Book of Travels News

3 Month Tech Work Progress update

We want to thank you for your patience. As you are aware we had some significant issues that we needed to take time to solve that we estimated would take 3 months. We are now 3 months and 1 week after that and finally have some news for you as well as a new Beta Test Environment for you to use.

If you followed our Tech Blogs you would have seen that we were doing “things” but as it was all short comments aimed at internal users it may not have made a lot of sense. In essence, what we have done is change some of the core tech the game uses as well as streamlined some of our production pipelines. That main change with this is an update of the Unity Engine from a 2019 version to the newer 2021.3.3f1 version. If you look this up you will see that yes there are newer versions, however we needed one that offers Long Term Support as well as not jumping too far ahead from the 2019 version.

Updating the engine comes with several benefits. You should initially notice that the game *feels* a bit smoother but mostly it allows us to add some new technologies in that we can use in the near future to give you better gameplay, from things like a new Input System (affecting mouse movement and potential controller support) to new cinematic cameras and live real time events. Now this stage is complete we need to present you with an updated Road Map which will be coming in the near future that will explain what we will fix and change as well as provide some detail on new content that we know you are all excited to hear about and play.

As well as the engine update we have started to make other performance improvements by re-writing portions of code and changing some visual effects to give a higher frame rate. The area you will see the biggest change here is with water. We use a very detailed reflection system which lead to water being always on, which is very costly. We have now managed to improve this system so only a small amount of water around your character is rendered leading to a significant frame rate improvement.

Overall one thing we need to avoid is making things worse. The problem with game development, especially in small teams, is being able to test all of the content to make sure its bug free and smooth before it gets released. This is one of the benefits of early access but also one of its greatest curses. One thing that greatly aids in this is a Beta environment, and that is what we want to share with you today.

Please understand – a version released on the Beta environment will be more unstable than one released on retail. It will also be a lot more restricted. However it allows us to have people play test updated versions without impacting the majority of players. We have now prepared an updated version of the game and propped it on the Beta Environment for you to try out if you wish to take part in testing new features.

Also it is important to realize that we have only addressed underlying core tech issues and general performance. Many of you wait for specific issues to be fixed regarding quests etc and these are not delivered as part of this update but will be addressed soon.

Be aware of the following:

The Beta Environment is more unstable than retail.
The Beta Environment will be turned off and restart at random with no notice.
Characters created on the Beta environment will be wiped periodically – do not use this for long term game play.
Only 7 seats exist per region – therefore only a total of 28 people can play on Beta at any one time.
On Beta you will occasionally see content that is not fully known by other players. Please avoid Spoilers.

This gives us the following development pipeline so you can understand how we will release content going forward, where the quality of the game needs to be higher in each stage before it can be released to the next. This environment is Windows PC only.

Local Development environment –> Internal QA environment –> External Test environment –> Public Beta environment –> Public Retail environment.

Our goal is that a version will spend a week on the Public Beta environment before moving to retail. For those of you who play the current build on this Beta environment please be aware of the following issues:

Boats will periodically teleport you when they reach docks – this might lead you to landing in water and having to walk to land.
Some water has rapid wave effects (most notably in Siram Fields)
The game client might hang during logout. You should be able to close it with Alt+F4

You may join with the password BetaShore2022 - for details on how to join a Steam Beta click the "Discuss" button below.

Thank you for your patience,
Joe & the team at Might and Delight

Might and Delight come up with a plan to save Book of Travels

Book of Travels is a tiny multiplayer online RPG from developer Might and Delight (known for the likes of Shelter and Meadow), which didn't do particularly well at the Early Access release but now they have a plan to save it.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/04/might-and-delight-come-up-with-a-plan-to-save-book-of-travels

The Next Quarter and Beyond

[h2]Dear Traveller,[/h2]

It’s been seven weeks since we put out any sort of community update, not counting the set of patch notes that has gone out between then and now. We’ve been very busy with our work to get Book of Travels to a good place and the studio is going through some important changes to that end, both in terms of how we structure and organise our workflow and in terms of leadership.

You may remember our last communication in which we detailed our plans for the future development, and in broad strokes that plan still stands. What I want to do today is bring further clarity on what is being done and what is going to happen in the near future.

Just like I put it on the table seven weeks ago, we are in a development phase of going back to the foundation and untangling the messier parts of the game code. To that end we’ve called in help from old friends with large amounts of experience dealing with situations like ours. You’ll get more details about these additions of talent and what it means soon.

