Hey everyone! I hope December's treating you well.

The unstable release[playstarbound.com] of Starbound 1.2 is here! This means a stable release is nearly here, but not quite - we may still make changes or find all kinds of exciting bugs that need fixing ahead of the official release. But if you're a Steam user and you just can't wait, you can check out the update ahead of time by running "Starbound - Unstable" from your Steam library!

For 1.2, we wanted to focus on giving you more to do after you've finished all that saving the universe business. To that end, we've added endgame procedural dungeons and bosses, the ability to terraform planets, weapon upgrades, and elemental damage! Take a look at the patch notes below for details, and click through if you're interested in bug/performance fixes and changes to the modding API.

If you'd rather wait for the stable release, sit tight! We won't keep you waiting too long. :)

• Ancient Vaults
  
  • Players who have completed the main storyline can visit a mysterious trader on the Outpost who will send them on a quest to activate and enter the Ancient Gateways found floating in some systems
  • These gateways provide access to Ancient Vaults: challenging procedural dungeons left by the ancients, filled with dangerous guardians (including procedural bosses!) and fantastic lost technologies
   
  
• Terraforming
  
  • Using powerful devices acquired from the Ancient Vaults along with a new Essence currency, you can now transform regions or whole planets into entirely different biomes
  • Terraformers can be used to expand a region across a planet’s surface, replacing natural blocks, objects and plant life, and eventually changing the type of the planet itself
  • Microformers are consumable single-use terraformers which provide even more region types to add to your worlds
   
  
• Weapon Upgrades
  
  • Use the ancient anvil available at the end of Ancient Vaults and spend Essence to upgrade your outdated legendary weapons, opening up many new options for endgame combat styles
   
  
• Elemental Damage
  
  • Monsters now have resistance and weakness to elemental damage types, making your choice of weapons more important than ever
   

• Holding the activation key while in a distortion sphere tech will force deactivation, to avoid being permanently stuck in small spaces
• Contain tooltips within the game window when they’re near the edge
• Fix a bug with monster kill sounds not playing correctly
• Several bug fixes to monster/NPC behaviors and pathfinding
• Various typo and asset fixes
• Add appropriate “bushes” to the Rust biome
• Update SDL2 to 2.0.5, should fix some fullscreen issues
• Fix some security vulnerabilities in server packet handling

• Improve generation time of older, image-based dungeons
• Other minor improvements to dungeon and world generation
• Use larger texture atlases on graphics cards that support them
• Various optimizations to monster/NPC scripts

• Behavior Tree system moved to engine for performance reasons, now accessible with the root.behavior lua binding. (Check lua documentation)
  
  • Cleanup node removed
  • Decorator node lua implementation changed
  • Action node arguments moved around, now (args, output, nodeId, dt).
• Generic currency support.
  
  • Additional currencies can be added and consumed without requiring configuration
  • To associate a currency with a currency item, to be used in crafting, it needs to be configured in /currencies.config
  • .coinitem files changed to .currency
• Object changes for terraforming support
  
  • Objects can have a new boolean key, "biomePlaced" which if true will cause them to be placed and removed by terraforming.
  • Objects can have a new boolean key, "rooting" which if true will mark all of their anchor spaces as roots and prevent those tiles from being broken until the object is broken (identical to how trees and vines work).
• Player inventory can now be configured in player.config, allowing changes to:
  
  • Number of bags
  • Inventory size of each bag
  • Number of action bars
  • Action bar size
  • NOTE: modifications to player inventory size need to be applied both server side and client side, and will invalidate existing characters unless manually versioned

• Damage sources, requests, and notifications
  
  • Introduced new hit types; WeakHit, StrongHit and Killed.
  • Removed killed boolean from damage notifications, replaced with Killed hit type.
  • Damage effects (sounds, particles) can be configured for each hit type (Hit, WeakHit, StrongHit, ShieldHit, Killed) in damage type configurations (.damage files).
  • Added support for elemental types to damage types. Elemental types can be configured in /damage/elementaltypes.config and can be set for each damage type using the “elementalType” key, which defaults to the “default” elemental type. Each elemental type has a unique set of damage number particles for each hit type.
• Monsters
  
  • Added support for client side rendering scripts
  • Allow overriding randomly selected monster parts by setting “selectedParts” in parameters
  • Add support for direct palette swaps with the “colorSwap” parameter
  • Allow overriding “shortdescription“ in parameters
  • Allow overriding “dropPools” in parameters
  • Allow setting animation parameters directly in monster parameters with the “animationCustom” parameter. This is merged into the animator configuration.
• Lua API changes:
  
  • ActiveItemAnimation
    
    • Removed activeItemAnimation.animationParameter (replaced with animationConfig.animationParameter)
  • Animator
    
    • Added animator.partProperty
  • Item
    
    • Replaced item.is with item.matches
  • Monster
    
    • Added monster.setDamageParts
    • Added monster.setAnimationParameter
  • Npc
    
    • Added npc.loungingIn
  • ObjectAnimator
    
    • Removed objectAnimator.animationParameter (replaced with animationConfig.animationParameter)
  • Player
    
    • Added player.currency
    • Added player.addCurrency
    • Added player.consumeCurrency
    • Modified player.hasItem to allow exact parameter matching
    • Modified player.hasCountOfItem to allow exact parameter matching
    • Modified player.consumeItem to allow exact parameter matching
  • Root
    
    • Added root.behavior
  • Added animationConfig table for use in client side rendering scripts
  • ScriptPane
    
