Hextale

The first part of a visual and sound update: HexTale now sounds like itself, runes show themselves when they work, and the altar draws its circle on the ground. No more borrowed chimes, beeps and hisses at the mod's magic moments, and the Void's creatures have voices of their own. The workshop has a new look too: machine screens of walnut and brass, new models for the altar, the Hexcore, the jars, steles, furnace and lapidary, one family of essence signs and carved stone.

Added

• When a rune works, a flat hexagon of light opens round the spot and the rune's own glyph flares over it, in the rune's colour - bigger and brighter for bigger effects. Runes on your pickaxe and clothes never chatter: runes that keep things going (Haste, Mending, Radiance, Magnet and the like) only glint, near a player one sign shows at most every two seconds, and a rune on your own body draws a smaller, quieter sign. The client option "Rune signs" can hide your own signs or all of them.
• Runes show what they do, quietly: a Drill pickaxe's lightning strikes every block it takes, Smelting sets the blocks alight for a moment, Erosion, Passage and Quake crumble the stone away block by block, Forge and Gemstone lift hot sparks and gem light out of the rock, Cache sends the drops into your pocket as pieces of themselves, Insight sends a wave through the stone. On the other tools: a felled tree comes down log by log, saplings and seeds rise green, Chain Lightning and Flash strike as bolts, Withering draws the foe's life to you, Spoils glints gold. Each has its own soft sound, played once even when many blocks go at once.
• The same goes for the rest: clothes heal, cleanse and ward off fire in rising light, a Mirror robe strikes back as a bolt, boots cushion a fall with a gust; the grapple's Gravity drags its catch in along a stream of light; machines' runes rise hot, golden, green or as steam where they work; the Null Lantern and the Void Anchors bite with thin bolts.
• Learning a rune from a scroll or from research notes: the rune writes itself in the air before your eyes inside a hexagon, holds for a moment and flies into you.
• The altar's circle: when a ritual starts, a hexagonal sigil lights up on the ground, sweeping round from the north and drawing a line to every pedestal, stele and jar of the circle. Light runs along the lines into the altar - brightest from the pedestal or jar being drawn - and the sigil turns faster as the work goes on. A stalled ritual reddens it, a collapse cracks it apart, a finished one throws it outwards as it fades.
• The altar draws essence from its jars as living streams, like every other machine that draws from jars.
• A pedestal item drawn into the altar comes apart into pieces of itself: each piece tears out upwards, swings over in its own arc and whirls into the altar's item, leaving a few sparks behind. The item no longer crumbles as if it broke.
• A working circle breathes: sparks rise slowly off the lines of the sigil and motes of light gather into the work.
• Essence on the move can be seen: a pulse of light runs through brass pipes in the colour of what they carry (water too); pouring a bottle into a jar or filling it from one, and every device that pays from the jars around it (Binding Chalk, Rift Gates, the World Anchor, winding a Recall Charm), shows a living stream from the jar.
• The alembic: steam climbs out of the boiling flask into the head, the distillate drips from the beak in the colour of what it holds, and an item boiling down lets its essence rise off the water.
• The separator's drop through the stopcock falls where you can see it, not only hear it.
• The Hex Workbench shows its work: a craft lights the carved channels, a hexagon flares in every filled cell and the light leaps up from the middle; a crystal soaking into charge sinks into the worktop as a closing hexagon of light.
• The Hex Lapidary throws grit of the crystal and sparks off the disc with every stroke (redder when it runs hot), and a new facet catches the light.
• A melt settling in the Hex Furnace or the Hex Foundry has its own soft sound and a breath of hex flame; the foundry burns with the same fire, smoke and sparks as the furnace, and catches with a deep roar when it is built.
• Machines sound like they work: a running ritual, the Hex Furnace, the Hex Foundry and the separator have soft working sounds that fade in and out with them (a ritual's rises as it goes on and sinks when it stalls). The furnace and foundry no longer use the vanilla crackle.
• Rift Gates show their ring alive: a slow whirl of rift light spirals into a bright core while the gate is linked, dim and stuttering when its jars are dry, only a broken flicker when its partner is gone; it flares when something goes through.
• Pylons hum softly while they move things, and a Hextech Purifier breathes in while it draws the Thinning.
• Devices show their reach: an empty hand on a Null Lantern (or placing it) and on a World Anchor (or it waking) lays a hexagon of light on the ground out to the quiet zone or the held chunks.
• Ward Glass ripples with an amber hexagon where you push against it, and Veil Glass ripples pale where a creature comes up against it.
• A Recall Charm opens the rift's sign where you leave and where you land; a Soul Flask draws a creature in as a stream of light and pours it out again.
• The Hexcore draws the same circle on the ground as the altar, with streams from its jars.
• A rune on a stele stands upright in the air inside a hexagon instead of always facing the screen.
• The hextech hexagon everywhere: the sigils of pylons, plates, the funnel, the sawmill, the purifier, the skypack's jets and the diary's pictures are hexagons now.
• The Thinning's blight creeps into the ground with its own dark sound.
• The Research Table's orb is a crystal of light now: two faceted shapes of fine glowing lines turning against each other round a bright spark, glints circling it, and a hexagon turning round it while you draw.
• Pylon links show as fine lines of light hanging between the gems, with pulses running out along them the way things will go; the Sorting Matrix's lattice of lenses is joined by glowing edges that light up as it reads what passes.
• Drinking a bottle of essence shows each gift it gives: fire, water, light, life and metal rise round you in their colour, air and shadow whirl round you, earth crumbles under your feet, spark strikes the ground. Unknown essence leaves a murky haze.
• A Binding Chalk figure closing runs light round its line from end to end, then the whole figure glows.
• A new compound forming in the Lab Bench's flask flashes in its colour, and a hexagon opens round the flask.
• A Chem Burner lights with a whoosh of flame out of its window and a puff from the flue; a Pink Brazier bursts into pink fire; both leave a curl of smoke when they go out.
• Waking a block with hextech dust opens a hexagon of hextech light on the ground round it, a rune rising over it.
• Stone drinking essence under a drain valve: the drops sink into it, a hexagon of the essence's colour flares on its top and warm sparks rise off the new magic stone - no more crumbling as if it broke.
• A pump's stroke draws the water in from every side; a sticker put on a jar ripples over the face in its colour; a crystal soaked into a Crystal Battery comes apart into pieces that whirl into it, and the battery feeds a Hex Workbench through a thread of light.
• The Void's roads have their moments: when six anchors hold a breach, cold streams run from each into it and a hexagon locks round it; healed land opens a hexagon of life over the spot.
• Every rune that works now makes a soft sound of its own - a short breath of energy and a low pulse - on tools, clothes, machines and gadgets alike.
• Learning a rune from a scroll or from research notes has its own sound: an ink stroke and the knowledge settling in.
• Voidlings and void mites have their own voices: a dark clicking chitter, their hurt and death cries, a voidling's snap and claws, mites crawling, clinging on and being shaken off.
• New sounds for a crystal humming (Crystal Battery, dormant hextech, Hex Workbench, Hex Lapidary, Nullstone, the pickaxe's Reveal), the Hexcore's strikes, a Dust Charge sparking up to its burst, unstable hextech thrown, a burner or brazier going out, water flashing into steam, and choosing or being refused in the diary, the research board, the stele and the Lab Bench.

