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Update 9.7.13 released!

Thu, 18 May 2023 13:55 CEST

Hey Citizens,
we've just released Update 9.7.13 to address the following issues:

Civics:

Added: A limit of 5000 characters for election speeches was added to prevent errors in the server log for too long text.
Fixed: Triggering a law that records a custom stat with a name length of less than three characters would disconnect the client from the server.
Fixed: As a landlord, changing the bank account a rent goes to had no effect until the renter left residency and rented it again.
Fixed: An issue with specific laws that caused the boot time of the server to become extremely long.

Art & Effects:

Fixed: Texture and highlight for urchin plants were not displayed correctly.
Fixed: Sound effects were not playing when moving through plants.
Fixed: Harvest animations were not playing for plants.
Fixed: Trees did not have wind animations.

Gameplay:

Fixed: Debris and plants were not slowing down players and vehicles as intended.

Interaction:

Fixed: Several issues with tree trunk physics that could have a multitude of potential negative effects, from them falling underground to catapulting players to space.
Fixed: An issue that in specific circumstances could lead to the creation of untargetable ghost rubbles.
Fixed: The interaction area for papaya plants was too small.

UI:

Fixed: In specific circumstances food items in storages would not show or show a wrong shelf life bar until they were moved around.

Server:

Fixed: A cause for vehicles teleporting across the world was identified and fixed.
Updated: ModKit.eco.template was updated.

Miscellaneous:

Fixed: Players that had specific special characters in their name would get a unity crash when joining a world.
Fixed: Crafting and repairing items did not work when a player with a single-letter name existed in the world.
Fixed: Debris and some plants could get rendered at a position they don't exist, leading to invisible debris and plants at the place they actually exist and untargetable debris and plants at the place they pretended to exist.

Hotfix 9.7.12 released!

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 21:07 CEST

Hey Citizens,
Update 9.7.12 is now available to address the interaction and physics problems that started to appear after our last update.

As an immediate response, this night we already had replaced Update 9.7.11 with a newer build to prevent the issue from appearing on yet unaffected worlds. Unfortunately that also had the drawback of causing a bit of confusion, as servers had to be updated to the new build without it having a new main version. This update should fix the issue on already affected worlds and restore version continuity.

The root cause for the issue in Update 9.7.11 was a bug that allowed certain objects (rubble, logs, trunks, vehicles, etc.) to drop into invalid, largely negative positions. Only once that actually occured the physics engine malfunctioned, leading to the issues you were experiencing, which is why not everyone was affected and the reports on the problems appeared unusually late. This update removes any objects with such positions.

Additionally the following issues have been addressed:

Fixed: Notifications for changed votes weren't sent globally as intended.
Fixed: It was possible for players being unable to exit vehicles that got stuck, but didn't fall over.

We wish to thank you for your patience and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Update 9.7.11 released!

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 23:34 CEST

Hey Citizens,
we're releasing Update 9.7.11 to address some issues that appeared in our last update.

UI:

Fixed: The shown currency of the store owner didn't update immediately after a change, leading to wrong values being displayed.
Fixed: The soil sampler showed wrong yield values for trees that aren't 100% mature.

Server:

Fixed: Some players were unable to join servers (on the first try) due to view errors.
Fixed: Server logs were reporting errors for physics, despite that should only be enabled in development versions.

Miscellaneous:

Fixed: The interaction range of skid steers and excavators was way too high and caused major usability issues.
Fixed: Players could crash when harvesting if they didn't skip the tutorials.

Performance Update 9.7.10 released!

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 15:49 CEST

Dear Eco Citizens,
we're happy to announce that Update 9.7.10, the last part of our 9.7 Performance Update series, is now available.

In the coming days after the easter holidays we plan to make an early development version of Update 10 available for public testing on the playtest branch. Please note that the official playtest on official server White Tiger will start independently from that a bit later and that this branch may be updated very frequently, up to several times a day. The branch will not guarantee migration yet, neither from prior versions nor between playtest versions. All further information about the playtest will be available on our official discord: https://discord.gg/eco.

We're sorry for the slight delay. Good luck on your egg hunts and please find the changelog below:

Optimization - Client

Improved: Optimized plant rendering, making plants faster to appear and more lightweight for the engine.
Improved: Heavily optimized the minimap, also addressing several issues with and caused by it.
Improved: Several optimizations for chunk, network and view updates - removing duplicate and unnecessary updates, reducing and optimizing sent data.
Fixed: An issue that caused micro-freezes on harvesting plants.

Optimization - Server

Improved: The amount of notifications sent was vastly decreased by accumulating notifications where possible, removing unnecessary notifications and displaying notifications only to affected players where they are not relevant for anyone else.
Improved: Mod file uploads have been limited to one at the same time per user to prevent overwhelming the network. Additionally a configurable limit for how many players can be served with mod downloads at the same time has been added.
Improved: Small optimizations for the login queue.

Icons

The way to display icons without background has changed, it is no longer possible to use lowercase identifiers to achieve this. Instead, the code for icons now has a parameter type="nobg" that can be added to make the icon have no background. Additionally, icons without background do no longer show a border.

For example, on a sign will create this:

Avatar

Fixed: The land claim stake was displaying as a untextured white object on the avatar.
Fixed: The avatar would hold an arrow in its hand when the player went to sleep while having a bow selected.
Fixed: Removing a tool from the hotbar that exists a second time in the hotbar as currently selected tool led to the avatar showing its hands as empty, despite the selected tool still existing.

Civics

Improved: Civic name length limit was increased.
Fixed: Revised civics would not correctly remove the addition of "Revision" after passing when the law name was too long.
Fixed: Old civics that were revised would get multiple "Old" added to their names instead of just a single one and a number.
Fixed: Some contract clauses would become invalid in repeatable contracts after it was accepted the first time, preventing players from accepting it several times as intended.
Fixed: Contracts could show up with missing description and all entries invalid on contract boards.
Fixed: Performing specific actions when creating a contract with nested clauses could lead to a client crash.
Fixed: Repeatable contracts could disappear until a server restart after it was completed for the first time.
Fixed: Not repeatable contracts would sometimes still be displayed on the contract board despite they were already accepted.

Economy

Fixed: Trading with a store which had set a bank account that was deleted in the meanwhile led to a client crash.
Fixed: When claiming new land for a deed, the bank account of any stores on the deed was reverted to the one of the owner of the deed.
Fixed: Stores owned by an elected title reverted to barter mode and turned off after changes were made to the owning elected title.
Fixed: Deeds for sale on a real estate desk were not removed when the deed was deleted.
Fixed: Deeds listed on a real estate desk were removed when the deed was owned by a title and there were changes to the holders of the title.

Improved: Trees on the edge of the minimap now disappear smoothly.
Fixed: After opening the chat while the map is in full screen mode, the map could no longer be closed with the "ESC" button.
Fixed: Text in store tooltips could overlap for long item names.
Fixed: Hovering over the amount of people with a specific level of a profession in the skill UI would not show a tooltip.
Fixed: Several tools were not showing their descriptions.
Fixed: Players were receiving a hint to switch their residency to a deed with allegedly more housing value than their current residence, despite that not being true.
Fixed: The soil sampler could show wrong info on growth times when growth rates were changed in the configs.
Fixed: Food items would sometimes not accurately show the spoilage level until moved.
Fixed: Property layer on minimap was not activated by default as intended.
Fixed: Shadow placement preview could show objects with wrong colorization.
Fixed: The popup that appeared when being kicked from the server due to inactivity showed buttons to report a bug.

ModKit

Added: A way to define food items as not spoiling. (Thanks to nid)
Added: An option to toggle a vehicle's world object state while driving.
Improved: Expanded availability of marked up usernames. (Thanks to nid)

Balance

Changed: Harvest yield of kelp was increased by 1.
Fixed: Harvesting kelp was not affected by the gathering skill.

Miscellaneous

Improved: The camera for cart driving was adjusted to remedy a possible motion sickness cause.
Improved: Carts do no longer collide with animals.
Fixed: The "Clear Vegetation" tutorial could sometimes not be completed.
Fixed: Some animal species, like alligators, tended to die out quickly after server setup.
Fixed: Food items would sometimes not turn into rotten food despite the remaining shelf life being 0%.
Fixed: Under specific circumstances it was possible to interact with world objects through walls and windows.
Fixed: Players were unable to leave their vehicle when it fell over and turned upside down.
Fixed: When using specific mods it was possible that food items picked up did not start with a shelf life of 100%.
Fixed: Plants would sometimes not show fruits, despite being fully mature.
Fixed: Some dolphin can be mounted again, also fixing an issue that could lead to players being unable to join an very old migrated worlds.

Server & Configs

Added: Command /network setpassword to set or remove a server password during runtime.
Fixed: Normally unobtainable settlement objects in a savegame would crash the server.
Fixed: Players trading with shop carts caused unnecessary warnings in the server log.
Fixed: The command /land remove removed all blocks but the specified blocks instead of the other way round as intended.
Fixed: Players sometimes could get stuck at downloading mods.

ModKit.eco

Added: "MaxNumberOfDownloadRequests" config variable, defining the number of players that can be served mods at the same time - defaults to 10.

Update 9.7.9 released!

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 19:02 CET

Hey Citizens,
we're releasing Update 9.7.9 to mainly address a memory issue with servers:

Civics:

Fixed: Contracts would show an accept button for the creator if they were an admin and cause errors when the payment clause was used.
Fixed: Custom Stats containing absurdly high numbers could lead to the server no longer booting.

Server:

Fixed: Wrong initialization order that in specific circumstances could lead to the server no longer booting.
Fixed: Issues with memory allocation and garbage collection, especially on AMD CPUs with many cores and a tighter memory budget, that could lead to major lags and server crashes.

Miscellaneous:

Improved: Clarified description for "GrowthRateModifier" server setting. (Note: There is a known issue with the soil sampler showing incorrect growth times, this will be fixed in Performance Update 3.)
Fixed: Usability of legacy GameValue API for mods restored, it will be completely removed in Update 10.
Fixed: Removed rooms were never truly removed from their deeds, using unnecessary memory.

Update 9.7.8 released!

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 09:14 CET

Hey Citizens,
we have just released Update 9.7.8, addressing several issues with mod support:

Civics:

Fixed: Contracts would sometimes not pay the intended person, but someone totally unrelated.
Fixed: Contracts showed a button label that is only intended to be visible for developers.

Server:

Improved: Mod files exceeding 32 MB are now supported.
Fixed: Large data transfers for mod downloads could make the server unresponsive and increase the time needed for players joining massively.
Fixed: Joining players' mod downloads could lead to lags for all other players on the server.
Fixed: An issue that could lead to players joining a server only seeing a black screen, being unable to play.

Miscellaneous:

Fixed: A cause for random crashes that some players experienced.

Road Map to Update 10

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 17:51 CET

Hello Eco Citizens,
with 9.7 performance updates almost complete (one more big update for this version to come), the majority of the team is working on the long awaited ECO 10! We’re going to be doing little quality of life updates along the way, but have a deadline set of April 3rd for the start of public playtest for Update 10.

We’re going to be demoing the features as we build up to this launch with live streams, here’s the schedule, with each livestream from various Eco devs typically happening on Fridays at 21:00 CET / noon Pacific Time. You can watch the demos on Twitch[www.twitch.tv], YouTube, Facebook[www.facebook.com] or directly here on our Steam store page. We’ve put together a calendar you can sync with if you’d like to keep track of these, click here[calendar.google.com].

Schedule:

Twitch Election Plugin – February 3rd

We’re building a custom plugin for twitch that will let users cast votes in a streamer’s elections and view and interact in other ways with the game. Streamers are a huge part of the Eco community and we want to make some really interesting ways for them to interact with their audience and blend the barrier between creator and audience.

