It’s hard to believe Stars Reach has been developing out in the open for the last year, but Raph Koster’s Playable Worlds has reached that milestone – and it’s done it with a new patch for the pre-alpha testers.

“We’ve done an extensive network upgrade and we’re asking for your help to stress test it,” the studio says. “We’re going to experiment with flora and creature densities during these tests to get your feedback AND to assess impact with the new code….so that we know how far we can push it in the next update! Along with this massive infrastructure change, we have a handful of other improvements to go along with it, but the bulk of this particular update is the network changes.”

The so-called Cosmic Calibration update also includes tweaks to sunrises, sliding, fonts, seeds, invulnerability, portal access, battery costs, and the help menu, plus there are changes to mob distance rendering: “You can now see creatures a LOT further away than you could previously. (A good thing.) You can also sweep your mouse cursor around and find them that way, but that isn’t a permanent feature. (Too easy to find creatures in trees that way.) We’ll be fixing that so you can’t see nameplates that far away or when obscured in the future.”