For now, know that we’re taking the necessary steps to ensure we get to a place where we can efficiently build a better foundation for Book of Travels to grow on.

So, you may wonder what these actions mean for you as a player. Here’s the deal:

For the next 3 months we’ll focus on more large scope tech issues.These won’t be specific bugs or glitches that are typically visible to the player, but more world encompassing system issues that need to be addressed in order for the game as a whole to be more fertile ground for us to start eradicating the comparatively smaller problems that actually are evident to the player.
During this time we may appear to be quiet or seem inactive. This is just because we will be very busy. Since the nature of these larger scale issues don’t always make them suitable for traditional patch notes, you won’t necessarily see a typical flow of those during this period. You will, however, notice the game getting updated in the Steam client, and if an update doesn't come with the traditional patch notes – now you know why.
After this period we’ll resume with the releasing of additional content. By this point we plan to have the game’s foundation solid enough to allow us to start growing it again. We have lots of cool things that we’re dying to get into your hands. The city of Kasa, for instance, is very close to being finished and we know you’re excited for the deeper character customisation tools that we’ve talked about in the past. But this doesn’t mean that we’ll be done with fixes, just that we can start doing both fixes and fun new content.

So that’s the gist of it. We have a plan and the means to execute it. I hope that this has been informative and clear, and that you share our confidence in the project’s future. As always, we’re enormously grateful for the patience and the excitement that you continue to show us. See you in Braided Shore!

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

Patch Notes April 5 (v.0.18.040422.32061)

Dear Traveller,
Today, April 5th 1pm CEST, we're rolling out a new update to Book of Travels and it contains a few changes and a plethora of fixes. Read on to find out exactly what is being adressed.

[h3]Additions & Tweaks[/h3]

You now get a better default server region assigned per default, based on your local time zone.
Implemented gameplay effects for some of the traits:
- Observant players will now see collectibles glimmer more often.
- Eager players will now run slightly faster.
- Restrained players will now have a chance of retaining a small amount of reagents when brewing tea of their wind affinity.
- Learned players will now retain a small amount of level progress on honed skills when unlearning them.
- Focused players will now brew tea quicker.
- Tough players will now have more stamina.
Added popups to the settings menu when you apply settings, and when you try to close the settings menu without applying the settings.
Added text to “What’s the plan?” under “Why early access?” in the main menu.

[h3]Bug Fixes [/h3]

Server and Network

Solved various issues around NPCs catching up with their pathing client side (NPC server desync).
Fixed various causes of the players saved position not being used when logging in.
Fixed a bug that created clones of NPCs in the login lobby when logging out.

Vehicles

Several issues around traveling with boats solved (boats sometimes disappearing when stopping or changing level, issues with syncing position of remote players when traveling).
Solved a case of the player not getting correctly attached to a vehicle (causing the screen to stutter as the vehicle moves, and caused movement issues for the player after disembarking).
Solved getting stuck on a boat if disembarking by walking to an interactable object.
Graphical vehicle details (effects, turning components etc.) should now update as long as it is running (and not stop a little moment before stopping sometimes).
Solved that the train locomotive was sometimes visually turned in the wrong direction.

Combat

The red combat circle now moves with the combat participants (as intended).

Movement

Players should no longer be locked after gathering reagents or petting animals.
Solved that you had to sit down before logging out to be able to log out.
Fixed a bug that enabled players to pick up reagents from far away when they were unable to move.
Fixed animal ports walk & running speed in water.

UI and Interactions

Fixed text load errors regarding signs. You should see less [CUSTOM POEM] on signs now.
Fixed a bug that caused skill cards to not show the correct amount of levels the skill can achieve.
Text boxes should no longer disappear if enough time has passed. They now only disappear when closed or when walking away.
Fixed issues with text boxes not scaling properly to the text if the text contained prose (centered and italic text).
Fixed a bug that caused the settings menu to take a long time to open.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to be blurred for a moment after transitioning between levels.
Fixed an issue where the endeavour progress markers where not correctly closed and resetted.
Fixed a bug that caused the endeavour UI to pop in on spawn.
Fixed a bug that caused the Emote and Skill parts of the HUD to disappear when opening a menu with a hotkey on the frame as clicking to walk.
Fixed a bug that caused the reagent UI to not display properly after logging out and in again.
Fixed a small visual bug that caused the starting equipment to be marked as newly obtained when dragging them to the inventory.
Pressing Tab no longer shows the name tags of invisible NPCs (such as ghosts).
You should no longer be able flip pages with the arrow keys while picking your start scenario in character creation.
Fixed a bug that caused scrolling tutorials to also zoom the map.
Fixed a bug that caused the 'Ghost Smoke' effect to remove the ability to use emotes.

