[Changelogs] Alpha 4

Alpha 4 changelogs

After many months of break, updates are back! This update adds some critical major features: a descent pause menu, key bindings menu, save and load solo games. Also adds a first piece for automation, bug fixes, and more!

General features

Major features:

• In-game pause menu: By default, press escape to open the pause menu, it pauses solo games (but not multiplayer games).
• Save and load solo games: You can now save your solo party in the new in-game pause menu, and load them in the main menu. saves are stored in a folder ".pixurvival" in your default user directory. Multiplayer game saves will be added in a future update
• Key bindings menu: In the new in-game pause menu, you can see all the keys used by the game and change them. It proposes default configuration for QWERTY and AZERTY keyboards.

Minor features:

• Discord support: The game is now detected by Discord and shows your game status! When you enter to the multiplayer menu, your default name is your Discord one.
• In-game chat improvement: Messages are now wrapped, so no longer needs to scroll horizontally! Messages headers are colored according to the player's team. New key: press ENTER to start typing in the chat.
• /list command: New in-game command: /list, to list a kind of element, uses "/list item" to list all the items of the content pack, "/list creature" to list all creatures, this is useful for /give and /spawn commands. Uses "/list player" to list all the players names.
• Added a "back" button in all menus.

Content pack features

Creatures can now have an inventory, pick-up and drop items, and harvest structures!

New Creature property: inventory size (number of slots).

New Creature's behaviors:

• Harvest structures: The creature will search for structures around according to the the chosen search distance and structure set filter. When he founds one, he will move toward it and harvest it, then repeat.
• Pick up items:  Pick-up items around according to the given search distance and item set filter.
• Drop items: Drop on the ground its inventory content, according to the item type filter. Optionally a maximum quantity to drop and a target direction can be specified.

New Creature's behavior's change conditions, among others for a better use of the new behaviors:

• Inventory content: Compares the total quantity of a given list of item type contained by the creature's inventory.
• Task finished: Means "a unit task has been done". Have a different meaning according to the current behavior. For Harvest behavior, it means a structure has been harvested. For pick up items, it means an item has been picked up. For Move toward, it means the minimal distance has been reached with the target, and so on.
• Nothing to do: Like Task finished, Have a different meaning according to the current behavior. In general, it means that no valid target has been found.

Vanilla content pack

New item: the wooden puppet, made of wood and magic wood. Uses the item (by pressing the inventory shortcut or by taking it with the mouse and right clicking anywhere in the world) to spawn a wooden puppet at your service! It takes advantage of the new behaviors and will harvest for you nearby structures! But be careful, They are rather awkward and could wake up a dragon!

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue making sometimes the loading duration of a new game infinite.
• Fixed a memory leak on server when starting new games after new games.
• Removed the "test" text in the in-game chat input box.
• Command's auto-completion with TAB is now working correctly when writing a list of elements (eg. /give wood_sword,wood_bow)

What's next?

For the next update, I will focus on "user friendliness", by adding, among others, an in-game tutorial, this would requires a "fixed" map instead of a regular generated one, so i will add the possibility in the editor to make game modes with "provided" maps. If you have any idea of how to make the game more user friendly, I would be happy to discuss with you in the comment section bellow or in the Discord!