Merchant of the Skies News

Hey Merchants!

To celebrate the autumn sale, we've put Merchant of the Skies on 20% discount.

Since Steam is rolling out the Award Nominations, please consider nominating our game for Labor of Love award. The game is still very much in active development: we've been working on it daily since July and plan to keep it that way until at least March 2020. Getting nominated would mean extra visibility opportunities for us, possibly enabling to work on the game even longer.

In any case, thanks for your support so far and we hope you have happy holidays ahead and do enjoy the winter.

Cheers,
Vladimir

Hey Merchants!

I've noticed that 1.3.1 patch on Friday opened up some issues with resource icon and map generation. I've made sure this is addressed today by pushing a small update 1.3.2:

• Resource icons are fixed (in some cases, they were not displayed / displayed wrongly)
  
• If you started a new world on Friday/Saturday, you had one island that you could not visit. This is fixed now
  
• Map island clicking issue on some resolutions fixed
  

Happy playing and let me know if you encounter something else!
Best,
Vladimir

Hey Merchants!

The 1.3.0 update is here! We did our best to improve the caravan/map navigation experience and enhance gameplay settings.



Here's a video summary of what's new:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


On a side note, we are looking for more German and Spanish community translators - if you like the game and are interested in helping out with making it available in your language, come join our discord.

• Added two new biomes
  
• Two new resource-producing islands added: spice / tea islands
  
• Two new buildable buildings added: spice / tea gatherer
  
• Windmill now also produces dyes out of spices
  
• Replaced sawmill sprite
  
• Replaced ship workshop sprite
  
• Non-central island biomes with shipwrights are guaranteed to have houses now
  
• EXPERIMENTAL: basic resource island are biome-independent now (can occur in red / lightblue / yellow biomes more frequently)
  

• Caravan ship will stay at the tradepost _until_ it sells all its items
  
• Caravans can now sell items at bazaars (all sorts of items, price is reduced but the chance to sell them is at 100%)
  
• Can click on any caravan ships on the map (in any mode) to adjust its routes
  
• Hotkey to add a new caravan point
  
• Improved gamepad controls on caravan route creation (island selection now focuses the map properly + b button now cancels island selection)
  
• Can pick caravan island targets from price panel
  
• Can pick caravan island targets from quicknav panel
  
• Can add caravan right from the map if you have spare unused ships in caravan office. See "new caravan" button on the bottom menu
  

• Letter delivery quests will attempt to pick the same biome
  
• Reduced storm event hitbox on the map
  
• Reduced letter quest exp reward from 120 to 60
  
• Remapped fast-forward button gamepad hotkey on the map to LB + RB (to be held at the same time)
  

• Quicknav panel added on the map: find important islands quickly
  
• Visit island button increased by 1.5x times. Is now static (stays under the island)
  
• Week summary panel remade
  
• By request, has clickable pause button on the bottom right menu
  
• Mouse pan to scroll the island view (just hold the left mouse button and try moving your mouse around)
  
• Can now hold spacebar to keep focusing on your ship, rather than pressing it once (you can also go back to ship by pressing Q key)
  
• Esc/ gamepad B button closes setting window
  
• Can now sort price panel by clicking on the resources
  
• Distance value added to price panel, can sort islands by distance left
  
• Can click on caravan panel cities to navigate to them (if caravan is selected - the caravan places a point there; otherwise your ship navigates there if you do it in the navigation view)
  
• Message above the island on map window when storage is full (every new day)
  
• Message above the island on map window when new stock arrives to trading post (every new day)
  
• Made the warning message a bit more explicit in a specific case: when you buy a new ship and _have_ to sell the old one if your caravan office is full
  
• Map camera will focus on the ship when you tow it back
  
• Improved island selection with mouse a bit (island info will not disappear in some edge cases)
  
• City name written at the bottom panel in the island view
  
• Added "focus on the ship" button on minimap (and the tooltip for it)
  

• Now shows the amount of ships stationed in caravan office
  
• Now shows the bank debt/investment
  
• Lighthouse shows its upgrade costs if not yet fully completed
  
• Shows resources produced by buildings
  
• Shows building upgrade costs on your own island (can be turned off in settings)
  
• Shows fuel price of recharge posts
  

• capped frame rate removal
  
• disable custom mouse cursor
  

• disable weekly summary
  
• skip docking animations
  
• mouse wheel sensitivity
  
• island scrolling speed
  
• disable showing building upgrade costs in island info panel
  

• Tea island: can gather tea with baskets
  
• Added missing scythes module (can now gather wheat / spices manually)
  
• Island resoruce gain effects are actually going to be displayed above map islands (and not move with a camera like before)
  
• Reduced red biome inn y coordinate by 1 (so that captain does not look afloat when visiting it)
  
• Adjusted red biome trade guild waypoints (so that captain can't walk beyond the island)
  
• If you rapidly press "E" when the map loads, you are no longer taken to giant island
  
• Fixed leaves particle spawn points in house sprite
  

That seems to be it for now. I know there are other QoL things left to do, but hopefully this patch will make your experience playing the game better. Keep reporting stuff / let us know your suggestions, we are happy to read them. Hope you enjoy the patch.

Best,
Vladimir

Hey Merchants,

Thank you for the feedback about the latest patch! In this small update, I wanted to address some issues:

• map scrolling improvement: the map also scrolls when you positiong the cursor on the side of the screen (even outside of the map itself; used to work only inside the actual map)
  
• caravan view bugfix: white line (as in ship movement) won't be drawn when you click on the map during caravan route plotting
  
• caravan line fix: some navigation lines were not being drawn properly on the map
  
• smoother map closing animation @ caravan office (keeps the maps-x position so it closes less awkwardly)
  

Stay tuned for a much more substantial UI/UX update in November. As usual, if you like the game, please consider leaving a Steam review :)

Cheers,
Vladimir

Hey Merchants! Thanks to your feedback, we were able to identify critical map related things that need improvement.

Here are some changes that I've pushed today:

• Use arrow keys to scroll map (but not move ship); ship movement kept as wasd if this is what you want instead of mouse
  
• Fixed infinite mode objective display in main menu
  
• Pan map by holding left mouse button
  
• No longer need to have full crew inside to demolish building
  
• Camera no longer focuses on ship when you leftclick and ship starts moving (you can still press space to focus on it)
  
• Ship route is shown on the map to make it possible to see where the ship is moving
  
• Arrow points out where your ship is on the map if you scroll the camera too far
  
• spyglass now expands view range as intended
  
• German language translation fixed (bread is produced from flour (Mehl), not from Wheat as described before)
  
• Added missing flour line
  

As usual, keep the feedback coming :) Thank you!

Best,
Vladimir