Version History

Release notes for Patterns release 0.01k

May 7, 2013

New Planets and Gravity from the core

  1. Planetoid 1- A Hexagon shaped planet made from triangular shapes. 6 Biomes representing different environments and geology.
  2. Planetoid 2- One giant cube made from many smaller cubes. This is a canvas world and it is featureless. It is easy to build on and is ready for you to shape it how ever you see fit.
  3. Protoworld 2- Not a new world but we did a pass on optimizing it. This is a great place to start if you are new to the game. Gravity pulls directly down in this world.

Game Modes

Any Planet or save game can be entered into in one of three modes.

  1. Unbound: A very powerful mode that includes flying, unlimited substances and all shapes, powerful beam breaking power, and physics turned off.
  2. Easy Build: This mode includes basic inventory of shapes and substances and physics are turned off.
  3. Realistic: You need to earn all your shapes and substances and physics are turned on.

Construct Edit Mode

Right click on a shape connected collection of shapes you have placed and enter CEM. In CEM the object you are working on is hi-lighted and the rest of the world is grayed out.

In this mode you can do the following:

  1. Add more shapes to your construct.
  2. The Twist tool you can twist individual shapes or entire portions of the construct.
  3. The Selection tool enables you to add and/or deselect other shapes to be included or excluded from your Construct.
  4. Relocate your Pattern by click and drag on the Move tool.
  5. Save your Pattern to your Inventory.
  6. Re-Anchor your Pattern by clicking on a new face.
  7. Paint tool will transmute a single shape with one click or transmute the entire construct with a double click.
  8. Turn the entire construct into Debris.

UI Update

The front end shell and in game UI have all been updated.

Performance and Optimization

  1. Frame rate improvements.
  2. Greater efficiency in the new worlds in how they are constructed.
  3. First pass and automation used to convert Protoworld 2 to the new optimized state.

Note: Your save games will benefit from our Data 2 conversion and some of our general optimization improvements. Those world will likely not perform as well as the new planets added in this update however.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01j2-hotfix

  • Fixed save games corrupted by saving with a 'phantom' bomb.
  • Fixed soft lock when rebinding keyboard keys when in Tab camera mode.
  • Fixed Patterns that could in some circumstances become corrupted in the Pattern stone.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01j

Below are the save game stability bugs we addressed:

  • Hangs at 27%.
  • More robust support for older save files created with previous versions of Patterns.
  • Missing geometry in worlds with multiple save is less of a problem.
  • Lots and lots of bombing corrupting save files.

And a new feature:

  • Key rebinding allows you to customize the keyboard commands for your game. This can be accessed in Options under Controls.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01i

Performance and Optimization

  • Bombs ignite more quickly and with out excessive frame rate hit.
  • World stability around exploding bombs and saving and reloading the game are much improved.
  • Made the building code much more efficient so building large constructs in world should feel much better than before.
  • Changes to our data format resulting in much smaller save files.
  • Load times for new and save files is improved.

UI

  • Lots of UI bug fixes and polish
    • Re-skin of UI elements
    • Clean up to New and Save game slots
    • In game action slots and Inventory clean up
    • Prettied up a lot of dialogs

Graphic Settings

  • Added greater support for resolution settings
  • Added greater support for additional aspect ratios
  • Main menu is now in a fixed window
  • Addressed Issues related to game freezing at splash screen

New Formation

  • Added the ability for users to create their own Spawn point.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01g

New Editor

  • Pattern Stone- Create bridges, make bombs, build a tree and save it in the Pattern Stone. Your creations are saved to inventory where you can then place them any time as you have substances for them.

New Formations

Bombs are constructed from a charge, a trigger, and a number of caps. There are three variants to most bombs: radial, directional (or conical), and flat. Some bombs are limited to the radial variant. Most bombs will explode other bombs unless the bomb is affected by physics, in which case it will be propelled instead.

  • Radial bombs blow up in a radius around the bomb.
  • Directional bombs blow up in the direction of the bombs cap.
  • Flat bombs blow up outward from the charge. All shapes under the flat bomb's charge should remain intact (when exploding diagonally some shapes are removed and some are left).

The New Bombs (check out the release video for clues on how to make them):

  • Rocket Bomb- Has Physics. Activated after launch when speed falls below a threshold.
  • Rocket Bomb Triggered- Has physics. Launched with a plunger. Actiated after launch when speed falls below a threshold.
  • Rolling Bomb- Has Physics. Armed when velocity reaches a threshold. Activated when armed AND speed falls below a threshold.
  • Nak Bomb- Time delay explosion of Nak

Visual Updates

  • Clouds have been updated
  • Day/Night cycle tweaks
  • Wind effects can be seen at the higher elevations

UI

  • Added space in the inventory for Pattern Stone creations
  • Fixed Exit to Main Menu so that you can actually exit to Main Menu
  • Refined and polished Main Menu UI for better control of your Save Games.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01f

NEW formations

More explodey things that have a variety different behaviors.

  • Contact Bomb explodes on contact.
  • Time Bomb goes off after a short while.
  • Trigger Bomb and Plunger allows you to set it off remotely.
  • Ice Bomb spreads ice all over the blast radius
  • Proxy Bomb build it and it will go off.
  • Kiln and Forge that enables you to take a substance and turn it into another substance. Turn clay to brick for example.

Visual Updates

  • Visual updates to the sky.
  • New day night cycle measured by sun and moon.
  • An assortment of visual effects for physical substances.
  • New character animations.

New Build Delivery Option

  • Added support for downloading Patterns directly from BuildPatterns.com. If you have been using Steam to get Patterns updates you can still do so. If you are new to Patterns you can choose to get the game from Steam or you can choose to download it directly here.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01e

NEW Planets

  • Added three new planets.
    • Barren Plain- A wide open space.
    • Red Bluff- A vertical challenge
    • Hanging Gardens- A new worlds to explore and discover

UI

  • Support for Multiple Planets.
  • Support for Multiple Save As planet.
  • Support for naming your own files what you want to name them.
  • Time stamps with Save Files.

Physics

  • Your debris and free floating creations now save with the world.
  • Tweaks and tuning to Nak and Ice.
    • More slide and velocity support for ice.
    • Support for the sideways bounce.
    • New look for Nak berries.
  • Added a sinking behavior to an existing substance.
  • New visuals for stressed constructs.

Control Updates

  • WASD, Arrow Keys - move your character. Use SPACE to jump and double jump.
  • RMB(Right Mouse Button) to rotate camera, RMB click to select shape (for rotation)
  • Arrow keys rotate selected shape
  • LMB breaks soft substances, when nothing is equipped
  • 1-9, or clicking on Action Bar, equips Tiles, Shapes, Patterns, and Tools
  • LMB places equipped Tiles, Shapes, and Patterns, or uses equipped Tools
  • Left Shift - pocket equipped for easy breaking
  • R - (try to) repeat last placement
  • E - Inventory
  • Q - Unequip
  • M - Building Materials
  • TAB - Camera Lock
  • Double click Tile Tool to enter Shaping Stone

Friendly Tips

  • Break Starene shapes to add shapes to your collection, or build them on the shaping stone.
  • Breaking shapes will add to your substances required to build.
  • Break harder substances with bombs

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01d

UI

  • Moved Substances UI from upper right to the Substance wheel. Hit "M" to access but only if you have collected substances.
  • Embiggened shapes in the Inventory UI and Quick Slots UI.
  • Shapes now rotate with mouse over in the quick slots.
  • General clean up and UI bug fixing.
  • Explodey things no longer create 'holes' and vanishing bits to the world.

World

  • Added the ability to place Top Tile of any substance.
  • Added Ice Substance.
  • Added Nak Substance.
  • Added some new visual effects.

Physics

  • Added new physics behavior for Ice substance.
  • Added new physics behavior for Nak substance.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01c

Controls

  • Left Mouse Button (LMB) does all the action (building and breaking)
  • Right Mouse Button (RMB) moves the camera.
  • Tab - Switches to locked camera.
  • 1-10 equips Shapes based based on the corresponding quick slot
  • Q - Unequips an shapes in the characters paw
  • With nothing equipped (no shape in paw), LMB shoots beam
    • beam breaks soft substances
    • beam also randomly twists and scrolls shapes with 1 connection (replacing Rotate-Mode)
    • beam also applies force to Debris.
  • R - Repeats last action (This was formerly mapped to Q)
  • E - Brings up the inventory

UI

  • You can no longer drag from the inventory into the world.
  • You can drag shapes from the inventory to your Quick Slots for easy access.
  • X and Y cycle the selection of an active substance. This works like 01A-01B.
  • Most of the rest of the UI is a reskin of 01A in the new system with new art.
  • The presentation of the shapes includes scaling and rotation and will make them easier to recognize.

Formations

  • We added a new formation. The shape is very similar to the previous explodey thing but with one piece different.
  • Bombs will use Brimstone, a yellow substances formerly known as Gypsum, strewn about the latest world.

World

  • Top Tiles have been added to the world.
  • Gypsum -> Brimstone (surfer crystals).
  • A new island mass can be found in this update.

