Soulash 2 News

Greetings fellow gods,

Late Happy New Year everyone, let's start 2024 with a bang!



Today, I have for you the extended Modding Tools that some of you may be familiar with from the first game and Steam Workshop support to share your creations with the community.

I want to take this opportunity to encourage all players who like to express themselves creatively to give it a try! The tools, alongside simple JSON configuration files, offer a lot of flexibility to create your own enemies, items, special locations, abilities, skills, recipes, and even races with whole new civilizations! No coding knowledge is required. You no longer have to wait until I have time to add the playable goat people!

Let's quickly go through the main tools available to give you an idea of what can be done.

[h2]1. Entity Editor[/h2]



The Entity Editor offers the ability to quickly create your own items, resources, enemies, or environmental tiles. It can be as simple as pressing a duplicate button on an existing entity and tweaking a few inputs or as complex as uniquely combining different components to create something unusual that could crash the game. Fun!

[h2]2. Map Editor[/h2]



Soulash 2 offers a mixed approach of procedural and handcrafted maps in settlements and points of interest, and with the Map Editor, you can create alternative building maps for settlements or rooms for special locations.

[h2]3. Ability & Animation Editors[/h2]



With these tools, you can create new combat abilities with custom animations for your future skills or custom enemies.

[h2]4. Datatables[/h2]



This one might be interesting for those of you who like to know everything. Datatables offer information on all kinds of content available within the mod. Very useful for balancing.

And a list of JSON files for defining skills, milestones, amplifiers, passives, buildings, races, conversations, dialogues, special locations, natural resources spawned in biomes, weather conditions, portraits, and some worldgen properties.

Jumping between tools and JSONs may be a little clunky at times. Admittedly, I'm used to it since I've been using them for a long time, so I look forward to improving things with your feedback. We have local documentation available at Soulash 2/data/docs/index.html that I would encourage everyone interested in modding to check out.

There's a lot to tinker with, and the range of options will cause a lot of questions and issues, so if you're hitting a wall, join us on our Discord modding channel to discuss how to make things.

[h2]Other Changes[/h2]

A few bugfixes I managed to squeeze into 0.6.0:
- Reduced overall memory usage of map definitions.
- Fixed attack speed issue where it would default to 1.0 due to hidden hands.
- Fixed Spikehump Spike not allowing assignment when crafting or upgrading.
- Fixed too low prices happening occasionally.
- Fixed issues with cave generation, causing some locations not to spawn correctly.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

In the next two or three weeks, we'll focus on new content and reported bug fixes, and then I'll take a week-long break to recharge as I didn't manage to catch a breath yet after the EA release, and burnout is starting to creep in. After the break, I'll plan out updates in 2024 with your popular suggestions from Discord and announce the promised roadmap.

Thank you all for your support, and I hope you'll have a lot of fun modding the game,
Artur

Greetings fellow gods,

Holidays and code migration turned out heavier than I anticipated, so we won't see an update this week.

The good news is that the modding tools GUI work is done. I'm in the process of verifying the game and saves continue to work after migrating Entity ids to strings, after that it's only Workshop Integration and modding tutorials, so we'll begin 2024 with a big update.

I hope you all had a good time during the holidays, and I wish you all a happy New Year!

Greetings fellow gods,

As I grind away at the modding tools, I have a bunch of stability improvements, bug fixes, and small tweaks and improvements for you in today's weekly update, most of them coming from your reports on Discord.

I'll probably take a short break for the holidays. I expect the modding support to take 1 - 2 more weeks to get everything ready, the main challenge ahead being migrating entity IDs to strings. I'll share more details about the modding tools next week. Also a new non-combat skill is in the works too, so keep an eye on the releases!

Happy holidays!

Full changelog below:

[h3]Added[/h3]
- Added a save backup system that copies the save every year and keeps up to 3 backups in %app_data%\Roaming\WizardsOfTheCode\Soulash2\backups.
- Added a few new animals with unique resources to Savanna, Swamp and Snow regions.
- New ears options for each Rasimi subraces.

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Improved history simulation to prevent some cases of settlement starvation.
- Changed the selling price multiplier for some resource-type items like ores to 70% instead of 30% to align them with resources that provide bonuses.
- Tweaked the job-hopping situations in history simulation to make them less common.
- Added training option to all NPCs who may have something to teach.
- Leaving the region heals every NPC to full health.
- Changed treasure chest spawn rate to guarantee at least one in Golem's Tower and Harpy's Nest.
- Replaced 2 stat points in Armorsmithing with new boots recipes.
- Added Skavedda Horn to Scavedda Corpse scavenging.
- Added properties to Observer's Eye.
- Medusa's Head is no longer stackable, and it can be used indefinitely.
- Increased magic slots for Enchanted Turban to 5.
- Added parry to Oval and Scale Shields.
- Immobile entities are now immune to knockback.
- Added a bonus property to Great Larva Slime.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed a memory leak caused by portrait layer duplication.
- Fixed performance issues in actor-heavy settlements during combat.
- Fixed stamina regeneration ticks accumulate while the stamina is full.
- Changed region generation to prevent resources from spawning in the same tiles as stairs and slopes.
- Set max world name input to 15 characters.
- Added missing anvil to Human/Bone Wraith Toolmakers.
- Added missing beds to Human Archers.
- Fixed an issue in some settlements that would cause road generation to delete wells.
- Removed the chance for double snake leather spawn in Tropical Rainforest, causing some Rasimi towns to have too much food available.
- Manicles are no longer stackable.
- Fixed an issue with Fit passive, which might reduce health when losing endurance.
- Fixed an exploit that allowed selling higher than buying by juggling gear with high intelligence.
- Changed Sight range property to allow negative values on items.
- Added missing portrait for the arena master.
- Added Nettle Plant spawns to areas having the Nettle resource.
- Added Adamantine Vein spawns to areas with Adamantine Ore resources.
- Removed a wall blocking the door under the arena.
- Removed loot action from Burning Incense.
- Fixed Max Stamina bonus on items.
- When selling or stashing items that provide ability, the ability is disabled.
- Health bar is now correctly hidden during Frenzy.
- Fixed Mountain Maze spawn.

