Research Story News

Fixed
- Crash when foraging mushrooms/fishing after reaching maximum Research Rank.
- Creature Perk doesn't trigger the following day, if the creature was following the player while sleeping to the next day.
- Chroma Watering Can not listed on Remus' shop after upgrading to Gold Watering Can.
- Incorrect seasonality information for Sapphire Diver in the Journal: it correctly shows as 'Summer and Autumn' instead of just 'Summer' now.

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Update (13 Mar): Just adding a note here to make it clearer that controller support is in-development and will only be available to public when it's mostly/fully implemented in all parts of the game!
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[h2]Hello Researchers![/h2]

We've decided to start posting regular mini-devlogs to keep our players up-to-date on what we're currently working on and our progress.

Since the v0.1.24 update, we've been busy with further bugfixes and minor changes, controller support implementation, and engaging our community! Here are some highlights from the past week:

[h3]Controller Support - in development[/h3]
Controller support for most of the Start Menu has been implemented.


Moving items within the Inventory with a controller.


There are a few more things that need to be done, including support for other UI, having interactable objects show interact prompts when being near them, and updating tutorials to show corresponding controller buttons. We'll need to complete these before having controller support available to our players!

[h3]Minor changes[/h3]
While working on bugfixes, we also make gameplay changes where relevant. One of the feedback we received was that having tilled soil untill itself the next day can disrupt some of the players' plans and efforts. With that in mind, we made a change in our latest patch (v0.1.30) where tilled, sandy soil will retain its tilled state forever (or until the player changes the soil back to the loamy type).
Loamy Soil (left) untills the next day, while Sandy Soil (right) will remain tilled.

[h3]Discord community reached over 500 members! With the EA release of Research Story, our Discord community has grown to over 500 members! We're so grateful that the community has been so kind and fun - the many questions, suggestions, feedback, and bug reports encourage me to work on the game every day. I really want to make RS a good experience for the players!!


That's all for this devlog, thank you for reading and see you next time!

- Miki

Fixed:
- Soil modifiers (fertilisers, sand etc.) disappearing sometimes, causing previously growing crops to wither.

Changes:
- Added Insects as a diet option for Chickens.
- The Seafood Bowl crafting recipe now takes 1 fish instead of 2.
- The Cliffside Cave now unlocks earliest on 5 Spring, instead of 7 Spring.
- Players can no longer go deeper than floor 80 of the mines We changed this after hearing some feedback/confusion from players, so that it doesn't seem like there's new content beyond that. This is likely to change in the future as we add more content.
- Sandy soil retains its tilled state and does not get untilled the next day. Loamy/Default soil will still be untilled the next day.

Thank you for your bug reports and feedback, and for your patience as we work through these fixes! It's been really awesome seeing so many people play our game.
- Miki

Here is a list of changes since v0.1.24:

Fixes
- Fixed a crash when holding Flame Flower while Seed Sieve is in the same location.
- Fixed game freezing on a new day if the player changes tools while fainting.
- Fixed Peppermint withering within 3 cells north of farm pond.
- Fixed creature info incorrectly showing 'not fed' after saving and loading while in same room as the creature.
- Fixed unintended bug: Chance for double drops for Forge.
- Fixed weeds created by creatures disappearing when leaving the farm.
- Fixed crash in Winter when scheduling hangout for following Spring.

Changes
- Added Watercress as a Kelp Fertiliser material.
- Revised initial prompt for Elevator.
- Reworded 'Known Traits' as 'Possible Traits' in the Journal.
- Added more details to crash popup for players who can't easily access the crashlog file.
- The Calendar (in the Profile) now shows the current season + 3 subsequent seasons, so that players can plan for future events more easily. Previously, the Calendar only shows up to Winter of the current year.

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Update 2 (1 Mar): Just updated our latest build to v0.1.24! This should be more stable now *fingers crossed*. Enjoy the changes and let us know what you think! :)
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Update (28 Feb): We just rolled back v0.1.24 as many new bugs were coming in and we wanted to fix them before uploading it again as the latest patch.

Sorry, wanted to give a nice little update to celebrate the first week since launch, but I shouldn't have rushed it... Lesson learnt for future updates! Thank you everyone for your patience.
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[h3]Greetings Researchers!
[/h3]
It's only been a week since release, and we have already seen so many researchers joining us and exploring Shimmerbrook! Thank you to everyone for enjoying our game, and for your questions, bug reports, feedback, and suggestions! We've fixed most of the major known bugs to date and will continue to work on remaining issues in the coming weeks. Since we've received lots of initial feedback as well, we wanted to address some of them in this update.

[h3]Here are some changes made since release, based on the feedback we've received:[/h3]

- Some crops such as corn can now be used to craft Vegetable Bowls and Veggie Bait.
- Some crops such as corn now fulfils the Veggie-lover trait. Due to Summer not having a Vegetable-type crop implemented yet, we're making these changes to facilitate gameplay. These changes are likely temporary, until we add a conventional Vegetable to Summer.

- Seeds needed for Seed Bowl Recipe reduced from 3 to 2. This was changed as the Seed Bowl recipe can be hard to maintain in the late-game or when a new season starts. Players also can't use 3 different seeds for the recipe due to how crafting works.

- There's now a 5% base chance for double Fiber drops, even with no Scythe upgrade.
- Added a new early to mid-game item, 'Dehydrator', to have more Fiber options once Summer hits and Fertilisers are required. The Dehydrator can be crafted and processes Flowers into Fiber.
- Increased Stick drop rates from chopping trees. Large trees now drop at least 2 sticks, while small trees drop at least 1. There's also a chance for Sticks to drop when shaking a tree. Balancing for Fiber and Sticks, as they're generally hard to get but also very useful.

- Added Base Energy Slider in Gameplay Options (adjust base energy, up to 100 energy)
- More Energy options: Added a way to roast potatoes and chestnuts using a craftable 'Campfire' item. Prior to this, we had no cooking mechanic in the game. This is a very basic cooking system, let us know what else you'd like to see! The low base energy affects the experience for some players. We want to give more options to our players!

- Added diet options for some creatures: Seafood for Sproutkittens and Vegetables for Boars. - Added Cottontail as a thread material for the Spinning Wheel. These are minor adjustments based on player feedback.

New craftables: Campfire and Dehydrator

[h3]Bugfixes in v0.1.24[/h3]
- Fixed a bug where released creatures were still showing up in the list when assigning creatures to Pens.
- Fixed inconsistencies in descriptions between Journal and Item descriptions for some fish.
- Fixed 'Caught Perch for the first time!' bug even though you've caught a Perch before.
- Fixed a possible crash when entering the Observatory.
- Fixed a few typos and text errors.

[h3]What's next[/h3]
✨Controller Support and Cloud Saves
We'll start working on controller support, as we think that it's important to get that working properly early on! Together with controller support, we thought it made sense to implement cloud saves, as that'll facilitate players with multiple devices (e.g. PC & Steam Deck).
✨Inventory and Storage QOL
This is a highly-requested QOL feature that we'll work on as soon as we can. Among all the suggestions, we found a few important ones that we'll add to the game first:
- Auto-sort
- Auto-add to chest, auto-pull from chest
- Coloured chests
We think this is a good start to improving inventory management, and will continue improving it in the future.

Thanks again for your feedback and suggestions - they have been great and we're very happy to be building the game with the community!