Research Story News

A couple of hotfixes for bugs in the new update! Thank you all for your reports and patience.
- Fixed duplicate quest for 'Beginnings of a Bestiary II'.
- Fixed a crash that happens when releasing a creature that is assigned to a pen.

Miki

[h2]✨20% off during the Steam Winter Sale[/h2]
First up - to celebrate the holiday season, Research Story will be 20% off for 2 weeks, until Jan 4, 2024!

[h2]✨v0.7 Update: New features and content[/h2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POfu0ODIRdU
[h3]New research content! 📖[/h3]
- Added 16 new researchables: 4 creatures, 4 plants, and 8 fish for players to discover!

• Creatures: Weedip, Pumouse, Glaciroll, Stone Golem
• Plants: Rawbulb, Grubulb, Bassbulb, Sulflora
• Fish: Mud Skitter, Lumifish, Cactus Puffer, Flatfish, Sharpfin, Rainbow Skitter, Bonefish and Lava Puffer

- Added Meaty Bait & Nutty Bait.

- Added unique creature behaviours

• Unique behaviours added for some of the new creatures. This expands on existing research methods that requires players to observe a 'resting' creature.
  
• During certain behaviours, such as Foraging and Hiding, creatures will not be interested in the players' Feed Bowls. Wait for the creature to start wandering again before attempting to tame them!
  
• Weedip foraging:
  

[h3]Cave Variations 🗻[/h3]
- Mine Floor types has been added as habitats for the new flora and fauna:

• Tunnel
  
• Circular
  
• Weedy (only in Cave Biome)
  
• Workshop (only in Lava Biome)

[h3]Winter Festival ⛄️[/h3]
We've added the last festival for the year, the Winter Festival! In this festival, players can compete with townsfolk in the Snowball Frenzy minigame.


As with all festivals, unique festival dialogue and Festival Decor have also been added.

- New Decor:

• Snowball Frenzy Memento (Snowball)
  
• Snowball Frenzy Trophy (Snowball)
  
• Snowball Frenzy Memento (Target)
  
• Snowball Frenzy Trophy (Target)
  
• Snowglobe (Tree)
  
• Snowglobe (House)
  
• Snowflake Rug
  
• Snowflake Chair
  
• Fir Frog Plush
  

[h3]3 New OSTs 🎹[/h3]

• A Very Merry Winter Fest
  
• Town Night - Lingering Wisps
  
• Fungal Formations
  

(New tracks by bosu, Shevone, and Tyd)

[h3]New Feature: Equipment 👒[/h3]
Players can now find Equipment as they progress. These are (sometimes cosmetic) items that give minor buffs to players! There are currently 5 pieces of equipment in the game. More will be added in the future!

- Equipment:

• Flower Crown
  
• Bunny Ears
  
• Fisher Hat
  
• Bulb Amulet
  
• Marine Ring
  

[h3]✨Official launch of Simplified Chinese localisation 💬[/h3]
Simplified Chinese has been officially added to the main build of Research Story! We'll be using the Early Access period to see how players feel about the localisation, and make improvements along the way.

如果您有任何问题，请加我们的官方QQ群：326879816



[h3]Other improvements and changes[/h3]
- Polished 'Recording Station' UI.
- Added tracker for number of books completed in each Recording Station.
- Reorganized some research book requirements to fit the new additions.
- Reorganized some journal pages to fit the new additions.
- Mixer reclassified from 'Building' to 'Crafting Station'.
- Added fishing minigame mechanics that applies to new fish:

• "Switching", where the difficulty switches each time the progress bar increases.
  
• "Increasing"/"Decreasing", where the difficulty increases/decreases each time the progress bar increases.
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
- Fixed a bug where loading into a game -> observing a creature in the current map that requires 'observe while they are resting' does not register as completing the observation.
- Fixed missing 'Foraging Location' for Flame Cactus.
- Fixed a bug where flipping pages in the journal may not end up on the correct page.
- Other minor fixes.

[h3]📝 What's next[/h3]
As mentioned in a previous devlog, I'll be working on Creature Variants & Steam Achievements for our next update. I'll share more when I start work on them!

In other news, we're so close to 100 reviews! That's really amazing. I read each review, comment, and discussion and feel grateful for every one of them. If you enjoy RS, consider leaving a review to support us! It helps more than you'd think! :)

Happy Holidays and I'm looking forward to going into a new year with you guys! 2024 will be an exciting year for RS for sure. - Miki

[h3][✨Update v0.7 is in development, planning to release in end Dec~✨][/h3]

[h2]Greetings Researchers![/h2]

In the past 2 weeks, I've started working on the actual creatures and cave content for this upcoming v0.7 update! Here are some of the highlights:

[h2]Added 16 new researchables[/h2]
Added 4 creatures, 4 plants, and 8 fish for players to discover! There will be 84 researchables in total after this update goes live.

Each of the plants and creatures were added while considering the current state of the game. I was guided by these questions:

• What creature perks would help with some of the bottlenecks of the game? A useful creature will also mean that players can strategise and set new goals.
  
• Similarly, what crops will be useful and give players more options in progressing the game?
  

As for fish, I just wanted more variety at this stage, so I added 2 new fish for each cave biome. There's also 2 new bait: Meaty Bait and Nutty Bait.

[h2]Researchable Highlights[/h2]
[h3]Weedip[/h3]
One of the creatures added is Weedip, a little critter that grew accustomed to the weedy areas of caves.



[h3]Bulbous beginnings[/h3]
Of the 4 new crops, 3 of them are 'bulb-crops'. They are: Rawbulb, Grubulb, and Bassbulb. You might guess from their names - but they'll be an option for players to grow their own Meat, Insect, and Fish ingredients!



[h2]New Floor Types for the Mines[/h2]
I've also added new floor types for the Mines to add more variety to the mining experience. The weedy area (only found in the Cave Biome) is one example. Weedips only spawn in these floors!



[h2]Improved UI for Recording Stations[/h2]
With the new researchables, I further worked on our Recording Stations UI - to increase clarity about how many books there are in each shelf (tracker on top right), and also to make it look a bit prettier.



[h2]New feature: Equipment[/h2]
As I added more books for players to complete in the Archive, I also had to consider the rewards players can get from the books! I wanted to go beyond the current reward types (craftables/useful items, decor, and statues) and add other meaningful rewards. That's why I added Equipment! These equipment come with minor buffs.



[h2]📝 What's Next [/h2]
Working on this update has taken longer than I initially planned, due to some of the more complex and time-consuming content. I still wish to update this month as promised, but the update will be smaller in scope, with the remaining content moved to Jan/Feb 2024:



This will give me more time to work out the details, playtest, and not rush the development for the upcoming content! Thank you all for your understanding and continued support
Miki

Hello everyone~ This is a small patch to add two things to help with bug reports, especially for the harder-to-replicate ones.

- Added a debug screen. Press F1 to toggle debug screen for more game information.
- Added a game log, which records some logs for the latest play session. The files "Player.log" and "Player-prev.log" can be found in the folder %LOCALAPPDATA%\ResearchStory\, and sent to us when reporting bugs. This helps me replicate the bugs, as I can better follow the sequence of actions players did before the bug happens!

The information I added to the debug screen and log is quite minimal at this time, and based on the known/recurring bugs. I'll continue to build a more robust system as required.

Thank you so much again for all your help and support!
Miki

Hello, just fixing a couple of crashes:
- Fixed crash when picking up and placing a Cooking Stove.
- Fixed possible crash when scrolling down after buying a limited item from a store.

Thank you for the reports! :)
Miki