Posted February 05, 2025
Hello, everyone!
We loved your reactions to the Update 7 First Look article, and today, we’re even more stoked to let you finally play with the new stuff. The patch is now live on the experimental branch! It features the long-awaited 3D terrain, the Iron Teeth’s modular Tubeways, and a big surprise - Ziplines, the special transportation method for the Folktails that we kept secret until now!
For a refresher on how to play on the Experimental Branch and access the new content, check out THIS FORUM THREAD.
Patch notes - 2025-02-05 (Experimental)
Your Update 6 saves should be compatible with Update 7, but as always, we encourage starting a fresh playthrough. This will help you understand how the new features affect the gameplay.
3D Terrain
While the in-game terrain has always been made of little 3D cubes, you could only place them one atop another. With Update 7, terrain blocks go on all Solid surfaces - roofs, platforms, and overhangs. This gives you much more flexibility in reshaping maps and choosing where to grow your fields and forests - and we reworked the layer tool to make working with 3D terrain easier.
Thanks to 3D terrain, you can finally cultivate crops on top of lodges and warehouses. You may create extra-compact hanging gardens where plants grow on multiple levels. You might hide your beavers’ settlement in a cave, with a river irrigating its green dome.
We also updated the layer tool. It’s now much easier to navigate and build vertically.
- Reworked the terrain to make it three-dimensional, allowing you to put terrain blocks on all Solid surfaces. As we mentioned in the First Look article article, we will expand this feature as needed.
- The layer tool now uncovers terrain in addition to buildings and water, allowing you to look inside areas like caves, tunnels, and complicated structures.
- When using the layer tool, all ground-only objects now display a shadow on the terrain layer they occupy.
- Added the layer tool to the map editor.
- In the map editor, it is possible to use the terrain brush on Natural Overhangs.
Ziplines
We said we were looking into making the new modular transport methods faction-specific, and here we are. Our nature-friendly and not-acrophobic beavers have learned how to use ziplines! To build a zipline network, you will need Stations, which serve as entrances for units, as well as Pylons and Beams, which allow you to route ziplines around buildings and the map’s topography. You don’t want your beavers to smash into walls, do you?
Traveling and carrying goods via ziplines is fast and convenient, allowing your beavers and bots to cover huge distances and elevation differences easily. Have your builders build a Station, a Pylon, or a Beam, and connecting it to the rest of the network is a matter of a few clicks.
New feature: Ziplines (Folktails-only). Beavers and bots use Ziplines like paths, except they allow for extra fast (+150% speed) travel above terrain. Each Zipline connection requires at least two Stations, and any number of Pylons and Beams in between. Each structure in the network can be connected to up to two other structures. All connections are two-way.
- New building: Zipline Station (20x Log, 40x Plank, 20x Metal Block, 700 SP). Bots and beavers use this to hop onto and off a zipline. A single line can be up to 30 metres long and have a maximum inclination of 50 degrees.
- New building: Zipline Pylon (20x Plank, 10x Gear, 10x Metal Block, 500 SP). Use these tall structures to route your ziplines around the settlement without colliding with terrain, buildings, and other ziplines.
- New building: Zipline Beam (20x Plank, 10x Gear, 10x Metal Block, 600 SP). The role of Beams is similar to the Pylons, but since they’re smaller and the zipline is hooked to the side, they help in tight areas with large height differences.
Tubeways
The Iron Teeth’s new transport method requires a little more careful setup than Ziplines but rewards you with extra flexibility and can be integrated into the city as it grows. Our industrious faction builds Tubeway networks, consisting of Stations serving as endpoints, and the 1x1 modules that connect them - Tubeways and Solid Tubeways. Notably, the modules are water- and badwater-proof, and they can be joined just like regular paths… but also vertically.
Tubeways are adaptive instead of using fixed shapes. If you attach a new line to an existing line, you don’t need to demolish an old module first and break pathing. Instead, the connected module simply becomes T-shaped. With Solid Tubeways, you can make the routes go straight up and even cross vertically. You may also place some buildings directly over the line.
- New feature: Tubeways (Iron Teeth-only). Beavers and bots use Tubeways to travel significantly faster (think: four times as fast) than on paths. Tubeways are built using the two 1x1 adaptive module types that adjust their shape as extra lines are connected. Tubeways can be submerged in water and badwater.
- New building: Tubeway Station (40x Plank, 20x Gear, 20x Metal Block, 700SP). This is the entrance to the Tubeway network. Tubeways can be connected from the sides or from the bottom.
