First off, there will be no preview today, all of the changes in the update require the server changes which will not be released until tomorrow's update so there is no need.

Housing

We are excited to finally release the first version of housing! Players can unlock their own personal house by buying a housing deed from Brico and can upgrade the size of their house by purchasing subsequent deeds. Players can "move in" their house to a building either in the ruined towns or one of the new residence buildings in a player settlement. Players can unlock new house furniture recipes from Brico which can be built at the new construction station. Furniture can be placed, moved and picked up at your convenience.

Players can relocate their house to a new location instantly if their house is totally empty OR the new location is within the same claim. If the house is not empty the move will take some time and their house will not be accessible until the move is complete. If you want to move your house to another region currently the house must be empty, but this will change in the future.

For the release of this update there is just a small taste of content, but we have a lot more coming over the next few weeks. From tomorrow you will have access to 3 sizes of house deeds, 5 tiers of small residences for settlements and 2 sets of furniture. There will be more of all of these coming soon, especially larger residence structures.

The house permissions needed to be cut down due to some bugs we weren't able to get fixed yet, but we are hoping to re-enable the claim and settlement permission groups for housing asap. Additionally with the housing changes we giving a buff to the total amount of supplies and tiles claims can unlock as well as slightly lowering the maintenance cost of larger claims to give larger settlements the ability to build more housing districts.

Help Others Craft

Another change which is simple, but powerful is the ability to start a craft and allow others to help you with it. With this change, you can now start crafts which you don't meet the level or tool requirements for if you allow others to help. The owner of the project is the only person who can collect the final result. This opens up many cool opportunities for interesting interactions, such as:
- Hanging out at a crafting station and helping anyone who is in need to get some extra EXP
- Having a expert Smith craft your tool upgrade for a tip and making sure you receive the potential rarity upgrade without being scammed
- Having the whole claim pitch in to power craft the large stack of something
This system is far from done, we have many more ideas which can build off of this and we are excited to see what you come up with as well!

Third Party Tools & Game Data

We’ve recently gotten a lot of questions regarding our policy on third party tools, especially as they relate to which data is publicly accessible and whether they violate our terms of service.

We’d like to provide some clarity on the rules and our intentions.

Third Party Tools

(This section may be technical and is geared towards developers)

We designed BitCraft Online and the server-side engine it runs on, SpacetimeDB, to be very amenable to third party tools and API use.

In general, it is not a terms of service or community guidelines violation to use the game’s APIs to access data which is publicly accessible or queryable. As the game developer we are able to control which data is publicly accessible (see below).

Currently, due to an imposed temporary technical limitation, the only way to access the game’s data is to use your player’s access token to access game data. Additionally, the game server currently only allows you to read data in the region that your player is in.

Consequently, we have had players asking whether they can use player tokens to build tools that use their player’s token or other players’ tokens to access game data. Here are a list of guidelines to follow:

Permitted Actions (Not Terms of Service Violations):
- Using your own player's access token to read game data.
- Building a tool that uses your player's access token to read game data.
- Accessing game data with multiple accounts if you have purchased multiple copies of the game, provided these accounts are not piloted in an automated manner (no botting or Multi-Client Input Broadcasting).

Prohibited Actions (Terms of Service Violations):
- Sharing your token with another player: This is considered "account sharing," which is strictly prohibited in BitCraft Online. It is also extremely dangerous as sharing a token grants full access to your account, potentially leading to loss of your in-game possessions.
- Operating bot accounts.
- Building a tools that facilitates cheating or exploits game bugs.

With all of that said, today we're announcing a "verified developer program" for BitCraft Online!

Verified Developer Program

In order to avoid confusion or issues with the above, and to give developers a more convenient and verified way to register their tools with us, we are creating a Verified Developer program. Being a Verified Developer will give you access to a token which can be used to query data across multiple regions without having to do this player account dance or buying multiple copies of the game.

You can apply for the Developer Program here.

Data Accessibility

We intentionally chose to make almost all of the data in the game queryable by other players, at least initially. The data we’ve made public includes information about where resources are in the world, public chat messages, inventory contents, etc. Queryable data does NOT include personally identifiable information, personal information, etc. It only includes game information.

The motivation for this was to not initially restrict the types of tools that players could build. We have gotten feedback on all the ways this data can be used and misused as the Beta has progressed. At this point we would like to begin to pull back on which data is publicly queryable by players. We’d like to take a particularly close look at things like inventory data, resource location data that is not near your character, etc.

We believe this will be an incremental and ongoing process as we decide which data should be private, without eliminating the usefulness for third party tools.

Note that although we intend a lot of data to be query-able, it is strictly against our Community Guidelines to use that data to harass other players or build tools for cheating / botting. Doing so you can face severe disciplinary action, which may include, but is not limited to, a permanent ban from BitCraft Online. Our dedication to fostering a fair, enjoyable, and safe experience for all players.