CryoFall - Patch notes v0.21.x (Survivors Update)

[ai_enabled]

The first update after Steam Early Access release is available now! Announcement in Steam (https://steamcommunity.com/games/829590/announcements/detail/1624021088637690678)

=== CryoFall v0.21.0 ===

New major features and improvements:
    - Newbie protection ΓÇö the game provides 4 hours (counted only when the player is online) to help newbies with building the first base and crafting the necessary gear. All new player characters will have light blue nicknames with a shield icon so you could easily recognize them. A newbie cannot damage other players and still could be killed by non-newbie players but they will not drop any loot and will not lose any learning points. In case of non-player related death (killed by a creature, thirst, radiation, etc), newbie will lose LP and drop full loot as usual, but it could be taken back only by its owner so it's a minor annoyance. There are several other restrictions (like bomb planting is not possible by a newbie). The newbie protection could be canceled in the social menu at any time.
    - Damage tracking ΓÇö the respawn menu has been expanded to include a list of the recent damage sources ΓÇö such as creatures, players, harmful items and status effect (including names of players who have damaged you, even if you were offline).
    - Deconstruction with the crowbar will return a small part of the resources spent on building.
    - Visibility of nicknames and healthbars is now limited during the night and depends on the light sources nearby. Watch your steps! You might run into a dangerous creature ΓÇö or a sneaky player. Night-vision and artificial retina implant are much more valuable items now!
    - Implemented resource contesting mechanics for Oil/Li resource spots. Notification about the spawned Oil/Li location will be displayed to players who have Xenogeology tech unlocked. Resource cannot be claimed earlier than 30 minutes so players have to fight for the resource. And, as previously, the resource spot is decaying over time and during extraction, and also could be exploded ΓÇö it will respawn within 2 hours.
    - PvP damage is reduced by half so PvP skirmishes will take twice as long and will be less random.
    - Friendly fire for party members is disabled now.
    - Status effect tooltips expanded to include all the applied effects (such as move speed, health regeneration, woodcutting speed, etc).
    - Servers: server rates now editable in a separate config file (16 various ratesΓÇösuch as damage in PvP, damage to/by creatures, bombs damage, skill experience gain multiplier, learning points gain multiplier, woodcutting and mining speed, etc).

Improvements:
    - Restricted building near other players which are not members of your party (no more Fortnite-style construction fights, sorry, guys! :-) )
    - Status effects in HUD now displaying their intensity as a percent number under the icon.
    - Ability to deconstruct and repair buildings inside the owned land claim grace area (gray color) except the cases when there is an intersection with other player land claim area (red color).
    - Cybernetic affinity skill now properly works by gaining experience over time while implant is installed (when player is online). It also receives additional experience when implant is installed/uninstalled.
    - Switching the weapon in the hotbar will take a short delay.
    - Added new server console commands useful for community servers to use with social events: /admin.giveawayLP, /admin.giveawayItem, and /player.addLP.
    - Sort private chats by recent date ΓÇö newer chats to bottom (closer to local/global).
    - Chat tabs list ΓÇö always scroll to end on opening (to the latest private chats and local/global chat).
    - Chat room will not play any sounds if it's not currently visible.
    - Chat message context menu includes "Copy name" now.
    - Chat current tab will receive "unread dot" indicator until you explicitly open it (by pressing Enter key).
    - Ammo tooltip added for ammo icon over the weapon slot in hotbar.
    - Repair config is validated now ΓÇö error if the item is not used during building, error if the item count during building is lower than the repair total count for this item.
    - Modding: scripts will recompile when any txt file changes (to help with localization text editing)
    - Creative mode player can open the land claim window and edit the access list.
    - Creative mode player can edit doors and crates access list and access mode.
    - Creative mode player can edit signs in any land claim area.
    - Creative mode player can manage any trading station like its owner.
    - ╨íreative mode player can deconstruct a land claim instantly (without destroy timer).
    - Console command to spawn/destroy static object at position or all around the player: /world.place, /world.destroy

(the patch notes are so long that we have to split on two posts)

[ai_enabled]

