You’ve survived five days of torture, whether it be work or school.  You’ve made yourself a cup of coffee and have settled into your nice, comfy chair – all ready to relax and enjoy the short period of weekend solitude that awaits you.  Right?

NO, of COURSE not!  Mekanism v8 is out!

It’s been a big release for me.  3/4 of a year in the making, I’m happy it’s finally done.  There is so much in this release that there is no way I will be able to put it all in one changelog.  I’ll do my best, though.

Content:

• Flamethrowers – deadly, hydrogen-powered, fire-shooting, ore-smelting, forest-burning pieces of steel.
• Fusion Reactors – ultimate end-game energy production.
• Lasers – high-powered laser beam emitters, capable of breaking blocks and cooking chickens.
• Laser Amplifiers – control your lasers’ energy transmission and beam direction.
• Laser Tractor Beams – store the items your lasers mine.
• Factory Installers – upgrade machines to factories and factories to higher-tiered factories without breaking a block.
• Gauge Droppers – quickly swap fluids and gases from machines’ GUI gauges.
• Lithium – a brand new resource, created by evaporating Brine.
• Hohlraums – the key to igniting Fusion Reactors.
• Filter Upgrades – upgrade your Electric Pumps to filter out heavy water for Deuterium production.
• Solar Neutron Activators – advanced, neutron-absorbing machinery for Tritium production.
• Energized Induction Matrix – massive, modular, end-game, multiblock energy storage.
• Oredictionificator – standardize a single kind of dust, ore or ingot for your resource collection.
• Baby Skeletons – you heard me.

Enhancements:

• Brand-new upgrade system – upgrading never felt so good.
• Redesigned side configuration menu – configure not only which sides items can enter, but also energy, gases and fluids.
• Redesigned Seismic Reader GUI – now much cleaner and user-friendly thanks to Archtikz.
• Enhanced Logistical Transporter algorithms – now much more server-friendly and work better with Bins.
• Refactored machine recipe system – now completely optimized and more easily expandable for future additions.
• IMC recipe API – allowing for much easier integration by other mod developers.
• Digital Miner improvements – filter-based replace blocks, more filter-unique options, dynamic visual of the miner’s range, more user-friendly interface.
• Teleporter redesign – now with a beautiful and advanced new interface and frequency-based teleportation, with private and public frequency networks.
• Refactor of Salination Plant – now called Solar Evaporation Controller, much more CPU efficient, and capable of processing different resources.
• Better NEI modules – neater, easier to interact with, and better showcasing of Mekanism recipes.
• Better upgrade support – all processing machinery now can support upgrades, allowing for faster 5x ore processing.
• Revamped multiblock system – all multiblocks now follow a unified framework, allowing for easier future additions and better code efficiency.
• New multiblock features, including universal connected textures and multiblock creation animations.
• Config-based machine disabling – server-based machine configuration to allow for disabling of certain machinery.
• Improved sounds – machine and player-based sounds have been redesigned and improved to allow for seamless looping and better quality listening.
• Refactored sound system – Mekanism’s sound system has been completely recoded to follow along Forge standards, meaning “sound mufflers” will now work on anything Mekanism.
• Many more minor enhancements and additions I’m sure you will discover.

That was a mouthful.

Warning: Mekanism v8 contains some major changes that may corrupt some individual Mekanism machines or items.  Please back up your world before you update, or preferably, start a new world before playing with v8.  I will not be providing support on GitHub for transition issues.

I hope you all have as fun with v8 as I did developing it.  I can’t take all the credit, though – unpairedbracket has been an unbelievable help this release, and is the brains behind the new revamped recipe system, sound system, connected textures, lasers and Fusion Reactor.  Credit for the assets go to both my artist Archtikz and I.

Over the past few weeks, aside from finalizing this release, I’ve also been planning out what content will be going into v9.  I can’t promise it will be nearly as massive as this update was, but I have some pretty cool ideas.  I’ll keep you posted.

Have fun!