]round(a), sign(a)[/c], [c]sqrt(a)[/c] and [c]trunc(a)[/c] in text formulas. (Thanks to @Weylin)

• Fixed: When a law allowed anyone to ignore authentication for moving items in vehicles, everyone was able to detach modules from them.

• Fixed: An issue that under specific circumstances could prevent expanding deeds into neighboring settlements even when their border policies are configured to allow doing so.

• Fixed: The "Character Level Up" trigger counted level ups gained while the player was offline twice.

• Fixed: Items added to inventories through crafting orders, store purchases or picking them up would sometimes not stack with items already stored.

• Fixed: The dinner party tutorial would not complete when the steps weren't followed in the exact order presented.

• Fixed: The calculation of the ground pollution penalty for outdoor rooms didn't work correctly.

• Fixed: The Advanced Masonry Table was not accepting the Advanced Masonry specialty upgrade.

• Fixed: The "Hardwood Expert: Composites" and "Softwood Expert: Composites" talents both applied to all composites.

• Fixed: Bonuses that granted a reduction of labor costs didn't apply when adding labor to work orders started before such bonuses were unlocked.

• Fixed: The toolbench did not accept blocks for its recycling functionality, despite stating so.

• Fixed: Machines with pipe outputs continued to output fluids even when they were turned off.

• Fixed: Water pumps unintendedly continued to work when their input pipe is also the output pipe of another machine.

• Fixed: The fishing trawler caught fish at a significantly slower rate than intended. (Thanks to @superbjorn09)

• Fixed: The garbage modules for trucks couldn't collect from or dump into Primitive and Modern Dumpsters.

• Fixed: Craft orders for items that due to (modded) bonuses had no ingredient cost never finished.

• Fixed: Broken items erroneously could be used for repairs.

• Fixed: Some of the new sorters had their occupancy defined incorrectly.

• Fixed: Small Shipyard occupancy was defined the wrong way around.

• Improved: Abandoning a specialty now refunds stars instead of XP. The refund consists of the amount of stars invested into the specialty to be refunded (its own cost, the summed up cost for all taken talents and, if enabled on the server, the multi-specialty penalty paid for taking this specialty), scaled by the server's refund percentage and then rounded to the nearest full star.

• Improved: Installing upgrade modules on tables with queued work orders will now update those work orders to benefit from the module, no longer requiring them to be cancelled and set up again.

• Improved: Machines using 'processing' to craft (like recyclers and sorters) now have a button to take ownership of the process, allowing the machines to work on unclaimed land. Ownership can only be taken by players with the Recycling specialty and each craft will now provide a minimal amount of experience for it. This benefit is also listed in the Skill and Tech Tree UI.

• Improved: Catalysts now show an easily understandable percentage reflecting their remaining use on their icon, instead of the confusing numbers they displayed before.

• Fixed: Multiple localization related issues that could break highlights and tool interactions when playing on devices with a system language other than English.

• Fixed: An issue that caused tools to only be rendered partially after joining a server and could lead to interaction problems unless the camera mode was changed at least once.

• Fixed: Elevators would refuse to move further with a "You don't have access to do that" error once the cage had travelled for 20 blocks from where the elevator was built.

• Fixed: Carts and wheelbarrows could become unusable until a server restart after being forcefully dismounted from them.

• Fixed: Removing the block below a sapling that was tracked by an active harvest contract caused an exception that disconnected the player from the server.

• Fixed: Fish racks lost their modules when picking them up.

• Fixed: The work button sometimes didn't become clickable immediately after learning the talent required to craft an item.

• Fixed: Using the "Select all" button in multi-selector popups multiple times for different search results did not provide the expected result. Multiple such selections are now correctly merged.

• Fixed: Primitive Dumps could unintendedly be placed in free placement mode, potentially causing problems with room detection when they were placed in invalid positions through that mode.

• Fixed: Applying decontaminants near the world border could lead to them being applied to the wrong chunk.

• Fixed: Chopping a stump with a full inventory destroyed the drops instead of preventing the action with an error message.

• Fixed: Interactions that were prevented due to being out of range erroneously reported an authorization error.

• Fixed: Objects only accessible due to a law granting the ability to ignore authentication displayed all interaction hints that would be displayed to its owner instead of only those interaction hints linked to interactions that actually became accessible due to the law.

• Fixed: Authentication override notices caused by laws granting the ability to ignore authentication were displayed when looking at any object that matched the trigger of a law, even when the law's conditions did not apply and no actual access was hence granted.

• Fixed: Laws with an ignore authentication clause that returned to draft state (for example due to its host object becoming invalid) continued to cause authentication override notices until the server rebuilt its law cache.

• Fixed: Multiple issues that could appear when editing law descriptions.

• Improved: The dev tool can now smite areas based on selection shapes; increases the amount of a block in a carry slot for every additional copy action; copies world objects into the inventory instead of a carry slot and can copy a full stack of a block or an object when holding CTRL.

• Added: A "Max" button next to the "Start Project" button, allowing to set the number to craft to the maximum amount possible based on available ingredients.

• Fixed: The world map could render an older version of a district despite a new one being in effect.

• Fixed: The X-Ray overlay for pipes tended to not consistently display all nearby pipes.

• Fixed: The map on the Web UI broke when biomes changed due to rising temperature.

• Fixed: The sorting of map layers and entries in selection popups was always based on english instead of the selected client language.

• Fixed: The garbage output preview could display a wrong quantity when modules or talents apply.

• Fixed: The description text in the popup requesting the player to set their estimated hours played per day could overflow for languages where that text is significantly longer than it is in english.