Changed

• The drain valve, pump, separator drops, brush strokes, ink on the research board, the alembic's simmer, the Miasma Vent, the still's and lab bench's drops, the loupe's lens and arm and the tank's glug were remade: darker and softer, no squeaks, plucks or hiss.

• Rune chalk, the research board's ink and the loupe's lenses no longer climb in pitch like notes.

• The Essence Jar is a real jar now: a round glass body smaller than the block, rounded shoulders, a narrow neck tied with twine and a cork. Its tag hangs from the neck.

• The Rune Stele stands two blocks tall: a stone slab with a carved channel and a ring head where the chosen rune turns. Steles placed before grow their top when there is room.

• The Hex Lapidary is a walnut treadle bench like the workbench with a big grinding wheel standing on top in a walnut frame. The crystal sits in a brass clamp in front of the wheel, the cutting disc is mounted on the wheel's side, and a belt runs down to the treadle's flywheel under the bench; wheel and flywheel turn while you grind.

• The Greedy Funnel is a real funnel now: a nullstone cone narrowing from a brass-cornered rim down to a brass spout, with brass seams down its corners and the shadow vortex turning in its mouth.

• New look for the Pedestal: a slender column of magic stone on a stepped octagonal foot, a faint rune seam glowing deep in the cut of its fluted shaft, an aged brass collar and a shallow brass dish with a carved rim. The glowing blue cubes are gone; the item now floats just over the dish.