Avatars with Facial Animation via Webcam – February 17th

We’ve got brand new upgraded avatars coming into the game, with much more expressive and customizable faces, hair, and clothes. On top of that we’ve got lip-syncing based on your microphone and facial animation based on your webcam (both optional of course). This means that as your avatar is giving a speech or interacting with others you’ll see the actual facial expression the real human player is making applied on your avatar. With the depth of role-playing we’re seeing in Eco and the potential for live events like town halls, campaign speeches, etc, we’re expecting this feature to add a ton of depth to your characters identity and how you connect with others.

Boats Demo – March 3rd

The long awaited boats feature will be at last shipped in 10! We’ll be demoing all the new boats in the game, from row boats to industrial barges, and how they work. We’ll also show the other systems that support boats like new dock blocks, new placement systems, new swimming systems, etc.

User Pictures Demo – March 10th

We’re adding the ability to take pictures of what you see in game, and then use that on the sign, as icons for your avatar, and much more. This will further connect our new avatar feature, allowing you to take a picture of your avatar and use that for your presentation to users in chat as well. It’ll also be a part of the new culture system we’re building, you’ll be able to make a museum of pictures from other players around the globe to create culture points for the new settlement system.

Render to Horizon Lodding Demo – March 17th

With our performance upgrades for 9.7, the stage is introduce lods to render the landscape all the way out to the horizon, at 60fps on recommended hardware. You’ll be able to see the curvature of the world clearly, see distant cities and mountains, and really get a feeling for the scope of the world that’s being shared with everyone in it.

Settlements Demo – March 24th

The new Settlements system will allow the creation of towns, countries, and federations. Towns contain multiple citizens, Countries contain multiple towns, and Federations (think United Nations) contain multiple countries. Each has their own overlapping governments, complete with laws, taxes, treasuries, etc. Each casts ‘influence’ based on their culture (another new system) where their laws apply. The property system will be completely transformed too, based on population rather than skill upgrades. This is going to be a giant change to the feel of the game and looking forward to community tests and feedback! We’re also keeping support for the old style without settlements, which players can disable in the server if they like.

These are the major feature demos, but on the other Fridays we’ll have livestreams showing other features, and a chance for feedback from players.

We’re all super excited to get this version of Eco out to you all, its going to be like a new game. We got a ton of work to do still, so back to it! See you soon.

- John K, CEO Strange Loop

Update 9.7.7 released!

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 16:05 CET

Hey Citizens,
we have just released Update 9.7.7, please find the changelog below:

Civics:

Fixed: A failed attempt to overthrow the constitution would nontheless lead to all laws on the server being removed and the web ui no longer displaying prior elections to some players.
Fixed: After a failed vote to ratify a constitution in some circumstances it was not possible to try to ratify another one.
Fixed: In specific circumstances it was possible to change demographics instantly without having permissions to do so.

Server

Fixed: In some cases migration of a world from Update 9.1 could fail.
Fixed: Migration of a world from Update 9.5 could fail due to "ghost" districts that were not part of any district map.
Fixed: When placing unavailable technical items that can only be spawned by admins (accidentially), the server would crash and no longer boot. (These items are going to be removed from the list of spawnable items)
Fixed: An issue with LiteDB that could lead to corruption of the statistics database.

Miscellaneous

Fixed: Some trees frequently had their cut logs being hard to target as their hitbox was offset.
Removed: Holiday theme for spruces, storage boxes and elks.

Update 9.7.6 released!

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 11:36 CET

Hey Citizens,
we have just released Update 9.7.6 addressing a few issues that were reported with our last release:

Fixed: Some map icons didn't show their tooltips for some players.

World Objects

Fixed: On migrated worlds some tree branches were displayed wrongly or missing.

Miscellaneous

Fixed: In specific circumstances the tutorial could lead to a server crash.
Fixed: A very rare issue that could cause an invalid state in the savegame, leading to the server becoming unresponsible whenever someone tried to mine.

Performance Update 9.7.5 released! Happy Holidays!

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 11:01 CET

Dear Eco Citizens,
we are happy to announce that Update 9.7.5, the second part of our 9.7 Performance Update series is now available. Thanks to our wonderful community, especially all players helping us with performance diagnostics and testing this release on official server White Tiger, we are confident that we were able to address most causes for FPS drops over time in Eco.

Starting with this update you should no longer need to restart the game after longer play sessions to restore your FPS. Naturally, our playtests cannot test every single possible hardware and settings configuration, so your feedback will be key going forward to fix any potentially remaining issues.

There will be a third update in the series expanding on the improvements already made in the new year and we'll soon be ready for more news on Update 10 as well. For now, all that is left for us to say is a big thank you from the whole Strange Loop Games team for your support during this year - we wish you and your families happy holidays and a healthy new year 2023!

Optimization - Client

Fixed: Transforms update time (those updates happen for every position, rotation and scale change) increased over time and led to reduction of FPS during play sessions.
Fixed: Rendering time for minimap objects increased over time due to leaking graphics command buffers, which also led to reduction of FPS over time.
Improved: All trees were rewritten to optimize creation and rendering performance, got mesh based LOD (Level of Detail) and now use static meshes for rendering instead of animated skinned meshes, decreasing the rendering and chunk loading time.
Improved: In some cases repeating errors getting written to the log files in very high amounts could decrease performance, error logging has been limited so that this doesnt happen while preserving our ability to investigate and address them.

Optimization - Server

Improved: Stockpiles were generating too many block updates, trying to set blocks of stockpiles that didn't change.
Improved: Introduced caching to some of the initially sent views, notably reduces lag when players join a server and the loading time for those players.
Improved: Client updates are now faster, objects that aren't visible to the player are no longer checked as often.
Improved: The network thread in some circumstances got overloaded, we moved some heavy work to a different thread, this notably reduces the amount of server lag (disconnect symbols) especially on bigger servers.
Improved: Sped up calculations for predators by searching for potential prey from their own collection, instead of a collection that contains all physical objects.

Civics

Fixed: It was no longer possible to create civics before a constitution was passed and hence there was no way to pass a constitution with additional civics as a multi-election right from the start.
Fixed: Default demographics could be edited ingame.
Fixed: Laws would sometimes show a "Ignoring Trigger as that would result in a recursive law" message despite the law not being recursive and the action completing successfully.
Fixed: Hands were no longer available as a tool for civic triggers.
Fixed: Civics showed options related to an unreleased feature.
Fixed: Contracts no longer showed their description on the contract board.

Fixed: The skid steer could highlight itself as interactable when mounted.
Fixed: The improved highlighting for selected items during avatar creation didn't apply to all parts of the avatar.
Fixed: The claim highlights did not display white borders between deeds anymore.
Fixed: The claim highlights in some cases displayed a color that is different from the set one.
Fixed: The tooltip for "Citizen" didn't work correctly.
Fixed: The title of work orders in their tooltips could change to a generic name.
Fixed: The tooltip for titles displayed "Wages Source Bank Account" in the wrong color.
Fixed: The position of a player joining the server on the map could be displayed at 0,0 instead of the correct coordinates.
Fixed: The map UI could break, leading to the player only moving the icon layer when trying to move the whole map.
Fixed: Empty slots in the "public crafting stations" tab of the economy viewer wrongly showed a empty tooltip.
Fixed: The tooltip for an election ratifying a constitution didn't update the players eligibility to vote until a server restart.
Fixed: Depending on world size, the icons displayed on the minimap could be too big.

World Objects

Fixed: Framed Glass windows that weren't connected to a different block had no collision.
Fixed: Redwood signs used the texture of saguaro wood.
Fixed: Shadow placement of glass with glass refraction setting turned on showed only a bright white block instead of the glass block.

Ecopedia

Fixed: Ecopedia showed hidden items that are unavailable.
Fixed: Links in Ecopedia lost their color that hints at them being clickable.

Balance

Changed: Copper plates now require a machinist table nearby to craft.

Miscellaneous

Added: Holiday theme for spruces, storage boxes and elks.
Improved: Animal collision with players has temporarily been disabled until their AI is reworked.
Fixed: The message when hitting the shell of a tortoise with an arrow claimed it bounced off, dealing no damage despite it dealing reduced damage.
Fixed: Claim highlights on worlds with some specific sizes, such as 120x120, were showing misaligned. (This might need a new world to take effect)
Fixed: After reloading a chunk, fish could hover above blocks where players built structures over water.
Fixed: The candle in the starter camp disappeared when sleeping - but it's flame did not.
Fixed: The player avatar held their empty hands up in third person view after the player ate something.
Fixed: Multiple visual issues with animal movement when the player has high latency.
Fixed: Adding labour to crafting projects was sometimes not possible without restarting the project due to the players skills not being properly detected.
Fixed: Players could be locked in vehicles and on mountable objects by loosing authorization while mounted.

Server & Configs

Added: The commands dealing with profiling, administrators, bans, whitelist and mutes can now be executed via RCON.
Added: A new system to automatically kick idle players always or just when the server capacity is occupied to a set percentage and someone tries to join. Idle players will receive a popup warning when they reached the set idle time threshold. Admins are exempt from idle kick.
Fixed: A rarely occuring issue that could lead to crashes and objects being removed at server start.

Difficulty.eco.template

Added: "SkillbookCraftCost" config variable, taking the values "Normal" and "Expensive" - the latter making the recipes for skillbooks harder, which was priorily part of the "EndgameCraftCost" setting.

Network.eco.template

Removed: The setting "MaxConnections" was removed as it was replaced by "DefaultSlots".

Users.eco.template

Added: "RequiredOccupancyBeforeAFKKick" config variable, taking a value between 0 and 100 to determine how full the server needs to be (when a maximum amount of slots is set) in percent for kicks for idling to be executed. If 0, idle players will always be kicked - that is also the default.
Added: "TimeRequiredForAFKMinutes" config variable, taking any value in minutes to determine how long a player needs to be inactive to be kicked. The default is 0, which disables the feature.
Changed: The setting "UsersWithReserverSlotsAtQueue" was renamed to "UsersWithReservedSlotsAtQueue" due to a typo.

Update 9.7.4 released!

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 16:15 CET

Hey Eco Citizens,
we have just released Update 9.7.4 addressing a bunch of issues while we continue the work on the second major part of the 9.7 performance update series:

Optimization

Improved: The /profiler command for server profiling was improved and it is now possible to start all important profilings with /profiler everything.
Fixed: Some players, usually with a cpu with a low amount of cores, would experience FPS drops when moving.

Civics

Fixed: Stores using the treasury would close after a server restart.

Tools

Fixed: The sound for a broken tool was no longer playing consistently.
Fixed: The display of tool durability showed wrong values.
Fixed: The durability bar of tools would vanish after a tool was moved.

World Objects

Fixed: Housing points for multiple, repeated rooms did not get reduced properly.
Fixed: The Futon Couch was missing its model in the world.

Miscellaneous

Fixed: The game would take a long time to close or crash during the closing process.
Fixed: In rare cases a client could get kicked from the server when trying to place a Steam Truck.
Fixed: In rare cases players could crash shortly after joining a world.
Fixed: A blank entry appeared in the minimap selection settings.
Fixed: The details for a work order would sometimes not be shown in its tooltip.
Fixed: In rare cases servers could become unjoinable, instead displaying an error until a restart.
Fixed: The /unstuck command would fail in some cases when being underground and no longer dismount the player from vehicles.