Greetings fellow gods,

I finally got the Soulash 2 Soundtrack approved and released, so if anyone would like to get it, including the high-quality version to enjoy, and directly support a fantastic musician who've made such incredible music for our adventures, you can get it here: Soulash 2 Soundtrack

Since this is the first update, excluding the 8 hotfixes made since the start of Early Access, I would like to thank all 3,000 of you who decided to purchase the game so far, your feedback and support are very much appreciated. The next big thing coming will be modding support with Steam Workshop integration, so we can easily share these fantastic mods already in development on Discord.

The roadmap for 2024 is coming in January, so make sure to hop on Discord to leave your suggestions and mark the ones important to you before then!

Below is the full changelog for today's update v0.5.1, mainly introducing multi-cooking, multi-salvaging, and multi-crafting (for stackable objects), also increasing the chances for more toolmakers in the world and construction trainers.

[h3]Added[/h3]
- Added an option to repeat Production Actions (ex. Cooking) and Salvaging in equipment by holding alt key (can be remapped in Keymap).
- Added an option to craft and order multiple stackable items at once.

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Improved chances for NPCs to build Rasimi Trapmakers and Dwarven Engineers.
- Improved chances for NPCs to build Human and Bone Wraith Toolmakers.
- Move Speed bonus property from resources applies only to Boots.
- Changed portrait backgrounds for NPCs.
- Added Building menu hotkey to Keymap.
- Added bonus properties to some resources that didn't have them.
- Added woodcutting option to owlfolk tree.
- Dragon Bone is now stackable.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed rare crashes related to history simulation.
- Fixed crash related to Gryphon.
- Magic Power, Hearing, Sneaking, Health Regeneration stacks from multiple resources used.
- Fixed Fit passive max health bonus.
- Candle item type changed to Resource so it may be used in crafting.
- Changed the chance for a treasure chest in Skavadda Village to guarantee at least one.
- Fixed and tweaked Move Speed and Attack Speed bonuses on resources.
- Fixed an issue with gold transfer in stash where it would cause item transfer due to clicks working under the popup.
- Fixed Duration amplifier.
- Fixed an issue where fishermen would attempt to catch fish despite not having carry capacity.
- Changed some building maps to add enough beds for NPC characters.
- Bakeries have Cooking Places instead of Smelters.

Greetings fellow gods,

Today, I have the final post-release hotfix for you. From here, I'll transition into more sustainable and substantial weekly updates on Thursdays.

Thank you all for sharing your passion for the game, your feedback, and your bug reports, I'm glad so many of you enjoy the game and see so much more potential in it to offer your time to improve it. Building such an ambitious game is very difficult, but it is my dream game, and I'm glad many of you started sharing it with me.

The following short-term goal will be to add multi-craft and multi-cook, and then I'll polish the modding tools and include Steam Workshop integration, hopefully before the end of the year. There has been a lot of exciting work done by modders already, even without the tools, so I can't wait to enjoy some incredible community-built content.

Here's the hotfix changelog:

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Improved AI awareness of player character, causing them to remain aggressive longer.
- All leatherworking recipes that required Anvil or Tailor Workplace now require Workbench only.
- Tailoring Tool (scissors, needle) removed from Tailoring recipes, and Tailoring Workbench added to most of them.
- All Weaponsmithing recipes except early bone ones require Anvil.
- All Armorsmithing recipes require Anvil.
- Player character filtered out from "ask for trainers" results.
- Added tooltip when training to show how much more potential is available.
- Added training options to Human Soldier, Human Innkeeper and Bone Wraith Host.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed rare crash on world travel.
- Fixed an issue during trading that would prevent sending heavy items to player settlement.
- Fixed an issue that would click the finalize trade button while the delivery method selection was active.
- Fixed doors in Sunken Palace and added more challenging enemies to the location.
- Fixed Crafting screen lock when item progress has been canceled too soon.
- Fixed Aspen Grove spawn in regions.
- Duplicated Fur Mantle on Leatherworking level 36 replaced with Fur Dress.
- Fixed Yew Tree spawning Yew Log instead of another Yew Tree after woodcutting.
- Fixes in elemental domains.
- Fixed an issue that would prevent NPC crafters from recognizing having workstations if someone stood on top of them.
- Fixed an issue that would keep the NPCs in their old profession when they had to move to food production.
- Fixed an issue where order crafting wouldn't continue while traveling the world map.
- Fixed an issue where items ordered and finished during world map travel would not be delivered when approaching the crafter.
- Tweaked bed count in elven buildings so they have a place to sleep.
- Added some missing descriptions.

Enjoy,
Artur

Edit:
Well, I said the last one, but I wouldn't let someone wait with a game-breaking issue. :)

v0.5.0.8 fixes a rare crash related to a dead crafter attempting to finish an item.