- New building: Tubeway (2x Plank, 1x Metal Block, 500 SP). Use this module to create Tubeway lines. Modules placed next to each other connect automatically.
- New building: Solid Tubeway (4x Plank, 1x Metal Block, 600 SP). Use this module to create Tubeway lines that go upwards or are built directly below buildings and terrain. Modules placed next to each other connect automatically. Vertical intersections are also possible.
Balance
- Upward and Downward Power Shafts no longer require SP to unlock and only use Logs to build.
- Smelter now produces Metal Blocks twice as fast.
- Increased Mine’s and Efficient Mine’s Scrap Metal production for all recipes.
- Slopes’ and Stairs’ effect on range lines is now significantly lower.
- Excavator no longer needs Extract to operate.
Misc.
- Barriers placed next to each other now form a more seamless, larger structure, similar to how in-game fences work.
- Barriers no longer block relevant ground effects when placed in a diagonal line. This is communicated by the new visuals, as the corners of the barriers aren’t connected.
- Water Source is now Ground-only.
- On the toolbar, Spadderdock now comes before Cattail.
- Decluttered the bottom right corner of the screen by moving the version number to the game menu and removing the - Bug report button. And no, that does not mean the game won’t have any bugs anymore. You can still send bug reports at logs@mechanistry.com, report them on Steam, Discord, and Feature Upvote, and use the post-crash screen.
- Capped the number of entries in the in-game console to 20,000 characters.
- Added a keybinding to switch worker type in workshops (not assigned by default).
- Added a keybinding to reset camera.
- The game no longer displays a game over pop-up right after loading if there are no live beavers in that saved file, to begin with. Press F to pay respect without interruptions.
- Units now calculate the time needed to reach their destinations more accurately.
- On macOS, in keybindings, replaced Alt with Option.
- In key bindings, removed localizations for Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Cmd.
- Tweaked the format of descriptions for bonuses provided by buildings, such as carrying speed.
- Optimized explosion particles.
- Added the Build-a-Map Contest #4 winners to the in-game credits.
Modding
We are continuing our efforts to make creating mods for Timberborn easier and today’s release brings a few important changes. Expect more as the experimental build evolves.
- New features were added to our mods repository, such as: built-in code publicizer, zip files builder, and directory browsing controls.
- Added the Bootstrapper (global) context for the purpose of configurator installation.
- Removed PrefabConfigurators support which is now replaced with [Context] attributes and blueprints.
- Numpad Enter can now be used as a confirmation button in the Mod Manager.
- Timbermesh plugin now supports newer Blender versions.
- In Update 7, we continue the changes you could see in the last patches of Update 6. The remaining prefab components have been simplified and renamed to "Spec". There is still a "Fix prefab components" button inside our modding tools, which should help with the rename slightly (remember to make a backup, though). On top of that, Specifications are now called Blueprints and can have multiple components, also called Specs.
Bug fixes
- Fixed units breakdancing when traversing and rotating multiple sets of stairs.
- Fixed Alt-Tab and Shift-Tab (Steam Overlay) breaking keyboard input.
- Fixed the incorrectly looped animations for stranded beavers. They are already in a pickle, why make it worse?
- Fixed range indicators overlapping incorrectly.
- Fixed character attachments (such as builders’ hammers) not highlighting upon selection.
- Fixed a bug with most workshops animating too fast at higher game speeds.
- Fixed a rare situation with rubble disappearing after reloading the game.
- In the map editor, the “Relative height" brush no longer displays a green preview after reaching the map’s height limit.
- In the map editor, the irrigation now correctly reaches its final state without reloading.
- Selecting a construction site for a bridge or stairs now displays the range lines, similar to when selecting a building in construction.
- In the construction mode, warehouses’ and tanks’ entrances no longer light up.
- You no longer need to press Enter twice in dialog boxes with input fields, for example when renaming units or districts.
- Buildings that cut out terrain - such as Motivatorium - no longer also cut out shadows when being placed.
- Fixed beavers disappearing randomly while moving the camera.
- Key bindings in the map editor tools are now displayed correctly.
- Fixed a crash caused by deleting a District Center in an unfortunate moment.
- Fixed a crash caused by placing a District Center in an unfortunate moment.
- Restored sounds to buildings placed on high elevations.
- All area selection tools should correctly select objects on the layer chosen initially.
- Settlement Panel now correctly updates its numbers as new buildings are added.
- The mysterious “water columns” no longer appear underwater.
- Fixed the Farmhouse’s prioritized action working only on the prioritized resource.
