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ASKA Roadmap Reveal 2024

Vikings! We know you’ve been hotly anticipating our Roadmap and to see the direction of the game and we’re thrilled to share an overview of our first few major updates to ASKA in the months to come.



To be clear, these aren’t the only updates to the game, just the first few ones we want to share with you at this time.




[h3]Shall we dig into the good stuff then?[/h3]

Update One is something you shouted from the rooftops and we want to know we heard you!
Some time this August, ASKA will receive World Gen Options.

You’ll be able to customise many different facets of the game including enemies, gather rates, events, day/night length and more! We hope this will satisfy those of you looking for a peaceful building experience, and also those of you looking for an even harder survival challenge.
In this update we will also be including a couple of new buildings, but you’ll have to tune into the patch notes for that 👀



Updates Two, Three & Four will be spread out throughout the rest of 2024, and will include a variety of buildings, upgrades, system overhauls and new systems. We’re still cooking so we can’t give you an exhaustive list of what will be ready for each update (yet), but you can look forward to things like new enemies, gathering a raiding party & setting sail as well as some more fun additions to make your villages feel more alive.
Later in the year we will look to launch what we are dubbing our “multiplayer” update - where we will look to launch dedicated servers for you all. We’re also adding an in game chat system so that you can communicate with other players online & create lobbies.


[h3]A Note on Villager AI Improvements[/h3]

One of the most consistent feedback themes we receive from the community concerns AI, especially Villager AI.

We’re constantly working to make Villager behaviour understandable and consistent, and to give you more ways to engage with them. Our long term goal is to reduce micro-management and make Villager behaviour and intent as transparent as possible.

Although they sometimes might seem irrational, our Villagers' brains are actually quite complex! And they're doing their best to stay off your back as much as possible and do their jobs as best as they are able.

But that’s no easy task with all they have going on: They know when to eat and what to eat; they must sometimes defy their schedule to make sure the job gets done; they must pick out equipment and get dressed; drop off materials; plan their routes when setting off to gather a variety of resources (and try to not get killed in the process!); they must sometimes engage enemies and sometimes not… and so many other such “thoughts”.

Our objective is to give you not robots which you have to program yourself, but lively characters that are obviously doing their best to assist you and to see your designs come to completion. ASKA has grown a LOT in the last year and we're in the process of continuing to build on this by reworking key Villager jobs, like the Warehouse and Workshop workers.

We're always listening, and continue to appreciate your feedback and we finesse this to final quality.




To Wrap This Up…


We’d like to advise this also isn’t an exhaustive list and other things might pop up or slip in too as we keep working, but we hope this gives you all the reassurance that we have been and are continuing to work hard on building on the world of ASKA and delivering updates when we feel they are best ready to be released. We can’t wait to hear what you think so please do leave us some feedback in the forums, in Discord, on our social media. We are listening, and we want to ensure we deliver our vision for the game while taking into consideration any major changes our playerbase are advocating for when we feel it's appropriate.

Finally, if you’re reading all of this and you haven’t yet had the chance to explore the world of ASKA, we’re thrilled to say you can pick it up right now in the Gamescom sale for 20% off until 3 September.


Skal!
Sand Sailor Studios.

2 August Hotfix

Hey Vikings,
We’re rolling out another patch today with a bunch of improvements and fixes.
Your continued feedback and bug reports are always appreciated.
Hope you have a great weekend and your tribes are faring well.
Don’t forget to check out our dev stream tonight over on twitch.tv/sandsailorstudio where you can ask us any burning questions you might have and check out how we play the game.

Boop The Snoot
· Pups no longer eat when only slightly hungry
· Cooks no longer grab food from kennels
· Dogs no longer sit near player while hungry
· Fixed dog not sitting to be petted

Gamepad Goodness
· Added gamepad button prompts throughout various menus.
· Added gamepad navigation support for stats and proficiencies in both inventory menu and villager menu.

UI for U & I
· Fixed hover details panel not following correctly the target inside a scroll panel when using the gamepad.
· Fixed UI selection getting lost for a brief moment when a dialogue or a notification ends.
· Fixed input fields losing focus if your cursor exits in the input field box.

