Rusty's Retirement News

[h2]If you are experiencing a black screen and restarting doesn't help, please follow this step-by-step guide on how to fix it: https://imgur.com/a/7LOAktG[/h2]

This part of the code has remained untouched since launch but there has been a sudden influx of people experiencing no transparency since yesterday.

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Hey folks,

Apologies for the rollback yesterday, 1.0.8 was live for 1.5 hours, and people were immediately reporting issues with the transparent background, so we rolled back to the previous 1.0.7 build. For now, I’ve removed the performance improvements with the transparent background until we figure out what’s causing the issues.

• Improved performance for bigger resolution / high refresh rate monitors. We’ve updated Unity to a much newer version (2022 LTS) and we’ve removed some unnecessary computing tasks around how the transparency was being drawn. Please let me know how this works, it might not be perfect but it should be a lot better.
• Credited the people who spent three whole days helping me with this issue!
  
• With the improved performance implementation, some of the UI elements had to be shuffled around.
  
• Save file improvements! After talking with the folks who made the save file plugin, we have improved the code, added checks to catch errors, and lastly added automatic backups which will load if the original file is corrupted.
  
• The new save code only writes once to the file when needed so hopefully power outages and sudden crashes will no longer affect save files. While I cannot restore previously corrupted files, I hope this update will prevent files from being wiped in the future.
  
• In-game timer should now update correctly and according to real-time. Previously it would either go faster or slower than real time depending on the frame rate set in the graphics settings.
  
• The first piece of the blocked land on the right side is now actually blocked lol.
  
• Previously, saving while Rusty was clearing a piece of land would lock that piece of land when loading the game back up. This should be fixed now!
  
• Restarting the game should automatically detect your monitor's resolution and set the game to that resolution. Before you had to physically press R or T to reset the camera/resolution.
  
• Added more checks for achievements like 10 Million Spare Parts, 1 Million Biofuel, 1 Million Watered Crops, and 1 Million Harvested Crops. There are now 3 different places in the game that can trigger these achievements (on every load) so hopefully they will work more consistently.
  
• Speaking of 1 Million Harvests, I have decided to lower the achievement down to 250,000 Harvests. This was a miscalculation on my part and to me 1 Million seems a little too far out of reach. Running the game for days on end is not fun - especially when the game’s content does not currently match the hours needed to reach those numbers. I think lowering it to 250k still makes it a grindy-idle achievement but it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
  

What I hope to tackle next:

1. Performance on high-refresh rate monitors
   
2. Balancing patch for bees, butterflies, and berry bushes. Currently, how they behave is too confusing and not very reliable.
   
3. Adding more quality-of-life features and content!
   

Thank you! I was supposed to make a week 1 recap today but that will have to wait until tomorrow now ːorange_heartː

[REVERTED TO 1.0.7]

Reverted the update because people were reporting completely black screens, and missing save files on Mac. Luckily, only the folder where the save files were stored changed. This rollback should restore them.

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Hey folks,

Here are some more fixes and improvements to the game!

• Improved performance for bigger resolution / high refresh rate monitors. We’ve updated Unity to a much newer version (2022 LTS) and we’ve removed some unnecessary computing tasks around how the transparency was being drawn. Please let me know how this works, it might not be perfect but it should be a lot better.
  
• Credited the people who spent three whole days helping me with this issue!
  
• With the improved performance implementation, some of the UI elements had to be shuffled around.
  
• In-game timer should now update correctly and according to real-time. Previously it would either go faster or slower than real time depending on the frame rate set in the graphics settings.
  
• The first piece of the blocked land on the right side is now actually blocked lol.
  
• Restarting the game should automatically detect your monitor's resolution and set the game to that resolution. Before you had to physically press R or T to reset the camera/resolution.
  
• Added more checks for achievements like 10 Million Spare Parts, 1 Million Biofuel, 1 Million Watered Crops, and 1 Million Harvested Crops. There are now 3 different places in the game that can trigger these achievements (on every load) so hopefully they will work more consistently.
  