Playtest

The work in progress second major part of the 9.7 Performance Update series is currently on the public branch "playtest", accessible via Steam by right clicking Eco in your library, choosing Properties -> Betas and selecting "playtest" in the drop down. You're invited to join our test server White Tiger, and help us out with getting feedback and data for further improvements. You can find all details about the playtest, how to join and how to profile your performance on our discord: https://discord.gg/eco

Also for those of you interested in our Eco Meteor Plushie - we're at half time and half funded, let's get it over the goal line together: https://www.makeship.com/products/meteor-plush

Eco Meteor Shard Plushie available for limited time!

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 18:13 CET

Hey Citizens,
we're happy to announce that the Meteor Shard, our very first plushie made in cooperation with our friends at Makeship is now available for ordering at: https://www.makeship.com/products/meteor-plush

The Meteor Shard is inspired by the well-known in-game item that all Alpha Backers received for supporting us early (thank you so much!), comes with the iconic chain for hanging and is only available as limited edition via this Makeship campaign until December 23. The campaign basically works like a crowdfunding: We need to reach 200 orders until the end of the campaign for the plushie to be produced starting at the end of December and shipped in March 2023 - which Makeship does worldwide! If we don't reach that amount, you get your full money back, there are no risks involved.

Additionally, everyone that orders a plushie and once it arrived sends us a photo of where the plushie found its new home to support (at) strangeloopgames.com together with their SLG ID will get a unique user icon for their Eco accounts to show off ingame.

Eco players are experts in collaboration and saving the day, so we'll manage that easily, right? Let's make it happen together!

Update 9.7.3 released!

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 14:20 CET

Hey Eco Citizens,
we just released Update 9.7.3 to address some more issues that were reported to us - thank you!

Optimization

As announced in the last Update we have made further changes to the minimap that have high impact especially on very populated servers. Specifically we optimized synchronization of the minimap by implementing a delta module, reducing the amount of objects that get sent from server to client by only sending occuring changes instead of a full list whenever a new object got added or removed to / from the minimap. This had resulted in notable FPS drop and server lag on big servers.
We also optimized several controllers on the server that were sending updates to too many players, for example information about durability of items that belong to other players. On top of that we reduced the count of minimap updates being sent by only sending them when the position change is big enough. This results in notably reduced network traffic on highly populated servers.
Additionally we added, expanded and optimized several debug tools to help us identify performance problems easier.

Modkit

Added: Legacy support for block form & fill icons to keep compatibility with deprecated mods and for big images on signs.

Server

Fixed: In rare cases, If recurring transfers from titles were present in a world, clients could not join the world without being kicked.
Fixed: When concluding a barter trade the player would be kicked from the server.

World Objects

Fixed: Elevators could not be placed.
Improved: Elevators can now also be placed on shafts with uneven solid ground.
Fixed: Skid steers couldn't unload their contents into stockpiles and vehicles.

Miscellaneous

Updated: Localizations were updated to the latest state on Crowdin.
Improved: During avatar creation the selections of the players are now better highlighted.
Fixed: Vehicle deeds could get wrong default names that were intended for normal deeds.
Fixed: Several errors that would be logged in the client logs, potentially impacting performance.

Update 9.7.2 released!

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 02:00 CET

Hey Eco Citizens,
we're releasing Update 9.7.2 to address some more issues:

Optimization

We identified and fixed some issues that were affecting performance especially on larger servers:

Improved: We reduced the amount of position and rotation updates sent for minimap objects.
Improved: We improved the rendering of deed icons on the minimap by using methods intended for static instead of moving icons.
Improved: We removed the sending of unnecessary duplicated updates for bank accounts.

There is additional improvements for the minimap coming in one of the next updates.

Balance

Fixed: The Modern Glassworking module is now correctly accepted in the Electronics Assembly instead of the Electric Machinist Table.

Server

Fixed: If recurring transfers from titles were present in a world, the world could not be migrated.
Fixed: If a chair object that is unavailable to get via normal game means was present in the world, the world could not be migrated.
Fixed: Under specific circumstances related to titles and tooltips the server could crash.

Miscellaneous

Fixed: A critical exploit related to laws.
Fixed: Players driving a vehicle below a body of water would get wrongly ejected from their vehicle for being in water.
Fixed: When using legacy controls, entering a cart would always place the avatar facing north, no matter what direction it was facing when entering.
Fixed: Parts of the in-development feature "Settlements" were unintendedly enabled in this release.
Fixed: The animation for harvesting a plant didn't work correctly when holding a land claim stake.

Update 9.7.1 released!

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 15:27 CET

Hey Eco Citizens,
we have just released Hotfix 9.7.1 to address the issue with players without SLG account link being unable to start their local games. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Fixed: Creating new or loading existing local saves in the client was not possible for players that had no SLG account linked.

Update 9.7 released! Performance Improvements and Housing Upgrade

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 11:10 CET

Hey Citizens,
we're releasing our first of at least two main releases for our 9.7.x Performance Update series. Please note that this update is only the start, laying groundwork for future updates that will contain a lot more optimization than this one. Next to a bunch of optimizations for both client and server we also have a bunch of gameplay changes and bug fixes. Let's jump right into it:

Client Performance

To improve client performance we made several different optimizations:

We optimized the recycling of unused views. Views are used for data sycnhronization between client and server, but when specific data is no longer needed on the client these views should be recycled to save memory and avoid useless synchronization. Until now it was possible to have lag spikes during that recycling process, which have now been removed with an improved algorithm.
We fixed a world object views leak. Views for world objects (like work tables and stockpiles) weren't recycled on the client and kept in memory forever, receiving updates even when out of range or destroyed.
We simplified tree objects to remove unnecessary elements. When loading chunks, trees contribute significantly to the time it takes to spawn in objects. This change improves the time needed for spawning in trees. This is still work in progress and further optimization on it will follow in the next updates.
We removed Global Illumination. Global Illumination, which was on by default, led to a very significiant performance decrease due to the implementation used being outdated and by now unmaintained. We can now focus on purely improving our default settings without the impact Global Illumination had while investigating how we can bring back the feature better later on.

Please note that there are many other optimizations currently being worked on and being released later.

Updated Housing System

In preparation to another new system in Eco we are currently working on - Culture - we have reworked the way our housing system works. We'll reveal more about the culture feature once it's time for that, so here we'll only talk about the changes to housing.

The calculation of housing points now got a bit more complex: As before, you still have the diminishing returns feature when stuffing too many of the same objects into a room, but now we have additionally sorted furniture into further categories:

- Primary Furniture, that is bound to a specific room type and designates the room type.
- Support Furniture, split into the categories "Seating", "Decoration" and "Lighting" that can be used in any room.

The amount of housing points Support Furniture can provide is now capped to a specific percentage of the effective amount of housing points you currently get in that room from the primary furniture you placed into it after diminishing returns were taken into account. For Seating and Decoration that is 50% of that value, for Lighting it's 30%.

The idea behind this is to allow players to be more creative without taking a hit on their housing points if they don't cram everything we have into rooms, forfeiting the decorative aspect of decoration. It also allows us to balance the maximum amount of housing points that are achievable much easier, as we only need to focus on the Primary Furniture for that in the future.

Server Performance

For improving server performance we made several improvements for memory allocations which leads to a decrease in lag spikes that could happen at garbage collection:

Animal Pathfinding was optimized by avoiding repeated calculations, resulting in a 50% decrease of CPU time spent on animals and less memory allocations.
World Layers were optimized by implementation of a cache for plants based on cells, resulting in a 70% decrease of CPU time spent on world layer calculations and avoidance of memory allocations.
Localization was optimized by removing the lock that prevented reading localization strings from two different threads, resulting in faster sent client updates.
Storage (as in Game Saving) was optimized by avoiding the generation of a lot of garbage during the zipping process for the savefile by forking the library we use to do that and making it use ArrayPools, resulting in 50% less garbage created by the process.
Startup was optimized by improving support of multithreading, resulting in 50% less time needed to start the server for small servers.

Additionally we fixed a commonly observed issue that led to a lag spike whenever a player joined a server, with interactions on the server halted for up to several seconds that was caused by network communication being blocked until the joining player received all initital data.

Minor Features

Bounding Boxes

Glassworks Table

Vases

Icons

We know that many of you like to use icons to decorate and totally love seeing that - from cool shop offering signs to such mimicking paintings! In this update we made some changes to how that works. To display an icon on a sign or elsewhere you need to use the tag. There are two options you can use that we'll explain with an example:

To show an icon with the gradient background (if it has one), you need to specifiy the item ID with the correct capitalization: will hence create an icon of an iron plate with its background.
To show an icon without the background you need to specifiy the item ID in all lowercase: will hence create a icon of an iron plate without its background.

The important thing to note is that you can no longer omit the "Item" part - just using IronPlate will not work anymore.

Balance Changes

New Items

Added: Glassworks table, created by a potter in the kiln for use by Glassworking.
Added: Vases with a housing point value of 1.
Added: Cotton Lint, a new item added into the production chain of cotton thread.
Added: Copper Plates, made by Mechanics using the Screw Press, similar to Iron Plates.

Housing Objects

Changed: Wooden Fabric Bed housing points increased from 3 to 4.
Changed: Hewn Nightstand housing points increased from 1,5 to 2,5.
Changed: Hewn Dresser housing points increased from 0,5 to 1.
Changed: Lumber Dressers housing points increased from 1,5 to 3.
Changed: Diminishing return of all dressers decreased from 0,6 to 0,5. (The value of the diminishing return decreasing means the diminishing returns are effectively higher)
Changed: Cast Iron Bed housing points increased from 3 to 4.
Changed: Cast Iron Royal Bed housing points increased from 3,5 to 4,5.
Changed: Nylon Futon Bed housing points increased from 4 to 5.
Changed: Bookshelves are now considered an object for the living room.

Ingredient Changes

Changed: Animal Mounts now use Hewn Logs instead of Lumber to craft.
Changed: Boilers now require additional copper plates to craft.
Changed: Heat Sinks now use copper plates instead of copper bars.
Changed: Heat Sinks now require more copper wiring to craft.
Changed: Portable Steam Engines now require additional copper pipes to craft.
Changed: Excavators, Skid Steers, Steam Tractors, Steam Trucks and Trucks now require additional Light Bulbs as a static ingredient to craft.

Miscallenous

Changed: All items in Glassworking with the exception of Fiber Glass are now crafted at the Glassworks table.
Changed: The calorie reduction per level in the specialty was changed as follows:
- Level 1: Decreased from 20% to 5%.
- Level 2: Decreased from 25% to 7%.
- Level 3: Decreased from 30% to 10%.
- Level 4: Decreased from 35% to 12%.
- Level 5: Decreased from 40% to 15%.
- Level 6: Decreased from 45% to 17%.
- Level 7: Decreased from 50% to 20%.
Changed: The maximum yield of rice was decreased by 1.
Changed: Rice now requires a sickle or scythe to harvest.
Changed: All tools except Hammer, Machete, Drill and Road Tool now use a flat 20 calorie cost per use.

Bug Fixes & Improvements

Audio

Fixed: When switching from a fishing pole in your hotbar to a chainsaw in your hotbar the chainsaw would play the fishing sound effect instead of the one for chainsaws.
Fixed: Fishing pole sounds were playing for all players regardless of distance to the audio source.
Fixed: Players couldn't hear the sound of vehicles of other players until they started to move.
Fixed: Player could still hear the sound of vehicles of other players even though the vehicle had no more fuel and was hence not running.
Fixed: Logging out underwater and then logging into another world caused ambiance sound effects to no longer function.
Fixed: The harvesting sound stopped playing after many chunks were loaded and unloaded.

Avatar

Improved: The running animation for avatars that do not hold a tool has been removed due to reports of causing motion sickness.
Improved: Avatar animations in third person view now match the movement direction instead of sliding when moving diagonally.

Civics

Fixed: When trying to tax a player a negative value through the treasury the UI simply closed without any action taken instead of displaying an error.
Fixed: Civic article names do no longer get truncated when they're within the character limit.
Fixed: When taking a harvest contract and harvesting a shovelable plant for the contract a crash occured.

Modkit

Changed: Vehicle scripts have been moved, which results in any modifications or overrides to them requiring an update.
Changed: Due to changing the tooltip system used for Ecopedia all item and object overrides will need to be adjusted, specifically the attribute "display: InPageTooltip.DynamicTooltip" for Ecopedia needs to be removed.

Tools

Improved: Claiming with the claim stake does no longer play an animation.
Fixed: The fishing pole shadow wasn't attached to the avatar.
Fixed: Fishing line and lure were not syncing properly for other players.
Fixed: Bows and arrows were not syncing properly for other players.
Fixed: When you leave a cart after you entered it with a tool animation playing the tool animation will no longer continue.

Vehicles

Added: The steam tractor now has working lights.
Fixed: In default controls mode, when pushing a cart instead of pulling it the controls got erroneously inverted.

Added: The "Authorized Consumers" text in world objects now has a explanatory tooltip.
Improved: The creation of generic work orders does no longer create a map marker.
Fixed: Some minor issues in the display of title tooltips.
Fixed: UI elements that faded in didn't display correctly.

World Objects

Fixed: Several causes that could lead to world objects becoming uninteractable. We might not have caught all of them, so please keep reports and logs coming if you still experience this issue.
Fixed: World Objects that required solid ground wouldn't stop working immediately after the requirement was no longer fulfilled.

Miscallenous

Added: A new ecopedia page listing all living room furniture was added for easier navigation.
Changed: Rice is no longer required to be collected to finish the tutorial task "Find Food" due to it now requiring a sickle to be harvested.
Fixed: Players were unable to take fuel out of vehicles when they were authorized but didn't own the vehicle.
Fixed: Lumber Stockpiles could cause error spam in the player.log, leading to diminished performance.
Fixed: Using the /unstuck command while driving a vehicle caused the player to no longer be able to interact with the vehicle.
Fixed: Wolf Whisperer rewards were not available in void storage for eligible players and Alpha rewards had the wrong display icon.

Server Configs

Users.eco.template

Added: "SLGAccountName" config variable, used only for QA mode purposes.
Added: "SLGAccountPassword" config variable, used only for QA mode purposes.
Added: "SpawnSearchRange" config variable, determining the range around a potential player spawn point in which all requirements to finish the tutorial must be available when not using a fixed spawn point - defaulting to 600.

Storage.eco.template

Added: "NewGameTemplate" config variable, specifiying a prepared savegame that is to be loaded whenever a new world is generated instead of regular world generation.
Removed: "UseCacheForDBQueries" config variable, it is now obsolete due to being enforced at all times.

Maintenance.eco.template

Added: "ReasonForAutoShutdown" config variable, acceptable contents are "Restart", "Shutdown" and "Update", determining exit code for the automatic shutdown / reboot feature.

Network.eco.template

Added: "ReservedSlots" config variable, determining the amount of slots available to players assigned queue priority permissions beyond what "DefaultSlots" would allow - defaulting to 5.
Changed: "MaxConnections" config variable was renamed to "DefaultSlots".

Voice.eco.template

Added: "ServerVoiceIdentifier" config variable, for containing an ID for the Vivox voice chat implementation - this is auto generated, should never be changed and never be copied to other servers as otherwise you will hear the same voices on all servers with the same ID.

Update 9.7 - Focus on Performance

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 10:17 CET

Hello Eco Citizens,
today we'd like to give you an update on where we’re taking Eco after our 9.6 release. As an Early Access title, we’re always looking to balance adding features with polishing existing ones, and we’ve decided to have a final Eco 9 update that is focused solely on performance - Update 9.7.

A major part of our team will be focused on both client and server performance, fixing some long standing issues that should make the game a much smoother experience, especially on lower end machines. Our CTO Alex will tell you a bit of the details on how we plan to make it work:

Our strategy is to compare profiling snapshots we collect from QA and players on public test servers after hours of gaming. There are no obvious reasons we can easily fix, but one thing we noticed is greatly increased transform update time (every game object in game has a Transform with its position, rotation and scale) while the amount of game objects is not so different. These updates happen inside of the Unity Engine and we don’t have direct control over it, but fortunately we found a way how we can inject a tracking for all transform changes and identify places which cause most of the updates and potentially fix them.

And you can help us with that by playing on our public playtest server for the first part of Update 9.7 that will start tomorrow at 18:00 CET / 9am PT on our official server Giant Panda - all details and how it works will be published on our discord: https://discord.gg/eco

In an average Eco world you have a lot of trees especially with user tree farms. FPS may drop significantly in such areas. There is also time and resources which need to be spent to create a new tree and destroy a tree which impacts the speed of loading objects received from the server.

We are working in two main directions:

Simplifying tree models to improve instantiation time, saving memory resources and cost of component updates.
Optimize rendering, especially at a distance. Right now a tree is a set of trunk and branches, but on a far distance (LOD1, LOD2) it may be replaced with a single mesh which might be a bit different, but still pretty recognizable and saves a lot of GPU resources - see the video below.

There are tons of plants and every plant now has a game object with a few components (including a transform). In previous patches we optimized rendering to be less expensive and now we are ready to make the next step - fully replace these game objects with Unity DOTS lightweight entities. It benefits us in all aspects: memory, maintenance cost, instantiation and destruction speed. Also it lets us use job threads (multi-threading) for plant related updates such as move through detection.

With the power of DOTS (Unity Data Oriented Technology Stack focused on performance and multi-core utilization) we are able to heavily parallelize chunk builds and updates. A chunk is a minimal unit of terrain to be processed by a terrain rendering system and basically is 10x10x10 blocks in Eco. Effectively it reduces the time between chunk data being received from the server and then rendered in the game.

And that's it from Alex. Update 9.7 will be shipped through several 9.7.x updates - we're aiming for at least two, one in mid-late November and one in mid-late December. After that, the next shipment will be Eco 10, which will have two giant additions you've been waiting for: boats and settlements.

We’ll have more updates on this and our long-term plans for Eco soon, so stay tuned. Spoiler alert, they’re big - and some are fluffy.

Version 9.6.6 released!

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 08:00 CET

Hey Eco Citizens,
today we release Update 9.6.6 to fix a major issue with civics. We expect this to be the last update before 9.7.

Fixed: Certain conditions in civics were ignored, leading to all types of civics to not work properly in specific circumstances.
Improved: Adjusted glass to have a bit more opacity, based on your feedback.

Version 9.6.5 released!

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 14:21 CET

Hey Eco Citizens,
we're releasing 9.6.5 to address the issue with holding the interaction key to pick up materials, thanks for reporting!

Fixed: Holding down the interaction key to continue picking up materials until the key is released didn't work.

Version 9.6.4 released!

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 14:26 CET

Hey Citizens,
we have just released Update 9.6.4 with a collection of fixes for issues you've been reporting. At the same time we're working on Update 9.7, for which we'll have news soon as well. Enjoy:

Audio

Fixed: Tools could stop creating sounds after using them for a long time.
Fixed: Tools could stop creating sounds after eating food.
Fixed: Tools could stop creating sounds when switching to it from a torch.

Avatar

Fixed: The avatar of the player could duplicate and exist twice.
Fixed: When scrolling through empty hotbar slots the avatar animations would reload.
Fixed: The held tool would not display on the avatar after login if another tool of the same type is in the hotbar.
Fixed: The camera would rotate around the global z axis in third person view.
Fixed: When using higher FoV players could not look directly below them.
Fixed: When in a tilted vehicle the camera would feel inverted.

Balance

Changed: Hoes, Scythes and Sickles now use a flat 20 calorie cost per use.
Changed: The experience gain from crafting quicklime was reduced from 1.0 to 0.1.
Changed: The icebox now requires only Carpentry level 1 instead of 5 to craft.
Fixed: Cotton seeds would degrade into garbage instead of compost.
Fixed: Spoiled food would degrade into garbage instead of compost.

Civics

Fixed: Elections could sometimes not be started due to the confirmation window not popping up.
Fixed: A "Change Settlement Name" civic action without icon was shown in the multi-selector for civic actions.
Fixed: Removing oneself as manager from bank accounts and appointed titles without selecting another player to remove first was not possible.
Fixed: A player would be assigned a fictious place of residency despite not having taken residence anywhere, yielding wrong results for laws working based on residency.
Fixed: Sometimes your vote could count twice in an election.
Fixed: Work parties could lead to a server crash when attempting to pay a contributor that has left the work party before payment.
Fixed: Choosing an executive action in constitutional articles did not work correctly.
Fixed: A client crash would occur when trying to seize a bank account that has no owner via law, if done via executive action instead a server crash would be caused.
Fixed: Overriding authentication via law to allow property transfer by players that do not own a property did not work.
Fixed: In a law where species were selected, the selected species didn't show in the law editor.
Fixed: The search for law triggers did not yield all the results that were expected to be shown.
Fixed: The mount action law trigger had no icon.
Fixed: Work parties could lead to a server crash when attempting to pay a contributor that has left the work party before payment.

Graphics

Improved: Reduced fog in the distance.
Fixed: When looking through plants the lighting could sometimes be distorted.
Fixed: Several graphical issues in the main menu were fixed.
Fixed: Disconnecting from a server while being underwater would lead to the main menu being tinted in a blue tone.
Fixed: Sunbeams on clouds did not originate from the sun.
Fixed: Harvesting rice did not show the harvest effect.
Fixed: Light around objects and trees could flicker when it is raining.
Fixed: Harvest effects would stop triggering after loading and unloading many chunks.
Fixed: Glass blocks had unnatural tinting depending on the light conditions.

Stores

Fixed: Shop carts would use the bank account of the owner of the property it stands on when setting it up.
Fixed: Stores that were not placed by the owner of the land it was placed on would revert their bank account to the land owners bank account on server restarts.

Tooltips

Fixed: Crafting orders could sometimes show up as complete despite they were not.
Fixed: Tooltips in crafting tables would not highlight resources to open their tooltips.
Fixed: Prior offers of a store that was removed would still be displayed in the item tooltip for "Sell it at".
Fixed: Several minor issues with title tooltips.

Fixed: The newsfeed would display too many notification types, leading to it spamming players.
Fixed: Unauthorized players can no longer try to edit the text on a shopcart just to notice that they cannot save it.
Fixed: When connecting to a hosted server, then cancelling and trying to load a local save the connection info would display that you are trying to connect to the hosted server.
Fixed: Trees would be displayed darker than intended in specific zoom levels on the map.
Fixed: When chatting while the store UI is opened keys pressed would trigger shortcut actions.
Fixed: The interaction area to move the chat was too small.
Fixed: Clicking save on the edit tab of a sign placed on your property would pop up a unnecessary message.
Fixed: Text padding on reference descriptions in Ecopedia was missing.
Fixed: The pie chart for elections on Web UI would display yes votes as no votes and vice versa.
Fixed: Vote buttons would be shown on the Web UI even when not logged in.

World Objects

Fixed: Picking up a log that lies in the zone of a storage would open the storage.
Fixed: When trying to interact with some world objects two times in a row the second time could require the user to click the interaction button two times to function.
Fixed: Closing an UI with left mouse button while holding an item that has a left-click interaction could cause that interaction to fire.
Fixed: Left and right click interactions for world objects like turning on / off or placing something inside didn't work reliably.
Fixed: The highlight for tiny, lumber and large lumber stockpiles was offset to its actual position.
Fixed: Players could be disconnected from the game when placing a government object in the world.
Fixed: A duplication bug involving removing stockpiles and picking up items from the ground.
Fixed: Starter camps could be placed into the boundaries of other starter camps, making them overlap.
Fixed: The highlight for buttons inside an elevator didn't work properly.
Fixed: Clicking on the buttons inside an elevator could open the authorization menu additionally to the expected result.
Fixed: Placing a door was not possible when there is no solid block on ground height in front of it.

