Book of Travels News

[h3]Dear Traveller,[/h3]

We hope you're having a fantastic holiday season. As you know, it's been over a year since we launched Book of Travels into Early Access and the world got to explore this world of Braided Shore that we've worked on for over half a decade. And even though there's been bumps in the road we are still fully committed to making Book of Travels the best game that it can be. More importantly, we see how much you - our players - share our belief in our vision for this world.

We appreciate you very much. And as a small token of that appreciation, we're releasing piece of downloadable content that we call 1 Year EA Anniversary Digital Goodies.



[h3]A Bundle of Book of Travels art[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2223580/Book_of_Travels__1_Year_EA_Anniversary_Digital_Goodies/

This free fan kit art bundle includes a collection of pieces of art, music tracks, wallpapers and more. It’s a small token of our appreciation of your continued support and passion for Book of Travels, and something to hold you over while you wait for the next big in-game content drop. Here's a download link to a zip file with the contents, if you'd rather have it that way!

2 BoT Cover images, Digital art (HD):
The First Cover.png
The Second Cover.png

3 Hand painted Forms, Digital Art (HD)
The Crested.png
The Goodward.png
The Veiled.png

4 Hand painted Digital Art (HD):
Kettem Rajh.png
Kettem.png
Maisu.png
Saida the Sea Fury.png

1 Timelapse video:
Painting Ketten Rajh.mp4

Music:
Two free songs from the Soundtrack as MP3s:
Paths (Main Theme).mp3
The Elden Road.mp3

1 Map:
A new map of Braided Shore (Updated artwork, HD)
Wallpapers for desktop and smartphones - a selection of beautiful and hand painted art from the world of Book of Travels: Maps, art with forms and creatures you can play or meet in the game, items, clothes, food and much, much more:
14 x 1080 x 1920 (smartphone)
7 x 1920 x 1080 (desktop)
7 x 1920 x 1080 (desktop)
5 x 1920 x 1200 (desktop)
6 x 2160 x 1920 (desktop)

We hear from a lot of you that you'd love to get some high definition Book of Travels art in bulk, so we hope that this will come as a nice little surprise. Again - thank you for being with us as we continue to grow and improve Book of Travels. You'll hear from us again soon!

May your tea never grow cold!

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

Good afternoon Traveller,

And a happy Friday to you! This is going to be a quickie, because we just wanted to put out a map of Braided Shore for you to do whatever you want with. Save it, use it as a wallpaper, a screensaver or print it or do absolutely nothing - choice is yours!



In a little while we'll all go home for the weekend but you can rest assured that we're working on very cool stuff for Book of Travels. In the meantime, stay magical and may your tea never grow cold.

Best wishes,
Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Minor engine upgrade to Unity version 2021.3.10 (previously 2021.3.3)
  
• Minor Text Changes on some Poems and new messaging around boarding vehicles
  
• New Server system first trial using smaller "Headless Build" creation
  
• Added Rich Presence for Steam and Discord
  
• Improved performance of level prop visual fading
  
• New Vehicle UX for boarding and resting whilst travelling
  
• Players can now look at their map and inventory without accidentally triggering jumping off of the train
  
• Vehicle smoke now varies based on whether a train is stopped, accelerating, decelerating, or moving at full speed
  
• Station masters and boat hands on train platforms and docks now announce upcoming vehicle departures
  
• Newly added boats horns announce when a boat will depart soon
  
• Players now rest while riding trains and boats
  
• There are consequences for players who choose to ride boats in storms and jump off of trains
  
• The vehicle departure progress bar has been removed
  
• There are updates to how vehicles are implemented overall, that should result in a reduced number of disappearing and stuck trains
  
• Updated several map names.
  
• Added a unique description for every "Trade Good" item (around 800)
  
• Added a unique description for every "Shoe Equipment" item
  
• Proofread and polished in-game dialogue.
  
• Change to the way roads are handled – this will not yet be apparent to players but will allow more accurate road usage in the future.
  
• Keys in the Control Settings will now change based on your keyboard layout.
  