• New look for the Hex Workbench: a craftsman's bench of walnut and brass instead of a stone slab with a neon grid. The 3x3 grid is inlaid in thin, darkened brass into a thick walnut top, the legs stand in brass shoes over a lower shelf, a saw and a mallet hang at its side, and a large hextech crystal in a diamond-shaped brass setting at the front is the only thing that glows.

• New look for the Hextech Altar, the heart of the circle: a stepped octagonal dais of magic stone that spreads past its block, a column of four slim pillars caging a glowing hextech crystal, a wide stone table with a brass rim and a glowing lens, and four brass claws cupping the turning rings from below. The item floats higher, inside the rings, and the glowing cubes are gone.

• The Hexcore is the altar grown into a massive cradle: three wide stepped tiers of magic stone, four buttresses with channels of carved light running up into a crown, a glowing heart caged under the crown, and four big brass claws holding the floating matrix from below. Its steps can be climbed, and the ritual's ground sigil keeps clear of them.

• New look for the Hex Furnace: a kiln of warm fire bricks on walnut posts with brass shoes, a brick crown with a brass chimney and an arched, brass-framed mouth under a small crystal keystone. While it burns, the fire glows in the mouth, the keystone lights up and smoke and embers rise from the chimney; the neon rim is gone.

• The essences are now one family: each is a drop of living essence in its own colour with its sign glowing inside, drawn at a finer 32 px scale. The signs are the same ones the screens show.

• Essence Jars wear a small paper tag on twine with the essence's sign instead of a big card over half the glass.

• Seven items that all looked like the same violet stick got their own shapes: the Synthetic Crystal is a cluster grown on a brass seed plate, the Rift Link Crystal a crystal broken in two halves that still hold to each other, the Clouded Crystal a heavy dark lump with a cloud inside, the Void Shard a sharp black sliver with a glowing crack, Void Chitin a ridged plate of shell, and the Scroll of Oblivion an ash-grey scroll with a violet seal. The Hextech Crystal keeps its look.

• The 22 essence signs are redrawn as one set, like stamped emblems: the same bold outline, the same light from the top left and the same amount of detail. Every essence keeps its subject (a flame, a sun, a skull, a paw...), so you know them at once, but water is now a breaking wave instead of a drop inside the drop, and the pale and dark essences show their signs more clearly. The drops, the screens and the jar tags all use the new signs; the tags print them like a woodcut stamp, so no sign turns into a dark blot.

• The Essence Sticker is now the same paper tag on twine as on the jars, with the essence's colour stamped on it.

• Carved magic stone instead of rings and spirals: Chiseled Magic Bricks show the earth rune raised in a sunken panel, Whorled Magic Stone carries a quiet band of carved hexagons between plain courses, calm enough for a whole wall, and the end of a Magic Stone Pillar carries a clean carved cog.

• The end of a Stripped Magic Log now looks like a real log end with growth rings and a drying crack, and the Magic Trapdoor is a pale wooden hatch with a hexagonal window instead of a die.

• Chalk marks and chalk figures look hand-drawn now: wobbly rings with gaps and chalk dust instead of clean drawings.

• The machine screens are made of walnut and aged brass now instead of a flat dark plate: wooden boards in a brass frame with riveted corners, the name on an engraved brass plate, slots and tanks sunk into the wood, product slots in a riveted brass ring and buttons with brass rims. The Research Table and the diary keep their own look.

• The Hex Lapidary shows the crystal as a cut gem: flat facets that trade the light as you turn it, a bright table and a glint now and then, instead of a smooth gradient.

• The Lab Bench shows how much of the compound is in the flask as liquid in a graduated glass tube, and its purity on a scale with a brass mark at what the topic needs, instead of small numbers (the numbers are in the tooltips). When there are more topics than fit, the topic grid scrolls with the mouse wheel and no longer covers the open topic.

• The coil under an Impulse Plate's lid is a glowing cog now.

• Outlines and collision follow the models: what you aim at, click and stand on is the shape you see, not a box that is too big or too small. The Hextech Altar, the Hexcore, the Hex Furnace, the Hex Lapidary and the Pink Brazier reach past their own block, and there they can be aimed at, clicked and mined too (the Hexcore's tiers, the altar's dais, the furnace's chimney); a block put into such a spot simply takes its place.

• The Hexcore's claws are slimmer with tilted knuckles, and its ribs sit closer to the cradle.

• The Hex Furnace works three times quieter.

Fixed

• The Skypack's jets, the Levitation Plate's column and the Void's breath no longer tick each time their sound loops.
• The gem bezel on the Hex Workbench no longer flickers.