Events and Endeavours

Fixed interacting with endeavours sometimes does not start the progress.
Fixed an issue where endeavour progress was not correctly added.
Solved an issue with social endeavours where the progress icons were not displayed.
Solved an issue with social endeavours where the player would slide away.
Solved an issue with social endeavours where the first interaction did not count towards the progress.
The Patterfoot dog should now properly give out its exchange item instead of only showing it off.
Solved a case of NPCs sometimes teleporting instead of walking/running.
Solved a case of NPCs sliding.
Solved a case of NPCs animating walk/run while standing still.
Solved a case of animals bobbing their heads up and down (when supposed to graze).

Skills and Traits

Fixed Veiled Gate portal not teleporting the player.
Skills are now properly set as unavailable when another skill is being cast. This fixed an exploit that could be used to cast skills with less reagents, less casting time and bypassing skill restrictions.
Fixed a bug that caused the Guise skills to not color skin-tight clothes properly (such as The Mosswalker's pants).
"Fixed bugs regarding the Dyslectic trait:
- Dyslectic characters can no longer read the Vellan language without the required skill.
- Dyslectic now affects readable signs.
- Dyslectic no longer affects tooltips for non-readable items."
Creating a fireplace should now cancel logging out.

Audio

Fixed a bug that caused mouseover sounds to play even when moving another UI element.
Fixed an issue where the endeavour interaction sound would not stop after cancelling or succeeding with the interaction.

Levels

Fixed a place in the Underbelly where you could fall through the terrain.
Made a non-interactable fireplace in Little Slip interactable.

Miscellaneous

Light should now properly affect transformed players at night.
Fixed a bug that caused graphics settings to not be properly loaded.
Fixed double text sign in Bat Saha.
Changed the dialogue of the Masterless key Collector to avoid confusion.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

March 8 Patch Notes (v.0.18.240222.31946)

Dear Traveller,
Tomorrow, on Tuesday March 8th at 1pm CET, we're rolling out a new patch to Book of Travels. Below you can read up on what it contains.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

Combat

Combat rule change: The attack counter now counts up even when defending. This solves the previously broken dynamic where a large number of weak NPCs could overpower a strong player, and that a player could defeat any single enemy by spamming attacks.
Solved more cases of faulty positioning in combat (mostly attacking when too far away from the opponent).
Visual tweak: Characters now rotate faster towards each other when putting their hands on their swords before combat.
Solved various triggers for the player exiting the hand on sword animation while still in the hand on sword action.

Movement

Several issues with remote player movement solved (Server desync of other players moving around in the world).

UI & Interactions

Fixed a bug that caused the top half of a players emotes to disappear.
A merchant's inventory will no longer be sorted after moving items to and from the receive box. The player can sort manually through the filter buttons.
A merchant's inventory will stay on the same page when moving items to and from the receive box.
Fixed a bug in the trade screen where trading an item you have duplicates of would always trade away the first instance of that item in your inventory. Trading should now always take the correct items from your inventory.
Fixed various trade bugs that caused duplicate items to behave strangely in the trader's inventory. (Ex. clicking one item would remove all items with the same name from the trader's inventory, and other bugs.)
Fixed a bug that caused stacked items in trade to appear invisible after shift-clicking them.
Fixed issues in trade where Shift or Ctrl-clicking stacks of items would trigger the "Cancel Trade" prompt.
Fixed a bug that caused the item ‘Willow Nut’ item to not have a description and disappear from the players inventory after logging out.
Eating from your inventory should now decrease the amount of a stacked item visually.
Fixed a bug that caused life petals to not show when regained by an endeavour.
For the skill ‘Flaring Crescent’, the spawned weapon now has a proper item icon in the inventory screen.
Fixed correct display of weekday in the debug menu.

Events

Teapots no longer disappear when entering a level by boat.
Fixed cases where NPCs interactions and dialogues did not switch properly from night to day.

Skills

The skill 'Flaring Crescent' is no longer available when the users inventory is full, since this would remove the currently equipped main hand item from the users inventory.
Improved server synchronization for the passive skill 'Tricks of the Messenger'.
Fixed some incorrect skill restrictions, like 'Hide in Water' requiring you to be on a road.

Audio

Fixed a but that caused the weather audio to keep playing after logging out.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight