by Fixerol » Wed Mar 15, 2017 20:44
This time I decided to make it very short and post stuff that caught my eye as a simple player for time period 22DEC2016/0.4.15-15MAR2017. Minetest 0.4.16 will be exciting, and here is why:
Engine::
Graphics:
* Add smooth lighting for all nodes (BEHOLD! Yes it does, everything (stairs/slabs/water/signs/moreblocks/etc) look so awesomely smoothed now, waited for this since 2011)
* Update lighting at block loading (map protocol bump, if you have some important maps, make a backup before transition)
* New bulk node lighting code (those two fix a lot of annoying lighting bugs and moretrees are working out of the box)
* Redo lighting curve (shadows and lighting were overhauled, light sources produce much more visible light)
* Make object mesh face shading consistent (fancy now)
* Add hardware node colouring (very useful change, already used by modders to colour the nodes and save the RAM, no need to define trillion coloured nodes iirc)
Anticheat:
* Various anti-cheat improvements (interact distance, taking bones after death, dropping stuff after death, server-side breath etc)
Fixes:
* Fix >5 year old PlayerSAO deletion bug (yes, finally it is gone, you can join Vanessa's and Co servers without server kicking you out, I checked)
* Do not force deletion of players when mapblock is full
* Fix visual_scale being applied squared for plantlike (no idea what it is, but someone will be interested)
* Block spam messages before calling on_chatmessage callbacks (no more spam on IRC mod I believe)
* Map generation limit related crash-fixes (yes, 2011-2017 crashes at world limit, I remember YOU)
Other:
* Client Side Modding (hard to believe but it is merged, now under heavy improvement)
* Add particle animation, glow (useful for modders)
* Add ping indicators in serverlist (self-explanatory, more green lines the better)
* Allow texture packs to customize the progress bar
* Allow server side occlusion culling (before sending a mapblock to you, server will check if it is visible or not, should help save some bandwidth)
* Minimap cpu usage optimisation (had no fps improvement for me, but cpu usage should go down).
* Guest#### is not autogenerated anymore, use proper name at login (yep, no more thousands of guests on servers, use proper name, it is 2017)
* Support password authentication (for redis database)
* Save metainfo for falling nodes
* Climbing speed increased from 2 to 3 (try ladders)
* Lots of other fixes and improvements
Game::
* More generous meselamp recipe (light all the things!)
* Ladder recipe: Make wooden ladder recipe more generous (climb all the things!)
* Decrease the cost of gunpowder for trails and change TNT recipe (gunpowder trails are much more cheaper now)
* Torches: Reduce light source level from 13 to 12 (this change was needed because of lighting redo in engine, torch was too bright, it is brighter than in 0.4.15).
* Add nodebox mese post light usable as a growlamp (meselamp that looks like a torch)
* Add desert/silver sandstone-related blocks (desert sand and silver sand have new blocks! and they look good)
* Add silver sand blob ore, relocate other blob ores (more silver sand in the world)
* New jungle dirt in jungles
* Papyrus, cactus: Require light level 13 for growth (haters gonna hate)
* Leafdecay: Node timer based implementation, API (node-timer based leafdecay mechanism)
* Leafdecay: Register leafdecay for bush leaves
* Keys and books have tooltips with descriptions
* Tree schematics: Alter jungletree, aspen, pine, appletree (changes trees look a bit)
* Flint & steel sounds: Fix bugs caused by nil position (entire server heared some flint and steel users)
* Screwdriver improvements
* TNT fires are properly removed now (before they spawned forever)
* Add /killme chat command
* Add support for custom bed sounds
* Add creative.is_enabled_for
* Sfinv improvements
* Other fixes and improvements
I've listed only some changes and omitted some I don't fully understand/etc, you can view all changes on minetest/minetest_game github pages.