Important Update 0.7.1 - Major Overhaul of Audio, Visuals, & Blocks

Hello, Engineers!
We’re thrilled to announce that the 0.7 update has arrived and it’s filled to the brim with tons of exciting new features and enhancements! Whether you’re looking for updated block visuals, new blueprint building in survival, improvements to multiplayer or modding tools, there are plenty of fantastic new additions to experience in Medieval Engineers!

We are extremely proud of the work that has gone into the design of 0.7. The models -- and many aspects of building in the game -- have been redesigned from the ground up. Today we unveil this, and leave 0.6 behind. We recognize that with such a huge change, there will still be bugs, errors, imbalances. But given that Medieval Engineers is still in Early Access, we wanted you to jump in, see how it works, and help find the things that don't work right. If it ever becomes too much, you can switch back to the stable 0.6 branch as always!

WHAT HAVE WE UPDATED?

Block Visuals:
We have remodeled and retextured almost everything when it comes to blocks. You’ll notice that there are no longer any hard edges. We have introduced parallax shading to bring more depth to the blocks without increasing the triangle count, ensuring the performance does not degrade. Additionally, we re-added some old blocks that got lost (wall with double-window with a pillar, etc.).

​

Updated Trees:
The trees in Medieval Engineers also got a makeover. There are new pines, new spruces, and oak trees!
Tree cutting has also been tweaked, so go check out those new oaks and don’t forget to yell timber when you cut them down!

​

Female Engineer:
The female engineer is looking better than ever, as we’ve incorporated some of the features from the Space Engineers female engineer. Likewise, her body proportions look much more realistic.

​

Grids:
The grids in Medieval Engineers have received a lot of updates, as we overhauled the entire grid codebase, removed multiblocks, optimized adding and removing blocks (grid splits and merges) on very large grids, simplified many systems, fixed small grids not sticking to large grids, improved block placement along with structural integrity and stabilized physical constraints (ropes, catch blocks, etc.).

​

MULTIPLAYER
We have upgraded the multiplayer behavior, especially with regards to the grids, to ensure they are sent over the network quicker, and fully connected, to prevent grid desynchronization, ropes getting cut, and other horrible scenarios that would cause clients to freak out. Serialization is now much faster in multiplayer. There is also better entity grouping to ensure grids load in together, which combined with lots of minor fixes, should significantly improve bandwidth.


WHAT’S NEW?

Blueprint Building to Survival:
With the simple click of a button and a few swings with your trusty mallet, players can now add large buildings, such as castles to a survival world, as well as small constructions, including catapults, which are ready for action! Plus ropes and connections are now saved in blueprints. Blueprints now automatically store, and display, which mods are required, so you can always see what you may be missing when you place a blueprint. It also checks for research, shows you the resources needed to build it, and provides an easy way to check your progress. You can now work together with your friends in building your town!

​

World Chunking
World chunking is a new system that unloads objects that are very far from players. By doing this, we managed to vastly accelerate world loads, particularly for really large worlds. Dedicated servers should also see a reduction in memory usage. On top of this, it removed the need for abandoned grid decay, abandoned grids are usually not loaded into the scene, and thus do not consume any performance anymore. You can go explore servers and discover all kinds of ruins and structures left behind by people!
This vastly accelerates world loads, saves and unloads entities that have no players nearby, thereby reducing memory usage and performance loading. It also removes the need for abandoned grid decay; abandoned grids no longer take up any performance.


WHAT HAVE WE OVERHAULED?

GUI:
Be sure to check out the new main menu, blueprints screen, crafting screen and medieval master screen. Every other aspect of GUI has been retouched to fit this new style for the game. It’s not only visual, every screen also had careful thought put into it about what we want to show, in order to improve the flow of user interaction.

​

Audio:
Medieval Engineers has never sounded so good! Lots of places that were missing sound now have sounds. We also improved the sound quality in many instances, and we added effects and filters, such as reverb and low-pass filters.


NEW ENGINE FEATURES:
Under “the hood” of Medieval Engineers, there are rendering Performance improvements and GPU particles. There are also better visuals for sunsets and sunrises, and improved logging behavior to help us catch more bugs.

​

FOR MODDERS
For our amazing community of modders, we have a nice list of new tools for you:
-Crafting system refactored to support world chunking and more, see this guide for more info:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SmAHtGy1YwGOt6XF9SOSooIimcZQnFt4aamiZA-RK5U/edit#
-ModAPI dialogs
-Dynamic environment system access
-Added support for underground and inside checks to environment rules
-Programmable animation layers (thanks to Equinox)
-Navigation mesh session component (thanks to Equinox)
-Seedbags now support seeding on non-farming voxels and can plant non-farmable items.
While we are working out the kinks in 0.7, it may be worth creating 0.6-based copies of your mod so servers that want to remain on 0.6 for a while longer are able to continue playing without too much disruption.


OTHER NOTEWORTHY FEATURES
Last, but certainly not least, we have a voxel hand that obeys landscaping stakes. This was a highly requested feature from the community to fix trouble spots when landscaping.
We hope you enjoy all of these new additions to Medieval Engineers, as we know that we’ll enjoy seeing what you create with them.