Miscellaneous

Fixed: When using a hammer to place blocks towards a highlighted block on a property you have no access to or when placing blocks on a property you are only authorized on through a law that ignored authentication the block would be placed as item and not as block.
Fixed: Worlds would not render correctly on Linux builds and only display a pink screen.
Fixed: When migrating from 0.9.5.4 districts would loose all their contents.
Fixed: Migrating worlds directly from 9.4.6 to 9.6.x would lead to a server crash.

Server Configs

Added: "PercentOfDaysToBeActiveForLongTermDemographic" to Civics.eco to control the percentage of days that a player needs to be active to be part of the demographic "Long Term".
Fixed: The server configuration setting "AllowOverthrow" in Civics.eco did not prevent players from creating laws that prevent placing a capitol.

Update 9.6.2 Released!

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 13:59 CEST

Hey Eco Citizens,
we're happy to announce that Update 9.6.2 has just released. It contains several fixes for issues that were reported, more polish and we have also slightly adjusted the shelf life for seeds and crops based on your feedback. Please find the full changelog below:

Avatar

Fixed: Adding items to a stockpile while standing on top of it could cause your avatar to fall underground
Fixed: Swapping tools would not always display visually to others
Fixed: Tools could clip through the blanket while sleeping in beds
Fixed: Sleeping would break some clothing visually

Balance

Shelf life of Crop Seeds increased by 3 days
Shelf life of Crops increased by 1 day

Civics

Fixed: Elected Titles with appropriate permissions were unable to manage the Treasury
Fixed: It was not possible to reorder vote preferences for candidates once an initial vote was made
Fixed: Votes from the election website would not always register correctly on first attempt, depending on browser settings
Fixed: The button for "View All Votes" on the election website was not opening
Fixed: When drafting civics, the incremental numbers used as a suffix for default names would be missing for every other entry

Graphics

Fixed: Looking in the direction of multiple smog sources would cause FPS drop
Fixed: Foxes would sometimes become elongated
Fixed: Some Linux machines would render all world graphics purple

Stores

Fixed: Store notifications in the news feed could display incorrect items for sale
Fixed: The shop cart would not accept trades from linked storages

Tools

Fixed: After relogging into a server, it was not possible to use the currently equipped tool until swapping tools
Fixed: An exploit allowed using tools without expending calories or durability
Fixed: It was not possible to place Asphalt Ramps when the first placement point was lower than the second
Fixed: Using a tool in third-person view while riding a vehicle would cause the animation to loop
Fixed: Only Cod and Moon Jellyfish were catchable by fishing
Fixed: Unclaiming property with the Land Claim Stake would display incorrectly if there was no property to unclaim

Tooltips

Fixed: Residency information in citizens tooltips would not update until after a server restart
Fixed: Requirements to be eligible in an elected title's tooltip would not update until after a server restart
Fixed: Specialty/profession tooltips referenced in civics would only display the title of skill
Fixed: Modded items could display the incorrect specialty labor required on tooltips
Fixed: The tooltip for "New Tab Created per Whisper" in the settings menu had overlapping text

Updated server UI to make naming the server and assigning user permissions part of the "Initial Setup" tab
Fixed: When resizing the Economy Viewer, it would move to the bottom of the screen
Fixed: Bank balance tab could become misaligned when resizing the Economy Viewer
Vehicles
Fixed: The crane was unable to interact with blocks
Fixed: It was not possible to move the Shop Cart after a server restart if it was open at the time of the restart
Fixed: A crash would occur after watching someone pick up a cart then leaving and re-entering rendering distance
Fixed: Placing a large vehicle on top of an avatar would cause both to be pushed back backwards
Fixed: Steam Tractor Harvester and Sower attachments had incorrect collision with other blocks
Fixed: The Wheelbarrow could cause strange physics interactions after repeated use

World Objects

All world objects that consume fuel now have an On/Off toggle switch
Fixed: It was possible to duplicate items on busy servers by transferring items to a stockpile and quickly picking up the stockpile right afterwards
Fixed: Civics world objects migrated from 9.5.4 were not appearing on the world map
Fixed: The interaction highlight would remain on a bed after starting to sleep
Fixed: Using HTML tags in the text field for world objects would cause a client crash

3D Food

Fixed: Held food could become invisible to others when cycling between foods that have a 3D model and those that don't
Fixed: Cancelling an eating animation by switching to another food would cause a delay in the next food appearing
Fixed: Eating animations were missing when right-clicking the food in your currently selected toolbar slot
Fixed: Poke Bowl had different cutlery in first-person and third-person view
Fixed: Curved shaders were missing in a variety of foods, causing a strange appearance

Misc

Optimizations to physics interactions
Fixed: Changes to tools resulted in the Big Shovel Mod unable to be fixed for 9.6
Fixed: The client would occasionally crash when loading chunks
Fixed: Contributing to a work party could cause a server crash when under heavy load
Fixed: Interacting with Taro Root plants would sometimes cause a crash

Update 9.6.1 Released!

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 21:01 CEST

Hey Citizens,
we have just released Update 9.6.1 that includes some key fixes and polish to new features, as well as a built-in sign for the shop cart to display text to potential customers. It has been great hearing feedback from the community on all the new changes, and we are committed to frequent updates as we work towards our next major release!

Note: As part of a migration fix for this update, servers that have been created since the release of Update 9.6 with laws that reference the abandoned demographic will need to revise these laws to make sure the demographic is correctly set to "abandoned" - it is possible that laws that were intended to target abandoned citizens will affect active players otherwise!

Avatar:

Fixed: The avatar would get stuck with their arms outstretched after dismounting from carts
Fixed: It was possible to move other’s avatar by running into them
Fixed: Tools would sometimes have an incorrect position on the backpack in third person

Graphics:

Fixed: Plants & foliage could appear to vanish when turning around in an area
Fixed: Plants would sometimes fail to render and would only show outline when targeted by a tool
Fixed: Changing the Shadow Quality could break how water appeared

Food:

Fixed: Bowls and plates would be missing when eating food with the right mouse button
Fixed: Eating sounds would not play after the first time when using the right mouse button
Fixed: Rice and Camas Bulb were not displaying properly when held and during eating animations
Fixed: Charred Heart of Palm was missing in third person view

Vehicles:

The Shop Cart now has a built-in sign to display text (only one side for now)
Fixed: Vehicles would tend to teleport themselves into an unreachable location

Misc:

Fixed: Work Parties that involved tagged ingredients would crash the server upon restart If they were left partially finished
Fixed: Worlds that migrated to 9.6 which had civics that referenced the Abandoned demographic would have this demographic changed to the Long-Term demographic
Fixed: Chat Zen mode would sometimes still show the background when hovering the mouse between tabs
Fixed: Unneeded debug logs removed from the ModKit

Update 9.6 released! Food Spoilage, Shop Carts, Immersion and more!

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 16:11 CEST

Hey fellow Eco Citizens,
after a month of successful playtesting with you, our community, and Eco modders, we're ready to release Update 9.6. This Update focuses majorly on improving the immersion within Eco, adding 3D models to every food in the game as well as a whole new First Person View with countless new animations. We're rounding that off by adding Shop Carts for your mobile business needs and a major new system changing up the economy: Food Spoilage!

Food Spoilage

A major problem in the real world is food waste. With this Update we are introducing a completely new mechanic that adds a shelf life to all food items and crops in Eco (configurable with a multiplier) depending on the type of the food. Once the shelf life of a food runs out, it spoils and is only good for making compost.

This mechanic will incentivize food producers to think about sustainable production of their goods to minimize losses due to food spoilage and as such introduce a new important factor that needs to be considered within the economy on Eco servers.

Of course, with increasing technology level in your worlds there will be options at your disposal to extend the shelf life. The Icebox and Refrigerator were updated to provide increasing bonuses to food freshness and so does the brand new Industrial Refrigerator which also offers a storage capacity similar to the Silo. And while we're at the Silo - we also added a Powered Silo to allow you to extend the shelf life of your crops as well.

3D Food

Our art team has been hard at work to craft over 140 3D models for all the different food items we have in Eco that will be displayed in your new player hands when you select the food in your toolbar. We do also intend to expand this feature to allow placement of food on and eating it at tables in the future.

Each food has also received it's own eating animation that fits the displayed food. Of course we know that not everyone likes to watch longer animations, so we also added "gulping" for those of you that are so hungry that they need to eat a lot of food at once.

All of this is fully moddable, allowing modders to add their own 3D models and animations for their food. We know there are several food mods out there, and we're eager to see what you all will be doing with these new possibilities.

First Person View

To further improve immersion during gameplay, we have introduced character hands in first person view. You'll now be able to see your character holding their tools and to accompany this new feature we have also updated lots of animations for tool usage.

Shop Cart

A common occurrence many of you might know is that somehow your customers always tend to be somewhere else, often magically at the point most far from you. That's no longer a problem, because with this Update we're introducing Shop Carts that act as mobile stores with an internal storage of a cart, able to link to any other storage in their vicinity. So, if the customers don't come to you, just put a pop-up store next to your customers. Make sure you got the necessary government permits, though!

Server Queue

For the server administrators in our community we added an often requested feature to servers: A server queue that will place players that try to connect to a full server into a queue until the server has enough room for them to join. Administrators can also add reserved slots to allow specific players to bypass the queue or configure priority based queue positions that allow players to join at the front of the queue instead.

New Objects and Building Forms

Industrial Refrigerator
Powered Storage Silo
Canopy Window form for Carpets

Balance Changes

New room type “Living Room” that replaces the old General room. World objects with General type can still be placed in all rooms
Rugs are now crafted from Fabric instead of Cloth
Cloth recipe Plant Fibers cost increased to 9 from 6
Max growth age of pickable plants increased by 50%
Reduced max yield of Agave & Papaya by 1
Reduced minimum Plant Fibers yield of Jointfir by 1
Reduced min and max Plant Fibers yield of Barrel Cactus and Big Bluestem by 1
Decreased operating speed for Steam Tractor
Experience for crafting hammers & shovels decreased
Plant growth speed was added to the Difficulty configuration
Fixed: Favorite foods would not be correctly assigned when joining a server that had calories provided for food edited after the first time launching the server which made these foods eligible/ineligible for favorite food

Optimization

Significantly improved tooltip optimization by moving more caching to the client
Improved audio optimization
Optimizations to chunk rendering
Optimization for linking items in chat
Optimization for LOD and trees
Optimizations for view updates for World Objects
Optimizations for server performance during the meteor impact
Optimizations to calculations related to animals

Bug Fixes & Improvements

Audio

Added rustling sound when moving through plants
Fixed: Wooden Hammer did not make a broken sound when it should have
Fixed: Crane was not producing sound effects
Fixed: Arrastra would continue to play sound effects after the work order was completed
Fixed: Using the /skills levelupall command would cause audio notifications to continue to play even after logging out
Fixed: In many cases, buttons were not providing audio feedback

Avatar

Sleeping in a bed will now cause your avatar to appear in the bed to others, and will stay this way if you log out while in a bed.
11 New emotes: Bow, Kneel, Salute, Clap, Yawn, Agree, Disagree, Shy, Shrug, Exhausted, Confused
Fixed: While using /fly as a server admin, movement hotkeys were not respected and only allowed moving with the default WASD movement keys
Fixed: Emotes with extended animations (sleep/dance) would not show to players who connected to the server while the emote was already playing

