The holiday season is coming! Before being off for some days over Christmas, here is the next vonBiomes Update — as a special Xmas Edition! Now hotfixed with new Downloads! To theme things accordingly, this new version adds a winter variant of Old Forest, covered in snow. And if you play some Mechwarrior between the 23rd and the 27th of December, there is something.. magical happening ;)
🔥 UPDATE! Hotfix for vonBiomes 15
Sorry for the second notice, but thanks to a brave tester, two issues have been found in the latest release. Both issues have been fixed.
* Hotfix for smoke columns appearing when destructing some tree objects
* Update to the Burned Forest Smoke Effects
* Further safety implementation to kill various smoke effects at the end of mission
* Update to the new Fortress Tile for not having parts reappear in following missions
NEW DOWNLOADS
Join up on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/vonSeiten
I hope that was it ;) Sorry again for the update so short after release, but better fixed than broken on Christmas Eve:) Have some wonderful holidays, everyone! 🥂⛄
New in vonBiomes 15 Xmas Special Edition
New Biome:
Old Forest (Winter)
A winter-magic-wonderland to bring your mech lance to and stomp around in the snow! This is a variant of the Old Forest biome, that uses material functions to add snow to the custom tree materials and to have a new winter-themed biome in the game, which also fits perfectly to the season. Enjoy!
Mod Option:
Pixelator 3000™
To get the extra retro boost, you can enable this implemented Retro Filter, showing Mechwarrior 5 as old as never before! With Mod Options installed in your mod list, you can now play in an old-school pixel retro look. Enable the effect in the vonBiomes Mod Options and restart the mission — the initialization is done at mission load. You can also set the pixel scale to your liking. Standard is 320, which works well for me in 4K resolution.
What has been just an experiment actually looks and plays quite fine, and if you want to experience your Mechwarrior in neat pixel art, be sure to try it out!
More hand-crafted tiles!
I have added a range of new tiles and tile variants to the game.
- A Giant Tree
- A new Fortress Variant
- A Crashed Overlord Dropship
- An active Volcano
Find the new mission tiles across the Inner Sphere and in fitting Biomes!
(Quick Note: I have not seen all of them in-game yet, so let's keep fingers crossed they look also fine from the cockpit! If you encounter anything weird looking, please let me know:)
Interface Update:
The vonBiomes mission-screen interface is further optimized, mainly moving the name of the employer contact under the portrait, and removing 2 unnecessary headlines. This helps with the layout in multiple mission operations and in general makes better use of vertical space.
Fixes & Compatibility:
For better MercTech compatibility, I have removed a blueprint override of the base tree to avoid an issue with Merctech when shooting with PPCs. It is not much to lose for the mod and game (just an animation adjustment), but for MT players, this for sure is helpful.
Further fixes and improvements include
- Update to Old Forest Plant Set
- Rural Hills: Grass set update
- slightly reduced size of crystals on Crystal fields
- vonBiomes lighting: finetuning of night settings
- Hill Fortress tile: Repair bay placeholder removed for mod compatibility
- Salvage Operation Tile: made new metal beam objects for break condition fix
- NoSkyObjects Modifier for vonMissions Mod (to remove space stations in case)
- more minor adjustments and fixes for stuff
I did not have much time for testing (as usual;), getting out the new version was on my high priority list since on the 23rd, I need to be on the road travelling to the family for Christmas. I will be back on the 28th of December for more modding work and the next updates on vonMissions and vonHUD - or also for a hotfix if necessary.
But for now, I hearty wish you wonderful holidays, thank you very much for all the support you provided over the year for modding Mechwarrior to new heights, and your ongoing contributions to the work! Merry MechMas! ;) 🎄⛄🥂
Seasonal cheer abounds!
- Jonathan