This one is mostly about how the hollow looks and feels, and it is the biggest change to that since the first build. It is also the last big alpha build before the beta.
The beta is a few weeks away
The beta starts in the next few weeks. Three things come with it:
- Online multiplayer. Sharing a fire over your own network has worked since v0.0.11. The beta takes it across the internet: host a world, hand a friend a room code, and they join your fire from anywhere, with a relay in between so nobody has to open a port. The relay is built and being tested now.
- The price goes up. Early access is £4.99 until the beta, then £7.99, then £14.99 at launch. Buy now and the price you paid covers every build after it, the beta included, and a Steam key at launch.
- Everything carries over. Worlds, tokens, stickers, tapes and your wanderer's look all come with you.
The moor, relit
By day there is a sun now, and it moves. It comes up low and gold, climbs to noon and goes down the other side by evening, and everything standing in it throws a shadow that turns and lengthens with it. After dark the fire, the lamps and whatever you carry throw shadows too, each as long as its height against the flame, and under the big moon the trees throw moon shadows across the camp.
Video, then Graphics, has four levels now:
- Classic is the pixel look, blocky light and all.
- Modern is the smooth light and glow the game had before.
- Beautiful adds soft shadows, sharp where a thing meets the ground and softening as they stretch away, and shading in the creases where things meet. New players start here.
- Maxed out spends the most on both.
On the Mac it was made on, Beautiful costs about three milliseconds a frame more than Modern. If your machine struggles, Modern and Classic are right there.
A moor worth walking
- Hills. The moor rolls now. Uphill is slower, downhill quicker, and rock outcrops break out where the ground drops away. The camp, the railway and the buildings are kept level.
- Places to find. Abandoned camps, dens under mossy boulders, fallen trees with toadstools along them, woodcutter's clearings, rings of standing stones and stepping stones across the bog.
- Life. Crows and grouse that land and scatter, rabbits out on the grass, red squirrels up the trunks and moths at the lamps. The fire smokes and the leaves come down.
- Autumn. Bracken, red shrubs and tall grass gone gold, fallen leaves lying in drifts, hard fern staying green in the shade long after the bracken has gone brown, and moss on the old seat logs round the fire. It all goes over into November, then frost, then snow.
Controls and accessibility
Every key and pad button can be rebound, and every prompt in the game draws the key you actually use. There is an Accessibility page: text size, high-contrast outlines round whatever you are looking at, colour-blind palettes, reduced flashing, and holds as toggles.
And the rest
A bandage in your hand heals you now, gloomlings drop meat, nothing falls on the first night, the camp starts bare and you build it up, and the people are built stockier with bigger heads. The desktop app can turn VSync off, and the menus no longer run your fans.
The home page has new footage from this build, every shot the game's own renderer on Maxed out. The full list is in the changelog, and the build is waiting on your download page.