Chat & News Feed

Mentioning someone in chat will now cause the message to be highlighted for them in their chat screen
New chat emojis that can be sent using colons (ex.:smile:)
Sending too many messages in a row quickly will trigger a cooldown timer
Added a 500-character limit to chat messages
Craft order notifications in the news feed now display who started the order when hovering over the projects notifcation
Fixed: Linking multi-word tags in chat had inconsistent format to make them appear
Fixed: Setting a high UI scale caused the welcome message to have overlapping text
Fixed: The news feed could not be dragged down below a certain point in the screen

Civics

Fixed: Environment Statistics were not working in comparisons used for laws
Fixed: The tooltips for proposed laws would incorrectly say they were passed by executive action while the election was still ongoing
Fixed: The “/titles assign” command was not working when trying to assign someone a title that you already held yourself

Elevators

Fixed: Elevators had synchronization problems when multiple people were viewing the same elevator
Fixed: Having a vehicle loaded while using in the Industrial Elevator could stop the elevator and prevent it from going up
Fixed: Loading two vehicles into an Industrial Elevator would cause one of them to teleport to the bottom of the elevator shaft after disconnecting from the server while on the elevator
Fixed: Walking on elevators did not produce a walking sound
Fixed: When two people were using the same elevator, the one who didn’t press the button to operate the elevator would sometimes hear a falling sound

Modkit

Added modkit support for flower pots
Added support for custom links in the Ecopedia with a warning confirmation when clicking the link

Stores & Economy Viewer

New hotkey “S” to store UI as a customer to quickly complete the trade
Stores now have option to set max durability, and can list multiple items of the same type with different durability
Durability for trade offers now visible in the Economy Viewer
In the Transfer UI, currencies you don’t have are now hidden from the currency selection dropdown
Fixed: The Bank Accounts list in the Store UI had very crowded text and would spill over into two lines
Fixed: Scrolling in the Store UI while an offer was selected would deselect the offer
Fixed: Having a store with a colored name could cause the color to leak into other text in the UI
Fixed: Tooltips for Stores in the Economy View would not open if the text for the store name was truncated
Fixed: Economy Viewer bottom panel became misaligned when shrunk smaller than a certain size

Tools

Dropping dirt from a shovel no longer requires a target
Fixed: Modern Rock Drill animation would become incorrect when switching between first person and third person view while the tool was active.
Fixed: Bow animation would not always complete when firing in third person view
Fixed: Bow trajectory line would show incorrectly in third person when aiming at a significant height difference
Fixed: It was possible to get tools into a state where they would all incorrectly display control hints for placing world objects
Fixed: Available fill types would not change when swapping from a higher level hammer to a lower one while holding a block.
Fixed: When chopping a tree, if the trunk landed on someone else’s property, you were not able to collect the logs if you removed the stump first
Fixed: Land Claim Stake property highlight would remain when logging off and then connecting to another server.
Fixed: Shovel actions would sometimes not register while in third person view
Fixed: All types of hammer had the same speed as the modern hammer

Vehicles

Increased the light produced by vehicle headlights
Excavator and Skid Steer will no longer continue to break rocks even when their inventory is full.
It is no longer possible to exit vehicles with no available exit point and this would result in teleporting to the surface
Fixed: Wheel animations could become desynced, so the front and rear wheels rotations did not match
Fixed: Wood cart would drift slightly to the right even when moving straight.
Fixed: “You should be closer to interact” error notification would appear when interacting with the arm of a crane or excavator from a valid distance
Fixed: Skid Steer sometimes had trouble loading its cargo into a Truck, which required leaving and re-entering the skid steer to work correctly.
Fixed: When driving a Steam Truck and clipping into a corner at the wrong angle it would move the driver into the passenger seat
Fixed: Skid Steer was able to interact with stockpiles below it even when they should have been out of range.
Fixed: Using a Steam Tractor could cause the Toolbar to overlap with inventory weight UI
Fixed: Vehicle controls UI would not update if changing the control settings while already in a vehicle
Fixed: Excavators could look like the front wheels were hovering when moving forward and viewed by another player
Fixed: When switching between views or dragging a wood cart backwards in third person view, it could cause the avatar to twist in place
Fixed: Avatar would twist in an unnatural position when using the crane

Improvements to all Civics UI to improve readability
New addition to HUD to show remaining stamina timer when exhaustion is enabled
New tooltips to clarify the different buttons for notification types
Property transfer confirmation UI condensed in size and now includes the number of plots being transferred
New look for Server UI with tabs for categories of server configurations
Fixed: Some baked goods were assigned to the incorrect Ecopedia category
Fixed: The Objectives UI was displaying a non-working link to the Ecopedia
Fixed: The padding for some sliders in the escape menu was incorrect which caused them to clip outside the border of the window
Fixed: Fuel UI text was not adapting in size based on localization
Fixed: Viewing the Property tab of the Deed UI would incorrectly display the list of authorized users when access the UI as an authorized user but not the deed owner
Fixed: Eating a large number of food types in a 24 hour period would cause the Nutrition UI to expand over most of the screen
Fixed: Server listings would flicker in the server browser when selecting various options for sorting
Fixed: Opening and closing the Skills UI with low framerate would cause it to drift downwards on the screen each time it was opened.
Fixed: Icons were misaligned when viewing the inventory of a trash pile
Fixed: Asphalt Concrete’s White Edge form had the incorrect icon

World Objects

New block form for carpet blocks, Canopy Windows
New world objects: Industrial Refrigerator and Powered Storage Silo
Fixed: It was possible to get stuck when placing large objects or vehicles when placing them on top of your avatar.
Fixed: When picking up rotatable world objects, they would always face west rather than the direction they were facing when picked up
Fixed: When removing an object from a power grid, it would still act as a connection for transmitting power along the grid until the next server restart
Fixed: Icons would exceed sign borders when stacked on top of each other
Fixed: Waking from a bed by pressing escape would not stop time from skipping forward
Fixed: Plants could grow in placed stockpiles, causing the storage to get displaced upwards
Fixed: The Machinist Table outline highlight would overlap the avatar in third person view

Misc

Fixed: The meteor was not appearing behind the atmosphere
Fixed: Light reflected by glass would also pass through the glass as if not being reflected
Fixed: It was not possible to take blocks directly from storage into the carried slot using shift + click
Fixed: The auto-accept button for contracts was not working and contracts would automatically complete even when unchecked
Fixed: Work parties with payments split based on the work performed would appear invalid after a server restart, even though the work party still functioned correctly.

Update 9.5.4 released!

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 15:03 CEST

Hey Eco Citizens,
today we release Update 9.5.4 addressing a regression in the last update in regards to filters, thanks for reporting!

Fixed: It was not possible to select multiple entries in civic and work party filters.

Update 9.5.3 released!

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 10:46 CEST

Hey Eco Citizens,
today we release Update 9.5.3 addressing the following issues reported by players:

Fixed: Contract escrow could end up not having the expected amount of currency to pay out contracts due to work parties having refunded their payments.
Fixed: Tooltips didn't show the information line under the item name on where it can be crafted anymore.
Fixed: The jump tutorial did not progress in worlds where the meteor was disabled.
Fixed: Tooltips could show an exception instead of the expected information after being moved through categories in the store.
Fixed: It was not possible to remove the content of a filter in civics once any entry was chosen due to the submit button disappearing when all items were unselected.
Fixed: Scrolling in a list menu could lead to a different item than the actually selected one being chosen.
Fixed: Glass was displaying 'milky' at night.
Fixed: Trying to place a starter camp in an area where that is not possible could lead to empty deeds being created that got linked in chat.
Fixed: Clicking the highlighted term "Currency Created" in the description of a law would crash the client.
Fixed: The law trigger for completed work parties would trigger for every slot of the work party, no matter if that slot was actually filled by a player.
Fixed: The ui for displaying server details in the server list didn't display correctly in all cases.
Fixed: On some maps, specific areas could lead to the client crashing when entering.
Fixed: Entering invalid values as custom stat for wages at registrar titles could lead to the server crashing and not booting anymore.
Fixed: Hidden chat would become visible again when opening the construction menu.
Fixed: Changing the resolution caused some border lines in the "Set Play Times UI" to disappear.

Changed: Unowned objects are no longer automatically linked as storage.

Added: User Marked Up names are now moddable.
Added: The law trigger for completed work parties does now offer the amount of work added to the work party in calories.

Update 9.5.2 released!

Wed, 18 May 2022 10:58 CEST

Hey Eco Citizens,
we're releasing Update 9.5.2 to address some more of the problems you have been reporting:

Fixed: The client would sometimes crash with error message related to concurrent updates
Fixed: Setting the Weight Multiplier could cause incorrect weight calculations in inventories
Fixed: Increasing the Stack Size multiplier allowed more than one upgrade to be placed in a work station
Fixed: For some workstations, like the Machinist Table, placing a module in the same room would not be recognized until after the next room update.
Fixed: Laws that used a Citizen Timer trigger were not allowing Citizen to be used as a variable in a Condition check.
Fixed: Deleting a vehicle deed could cause empty deeds to be linked in chat.
Fixed: Civics would get invalidated after revising and passing them, reverting them to the prior version

Update 9.5.1 released!

Thu, 12 May 2022 00:52 CEST

Hey Eco Citizens,
today we're releasing Update 9.5.1, adding some polish for and fixing some of the notable bugs with some of the new additions in Update 9.5. This update should bring improved stability and includes several fixes for crashes and failed migrations. We also have included some changes to the chat channel system and animal hit notifications based on your feedback. Thanks so much for that, we really appreciate it.

Audio

Fixed: Ambient sounds during initial game launch were not respecting in-game volume settings
Fixed: Alt-tabbing while running underwater caused a large sound when returning to Eco
Fixed: The audio for chopping trees would sometimes stop playing

Chat:

Changed: Moved civic notifications to chat
Changed: Added Government notification category in the chat
Fixed: When responding to a DM from someone with spaces in their name, it could send the message to someone who had the first word of the name as their own name
Fixed: Chat was not hiding correctly when the Eco Log tab was open
Fixed: When relogging, unread messages in hidden tabs didn't show their notification badges correctly
Fixed: In some cases, hidden tabs didn't show their unread message badges even after receiving new messages
Fixed: Hidden tabs sometimes still showed their notification badges despite all message being read
Fixed: Italicized text was getting clipped in new lines of the news feed
Fixed: The chat command for listing admins was showing all players

Civics:

Changed: Added more info for money transactions related to laws
Fixed: Debt was not always being removed after repaying a cleared contract
Fixed: The Withdraw from Election button was not displaying an error when no election was selected

Graphics:

Fixed: Glass could have strange lighting tints, especially at sunrise and sunset

Storage:

Fixed: The server config for storage link range settings was not being respected after server restart
Fixed: The consolidate inventory button was not working for objects with built in storage, like vehicles
Fixed: Consolidating inventories on migrated worlds where items were stored in objects with new restrictions that would otherwise prevent the item from being stored here would cause a crash. Such items on consolidating will now be moved to Void Storage.