    • Added pane.playSound
  • Widget
    
    • Added widget.setSliderValue
    • Added widget.getSliderRange
    • Added widget.setSliderEnabled
    • Added widget.setItemSlotItem
  • World
    
    • Modify world.spawnItem to allow optionally setting a velocity and an intangibleTime
    • Added world.size
    • Added world.inSurfaceLayer
    • Added world.terrestrial
    • Changed world.entityMoney to world.entityCurrency
    • Added world.universeFlagSet
    • Modified world.entityHasCountOfItem to allow exact parameter matching
    • Added world.lineTileCollisionPoint
    • Added world.addBiomeRegion
    • Added world.expandBiomeRegion
    • Added world.pregenerateAddBiome
    • Added world.pregenerateExpandBiome
    • Added world.setLayerEnvironmentBiome
    • Added world.setPlanetType

[playstarbound.com]

Hey everyone! A new unstable build is upon us! This means that a new stable build is nearly here. Need a reminder of how unstable updates work? Here you go!

• We automatically upload everything we’ve changed in-game to the opt-in Nightly branch each night.
• When we’ve completed the update we’ve been working on, we push the update to the Unstable branch. You can learn more about opting in to the Unstable branch here[playstarbound.com].
• When we’re sure that the update isn’t causing crashes or terrible bugs, we push the update to the Stable branch.

Click 'read more' for a changelog listing the most significant changes we've made to the game since the last patch!

[playstarbound.com]

• Vehicles are a work in progress! You can purchase/repair them at the outpost, but the repair UI is... definitely WIP[playstarbound.com].
• Some one-handed, unique and biome weapons which still use the old system will be replaced in a future patch

• Weapons
  
  • Generated and tiered two-handed weapons now have special abilities that can be activated using right click. Many (45+) possible abilities are available for various classes of ranged and melee weapons!
    
    • Yes, some guns now have flashlights
  • Change to hammer mechanics: hold left click to wind up, release to fire
  • Change to spear mechanics: continue holding left click after a swing to keep the spear out to fend off enemies
  • Several new classes of hard-to-find unique weapons: boomerangs, chakrams and fist weapons. Find blueprints to upgrade these weapons into even more powerful and specialized versions!
  • A few miscellaneous unique weapons and items such as flamethrowers and remote-detonated grenade launchers

• Major changes to monster and NPC combat mechanics
  
  • Lots of new unique monsters found throughout the galaxy
  • Hostile monsters now damage the player on touch
  • Knockback is more powerful and reliable
  • Monsters have clearer ‘telegraphing’ to indicate when they are about to attack
  • Remade shields and improved blocking mechanics
  • Replaced electric stun status effect with Electrified, which periodically damages other nearby enemies

• Vehicles
• New system for player-controlled vehicles which can be spawned and despawned using Vehicle Controllers (acquired at the Outpost)
• Hoverbikes!
  
  • Great for travelling across planet surfaces quickly!
  • They include a passenger seat so you can transport your friends!
  • Come in several attractive colors!
  • Drive carefully to avoid blowing yourself up!
• Coming Soon! - Boat and Mech vehicles replace previous tech equivalents
• Repair your vehicles using auto chips, which can be found in the world or purchased at the Outpost
• Quests
  
  • Quest givers’ portraits are shown on quest dialogs and in the log
  • Colonists now occasionally give players new procedural quests to help improve their house or social standing
  • The abandon button can be used on procedural quests and the same quests can now be declined
• Added lots of biome content to Tier 5 (frozen) worlds
  
  • New ‘Midnight’ planets
  • New ‘Frozen’ planets (replaces Tundra)
  • Prism, Steam Spring, and Hive sub biomes
  • Lots of new microdungeons and other improvements to all underground biomes, including background caves and parallaxes
• Loads of item descriptions have been fixed/replaced/added, including lots of Novakid ones!
• Too many new objects, items, costumes, colony tenants, etc. to list
• Too many bug fixes, item tweaks, and balance changes to list

--

There's a new unstable patch out!  This will hopefully be the last patch before we release a new stable, if everything goes well.  For a list of everything new that will be in the next stable, see this[playstarbound.com] post.

Here is a list of just what has been changed in the most recent unstable update:

• Fixed a bug causing players to get stuck in barbed wire
• Fixed a bug causing colonists sometimes getting stuck in the ceiling
• More hover bike and boat vehicle tweaks, both visually and in behavior.  The hover bike now feels much better and can climb steeper slopes
• Changes for how vehicles are sold and repaired
• Much better vehicle spawning from the vehicle controller
• Fixed some more bugs involving lounging, removed the ability of two players to sit in the same seat if they timed it right
• Added knockback for shields
• Changes for how status and movement modifiers are applied to be more clear and more capable
• Armor dyes!
• Fixes for terrain generation at the bottom of oceans
• Fixes for the floran boss damaging too much, also make the ixoling smarter.
• Fixed chat bubbles rendering behind certain interface elements
• Versioning fixes importing characters from previous versions
• Assorted networking fixes, mostly revolving around items
• Fixes for displaying quest rewards
• Several fixes for projectiles so that they don't miss when a small target is near their point of impact
• Fix endlessly repeating sounds
• Fixes for the turret object
• Fixes for the trictus monster
• Fixed monsters sometimes ending up invulnerable near death
• Fixed monsters not aggroing PvP players
• Fixes for capture pods
• Include some things in our distribution for using the Tiled map editor
• A bunch of other miscellaneous fixes too boring to accurately describe!

We're currently working on a modder's guide for using Tiled, which should include everything you need to create dungeons and missions using it.  There should be a post later today or tomorrow with more details.