Thanks for reading!
Keen Software House team


Hotfix February 15th - Medieval Engineers version 0.7.1.649EB1:
- Crash fixes! \o/
- Added checkbox to audio to disable some of the advanced audio features we introduced but are causing troubles on some systems. You can find it under Options -> Audio.
- Respawning should now put you at the proper position when reconnecting.
- Corrected a big issue with claimblocks getting disconnected from their claim when they were built on a grid and another block was added to the same grid.
- Improved performance when walking close to grids with large amounts of blocks.

Hotfix February 18th - Medieval Engineers version 0.7.1.1B493:
- More crash fixes!
- Various claimblock fixes.
- Backups are working again.
- Reduced overall nighttime darkness.
- Plow block particles no longer left behind.
- Found missing tooltip on lockable catchblocks.
- Default compounding mode now initialized correctly.
- Deer no longer telekinetically try to eat your crops.
- Fixed one case that could cause the game to hang on exit.
- You should no longer hear players open their inventories many KM out.
- Stick Fences moved to Crop Production to make it easier to keep the deer out of your farm.
- Plow, Seeder, and Harvester block should now remain functional after placing them on a grid.
- Resolved an issue where parts of a demolished cart would stay in the world and not get cleaned up correctly, causing server crashes.
For modders:
- Setting a local mod in the mod selection screen no longer tries to load the workshop mod instead.
- Fixed StateTimer component, on state transition it can automatically transition to another state after some time.
- Added StateEvent component, on state transition it can fire an event.
- Added support for Inventory components to initialize with default items.
- Whitelisted Nullable.
- Whitelisted the following namespaces: Medieval.Entities.Components.*, VRage.Entities.Gravity.*, VRage.Game.SessionComponents.*

Hotfix February 19th - Medieval Engineers version 0.7.1.2A8E89:
- Stick Fence unlocked by farming quest.
- Wooden Mallet can build palisades again.
- Grass Ambient Occlusion is working again.
- Fixed a dedicated server crash related to catch blocks.
- Backups no longer have a chance of corrupting the main save.
- Mining with partial stacks of ore will now merge ores correctly.
- World Chunking more robust to loading entities twice by accident.
- Fixed an issue that would cause MP packets to get corrupted internally.

Hotfix February 20th - Medieval Engineers version 0.7.1.25A360
- More crash fixes.
- Updated models for blocks to correct various texture issues, etc.
- Tweaked bot spawning to reduce the barbarian/deer overload around players.
- Changed detection algorithm to make it easier to aim at signs placed on a stone cube.
- Mechanical crafting stations now require power again.
- Mechanical crafting stations now damage their toolheads again.
- Re-added missing door locked sound on large round stone wall with offset doors.
- By popular request, barbarian loot bags and random dropped items decay after 5 minutes again.
- Closed a loophole allowing people to place blocks in enemy areas.
- The windmill is now easier to place.
- Slightly tweaked official blueprints.

Hotfixes February 21st - Medieval Engineers versions 0.7.1BEB834 and 0.7.1.52815E
- Drawbridge placement fixed.
- Trash removal now works correctly with dynamic state setting.
- Missing particles on mechanical crafting stations were put back.
- Crafting stations with a long queue no longer continuously restart their sound effect.
- Various block placement issues resolved with wall walks, palisades, and roofs.
- Various crash fixes, as always. We're seeing the crash counts drop a little now!
- Various fixes to the game saving and loading should help reduce the number of missing grids.
- Copying a large grid while aiming at a small grid now properly copies the large grid.
- House banners now offset properly.
- Blueprint building should now work on dedicated servers.
- Fixed an issue that prevented people from placing blocks on dedicated servers.

Hotfix February 23th - Medieval Engineers version 0.7.1.5D7578:
- More crash fixes.
- Various particle effect fixes.
- AI no longer flood the worlds.
- Spiral stairs compound properly again.
- Resolved an issue that could cause saves to not save properly.
- Added maximum blueprint size test; this is necessary to prevent people from building blueprints into enemy areas. The size is about one area large. Enabling admin mode allows you to override this behavior.

New update, February 26th - Medieval Engineers version 0.7.1.9AA380:
- Updated diagonal timbers. Now coming in all sizes!
- Added mechanical stamp mill, it smashes your ores and stones for you!
- Added searchbar to crafting screen, find your recipes more easily!
- Re-implemented ctrl+click to queue 5 items at once in the crafting screen.
- Addressed more roof issues, but more remain, so we'll fix some more tomorrow!
- Fixed more crashes we collected from the logs over the weekend.
- Resolved three more issues with saving, this should help solve the missing grids issue.
- Fixed mechanical blocks not looping their animation correctly when it is stopped.
- Searching for blueprints by name no longer has the spinner get stuck.
- Deconstructing with a full inventory now drops the items on the ground nearby.
- Barbarian should no longer push you around.
- Training dummies can be picked up again.