Stores:

Fixed: Authorized users of a store were unable to rename categories or delete items from sale
Fixed: When a modded item was added for sale in a store and later removed from the server, it would cause the save to be unloadable. Removed items will now be removed from stores
Fixed: Barter trades were failing without an error message
Fixed: When the store was set to barter mode, there was incorrect padding in "Checkout" area
Fixed: When having over 20,000 items of inventory in a store, the quantity text would exceed the limitations of the frame

Tooltips:

Added: New hint tooltips for various buttons in the HUD UI
Fixed: Tooltips were missing from items in the Item Selector
Fixed: Tooltips tended to refresh when it was not necessary
Fixed: Complex laws and civics could result in an unwieldy tooltip that took up a large portion of the screen
Fixed: Recipe tooltips were not displaying text for tags with non-unique plural names
Fixed: Currency text was missing from the Transactions UI when checking the tooltip for truncated text
Fixed: Nylon Carpet was showing the tooltip for Wool Curtains

UI:

Changed: Adjusted up pop-up notifications when damaging an animal with a bow (number only, text doesn't follow animal, different colors for headshots vs bodyshots).
Changed: Updated Localization for a variety of phrases and languages
Fixed: Hovering effect not getting updated when scrolling in a dropdown menu
Fixed: Void Storage Icon was missing its animation
Fixed: Profession Overview wasn't showing the specialty levels of the players who had learned a specialty
Fixed: Preferred Playtimes menu was not showing hours above the time grid
Fixed: The minimap would glitch for one frame when being opened for the first time

Update 9.5 released! Improved Chat, UIs and more!

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 02:49 CEST

Dear Eco Citizens,
it's been a while but after two months of extensive playtesting with our community - thank you so much, everyone - Update 9.5 is ready to be released. Next to countless bugfixes and balance changes we have several content additions to the game for builders and decorators and lots of improvements for the focus of this update, the user experience. Let's get into the major changes right away.

New Store UI

In Update 9.5 we gave the store a completely redesigned UI that splits the items for sale and the items wanted on two sides with a detail panel for the currently selected item in the middle. The appearance of items has been changed into a much nicer card form that displays the most relevant information about it at a glance. On the bottom of the store, you will find the shopping cart that shows an overview of the items you have chosen to sell or buy and the button to make the trade.

In the view for the shop owner you are able to easily add and remove your items, create and name categories and sort items into those via simple drag and drop:

Improved Chat

Another important milestone we achieved with Update 9.5 is adressing a lot of the feedback we have received about our chat in the past, fixing many of the issues it had and giving it a completely new appearance:

As you can see, the new chat is now tabulator based, that means you are able to create your own tabs and specify exactly which sources of chat you want to be shown in that tab. When creating a tab, you can choose from notification sources that Eco provides or any channels created by players that you have access to.

Yes, you heard right, you can create your own channels and define managers and users for it, just as you are used to from many other parts of the game. This allows you to flexibily build your own chat views and have your own chat channels with only those people participating that you want to do. We also put a focus on accessibility, so you can flexibly change transparency and font size of the chat in the game's settings menu or activate zen mode for these times when you simply need a bit of silence.

Newsfeed

While reworking the chat we also thought about how we can show the activity of other players and government on the server to you while not filling the chat with information that not everyone wants to see. For that we came up with our new Newsfeed that by default is positioned in the center top of the screen, but can be resized and moved to your desire. And when there is no new news coming in - it goes fully transparent until you manually hover over it.

Storage Management

Another long awaited improvement has found it's way to Eco - you can now set Input and Output for machines separately in the Storage tab, take a look:

That is not all though, we also added a way for you to search in basically every storage UI and allow you to sort items with a single click of a button:

Lockable Tooltips

Addressing some common feedback we have reworked the behavior of the tooltips in Eco. In order to make a tooltip 'stick' you now need to hover over the tooltip and stay focused on it with your mouse for at least one second - the time being configu in the settings menu. The tooltip will display an animation around its borders to show that the lock time is running and will signal when the tooltip is locked. Alternatively, you can also press the CTRL button to instantly lock in a tooltip.

In addition, tooltips are now cached on both client and server and use less resources to load.

Tech Tree Visualizer

Inspired by some of the community creations we've seen we have added a Tech Tree Visualizer to the game that sorts the specialties into our Tier system and displays dependencies in a easily understandable way:

New Objects and Building Forms

Several new furniture items: Hewn Dresser, Hewn Nightstand, Lumber Dresser, Softwood Lumber Dresser, Hardwood Lumber Dresser, Upholstered Chair, Upholstered Couch, Nylon Futon Bed, Nylon Futon Couch, Small Bath Mat, Large Bath Mat, Towel Rack, Wool Curtain, Nylon Curtain, Cotton Curtain, Cast Iron Bed, Steel Abstract Fixture, Steel Hanging Fixture, Steel Hanging Lamp, Steel Kitchen Lamp, Steel Searchlight, Steel Square Fixture, Wood Kitchen Lamp
Three new building forms for Framed Glass: Window Corners, Window Grilles & Double Window
Fourteen new building forms for Brick: Window Grilles, Window Grilles (Edge), Window (Edge), Brace, Brace (Corner), Brace (Turn), Side Brace, Small Corner Brace, Thin Floor (Bottom), Thin Floor (Top), Thin Wall, Under Brace, Under Brace (Corner), Under Brace (Turn)
New Crab Pot object that functions like a Fish Trap but for crabs

Balance Changes

Excavator, Skid Steer, and Steam Tractor now require calories to operate
Motor vehicles can no longer be used underwater
Increased default player experience required to gain a new by 25%
Calorie reduction for leveling up skilled labor reduced to 20-50% from 50%-80%
Labor costs for most recipes requiring skilled labor reduced by 30%
Increased Labor costs for most food recipes
Food Tastiness feature is now enabled by default
Major rebalance of food nutrients and calories to make it harder to get a perfectly balance diet and to encourage more variety
The Icebox and the Refrigerator can now only store food, but can store a significantly larger amount
Added new recipe for Bean Sprout. They are now crafted in a Farmers Table instead of a random drop from Beans
Removed Greens tag from Bean Sprouts
Reduced cost of Heart of Palm in all food recipes they appear to 2 from 8
Change Heart of Palm cost to Camas Bulbs in "Fantastic Forest Pizza"
Changed all recipes using Beet Green item to use Greens tag instead to reduce RNG fortunes dictating what to craft food wise
Added recipes for crushing Mortared Stone and Stone Roads for recycling back into Crushed Mixed Rock
Hunting: Deadeye talent bonus head shot damage reduced to 50% from 100%
Hunting: Deadeye talent moved to level 6 and Arrow Recovery talent moved to level 3
Health of all animals increased
Recurve Bow moved to Smelting and now costs Iron Bars instead of Steel
Biodiesel now requires a new ingredient Ethanol which is crafted by Cutting Edge Cooking
Significantly reduced amount of Tallow obtained as a byproduct
Render Fat recipe now costs Scrap Meat instead of Raw Meat
Modern Agriculture Research Paper now has an additional Berry Extract Fertilizer cost
Added new tag Fertilizer Filler which contains Plant Filler, Pulp Filler, and Composite Filler
Adjusted several Fertilizer recipe costs to include a Fertilizer Filler cost
Added new recipe to produce Tallow at the Bakery Oven
Tallow Candle, Tallow Lamp, Tallow Wall Lamp, now have an additional Cotton Thread cost
Candle Stand, Ceiling Candle, and Wall Candle now costs Tallow Candle instead of Tallow
Carved Pumpkin and Tallow Candle is now produced by Farming specialty
Lights that use Tallow as fuel now consume fuel at a slower rate
Smith clothing Nylon Fabric cost changed to Cotton Fabric
Significantly reduced the amount of items that are eligible to be used to back a currency
Mining Basic Upgrade is now made on a Rocker Box
Paper Milling Upgrade is now made on a Carpentry Table
Crabs now drop a Crab Carcass instead of Raw Meat
Added new recipe for Clean Crab at the Fishery
Added new Small Fish tag to consolidate recipes on the Campfire
Masonry Mortar recipe labor cost increased to 25 from 15

Modkit

Added support for assigning server permissions via mods (Example mod for adding whitelist via Discord: https://github.com/StrangeLoopGames/EcoModKit/tree/testgame/whitelist-authorizer-example/Examples/DiscordAccessMod)
Added a post construction hook for modifying the properties of plant species without an override
Added Modkit support for Eco animal components and animation
Added support for multiple clients to connect to RCON
Adds support for executing chat commands via the Eco REST API
Added some commonly modified values to the server configs so they can more easily be edited: Stack size modifier, Weight modifier, Fuel modifier, Stockpile range modifier, and Plant maturity rate modifier
Fixed: Accessing the Mod Browser via the Server UI was not refreshing the available mods upon on the first load

Optimization

Many optimizations to block building and chunk rendering to use less memory
Mesh builders would not always clean up due to frequent updates, causing performance degradation over time
Reduce FPS impact of having large amounts of unread notifications
Reduce performance impact of opening storage containers when many other linkable storages are nearby
Tooltips now cache on both the server and client, leading to much reduced demands on populated servers and instant-tooltips on the client that don't require a call to the server.
Optimized thread safety checks
Optimized burst

New Visual Effects

New decorative insect Firefly that comes out at night
Added harvest effects when harvesting with a shovel
Added harvest effects when harvesting with a steam tractor
Added harvest effects for underwater plants, urchins and clams
Updated harvest effects animations for a large variety of plants
New splash effect when jumping into water

Bug Fixes & Improvements

Audio

Added a variety of new musical tracks and remixes of existing ones
Added sound effects for the shooting down the meteor sequence
Added sound effect for completing a transaction in a store

Avatar

A larger variety of tools will now be displayed as carried on the avatar when they are added to the toolbar
New animation for climbing over the top of a ladder
Zooming in while in third person could sometimes have the avatar blocking the frame
Trees and another plants will now temporarily hide if they would be blocking the avatar while in third person mode
Improvements to responsiveness while moving with third person camera
Fixed: When editing the avatar, occasionally foliage would be blocking the screen
Fixed: It was possible to get stuck in a roof if placing objects when placing objects below where you were standing
Fixed: During avatar creation, the avatar would often spawn facing blocks
Fixed: It was possible to get stuck in a wall when opening a door that pushed you backwards
Fixed: The avatar would have jerky movement when aiming a bow in third person
Fixed: It was possible to zoom out in third person view past the intended maximum amount when setting different values for first person and third person field of view
Fixed: Avatar nameplate could disappear when above water texture

Civics

Added additional information to tooltips for law conditions
Added collapsable menus for viewing civics in the Legislation tab of the Government UI
Election Processes can now specify what happens in the case of tied result: No Winner, Random, or Incumbent Priority
Fixed: It was possible to start an election for a deleted law draft if two people were editing a law at the same time
Added expandable lists for advanced fields when drafting civics to make large laws easier to work with
Added link to relevant Ecopedia page when creating/edit a civic
Adjusted font colors for civics titles to be easier to read while editing
Fixed: Elections Processes that had Mininum Percent of Voters Required of 0 would result in win for an election in which no one voted, instead of no declared winner
Fixed: When starting a multi-provision election, provision names would not update in the pending election UI if their drafts were edited after being added
Fixed: When a title that was reference in a law was deleted, it was not possible to remove the reference to this title by revising the law
Fixed: It was not possible to reference items with a parent item in a law (Example: Softwood/Hardwood Boards)
Fixed: Hovering over "math operation result" on a sidebar message did not work if the message was very long
Fixed: Laws with a text formula did not allow editing
Fixed: Blocking inventory access on a deed also blocked access to trucks with position on that deed
Fixed: "Construct or Deconstruct" with "Ramps" did not work with a law that ignored authorization
Fixed: Some text found in Constitution UI are overlapping each other while some are outside the border
Fixed: It was not possible to edit deleted titles on linked articles such as laws, amendments, etc

Crafting

Fixed: Focused Workflow talent was activating while having two of the same crafting tables in the same room
Fixed: Crafting time required for a project was not displaying correctly when it was reduced by talents
Fixed: When opening the crafting UI, sometimes the window would start partially scrolled down
Fixed: Control hints would not follow the mouse when highlighting a crafting table
Fixed: The Advanced Crafting button was missing a unique icon
Fixed: Work party tooltips were not being updated when labor and resources were added to projects

