Too much to cover all at once, but to get beyond that I'm going to post some of the more interesting bits (mostly visible stuff / content) then trickle out the remainder over time probably mostly on Twitter (good for small stuff)
First of we just released Alpha build 2, based on engine v1.1.0, which together with Alpha 1 (that never did get its own news post) brings in 10 new modules and a bunch of other stuff. Good chunk of effort in there from our GSOC students, including an in-game NUI editor by @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi (shortcut key is F10) and the less noticable but hugely needed rendering improvements by @tdgunes
GSOC is doing great overall, midterms just finished and all three students are proceeding nicely
Note: that for the newest version you may have to delete "config.cfg" from any old game data directory to get updated input mappings for new and changed shortcut keys.
New modules:

First of we just released Alpha build 2, based on engine v1.1.0, which together with Alpha 1 (that never did get its own news post) brings in 10 new modules and a bunch of other stuff. Good chunk of effort in there from our GSOC students, including an in-game NUI editor by @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi (shortcut key is F10) and the less noticable but hugely needed rendering improvements by @tdgunes
GSOC is doing great overall, midterms just finished and all three students are proceeding nicely
Note: that for the newest version you may have to delete "config.cfg" from any old game data directory to get updated input mappings for new and changed shortcut keys.
New modules:
- BlockDetector - made by @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi as a product of a little weekend hackathon, adds a gadget that starts beeping when near a specific block types (was used to find easter eggs at one point)
- Books - ancient module, recently refreshed by @Waterpicker
- BuilderSampleGameplay - mostly a test / proof of concept by @Josharias to show that the engine can be run without Core (so no inventory, health, toolbar, etc - those have been extracted from the engine and placed on Core for now) - useful in case somebody wants a really bare state to start something from
- DamagingBlocks - product by a group of students from Porto (Portugal) that makes lava ouchy! Could be extended further to also damage items dropped into lava and such
- DynamicCities - GSOC project by @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy - procedural generation of cities over time, responding to population growth and other factors
- GooeysQuests - very cool effort from @Florian making our mascot @Gooey a sort of in-game guide that will show up and offer the player quests at various times
- PotentialEnergyDevices - another utility module from @Josharias for his survival gameplay
- ShatteredPlanes - neato new world type from @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy consisting of deep canyons, floating islands, and so on. This world is compatible with JoshariasSurvival as well!
- StaticCities - the "old school" version of cities
- StructureTemplates - used for making structures from templates (surprise!), such as in GooeysQuests (the placeholder dungeon)
- At least two major performance improvements merged. Just one of them increased FPS by 10 on one mid-range system and made the game playable on "Mega" view distance, which pretty much has just been for testing so far!
- Deer now auto-spawn as the world generates with WildAnimals enabled
- More EXPLOSIONS WOO! Physics optimized some and TNT improved, fuses now also available
- We're a chapter in a book-sized report made by a group from Delft University of Technology
- New tutorial work on world generation (a chapter on world plugins), and our asset system
- The applet version of Terasology has been retired
Applet support is being phased out and the newest browsers will no longer work with them