Devlog #12: Blueprints you keep, a forest you can chop, and droids on patrol

This round covers the rest of 15 October. It's mostly about the world: there's a lot more of it to chop and mine, and there's now something walking the towns that wants you dead. We also changed how blueprints work, gave beds a real job, and cut together our first proper mechanics video.

The map fills up

Until now the main map had about 3,700 trees and 436 rocks. Most of the land between towns was open grass. Now:

15,300 trees you can chop. The new forests are shaped by noise, so some parts are thick woods and some are scattered clumps, with clearings in between. They stay off roads, out of town and away from the spawn beach.
1,500 rocks you can mine, in 215 new clusters. Plain stone is the most common. Iron, copper, sulfur and saltpeter are spread around, and gold sits only on the highest ground.
We removed 144 trees that had ended up growing out of rocks.

We worried this many trees would hurt performance, so we measured it standing in the middle of a new forest with the trees switched on and off. The difference was under half a millisecond per frame. We couldn't measure any change in frame rate.

Blueprints you keep

Blueprints used to work the old way: you found one, used it to learn the recipe, and it was gone. Now a blueprint is never used up. You can craft its recipe as long as the blueprint is in your bag.

That makes blueprints worth stealing, so there's a safer place to keep them: the Jammer cabinet. It's a locker you craft at the Workbench and place in your base. Any blueprint stored inside counts for your whole team within 50 metres, as long as the cabinet has fuel. It burns fuel cells on its own, and it only accepts blueprints and fuel. If it runs dry, those recipes lock again until you refuel it.

We tested carrying a blueprint (the recipe unlocks), dropping it (locks again), storing it in a fuelled cabinet (works up close, not from 60 metres away), and letting the fuel run out (locks). Still to test: multiplayer, and whether the cabinet's contents survive a save and reload.

Beds that bring you back

Beds and sleeping bags now actually respawn you. When you die, you come back at your nearest bed that isn't on cooldown, never at someone else's. If none is ready, you wash up on the beach like a fresh spawn. Each bed has a 5-minute cooldown after you use it. Beds and lockers can now be crafted at the Workbench.

Loot also got a pass to fill some gaps. Raw fish, vegetables and seeds turn up in food crates. Maps and scavenged jewellery appear in the right places. The AK's parts are now in the loot tables: scrap parts in ordinary crates, forged parts in better ones, and military parts only in the rarest spots, or crafted from a military blueprint. All 18 AK parts (6 parts in 3 tiers) now have recipes.

Droid patrols

The towns aren't safe any more. Eight droid squads now walk loops through eight towns across the map. Each squad is two light droids and one heavy, and they move as a group along the town's roads, stopping to look around.

They're hostile to everyone, players and bandits alike, and they hit hard: an unarmoured player standing in the open goes down in seconds. They take cover and throw grenades. None of the eight patrol towns is near the spawn beach, so new players get some time to gear up first.

Getting them working turned up a crash. One of the stock combat behaviours crashed the whole engine when a droid killed the player. We switched both droid types to a behaviour that doesn't, then let a squad kill us four times in a row to make sure it holds.

Not done yet: heavy droids fight the same way as light ones (only their body and gun differ), killed squads come back when that part of the map reloads rather than on a timer, and the roads between towns aren't patrolled yet.

Armour on the car, on camera

We recorded a full play session and cut it into our first mechanics showcase: loot, harvest, build, find a ride, armour up, roll out and fight. The armour section shows the vehicle armour from devlog #8 in play. You walk around a bare hatchback bolting plates on one at a time until it's caged in.

The same hatchback, plated, with a roof rack

Small fixes

The "drink" prompt now only shows over real water. Before, an invisible sea plane under the island was grabbing the prompt and stealing it from loot crates.
The crafting list's scroll bar now matches the other menus.

What's next

Roads between towns: patrols on the main roads, not just inside towns.
Tougher heavy droids with their own fighting style, and droid loot when you kill them.
A full fresh-start run, writing down everywhere the early game gets stuck.