Changes:
    - Both .300 ammo types and heavy machine gun are nerfed (work in progress, we cannot change it any more at this time as it requires rebalancing other weapons as well which is planned for the next updates).
    - Construction is restricted in the mountains, clay pits, and salt flats. They will continue spawning resources even if they're covered by a land claim placed nearby.
    - Torch, hand lamps and miner helmet light distance extended a bit.
    - Reduced damage from hunger and thirst.
    - Creatures are no longer able to damage structures.
    - Synthetic fiber recipe adjusted to provide more fiber for less resources ΓÇö BTW, it was never intended to be the primary way of crafting fibers, it's just one of the ways if you have excessive oil.
    - More LP for quests (up to 100 LP for more advanced quests at the end).
    - Learning skill and death LP threshold rebalanced to provide 50 LP as a min death threshold (it goes up to 250 LP on Learning skill level 20).
    - Limit simultaneous quests added and quest requirements satisfied sounds.
    - Quest "Craft and equip cloth armor" will accept any equipped armor.
    - Quest "Craft and equip better armor" will accept any equipped armor (not only wooden) except cloth.
    - Reduced requirements for rope crafting, cloth armor crafting, building workbench, small floor lamp, and the first quest (resources gathering).
    - Dazed status effect no longer affect attacking and interactions with buildings. Only your movement speed.
    - Bear is dealing about twice the damage now.
    - Pragmium nodes will not destroy on their own so quickly in volcano area on the north-east.
    - Larger land claim construction constraint around oil and Li deposits if player doesn't have Xenogeology tech.
    - Land claim complete destruction will instantly reset the decay timer for the buildings within it so they will skip the 32-hours pre-decay timer and will start to decay immediately (and will decay completely within 24 hours).
    - Floor rug building in a single step.
    - Human fists and animals hit sounds changed to soft tissues.
    - Added interpolation for other players' weapon rotation so it will not look jerky anymore.
    - Spectator is not affected by status effects anymore. Active status effects are removed when switching to spectator.
    - Duration or "Pry open" container action in radtowns is increased a bit.
    - Reduced sound volume for fridges.
    - Proper error message will be displayed when launched with mixed mods configuration.
    - Proper error message will be displayed when a required DirectX 11 DLL is missing on Windows 7. The link to Microsoft website to download it is included.
    - Recent servers now has a full tab in servers browser.
    - Mining charge will now deal more damage to exposed oil/Li spots.
    - Player looting your bag notification will not disappear on its own now.
    - Base raid mode will not activate from the mining charge explosion.
    - Servers with modified Core.cpk file are now categorized as "Modded" servers. We donΓÇÖt want to see broken community servers where the hoster didn't even test their changes and created many issues and bugs for the players. Not to mention that people assumed these were bugs of the game, rather than broken mods.
    - "Featured" community servers will be displayed first.
    - Server icon file (ServerIcon.png) should be placed in /Data/ folder now (near the ServerSettings.xml file). BTW, it should be not larger than 64 KB.
    - Updated localization (multiple corrections and improvements added).
    - Reduced unnecessary server logging (reduced logging severity for many events).
    - Stripping of logger calls implemented for scripts compiler to ensure that only the logging of the selected severity will be passed into the scripts assembly.


Fixes:
    - Steam account change was not detected by the game client so it kept using the previous account.
    - Light flickered in center of screen for a frame or two when another player entering the player scope.
    - Switching game language on the first launch in Steam caused the game to stuck on the "Connecting..." screen.
    - Error "the party is full" when trying to invite a player while the party is 9/10.
    - Some build quests (such as workbench building) were not shared with party when a party member finished it prior to receiving it.
    - Holding the fire button for musket, shotgun or similar one/two-charge guns was resulting in the second shot always missing (skipped on the server) due to an incorrect reloading timing.
    - Plant tooltip could not fit the text in harvest and watered bars in some translations.
    - (Physics) issue with stuck-rubberbanding when moving close to trees, bushes, buildings and other world objects.
    - Improved items resync (should help with issues such as item stuck in hand and cannot get rid of it, etc).
    - Land Claim building window text for non-owner fixed to avoid text overflow.
    - Game server were unable to launch scripts compiler if it executed in a path containing spaces or the path is too long.
    - Fixed raid base construction/repair restriction (it was not activating when there were more than a single land claim area at the bomb location).
    - Bed construction was too quick.
    - Steam start menu (first account actions) didn't fit in some languages (Spanish).
    - Opening chat now will stop using current item/weapon (previous the action was continued until the chat is closed).
    - Missing console caret is finally back! (updated NoesisGUI to v2.2.1).
    - Rare random issue with garbled UI rendering on Alt+Tab (missing textures, etc).
    - It was possible to drop implants to ground by using the Alt+RMB shortcut, avoiding the need of uninstalling them in med lab.
    - Weapon muzzle flash skipped first frame of rendering for other characters resulting in much less spectacular muzzle-flashes...
    - Building restriction around other players should check whether this is a player's land claim first.
    - Server browser not loading the servers list or stuck on game server loading screen (MTU size reduced to much more reasonable value, and MTU discovery is enabled now to autodetect the optimal MTU size).
    - The game will try to detect whether it's sandboxed by Windows defender or antivirus and will attempt to use different folder for user data (%LocalAppData%/AtomicTorchStudio/CryoFall). If it's still not possible, a error message will be displayed.
    - The game will display a proper error message if it's sandboxed by Windows defender or antivirus and cannot launch the scripts compiler executable.
    - Player continued receiving network events for not observable player characters after the respawn (harmless but extra traffic and errors in log).
    - Fixed a random rare crash on startup related to shaders compilation.
    - Pragmium armor, hazmat suit and apart suit will not have player's beard visible under it (other face features will be temporary disabled too until we implement the proper masking of the beard and other face sprites outside the helmet sprite).
    - Pragmium source mineral lifetime decreased to one day to prevent their capturing for longer periods.


Important:
    - NO WIPE with this update (as we're not adding new content, only features and improvements). The next wipe is still planned for mid to late May with the next major update!
    - If you need to play on a server which is not updated ΓÇö you can switch to previous game version in Steam (game properties -> "Betas" tab).
    - If you're hosting a game server ΓÇö please follow this guide in order to update the game server (http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1274.new#new).
    - If you have modified the Core.cpk, you need to use the fresh Core.cpk and apply the changes again (or simply use new default Core.cpk and just adjust server rates config file.). You should NOT use your current Core.cpk. If you're familiar with Github you can merge your changes by creating a fork of our repository https://github.com/AtomicTorchStudio/CryoFall
    - If you're interested to see what's actually changed in code with this version please see our Github commit for this update (https://github.com/AtomicTorchStudio/CryoFall/commit/f1a7a9ff6e2f1a3f8f9859080351f55ea3b1b130) (389 changed files with 6,211 additions and 1,512 deletions).

And finally
Please consider leaving a review on Steam. It honestly helps the game grow and gain new player.
We really need your support at this early stage. Games can succeed or die depending on whether there are players or not and we need your help now.