Graphics

Added new graphics setting that enables high quality water rendering
Improvements to underwater post-processing effects
Glass blocks now refract light
Added sunrise and sunset colors to volumetric lights
Improvements in lighting saturation
Increased bloom strength range
Fixed: Vsync and Volumetric Lighting would not always initialize correctly
Fixed: Angling the camera by a block in the water caused water fog to disappear
Fixed: Driving vehicles with the lights on at night caused graphical bug on water surface
Fixed: Crossing 0,0 point would cause lights and insects to momentarily disappear

Main Menu

Improved Voice Chat settings to be more clear and provide additional options
Added confirmation box after pressing Exit to Main Menu while connected to a server
Fixed: Text was getting truncated in the settings menus after lowering resolution
Fixed: Pressing enter while a window was open in the main menu would proceed to connect to the most recent server instead of reacting to the window that was open
Fixed: Main Menu was not displaying correctly on wide screen monitors

Meteor

Meteors will now destroy objects inside buildings when destroying buildings instead of leaving them floating
Rooms destroyed by meteors will no longer count as valid rooms
Meteor craters will no longer create dirt floating in the water when hitting small bridges
Ramps hit by meteors will be always destroyed entirely
Items in stockpile's inventory that are destroyed by meteor impact will be removed from stockpile's inventory or turned into dirt
Crate blocks spawned by stockpiles will no longer be immune to meteors
Changed size of crater created by main meteor impact from 30 to 50
Effects of '/meteor addhours' command will now be visible in server's configuration
Fixed: Using /meteor addhours command was not updating display for hours remaining until after a server restart

Minimap

The 2D Map can now be zoomed out far enough so it is possible to see the entire map at once
Different view styles of the map/minimap now retain their own zoom settings
Fixed: Map marker text would overlap with other elements of the UI
Fixed: Minimap icons could trigger tooltip popups when hovering outside of the minimap when the minimap was in docked mode
Fixed: The map would close when editing a deed by selecting the deed on the map
Fixed: "Follow Player" setting in the minimap would not work in vehicles or after using the /fly command.
Fixed: Player arrows in the minimap would face the wrong direction while operating a vehicle if they entered the vehicle while in 3rd person
Fixed: Black deeds were appearing invisible on the map

Tools

Hitting an animal with a bow now displays damage taken in a popup above the animal
The Fishing Pole line can now break if it takes too long to reel in a fish, which is indicated by the fishing line turning red if it is about to break
Fixed: Attempting to use the shovel with a non-diggable block in hand would cause the shovel to not work without an error to explain why
Fixed: Rapidly clicking while the hammer was selected would result in placements errors
Fixed: Fishing pole line was offset in first person when turning down render scale below 100%
Fixed: Reeling in a fishing pole when cast a very short distance was taking too long
Fixed: It was not possible to reel in a fishing pole after interacting with another object while fishing
Fixed: Fishing pole line could be dragged on land by walking away after casting
Fixed: Switching off and on the fishing pole while a fish was on the line would freeze the fish
Fixed: Modern Pickaxe tooltip was displaying the incorrect amount of hits required on Basalt
Fixed: Papaya was giving the incorrect interaction hint when a hammer was selected

Tutorial

Updated style of tutorial to be more goal oriented and with additional informative videos
Shrunk UI for tutorial and notifications.
Added tutorial for opening the Ecopedia
Added tutorial for using a Machete to clear paths
Centered experience multiplier during the Forage for Food tutorial
Added triggers to active the food tutorial when either at 20% calories remaining or after eating food for the first time
Tutorials now show their subtasks one at a time when they should be done in a specific order.
Fixed: The camera would get stuck with strange behavior when pressing escape during the meteor tutorial at the moment the meteor was spotted in the key
Fixed: If skipping all tutorial steps after first skipping the Nutrition tutorial, the nutrition meter would not load, requiring a reconnect to appear.
Fixed: The "Reset Ecopedia viewed pages" button was not functioning
Fixed: Client could crash when using the /tutorials task discord command

Vehicles

New and improved model for the Wood Cart
Fixed: After renting out a vehicle, the tenant was unable to drive the vehicle or access the storage
Fixed: Exiting a vehicle in a narrow space would teleport you to the surface
Fixed: Wood carts could teleport to the surface if they were confined in too small of a space underground
Fixed: Crane could have a phantom shadow placement after leaving and reentering when the storage was empty
Fixed: Avatar would stretch when crossing the world border while operating a wood cart
Fixed: It was not possible to rotate blocks with the Crane
Fixed: When using a crane to interact with a stockpile, the control hint would list all items to pick up when it should only have been blocks
Fixed: It was possible to reduce the calorie consumption of the Hand Plow by eating after running out of calories while operating it
Fixed: When backing up into a wall with the Hand Plow, it was possible to get stuck when dismounting
Fixed: When using an Excavator or Skid Steer to pick up large pieces of rubble, it was only providing one stone/ore instead of two
Fixed: The toolbar was missing while riding in a Steam Tractor
Fixed: Steam Tractor attachments were not visually synced with other players after turning them on
Fixed: There was an exploit where you could take finished items from other's work table by giving them authorization on your vehicle

Added pin button to backpack so that it remains open when pressing Escape
It is now possible to search the economy viewer by text
Updated style for many of the UI, including the Escape Menu, Currency Exchange, Bank, Deeds, Status Indicator, and more
Unified size and settings of various fonts to add more consistency
Updated style for control hint popups when hovering over an object
Added additional information for the notification when being invited to join a residence, like deed location
World Objects that used a paper background for their UI now use a wood background, with the exception of the Bank which uses a metal background
Notifications from the Currency Exchange are now condensed into one message
Added tooltip to Currency Exchange amount restrictions to explain its meaning
Changed colors for object and block highlights to be more color-blind friendly
Clarified error message on Mint UI when trying to mint a currency with a duplicate name
Bank UI now displays Personal Accounts and Government Accounts separately
Fixed: Blur effect was not disabled when hiding the UI while a menu was opened
Fixed: Changes made on the Authorization UI were not updating for others when multiple people were accessing this UI
Fixed: Tags did not have spaces when they were multiple words
Fixed: Research papers and camo clothing did not display their color tints in the Ecopedia and tooltips
Fixed: The highlight for carried blocks would overlap the current quantity carried when moving more of a block into the carried slot
Fixed: Icons on the notification banner could exceed the boundary of the background in cases with small amount of text
Fixed: Icons for the Small Standing Wood Signs would display as salads in the Ecopedia
Fixed: Background blur was missing when opening a Contract or Workparty from outside of a Contract Board
Fixed: The notification for claiming the first plot of a deed showed total land 0 square metres claimed
Fixed: When mousing over the notification for gaining specialty experience to see the tooltip, it would suddenly vanish after moving the mouse away
Fixed: Asphalt Concrete Ramp was included in the Road Tag when this is already covered by Asphalt Concrete
Fixed: Some of the marked up text in the Ecopedia did not have a working tooltip when hovering it
Fixed: Escrow transfer messages for contracts were not displaying the name of the contract associated with the transfer
Fixed: Rent for Property UI did not have a scroll bar, creating issues when having a large formula for determining eligble renter
Fixed: In the Economy Viewer UI, the Work Party tab was not scaling when the UI size was adjusted
Fixed: Changes made to the Set Play Times UI were saving changes regardless of the method used to close the UI

World Objects

Fixed: Not all plants species would fit correctly in a planter pot
Fixed: It was possible to place very large world objects in a way that would encroach on a neighbor's property claims
Fixed: Using /spawn court command was causing the Court to spawn partially inside the wall
Fixed: Some objects had duplicate Power and Pipe Components included in their tooltip
Fixed: Using the /build stockpile command with some blocks, like clay, would cause a crash
Fixed: The Computer Lab would sometimes report there was not enough power to power the lasers when there was adequate power

Misc

Added option for server admins to disable proximity voice chat
Expanded the exhaustion feature to allow saving up stamina over multiple days when not becoming fully exausted. The maximum amount of time preserved can be set in the server configuration.
Added option to the escape menu to view and copy the Server ID of the server connected to for sending to others so they can join
Greatly expanded the text strings that are localized
Fixed: There was no error notification when trying to plant a seed on a tilled soil block that had been covered by other blocks
Fixed: The drop down to select a bank account to pay repair fees was not appearing in the Tool Bench
Fixed: Smiting an Industrial world object with a Dev Tool would not update the room calculation to no longer be considered an Industrial room
Fixed: Using the Land Claim Stake near the border of the plot would not display the claim highlight
Fixed: Server could crash with LiteDB Exception: Databse lock timeout
Fixed: A crash could occur when quitting Eco while connected to a server under certain conditions related to pollution
Fixed: Occasionally the client would crash with an null reference exception related to "InventoryChangeSet"
Fixed: Occasionally the client would crash with an error "Failed to handle RPCResponse"
Fixed: Base food score was not being added to experience multiplier with zero calories
Fixed: Claiming an individual plot displayed a notification of the plot have a total land of 0 square meters
Fixed: The contract clause Add/Remove Blocks was not counting blocks that were stacked on top of each other
Fixed: Placing a waterwheel underwater could create holes through the water
Fixed: The camera would get displaced if being attacked by animals while sleeping
Fixed: "Features" server config tab would not update until after saving the settings
Fixed: Various typos and text corrections
Fixed: Animal carcasses would sometimes teleport to the surface

Update 9.4.6 released!

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 23:46 CET

Update 9.4.6 has been released and includes the following changes:

Fixed: Players and other objects would sometimes appear invisible to others
Fixed: The audio for chopping trees and other tools would sometimes stop playing until switching tools
Fixed: Members of a demographic were not given edit permissions when that demographic was assigned as a manager of a registrar title or a bank account
Fixed: 32-bit build would crash on startup
Fixed: Casting a fishing pole was creating errors in the server log
Fixed: Issue with banlist on servers
Fixed: Using RCON with a non supported command was causing an exception
Added: /kick, /listusers and /listadmins commands now all have RCON support

Update 9.4.5 Released!

Sat, 08 Jan 2022 00:04 CET

Update 9.4.5 has been released and next to removing the holiday skins includes the following changes:

Added: New emotes: /wave, /sit, /bow, and /salute
Added: Modkit support for custom images for signs and Ecopedia banners
(More Info: Example Mod[github.com] & Wiki Documentation[wiki.play.eco])
Fixed: Laws using a progressive percent were unable to accept 0 as the minimum threshold
Fixed: Firing a bow was creating errors in server logs

We were also made aware that we didn't attach the full changelog for the prior Update 9.4.4. We're very sorry for this and here are the full patch notes:

Added: New admin commands to help manage the skill points and levels of other players
Fixed: It was possible to exploit furniture score calculations by placing furniture in the gaps of the wall between rooms
Fixed: Plants would not render on the edges of the screen when rotating the camera in third person
Fixed: Eco client would freeze when failing to get a response from Steam while in the middle of connecting to a server. This now causes a timeout with an error message explaining the problem.
Fixed: Eco client would freeze when failing to connect to a Cloud Worlds when the relay server was unreachable
Fixed: Using "Global Timer" as the value for a law effect would cause an exception
Fixed: There was a situation that could result in some plants dying on a fresh world even when they were in a habitable environment
Fixed: Exiting a UI with the left mouse button would also trigger the tool being held
Fixed: Economy Viewer would show negative values for crafting time remaining on public crafting stations with finished orders
Fixed: Mods downloaded from mods.io were being placed in the incorrect folder
Fixed: There were still cases of rounding errors for currency transactions with fractions of a cent
Other: Various Localization updates and fixes