Villager Brain Tweaking
· Fixed kleptomaniac hunters (archers no longer grab items unrelated to their job)
· Crafters no longer complain outside work hours
· Gatherers no longer fill storages with items they are not supposed to gather
· Farmers now plant as soon as they are able instead of tilling the entire field first

Pause Priorities
· Added pause menu while using the boat.
· Fixed bellows proficiency gain when the game is paused

Don’t Forget To Save!
· Fixed potential disconnect if a client leaves the game during a boss fight
· Saving should be a quicker on larger worlds

I Can’t Think of Cool Titles For These I’ve Let You All Down
· Vehicles that glitch out of the map are automatically destroyed
· Removed dyer and weaver L2 requirements
· Added decay to Spoiled Food

Gamescom 2024

Hey Vikings!
We’ve got some ultra super excellent exciting news to share - ASKA is going to Gamescom! 🥳🎉

That’s right - some of our amazing Sand Sailors and our Community Manager Paige will be hanging out in the Indie Arena Booth area and available to chat to you about all things ASKA. We’d love to say hi to you so If you’re heading along please do let us know.
We are thrilled that we have this opportunity to speak to our players, creators and introduce some new people to ASKA too.

See you there!

Roadmap? A Statement

Hey Vikings 👋

We hope everyone is faring well, and that your tribes are growing too.

We’ve seen a rising number of people asking us where the Roadmap is and we wanted to put out some information for you.

We have a vision for ASKA and how its going to unfold but our small (but mighty!) dev team of 10 needs to take some time to ensure more immediate fixes have been put out. We are addressing all of the balancing issues and bugs that have come to light since launch and couldn’t have done this without you, our incredible and passionate community. There have been six patches in the last four weeks, and that number is only going to increase as time goes on.

The Roadmap is coming, we are working on it at the moment - we have been working on it for some time now. Creating a Roadmap is a complex process because we need to evaluate and balance the changes we want to make, plus ensuring we listen to requests from the community, plus weave that with all the features we had already planned for the Early Access period. Due to the passionate feedback from you all, it takes time to ensure everything is in an order that we feel is achievable for us and flows best for you players, whilst still honoring our vision for the game. The base game also has to be as solid as it can be before we can add more to it. To us, the Roadmap is a balance of our vision and also your feedback and we’ve already rearranged certain priorities based on the community.

As soon as the Roadmap is ready, we’ll get it out to you all. In the meantime, we just wanted to share a huge and sincere thank you again for all of your wonderful support. Our journey with ASKA is only just beginning, and we hope yours is too.

Skål!
Sand Sailor Team

Tuesday 16 July Hotfix

Hey Vikings, we’re back again with another patch, fixing some pesky bugs & making some more improvements.

We’re going to sound like a broken record at this point, but truly thank you for all of the support and feedback given - please do keep it coming.

As an aside, you’ll notice we’ve a new pinned post in the forums called “Screenshot Saturday” - we post community screenshots on our Twitter (X) account every weekend and would love to see your submissions!
And as always, if you haven't already please do leave a review 🙏


Optimal Optimizations:
  • Boats, Boat Maker and Kennel are now visible in settlement menu
  • Cart optimizations
  • Revamped some interactions networking to allow for more concurrent interactions
  • Winter invasions now scale further past the initial cap of 40 villagers
  • Buffed all higher tier weapons and shields
  • Villager dialogue boxes are no longer displayed for far away villagers
  • Added an armour rack to Metalworker and Leatherworker addons
  • Weapons and Shields durability and damage balancing


Bug stomping:
  • Fixed cold iron not being removable from anvil
  • Fixed potential crash on clients when the host disconnects
  • Fixed pelt storage at Hunter's House
  • Carts no longer explode in shallow water
  • Fixed Unexplored Cave not showing on clients
  • Fixed a "Saving Failed" bug caused by literal bugs (Cave Crawlers)
  • Fixed AI warriors reordering the patrol points when starting their shifts
  • Fixed Smolkrs being able to destroy resources from carts and sleds from a distance
  • Fixed instances of villagers getting stuck when trying to travel large distances, far away from the player



Thanks!