Isles of Silence News

[h3]FIXES:[/h3]
- Updated the underlying engine to hopefully resolve some stability issues. Needs further testing to see if this resolves the game not fully closing, but it seems better
- Fixed a major bug in the audio-shuffler code that caused the game to hang when switching songs, sometimes indefinitely. Should be no more lag spikes
- Happy 2025!

It's been amazing seeing the influx of new players from the Wanderbots video! Thank you for all the feedback and support, the game is very much still actively being updated and I look forward to continue pushing it to be the best it can be!

With that being said, it's been a while since the last update. A lot of QOL, mechanics changes, and hotfixes are ready to go, and they're finally in a state to be pushed live. No new major content yet (there's a good bit of that already made, but it's disabled currently due to needing some more work), but expect that soon!

[h3]NEW CONTENT:[/h3]
- 'Tracker' skill implemented
- New tools unlocked with Isle 2's other new recipes!
- 5th Hunter can join the crew
- Fun new dialogue effects (currently sparsely used)
[h3]NEW QOL:[/h3]
- Dynamic Camera implemented to the active quests display. Currently only used to make the camera follow your mouse
- You can finally bail from quests
- New Workshop upgrade after Drodden to help automate better tools or building materials
- Recipes in the crafting tab can be sorted into type
- Offline progress is displayed, and should lag less when catching up after tabbing out
[h3]CHANGES:[/h3]
- Hunters reorganize on their tab based on their Isle
- Library tab now visually shows the monster's initial locale
- Farm Plots have to be clicked to harvest once done
- Custom scrollbars! No more highlighting text! Feels less like a website now
- Shrunk Hunter HP Bars on Quest screen
- Village Tab now tries to keep top tabs visible when scrolling
- Increased moss cost of 'Mossy Knoll'
- Ships now animate into the distance
- Certain inventories are categorized (such as the dock's)
- Meera renamed to Minrah, as it always should have been
- When selecting a tab, you are scrolled to the top of the tab. This should help in locating the weapons tab the first time.
- Music is pre-loaded to avoid lag when switching songs
[h3]FIXES:[/h3]
- Game finally shows you it catching up if you lose focus, instead of freezing for a couple seconds
- Speech bubbles no longer scale with the character's size
- Health bars stay black after hunters faint
- NPCs will no longer pop into view if you scale the window really fast
- Auto-generated save file backups no longer have weird end encoding that stops them being immediately
loaded
- Isle 2 will no longer allow access to village construction early
- Dock page's fixed divs should no longer be hidden offscreen

NEW QOL:
- Can click the purple box by a crafting recipe to cancel the craft (finally)
CHANGES:
- "(hunter) couldn't find anything" message on Excursions is now red to stand out better
FIXES:
- Major bug fix, the autocrafter no longer pulls items from the wrong Isle inventory, allowing for negative values
- Fixed an issue where workshop upgrades wouldn't register if updating your save from a specific version
- Fixed mingle-beam recipe not unlocking until a refresh
- Crafting progress bars will only appear on the Isle in which the item is being crafted (no more overlayed bars)
- Crafting number boxes will show how much you are making only on the Isle you are currently on
- Autocrafting Items now makes progress offline
- Fixed a potential memory leak where every item crafted would create a hidden progress bar that wouldn't go away until the game was closed (oops)

This update lays all the final framework in terms of polishing, rebalancing, bug-fixing, and early-game mechanic tweaks needed to confidently push forward with new content

[h3]NEW:[/h3]
- **Save Backups, Local Auto-Saves, Steam Cloud Saves**
--NOTE: Cloud saves backup your files to "%homepath%/Documents/My Games/IslesOfSilence", loading these saves is currently a manual process (to be changed as soon as possible)
- Added multiple new recipes using Isle 2 resources
- Isle 2 workshop can be unlocked
- Islue 2 Excursion is completable, unlocks several more story beats
- Added placeholder for new mechanic: 'The Refinery'
- [EXPERIMENTAL] Added characters to the 'village construction' tab
- Added 2 more songs that were accidentally left out: 'Sky Garden' and 'All Who Are Weary'
- Settings window now shows total playtime on save
- The map on expeditions now updates as you progress
- Hunters weapons now appear on their backs [Some placeholder art still present]
- Hunters need a longer recovery if they fainted in battle - will be tied to the Ward
- Fainted hunters will not be able to go on quests until their HP is above 0
- More Village Construction upgrades (2 Workshop upgrades, 1 Farm upgrade)
- New Setting that allows you to choose the minimum strength tool your hunters can auto-equip
- Certain text-boxes now explain why they've triggered

[h3]CHANGES:[/h3]
- Changed some village upgrade text that was outdated
- Changed song name 'Under the Maple Leaves' to 'Foraging for Mushrooms'
- Auto-equip tools works while the Hunters are resting to be more intuitive
- Shattered Coast percentages now add to 100% instead of 80% (oops)
- Red text in the Village Construction tab no longer looks horrible
- Remedy upgrades only show once the Amalgam table is built
- 'Steading' renamed to 'Garden'
- Village Construction UI revamped
- Malig-zome not listed as a seed since it cannot be planted
- Added a category to the inventory for construction materials
- 'Ice Herb' now called 'Alough' and is used in Soothing Clump instead of Moss
- Updated some of Drai's dialogue to segue into the watchtower
- Watchtower is slightly cheaper

[h3]FIXES:[/h3]
- Removed song 'Untitled 2', which was a duplicated of 'Foraging for Mushrooms'
- The Village Construction floor no longer moves the wrong way when changing buildings
- Village Construction tab no longer unlocks with the village
- Illid now moves to the farm when it's unlocked
- The text box no longer sometimes types out whole lines at once instead of letter-by-letter
- The Village Construction preview layers better, won't appear above things it shouldn't
- Watchtower unlock now shows without a refresh
- Boats no longer need a refresh to work
- Numbers show correctly when manually equipping Hunters' tools on Isle 2

FIXES:
- Fixed an issue where the starter boat could go missing if reloading the game at a certain point
- Boats now show the 'Depart' button after they arrive
- Boats now no longer keep Aryll hidden until refresh (Aryll really drew the short end of the stick with these bugs)
- Boats now visually update their emptied inventory upon arrival
- Boats now unlock their inventory upon arrive without needing a refresh