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Goanna v0.13.0-alpha

You can say a chat line instead of typing it, and chat from a controller. Starting a world with the recommended materials now gets the newest ones, and the AI game master can give named and enchanted items, put buildings in the world and have its characters build them.

Chat

  • Voice typing. Hold T, speak and let go: the words appear in the chat box unsent, read aloud says them back if it is on, and Enter sends them. A quick tap of T opens chat to type, as before. Speech is turned into text on your own computer by Whisper; nothing is sent anywhere. The speech model (57 MB, or 181 MB for the larger one in Settings, Audio) downloads the first time you use it. The microphone is open only while T is held. It has been tried with synthesised speech, not yet with a real microphone.
  • Older processors. Voice typing needs a processor with AVX2, which most PCs from 2013 on and the Steam Deck have. On one without it, holding T does nothing more than open chat.
  • Escape closes chat with one press. It took two.
  • Chat from a controller. D-pad up works like T: hold it to speak a line, tap it to open chat. In the chat box, A sends the line and B closes it. On a Steam Deck, the Steam keyboard (Steam and X) should type into the box. Tried only with simulated button presses, not yet on a real controller or a Deck.

Materials

  • Recommended means the newest. Starting a world with the recommended materials first downloads the newest version of that game's materials if a newer one is out, showing the download; pressing Start Game again plays with the installed ones instead. Before, the world got whatever version happened to be installed, which could be the old blurry baked maps rather than the sharp authored ones. Old maps left in a world by an earlier version are cleared as it starts.
  • The bundled materials install however Goanna is started. A release found its own Mineclonia materials, and Luanti's base textures, only when started from inside its Goanna folder. Started from a desktop shortcut, Steam or another folder, it never installed them and played with an older pack or none.
  • Material updates are on. The Download material updates switch (Settings, Updates) starts on for everyone with this version, including anyone who had it off. Some had it off without choosing to: one of Goanna's tests could overwrite a player's settings when run on their machine. Turn it off again there if you want it off.
  • Overlaid and combined textures get their own relief. A texture made by laying images over each other, combining parts or turning one, such as Crimson and Warped nylium's sides or the chiseled bookshelf's front, now draws each part with that part's authored maps, in the right place and the right way round. Before, the whole face took the first image's maps, or none.
  • Paintings show their pictures. Mineclonia's paintings drew as plain blocks of wood.
  • Still to come for Mineclonia. The fix for iron, gold and netherite tools whose wooden handles shine like metal is not yet in a published pack. Mineclonia's pack stays 1.3.1 for now.

Read aloud

  • Every line is heard. A line that arrived while another was being read, such as the server's reply to a command, was shown but not spoken; lines now wait their turn. Turning Read chat off and on again no longer reads out what came while it was off.

Experimental

  • The game master knows what the world holds. It searches a catalogue of the game's items, creatures, enchantments and structures instead of guessing names.
  • Rewards. It can make an item, with a name, a few lines of description and, in Mineclonia, enchantments, and leave it near a player, in a chest, or have a character carry it over. A reward is never put in your inventory; you choose whether to pick it up. Rewards have their own budget, separate from fights.
  • Buildings. It can put up a building it designs or one of the game's own, and order a character to build one node by node while you watch. It never builds on protected ground, where players have dug or built, or on anyone, and undoing a building puts the ground back. Buildings are off unless the server's operator turns them on (goanna_director_structures), and a world started from Goanna's menu has no way to turn them on yet. In Mineclonia, the temples, huts and shipwrecks come without their loot.
  • Easier for a model to use. The game master's tools were reworked so a model calls them correctly more often: one tool per kind of order, the same words for the same things throughout, and a short brief when it connects. A model that only voices characters can be given just those tools. See docs/agents/director.md.