• The NPC “Resna” will now value Knot of Thankful Wishes to same price even when traded.
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed stuttering in Main Menu camera movement
  
• Fix for initiating combat
  
• Fixed issue where an NPC would give the player unlimited item duplicates
  
• Improved usability of screenshot section of the feedback menu
  
• Fixed a bug that caused map notes to not appear when pressing the note button in the map screen
  
• Fix to arrow marker so it no longer rises up when navigating with keyboard. Arrow marker will now disappear when clicking underneath the player's feet
  
• Fixed several places where you could walk through objects
  
• Players in Mist Keeper's Toe can now see themselves on the world map
  
• Fixes to occlusion culling in various areas
  
• Objects will now fade faster when camera is too close and when a player is behind objects
  
• Fix to reduce memory consumption over time
  
• Tricks of the Messenger will now be more accurate when walking on roads
  
• You can now zoom in and out with the camera again
  
• You can no longer offer items when there are no items in the offering window.
  
• Inventory will now be saved after making an offering.
  
• Fix to floating item icon at offering shrine when leaving.
  
• Fix to blurry clothing.
  
• Items added to the trade window will now always have the same value as the UI tells us.
  
• Fix for UI becoming stuck in front of some shrines.
  
• Various Text changes.
  
• Various performance tweaks.
  

[h3]Dear Traveller,[/h3]

It has now been 12 months since we released Book of Travels, the Tiny MORPG (MMO-Lite) to early Access on Steam. Whilst initial momentum was beyond expectation, seeing us hit the top 10 most popular games on Steam, server instability and a number of frustrating bugs showed us that we had some issues we needed to solve.

The first thing we looked at was the team. It may have not been explained very well at the time but we essentially took the team that had made the very successful single player focussed Shelter series and asked them to deliver a multiplayer experience. It became clear, and was poorly communicated at the time, that we needed to re-asses the team and hire different competencies. This had additional impact on the Shelter 3 release and the on-going support for Meadow and is a challenge to solve whilst remaining an independent developer.

[h3]A new team[/h3]

The creative core and art direction was working well, but we needed different skills around multiplayer gameplay elements, server infrastructure and a different type of “production pipeline” to accurately release frequent updates for an MMO-Lite style of experience. Over the past 12 months we have hired a large number of engineering staff whilst keeping the majority of the art, stories and design the same, with the aim of improving on what we have. In order to deliver the existing Feature Set we have planned, and outlined as part of the new Road Map, some 7000 hours of development work remain ahead of us. This is before we add in things like bug fixes, design tweaks and adjustments based on feedback. Adding in a new Beta infrastructure allows us to playtest some of these new features early and work on fixes and tweaks as the features develop and ultimately will lead to cleaner update releases in the future (but we are not there yet).



[h3]The Pillars of Creation[/h3]

Part of the rethink of the Feature Set has led us to look at the games positioning in your gaming library, where MMO-Lite sits and what we offer that makes us stand out from other games on the market. Our key focus can be divided up into pillars which are: Survival, Exploration, Trading and Mystery. As we deliver DLC in the future (and PDLC where applicable) we will touch on these four pillars both as the core DLC for each pillar, but also a percentage of change in each of the 4 in each DLC. So, we may release a DLC focussed on Survival, but it will contain elements that touch the other 3 pillars.

[h3]Long Term Pricing[/h3]

Whilst many of our reviews comment on “what do I do?” the vast majority of our players have spent hundreds of hours in the game world with some spending in excess of 1000 hours. We will address the starting scenarios to better introduce players to the game world, even “holding their hands” for at least the first 20-60 minutes, but after that point the players will be free to explore and survive in a large and growing open world environment where dangers and mysteries lurk in unpredictable and often hard to find places. As content is released and the world grows, the number of “seats per server” will increase so the chance of encountering a player remains at the same level even though the world is larger. This growth is balanced against overall game client and game server performance that was addressed as part of our main tech rebuild (and is a constant area of improvement). To this end, the overall price of the game will increase as and when more content is added, the first of which is expected mid-November.

[h3] In Summary[/h3]

The launch was far from ideal, and we had lessons that we needed to learn. We have had a major rethink and addressed these lessons and remain committed to delivering the vast world of Braided Shore. Book of Travels has performed well enough for us to remain dedicated to it for the long term and we are pleased with the reception, the player reviews and the excitement we hear in our community. We have a lot to show you over the next 12 months and look forward to watching your journey.

May your tea never grow cold.
Joe.