0.9 is live! news - Atmocity

Hello,
The new update is FINALLY live. It's been long overdue, in part because the new stuff came with a greater need for rewriting old, existing systems. As such, there may be some new bugs introduced as well. I will continue testing over the upcoming week and start ironing out any issues as well as continue the implementation of the painting - which is currently about 80% implemented, leaving some blocks unpaintable.
The new version features:

0.895 -> 0.9
- Added ability to "paint" blocks, allowing for more customized park areas etc. Also prevents a lot of instances of colliders interfering with placement of structures.
- Added props - freely placeable trees (currently, will add more stuff over time).

- Probability of finding hidden treasure when demolishing blocks changed.
- Pine trees resized.
- Pine tree stems no longer green and pine trees also properly follow season colors.
- Grid display now has additional sections. Looks nicer and helps when placing props.
- Changed wind effect for vegetation (so it's not as synced as before).
- Changed vegetation color so that it differs more from grass color (for the standard theme).
- Adjusted grass, asphalt and plaza textures to work with paint mode (changes overall appearance a bit).

- Fixed potential null reference error when drawing construction frame.
- Fixed null reference error when moving certain buildings.
- Fixed null error thrown by some rounded blocks.

- Improved performance in construction mode (when placing buildings and other structures).
- Improved performance in iterating through certain larger lists of objects.
- Improved loading performance.

Known issues:
Due to a huge overhaul of bridge code, previously placed overpasses may disappear.
Trees placed as props are currently not merged and as such may be fairly low in performance if many are placed in the same place.
Tool tips for props say "residential building".
Roads are currently no longer merged while I continue to hunt for a glitch making roads "stick" even when demolished.
Existing grass/grass+trees tiles are still present, in the next update these will be automatically transformed into painted blocks + trees.

Also, currently the tips when placing props are not clear. You can use alt + mouse click to scatter trees and ctrl to align to a smaller sized grid as well as to place along a perpendicular line.

As mentioned in the known issues, there are some things that are currently not optimized and may cause performance issues (like if you spam a tonne of trees in the same area). This will be addressed in the next update along with a bunch of other known issues.

There are also some issues with overpasses. This was an issue that could not be avoided given some things needed to be completely overhauled. It won't affect buildings placed on overpasses, it only means the overpass itself won't be visible - it can be destroyed and replaced however,

As for painting, you can now paint on most types of blocks. There are some that still need to be made paintable, but it should be fairly flexible already.





As mentioned above, I've yet to implement proper guidance when it comes to placing props, but the alt and ctrl keys should get you far enough. :)





In order to make the most out of props, I will need to adjust some colliders a bit, so that they can be more freely placed nearby buildings. This will be done over the next few updates as I discover what use cases are most likely. I'm still working on how to make it possible to place trees and other props around rounded edges, but that's coming too.



There's also a new demolition tool, made specifically to remove props. Props are removed when something is built on top of them (like roads or a building), but they can also be "pruned". Once I add non-tree props (like fountains, advertising boards etc.) I will probably make this a different icon :)



Lastly, expect the unexpected, it might not look like much, but this update has meant I've had to dig around a lot of really old and fundamental systems in the game's code, so there may be some new bugs.