A new patch came through for The Forest, signalling the end of one timer, and the beginning of a new one. 15 days from now, we should get version 0.03. First, the patch notes, then some story.

Version 0.02 Changelog (Saved games from 0.01 won’t work with this version)

New features and gameplay tweaks:

• Sharks
• Simple raft now buildable via book (No Sail yet!)
• Walls can now snap to form floors and roofs (experimental, can defy gravity)
• New suprise item added to yacht
• When being knocked out for first time you will now wake up in a random cave
• Lowered fall damage amount
• Birds can be killed with fire
• Stamina recharge now takes longer
• You can now block attacks with the red plane axe by holding down right mouse button
• Timmy taken scene a little more dramatic, better lighting, sparks
• Lowered intensity and range of fire light
• Lowered health on turtle
• Improved fish movement
• Increased range of lighter
• Enemies will drag downed friends out of danger again
• Females will sometimes freak out at dying family members

Performance:

• Improved load times
• Reduced stutter
• Overall performance increases
• Big memory optimizations, should help crashing on some pc’s
• Improved cave wall memory usage
• Dropped sticks and rocks are now pooled and shouldn’t increase memory over time
• Optimized hud rendering (10% faster on cpu)

World:

• Improved lake water swim zones
• Ocean swim zones now correctly rise and fall with tide
• Underwater visuals improved
• Improved terrain in some areas, reduced lumpiness in rocky area, fixed issues with caves poking through terrain
• Fixed super deep ponds that could kill players by falling into them
• Small old boat collision added
• Plane exterior collision added
• Improved balance on some grass textures (less bright)
• Lowered top heavy pine tree to be easier to cut
• Lots of small material/texture tweaks
• Sunset/sunrise made brighter
• Beach cave entrances made bigger and easier to enter
• Improved world collision in some areas
• Improved low resolution mountain textures
• Improved terrain rendering and missing specular
• improved cave lighting and details (caves 4,5)

Bugs:

• Fixed countdown timer not taking different time zones into account
• Fixed some spelling mistakes in tutorials and in survival book
• Fixed shelter on fire spawning infinite logs
• Fixed bug where day count was 1 more than it should be
• Fixed issue where sticks,rocks and logs needed could go to -1
• Fixed not switching back to default weapon after holding lizard, rabbit or fish
• Fixed player not colliding with things tagged ‘Prop’
• Fixed light leaking into parts of some caves
• Fixed bug where you couldn’t cook multiple times on same campfire
• Fixed spear being able to cut down trees
• Fixed ponds flickering at certain distances
• Fixed some items not being saved in inventory when game is loaded (some might still vanish, expect more saving fixes/improvements soon)
• Fixed log holder not saving logs on load/save
• Fixed twinberries not having eat icon and having wrong leaf texture
• Fixed bloody tables in cave not being cut out of nav mesh
• Fixed lizard and rabbit skin triggers not being connected to ragdoll body
• Removed extra set of teeth and eyes appearing behind Timmy
• Chopping dead bodies no longer results in player flying into the air
• Animals no longer spawn multiple copies if on fire
• Cannibals shouldn’t run underwater or follow player out to the boat (they might run a little bit into water however)
• Fixed some bushes missing vertex colors when cut
• Fixed birds landing in sky, improved bird a.i. and performance

This is definitely a meaty patch compared to the few hotfixes that have come down the pipeline. I like the fact that there’s been attention paid to the bugs, but new features are being pushed out too. That’s not to say that all the bugs are gone though:

But, we’re still in Alpha, so I’m not complaining. If these types of things persist into Beta, then I might have something different to say. Two of the new features immediately stood out to me, and demanded experimentation. The first was the ability to block with your axe. This seemed like a sorely needed mechanic, as it’s already bad enough that you’re always outnumbered by the Cannibals and they’re tough to take down to boot. I can confirm that blocking does help quite a bit. I was able to fend off two attackers and nearly kill one without really getting hit, until their third buddy attacked me from behind. This AI sure knows what it’s doing.

The other feature added that sounded awesome was being able to make a raft. I have yet to really test this part out, but I did do some more exploring. I decided that instead of rushing to build a shelter like I had done before, I was going to really explore the land and find my boundaries. During that time I found a few bodies of water that I swam in (swimming animations/feel have been improved) but I didn’t run into any sharks yet. I thought that I had found an area where I would have my back to the boundary, so that mobs couldn’t spawn behind me, but that ended up being wrong, I must have turned myself around. I also stumbled upon an actual village of the Cannibals that was above ground.

Needless to say I didn’t explore the village. Once I had found the spot for my camp, I ended up using the remaining daylight cutting down trees, so of course I didn’t finish anything before it was dark and started raining. By then I was hungry too, and had wasted too much time and energy running around to really do much. So it was time to attack my attackers! One last valiant effort! That played out in the way I already described. When I awoke in the cave, I didn’t go but a couple of steps before a pack of them finished the job.

Days survived: 3

 

#theforest #survivalhorror #patchnotes