RobbyZ's Blog

Today’s update brings a number of new features:

The most exciting new feature is the Pocket Townstone.  It is a limited functionality townstone that can only be placed in your pocket universe.  It will not immediately increase the size of your pocket universe like a full townstone does.  However, it enables most townstone functionality such as the ability to let other players build in your pocket universe.  Just like normal townstones, please note you CANNOT move or delete this item after it has been placed!

You can upgrade a pocket townstone to a regular townstone for 10p (/townupgrade).  Doing so will cause your pocket universe to be expanded from 2×2 to 3×3.

Special thanks to setk and snakezxz for helping me test the new pocket townstone!

/rewardblocks command now shows which map the reward block is located on.

Hardmutes – a mod (or flood check) can use in situations where a user is heavily spamming / offensive to mute the player and prevent their text from being shown in IRC (reverts to a normal mute on next server reboot).

 

Three new updates today:

• You can now place the Oven!  You can turn it on!  Or turn it off!  Wow!
• Introducing Full Grass blocks.  Honestly I thought I had already made this one years ago.  Oops, my bad.  😉
• Have so many towns you can’t keep track of them all?  Or maybe you placed one and didn’t name it and now you can’t find it?  Just use /towns to get a list of all towns you are the Mayor of and their locations.

After many months of development, rendering, more development, even more rendering, the new map is finally online!  This is the first map update in more than half a year, and as this new map also includes =67, Potato Server, and many Pocket Universes, there’s a ton of cool stuff to see!

If you would prefer your pocket universe not show up on the map, you can type /togglemapprivacy while standing in your pocket universe.  The change will take effect next time the map is generated.

The map making process is now more automated, so it shouldn’t take another half year for the next map refresh 🙂

You can now earn Steam Trading Cards in-game!  As we are free to play, you should earn approximately one card drop for every $9 USD spent (the same as all free to play games on Steam that have trading cards).

If you don’t want your cards, send them to me 😛

NOTE:  Currently the Founders Packs do not grant trading cards.  I have requested Valve allow this, but not heard back on this request yet.

I’ve created a new build for 64-bit Linux users — now you shouldn’t need to install i386 libraries in order to play.  You may need to Verify Game Integrity Cache in order to get the new depot.

32-Bit Linux should remain unaffected

Lemme know if it works for you 🙂

I am excited to announce that you can now unlock Steam Achievements while you play the Steam edition of the game.  Check out the full list of achievements.

ALL achievements can be earned by all players, although some can be a bit tricky 😉

Some special notes for existing players:

• If you’ve already collected reward blocks, you can trigger the achievement via /rewardblocks
• If you’ve already completed Draco’s questline, talking to him will unlock both those achievements
• If you’ve already fallen in the pit, talking to RobbyZ will unlock that achievement

Special Mac note:  The overlay doesn’t work on my machine, but the actual unlocking does work.

Fridge / Flowers Fix:  There was a bug where the Fridge & Flowers household goods items were poking out through ceilings.  If you pick them up and place them again, now they will correctly sort.

Draco Tutorial:  Draco gives new players 10 half-sized blocks now.  I suspect these will be a bit easier for new players to learn with than the full size blocks.

Shadow/outline tuning:  Picking up a block should correctly adjust the outlines of remaining blocks around it now.  Shadows on dirt should be more likely to show up.  Also, when moving the placement preview block, shadows will only be recalculated as needed.

TV Rename:  Modern TV is now officially called Platscreen TV in the shop.  Not sure who started calling it that, but you’re a genius. 😛

I’ve just pushed to Steam Mac & Linux builds!  I had to rewrite part of the rendering pipeline for Mac, but it seems to be working well so far.

These builds should be considered very beta, so please report bugs that affect these platforms on the forums (or if it just works, that’s good to hear too! ;))

Linux has been tested and is known to work on Ubuntu 12.04 32-bit.
Mac has been tested and is known to work on OSX 10.9.2 (Mac Mini).

Known issues:

• Mac + Linux: Overlay doesn’t seem to work in-game.
• Mac + Linux: If you switch windows, you may see two cursors in-game.
• Mac:  Game & launcher icons are shown as generic Java icons.
• Mac:  Java icon sometimes continues to be shown after game is finished, until icon is clicked.
• Linux (64bit):  Additional libraries are required, please see ‘How to Install 8Bit-MMO on 64-bit Ubuntu’ in the FAQ.

I’ve also fixed an issue that affected trading.  Trading now has better trade offer validity checking, so if you happen to get hit by phantom inventory objects, those objects won’t appear to be tradeable anymore.

Just uploaded a new build which adds ability to configure your e-mail settings directly — just go menu > options > Account/E-mail Settings