• Speaking of 1 Million Harvests, I have decided to lower the achievement down to 250,000 Harvests. This was a miscalculation on my part and to me 1 Million seems a little too far out of reach. Running the game for days on end is not fun - especially when the game’s content does not currently match the hours needed to reach those numbers. I think lowering it to 250k still makes it a grindy-idle achievement but it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
  

What I hope to tackle next:

1. Save files are magically wiped if the game quits unexpectedly. From reports, this seems to be coming from either an antivirus or a power outage on the PC. Unfortunately, the backups I implemented a few patches prior are also wiped, so it's not how the files are saved or loaded, but something else. I use a well-known plugin for saving and they don't understand what could be causing it either.
   
2. Balancing patch for bees, butterflies, and berry bushes. Currently, how they behave is too confusing and not very reliable.
   
3. Adding more quality-of-life features and content!
   

Thank you for all your continued support! Tomorrow I hope to make a nice recap on how week 1 went because it's been pretty amazing!

This one is only a short one because I’ve mainly spent the day investigating the hi-res / high refresh rate monitor issue with some developer friends (more on that below).

• Fixed: Some houses were unmoveable because sometimes another collider would block the ability to click and select the house. Now no colliders are blocking this action so it should work as intended.
  
• Fixed: You can no longer upgrade a building that is still being built which would cause Echo to get stuck.
  
• Fixed: Steam cloud saves for Mac.
  
• Not entirely sure about this one because I couldn’t replicate it on my end but people have reported that connecting to Twitch could be creating an infinite loop in the code. I’ve added a 5-second buffer between connecting and checking whether the game is still connected to Twitch. It’s a bit of a shot in the dark but hopefully it’ll keep the game from crashing.
  
• Added: Crop/building information panels now move to the right when setting the vertical farm to the left side of the screen. Zooming is still a bit wonky but I hope this helps in the meantime!
  

Regarding performance issues on hi-res monitors, we’ve spent the entire day testing and looking into different potential causes, and we’ve narrowed it down to two or three things that look promising. This week we will continue with testing and we will try to get it fixed!

It seems like the issue is easily replicated on high refresh rate monitors (i.e. 144hz), so I would appreciate it if you could send me your specs here in the thread so that we can identify a common pattern. For now, some people have reported that lowering the frame rate and setting the on-demand rendering to 3 helps.

Thank you so much! :orange_heart:

Hey folks,

More fixes and improvements are on their way!

• Feeder bots will look at your inventory and choose between the 3 lowest crops available. This should help push out low-level crops from your inventory, and that way biofuel bots are more likely to use better crops. Biofuel bots choose at random to evenly distribute crops.
  
• Added an extra check for the Play for 1hr/24hr/48hr achievement.
  
• Moving a house, saving, and then reloading would lock their respective features. Now when moving a house, it should keep the features you’ve unlocked.
  
• Fixed random individual crops from never getting watered! Thank you ArtificialColors for finding out how to reproduce this one because I had been scratching my head all weekend.
  
• If you moved a bot, the game would think that you demolished it and as a result, their upgrade cost would be reduced (which is expected behavior for demolishing, just not for moving). Now, moving a bot doesn’t affect the upgrade price.
  
• Updated “How does Splunk work?” Help description.
  
• You can now use the middle mouse button to drag the camera around while moving or building without it triggering the placement.
  
• Pressing “R” should resize the game to your monitor. I have also added an alternative shortcut “T” which does the same thing but this code checks other monitor parameters. If the game is locked into some weird resolution, please try using these two shortcuts.
  
• Biofuel converters should now complete regardless of their visual indicator, hopefully, this will stop biofuel converters from getting stuck.
  
• Slate will now dig more fossils!
  

Lastly, I would like to highlight a known issue with high-resolution monitors, for some unknown reason, when using a hi-res monitor the game uses a lot of resources. For now, please try playing around with the graphics settings by lowering the frame rate and setting on-demand rendering to 3 - a few people have reported that this helps.

Tomorrow I am meeting with some tech-savvy developer friends to have a closer look into the issue!

Thank you for your patience in the meantime!

Steam is lousy with farming sims that will absolutely destroy your productivity by ensnaring you within a compulsive loop of reaping and sowing. Rusty's Retirement explicitly promises a less engrossing experience: it's a farming sim that "sits at the bottom of your screen while you do other things."

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