We loved your reactions to the Update 7 First Look article, and today, we’re even more stoked to let you finally play with the new stuff. The patch is now live on the experimental branch! It features the long-awaited 3D terrain, the Iron Teeth’s modular Tubeways, and a big surprise - Ziplines, the special transportation method for the Folktails that we kept secret until now!
For a refresher on how to play on the Experimental Branch and access the new content, check out THIS FORUM THREAD.
Patch notes - 2025-02-05 (Experimental)
Your Update 6 saves should be compatible with Update 7, but as always, we encourage starting a fresh playthrough. This will help you understand how the new features affect the gameplay.
3D Terrain
While the in-game terrain has always been made of little 3D cubes, you could only place them one atop another. With Update 7, terrain blocks go on all Solid surfaces - roofs, platforms, and overhangs. This gives you much more flexibility in reshaping maps and choosing where to grow your fields and forests - and we reworked the layer tool to make working with 3D terrain easier.
Thanks to 3D terrain, you can finally cultivate crops on top of lodges and warehouses. You may create extra-compact hanging gardens where plants grow on multiple levels. You might hide your beavers’ settlement in a cave, with a river irrigating its green dome.
We also updated the layer tool. It’s now much easier to navigate and build vertically.
- Reworked the terrain to make it three-dimensional, allowing you to put terrain blocks on all Solid surfaces. As we mentioned in the First Look article article, we will expand this feature as needed.
- The layer tool now uncovers terrain in addition to buildings and water, allowing you to look inside areas like caves, tunnels, and complicated structures.
- When using the layer tool, all ground-only objects now display a shadow on the terrain layer they occupy.
- Added the layer tool to the map editor.
- In the map editor, it is possible to use the terrain brush on Natural Overhangs.
Ziplines
We said we were looking into making the new modular transport methods faction-specific, and here we are. Our nature-friendly and not-acrophobic beavers have learned how to use ziplines! To build a zipline network, you will need Stations, which serve as entrances for units, as well as Pylons and Beams, which allow you to route ziplines around buildings and the map’s topography. You don’t want your beavers to smash into walls, do you?
Traveling and carrying goods via ziplines is fast and convenient, allowing your beavers and bots to cover huge distances and elevation differences easily. Have your builders build a Station, a Pylon, or a Beam, and connecting it to the rest of the network is a matter of a few clicks.
New feature: Ziplines (Folktails-only). Beavers and bots use Ziplines like paths, except they allow for extra fast (+150% speed) travel above terrain. Each Zipline connection requires at least two Stations, and any number of Pylons and Beams in between. Each structure in the network can be connected to up to two other structures. All connections are two-way.
- New building: Zipline Station (20x Log, 40x Plank, 20x Metal Block, 700 SP). Bots and beavers use this to hop onto and off a zipline. A single line can be up to 30 metres long and have a maximum inclination of 50 degrees.
- New building: Zipline Pylon (20x Plank, 10x Gear, 10x Metal Block, 500 SP). Use these tall structures to route your ziplines around the settlement without colliding with terrain, buildings, and other ziplines.
- New building: Zipline Beam (20x Plank, 10x Gear, 10x Metal Block, 600 SP). The role of Beams is similar to the Pylons, but since they’re smaller and the zipline is hooked to the side, they help in tight areas with large height differences.
Tubeways
The Iron Teeth’s new transport method requires a little more careful setup than Ziplines but rewards you with extra flexibility and can be integrated into the city as it grows. Our industrious faction builds Tubeway networks, consisting of Stations serving as endpoints, and the 1x1 modules that connect them - Tubeways and Solid Tubeways. Notably, the modules are water- and badwater-proof, and they can be joined just like regular paths… but also vertically.
Tubeways are adaptive instead of using fixed shapes. If you attach a new line to an existing line, you don’t need to demolish an old module first and break pathing. Instead, the connected module simply becomes T-shaped. With Solid Tubeways, you can make the routes go straight up and even cross vertically. You may also place some buildings directly over the line.
- New feature: Tubeways (Iron Teeth-only). Beavers and bots use Tubeways to travel significantly faster (think: four times as fast) than on paths. Tubeways are built using the two 1x1 adaptive module types that adjust their shape as extra lines are connected. Tubeways can be submerged in water and badwater.
- New building: Tubeway Station (40x Plank, 20x Gear, 20x Metal Block, 700SP). This is the entrance to the Tubeway network. Tubeways can be connected from the sides or from the bottom.
