Flashlights, Fix For Black Screen Woes, and New Videos

We're aware that as time goes on, it get's harder and harder for some people to get into the game world and we know why it's happening -

Too much stuff has been built directly outside of the starting cloner in the woods and if you see the black screen for an extended period, it simply means your internet bandwidth bottleneck is insufficient to pipe it all into you before you time out of the game.

We'd planned on optimizing the data stream even more as time went on but we didn't realize how quickly people would start building really big things right in front of where you spawn.

To rectify this, we're doing two things;

1. Optimize all data coming to and from your client and the server.
2. Move existing structures (I mean the really big stuff, like that half-finished castle right in front of the starting area) to a newer, more open area until we can optimize it even more.

To keep this kind of thing from disrupting play again, we'll just have GMs monitor what's getting built and where, attempt to contact the owners if they do dumb stuff (like building literally right in front of the cloner, preventing people from getting out) and when necessary, relocating their constructions elsewhere.

For right now, a quick solution until we can push out a new patch tomorrow or the day after, here's what you can do to get into the game:

When you're at the black screen with my super-cool phrase on it, you can still chat believe it or not, therefore you can still use chat commands, including our temporary "goto" command used to sneak across the world super fast.

Just type in "/goto Castle 1" exactly as it's written there without the quotation marks and caps-sensitive. That'll instantly teleport you to a location that we'd planned to keep secret for the time being; A community "sandbox" area with semi-flat ground that all contributors at or above the $100 level can start building with Ferrocrete once we have that video out.

Again, ignore the fact that it's ugly, it's just a GM testing area, but that should get you ingame at least.

We'll update you again with a more permanent solution in the next few days :)

In addition to this, new in the game is a highly requested "Flashlight". We're adding these as actual craftable objects in the game in the near future, but for right now, night time pisses people off so just press L on the keyboard and voila, let there be light :)

In addition, for those who don't already know, we've uploaded new videos detailing the working of several game features to help you get started. Our next video, detailing factories will be released either today or tomorrow if all goes according to plan. Help spread the word!