Early 2018, a failed partnership with the XP cryptocurrency caused Forest Siege development to suddenly halt. Updates and progress stopped, the playerbase had started it's slow decline over the year.

Recently i discovered Forest Siege still has players, and as i have been further educating myself as a full-stack Node.js developer i now have a much easier time with Forest Siege development and optimization.

Forest Siege returns from the dead, with a major update containing several dozens of bugfixes, code and graphics optimizations, feature additions and the removal and replacement of the XP cryptocurrency.

Forest Siege is also making the switch from my "custom" versioning system to the Semantic Versioning system, as it is easier to understand on first glance.

0.0.4 Changelog:

         Additions:

1. SiegePoints (SP) - In replacement of the old XP system, SiegePoints have been temporarily adopted as a gameplay incentive.
2. Discord Rich Presence - Forest Siege will now dynamically display the user's activities and gameplay via a fancy Discord Rich Presence on the user's discord profile.
3. The Corvette Airdrop - Spend SiegePoints on an in-game dropship that delivers random items from the sky.
4. Bloodscreen effect - Upon health degrading below 50%, a bloodscreen effect will appear more and more vividly around the screen border, helping the player know they're taking damage. As some players forgot about the health bars and kept 'unexpectedly dying'.
5. Item selection glow - Items will now glow when hovered with the mouse, helping players engage with the environment at night and clarifying which items can-and-cannot be used.
6. Item selection border - Items now have an invisible 'border' surrounding them, this border expands the range in which you can click on, pick up, and interact with items. This especially helps for smaller items like Seeds and Sticks.
7. Better fire physics and realism - The Campfire's emitted flames/sparks and heat zone will shrink/expand visually and physically based on the amount of fuel within the fire, the audio will also adjust in volume as the fire's strength moves along time, fires will sizzle out instead of instantly disappearing.
8. Better post-processing - Visuals are now slightly more 'washed out' to better push the realism effect, as well as DoF changes, Anti-aliasing performance boosts and easier debugging tools for visuals.
9. Better grass - There's now multiple types of grass to push more variety in the map, as well as an increase in grass amounts and blending changes for the terrain textures to match the grass better.
Improvements:

1. Fixed the item handling system, you can no longer hold an infinite amount of items in your hand at one time.
2. Optimized code for the bush/farming system, lowering CPU load slightly.
3. Optimized code for the item and inventory system, lowering CPU load slightly.
4. Grass is no longer extremely wavy from the wind.
5. Slight change to the sleeping animations to help remove half-awake eye effects.
6. Movement speeds have been adjusted for all stances/scenarios, bushes will now slow the player down greatly if they are crouched. Crouch 'sprinting' is much less effective.
7. Replaced "Too Full" messaged with the ability to eat/drink further, even if one stat is full. EG: If your thirst is full, but hunger is not, you are still able to eat until both are entirely full, not only one stat full. The previous system felt limiting and as such has been removed.
8. Increased mouse sensitivity and improved 'input lag'.
9. Changed and added tips to the loading menu.
10. Improved main menu text colors/sizes for better readability.
11. Optimized main-menu to reduce GPU load.
12. Fixed axes and the ability to chop down trees.
Removals:

1. eXperience Points (XP) cryptocurrency - XP is no longer a part of Forest Siege, and has been replaced by a non-valued point system named 'SiegePoints'.
2. The Winter Skin - The game is now themed during the summer once again. This removal includes snowballs.
3. "Too Full" message from the hunger/thirst system, it made filling the player's stats a hard task and limited the stats system. This removal makes health regeneration more effective when full.
4. Starter storage & planter - Due to collision issues for the player

As a thank you to the Forest Siege players for staying and enjoying what was left prior to the past collapse, all players can use code "welcomeback" for 250 SiegePoints in-game. To redeem the code, enter the game and hit "P", the SiegePoints menu and store will appear, under the SiegePoints store you can redeem your code.