- New building: Tubeway (2x Plank, 1x Metal Block, 500 SP). Use this module to create Tubeway lines. Modules placed next to each other connect automatically.
- New building: Solid Tubeway (4x Plank, 1x Metal Block, 600 SP). Use this module to create Tubeway lines that go upwards or are built directly below buildings and terrain. Modules placed next to each other connect automatically. Vertical intersections are also possible.
Balance
- Upward and Downward Power Shafts no longer require SP to unlock and only use Logs to build.
- Smelter now produces Metal Blocks twice as fast.
- Increased Mine’s and Efficient Mine’s Scrap Metal production for all recipes.
- Slopes’ and Stairs’ effect on range lines is now significantly lower.
- Excavator no longer needs Extract to operate.
Misc.
- Barriers placed next to each other now form a more seamless, larger structure, similar to how in-game fences work.
- Barriers no longer block relevant ground effects when placed in a diagonal line. This is communicated by the new visuals, as the corners of the barriers aren’t connected.
- Water Source is now Ground-only.
- On the toolbar, Spadderdock now comes before Cattail.
- Decluttered the bottom right corner of the screen by moving the version number to the game menu and removing the - Bug report button. And no, that does not mean the game won’t have any bugs anymore. You can still send bug reports at logs@mechanistry.com, report them on Steam, Discord, and Feature Upvote, and use the post-crash screen.
- Capped the number of entries in the in-game console to 20,000 characters.
- Added a keybinding to switch worker type in workshops (not assigned by default).
- Added a keybinding to reset camera.
- The game no longer displays a game over pop-up right after loading if there are no live beavers in that saved file, to begin with. Press F to pay respect without interruptions.
- Units now calculate the time needed to reach their destinations more accurately.
- On macOS, in keybindings, replaced Alt with Option.
- In key bindings, removed localizations for Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Cmd.
- Tweaked the format of descriptions for bonuses provided by buildings, such as carrying speed.
- Optimized explosion particles.
- Added the Build-a-Map Contest #4 winners to the in-game credits.
Modding
We are continuing our efforts to make creating mods for Timberborn easier and today’s release brings a few important changes. Expect more as the experimental build evolves.
- New features were added to our mods repository, such as: built-in code publicizer, zip files builder, and directory browsing controls.
- Added the Bootstrapper (global) context for the purpose of configurator installation.
- Removed PrefabConfigurators support which is now replaced with [Context] attributes and blueprints.
- Numpad Enter can now be used as a confirmation button in the Mod Manager.
- Timbermesh plugin now supports newer Blender versions.
- In Update 7, we continue the changes you could see in the last patches of Update 6. The remaining prefab components have been simplified and renamed to "Spec". There is still a "Fix prefab components" button inside our modding tools, which should help with the rename slightly (remember to make a backup, though). On top of that, Specifications are now called Blueprints and can have multiple components, also called Specs.
Bug fixes
- Fixed units breakdancing when traversing and rotating multiple sets of stairs.
- Fixed Alt-Tab and Shift-Tab (Steam Overlay) breaking keyboard input.
- Fixed the incorrectly looped animations for stranded beavers. They are already in a pickle, why make it worse?
- Fixed range indicators overlapping incorrectly.
- Fixed character attachments (such as builders’ hammers) not highlighting upon selection.
- Fixed a bug with most workshops animating too fast at higher game speeds.
- Fixed a rare situation with rubble disappearing after reloading the game.
- In the map editor, the “Relative height" brush no longer displays a green preview after reaching the map’s height limit.
- In the map editor, the irrigation now correctly reaches its final state without reloading.
- Selecting a construction site for a bridge or stairs now displays the range lines, similar to when selecting a building in construction.
- In the construction mode, warehouses’ and tanks’ entrances no longer light up.
- You no longer need to press Enter twice in dialog boxes with input fields, for example when renaming units or districts.
- Buildings that cut out terrain - such as Motivatorium - no longer also cut out shadows when being placed.
- Fixed beavers disappearing randomly while moving the camera.
- Key bindings in the map editor tools are now displayed correctly.
- Fixed a crash caused by deleting a District Center in an unfortunate moment.
- Fixed a crash caused by placing a District Center in an unfortunate moment.
- Restored sounds to buildings placed on high elevations.
- All area selection tools should correctly select objects on the layer chosen initially.
- Settlement Panel now correctly updates its numbers as new buildings are added.
- The mysterious “water columns” no longer appear underwater.
- Fixed the Farmhouse’s prioritized action working only on the prioritized resource.
Post edited February 05, 2025 by Miami_Mechanistry