Shaping Stone

  • There is a new UI for tiles
  • Many improvements on hinging and snapping
  • Added feedback based on if you have a created a shape before.

Caveats

With .01c we are now displaying .01b save files in the main menu. You should be able to load your .01b save files with .01c. We have been loading ours. We have noticed some odd behavior regarding the shapes you have in .01b. Since we added an inventory in .01c it may be that all of your shapes appear properly but we have seen instances where they don't display as you would expect. That said the world and things you build in the world appear to work just fine. You just might need to recreate your shapes again in the shaping stone.

Release notes for Patterns version 0.01b.

Bugs and Tweaks:

  • Optimization work has been done to improve frame rate and performance when building and breaking things apart. In particular we focused on improving the manipulation of large constructs. For those who are prone to dropping entire islands (and we do enjoy those videos) results may vary.
  • Addressed remaining memory leaks.
  • Isosceles triangles are much less finicky when manipulated on the Shaping Stone.
  • The screen no longer goes black when manipulating shapes in the shaping stone.
  • The character now breaks free of structures built on the spawn point.
  • The character now draws correctly after respawning.
  • Game starts in full screen by default.
  • Formations (wheel and starene bomb) will now trigger on player created constructs and in other places they were not working previously.
  • Fallen constructs now return the correct substance count back to inventory.
  • You can no longer use saving and loading to build without physics.
  • Hint data for shapes now persists after saving.
  • We handle cursor focus better on machines with multiple monitors.
  • It is now possible to connect more that two tall antiprisms together.
  • Stress lines appear correctly on tall antiprisms.
  • The character no longer falls through the world as a result of standing on and stacking Octogonal Bi-pyramidalPrisms.
  • Fixed cases where a single placed cube would break apart the moment it was placed.
  • Hitting the shift key no longer deletes shapes as reported in certain circumstances.

Updated world, Protoworld2:

  • We added another island space to the existing world. This space includes a few more things to discover and a good challenge to overcome in getting there.
  • The addition to the world uses multiple "master" constructs; meaning the new islands are actually floating. Unsinkable?...time will tell.

One caveat:

In version 0.01b we updated ProtoWorld (0.01a worlds) with ProtoWorld2. When you launch 0.01b you should expect to only see ProtoWorld 2 (the updated world for 0.01b) when loading a "New Game".

This should and will bring up some valid questions. Can I go back and load my ProtoWorld? Is it backed up? How can it be accessed? The answers are yes, yes and read further.

Some background and insight. Our UI is a first pass built to support our Genesis goals. The ability to load and track multiple worlds at this point is non existent functionality in our current scheme. That stinks but we are actively working on a UI scheme that solves this problem, and others, and sets us up for future improvements and updates. More on that later.

In the meantime both 0.01b and 0.01a save files are found side by side.

Mac location
\\Library\caches\FreeRange\Patterns

Win Location
C:\Users\...[USER NAME HERE]...\AppData\LocalLow\FreeRange\Patterns\SAVEDATA\

0.01b save games are identified with a "2" appended at the end of "ProtoWorld". You can load 0.01a files simply by adding a "2" at the end of each "ProtoWorld" file.

For example, the file "data_ProtoWorld_0" is from 0.01a. Rename the file to "data_ProtoWorld2_0" in order for 0.01b to recognize the file. You will need to do this with each of the generated save files.

The files to modify are as follows.

  • character_ProtoWorld_0
  • data_ProtoWorld_0
  • inventory_ProtoWorld_0
  • patterns_ProtoWorld_0
  • shapes_ProtoWorld_0

That is how you can enable save files from previous version to load with 0.01B. We all look forward to the day when you don't have to jump through so many hoops.

A final word to the wise, any time you mess with save files that are special to you make sure you back them up first.

Version 0.01a feature list - Genesis

  • Build with over 20 Unique geometric shapes.
  • A hand crafted world of substances and shapes.
  • Explore, discover and bust apart a world in a pure sandbox environment.
  • Shaping Stone workbench that enables you to craft and discover shapes.
  • 8 collectible substances.
    • Clay
    • Bonestone
    • Starene
    • Nak
    • Limewood
    • Coralwood
    • Jasper
    • Gypsum
  • Emergent objects that explode or roll.
  • Simulated physics, gravity and tensile strength that plays upon substances and your creations.
  • 3 Save slots.
  • Building tools that include shape repeating and shape rotation.
  • Two camera modes for building and exploring.
  • A controllable character with Jump and Walk capabilities.
  • 3 different quality settings to accommodate a variety of system specs.
  • Full screen and windowed mode support.
  • Windows and Mac version.
  • Public access to bug reporting.