• Fixed: The filter bar in stores could overlay and hide the prices of the last row of orders.

• Fixed: Item links whose text was separated from their icon on a new line didn't display a tooltip on hover.

• Fixed: The Gain Specialty XP tutorial refered to talents that no longer exist.

• Fixed: The tooltip of a work order would show an error referring to water supply when the actual problem was a blocked sewage output.

• Fixed: The "Crude Refining" talent mentioned an effect on pollution despite Pumpjacks do not yet cause pollution.

• Improved: Carry slots now display a control hint to make clear that carry slots can be cycled with CTRL + Scroll.

• Improved: The description of the Empower: Blacksmith talent was reworded to make more clear that it affects tools used by the Blacksmith, not tools created by it.

• Improved: Water was renamed to Fresh Water to remove ambiguity after the addition of Salt Water.

• Added: New graphic setting "Far Terrain", if enabled this makes far away and otherwise not displayed chunks render in the game world using minimap data, basically extending the view distance with very low level of detail - defaults to true.

• Added: New graphic setting "High Detail Chunks", determining the distance for which the level of detail of blocks is not reduced, as a percentage of the configured "View Distance" - defaults to 100%.

• Fixed: The smoke effects indicating necessary repairs were barely visible for the new sorters.

• Fixed: Vehicles could display a wrong wheel orientation when loaded before their ground chunk.

• Improved: Modular storages like carts, dumps and flatbeds on vehicles now display their contents proportionally - the 'pile size' reflects the used capacity and each item type gets a share matching its quantity instead of only the contents at the start of the inventory displaying.

• Improved: The preview for the deconstruction selection when using the hammer now draws as a single translucent zone visible through blocks and stays smooth on large selections.

• Added: A TriggerDetector system for modifications, allowing a world object to trigger a server function when a player enters a trigger collider.

• Added: A ScreenOverlay system for modifications, allowing to display an UI or video directly in the camera view of the player.

• Added: "ReuseVanillaPrefab" and "ReuseVanillaFont" components for the ModKit, allowing modifications to access and use vanilla prefabs without needing to distribute a copy of them. Vanilla planter pots now also display modded plants automatically. (Thanks to @primo4e)

• Changed: Forced the build process for the Mac build to always use x64 architecture, allowing it to run on Mac's with ARM processors for as long as Apple supports Rosetta. (Thanks to @WeaselDog)

• Fixed: Two causes of client crashes on modern MacOS versions. (Thanks to @WeaselDog)

• Fixed: Automatic and manual login to Linux and MacOS standalone clients could fail under specific circumstances. (Thanks to @WeaselDog)

• Fixed: Freezes and light flickering caused by a system intended to prevent crashes by reducing the performance impact on system hardware that is detected to be overloaded reacting too harshly.

• Fixed: Animals could get stuck running in circles when they were supposed to die, making it impossible to pick up their carcasses.

• Fixed: Animals could get stuck running in circles when they reached the end of their path, instead of arriving and continuing onto a new path.

• Fixed: Synchronization of achievements between Strange Cloud and Steam could fail under specific circumstances.

• Improved: Joining a world is now faster and the stuttering of the background video during the loading phase has been reduced.

• Improved: Modifications can now alter the cost of installing modules based on who does so.

• Improved: Modifications can now alter the starting freshness of crafted food.

• Improved: The creative inventory now has buttons for filling stomach and giving a dev or paint tool and items given through it now merge into existing stacks instead of using a new slot per item given.

• Improved: Updated localizations to the latest state on our translation portal[localization.play.eco].

• Added: New admin command "/ignorecarrysize" that allows to carry any amount of items in carry slots.

• Fixed: A server crash that could happen when claiming plots that contain rooms with painted high-tier walls.

• Fixed: A server crash that could happen during crafting or trades, caused by the statistics database.

• Fixed: An issue related to fuel supply that could lead to a deadlock, preventing work orders to progress on the whole server.

• Fixed: The meteor shower happening after the meteor impact could cause extreme CPU usage, potentially making it impossible to play or even connect to the server while it was happening.

• Fixed: Changes to durability of parts weren't saved immediately and could be lost on a server restart.

• Fixed: Weather events didn't persist through a server restart.

• Fixed: Granting or revoking admin rights with the respective commands did not take effect on the affected player's client until they reconnected to the server.

• Improved: Implemented a recovery mechanism for failed database transactions to improve the resilience of the statistics database.

• Improved: Objects burning fuel and world chunk caches no longer get rewritten on every save cycle when nothing meaningful changed.

• Improved: Better handling of attempts to access parts of the WebUI that require authentication without a valid authentication ticket, removing the error spam that provided no useful information.

World.eco.template

• Added: "WorldCurveMode" config variable, determining how the game world is rendered - defaults to "Sphere". Also takes "CylinderX", "CylinderZ" and "Flat".

• Added: "WorldCurveRadius" config variable, determining the curve radius for rendering the game world if applicable - defaults to 500.

  ᐰttention: Changing these new settings is unsupported, do so at your own risk. Changing them may cause significantly reduced client performance, trigger existential dread due to questioning reality or ascend your consciousness to a higher form of existance.

We've already revealed that the next major update will focus around Animal Husbandry, but we're also working on a few more minor additions and improvements leading up to that. Here is a little teaser of some statistics views we are working on to provide you with more economical data to base decisions on.

(Functionality and UI is a work-in-progress concept and may not reflect the final state of the feature.)

Thank you for your support and enjoy the new update!
- Strange Loop Games