Solace Crafting News

[p]Thank you for the bug reports in Discord! I fixed up what I've been made aware of so far. I'll check out the Steam forums later on if I can find the time ːsteamthumbsupː[/p][p][/p][p]What You Can Do To Help
- Keep up the kind words on our Steam posts and the Likes
- You can get and support the builder here: https://bigkittygames.itch.io/solace-builder
- Drop by our IndieDB page to help make it visible: https://www.indiedb.com/games/solace-crafting-rebuild
- Support on our Ko-fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/bigkittygames
[/p][h3]Join us in Discord![/h3][p][/p][p]v 1.1.1.9 2026.02.27[/p][p]- Fixed a number of bugs preventing interacting with new doors/shutters/lights/furniture properly
- Stopped camera from zooming when holding shift to fine tune doors/shutters[/p][p]v 1.1.1.8 2026.02.27[/p][p]- Fixed plaster doorway blocking movement
- Fixed some new buildings throwing navmesh errors
- Fixed two dedicated server specific bugs
- Fixed facility placement on new buildings
- Swimming problems fixed
- Breath now tracks the mouth to better handle different character heights
- Swimming buoyancy now tracks the shoulders to better handle different character heights
- Added a small threshold to underwater checks to prevent falling loops when near the surface
- Deconstruction will once again refund building costs
- Weather management/transition improved[/p]

[p][/p][p]Kyle here.[/p][p]I've been working hard behind the scenes, and today we are officially moving the latest beta patch over to the live branch. Along with pushing the Solace Builder integration to live, we’ve packed in some additional fixes, upgrades, and improvements including upgrades to how characters move and animate. [/p][p][/p][p]Over the past year, I’ve finally recognized that one of the major shortcomings of Solace Crafting has been the overall presentation and feel of the gameplay. I started making Solace Crafting in 2017, if you can believe it, and after so many thousands of hours of familiarity with it I was really turning a blind eye to some of the earliest basic systems that have just kind of come along this whole journey and never really seen any major updates. Redoing the player movement code and updating non-combat animations is a big step toward fixing that.[/p][p]Moving forward, my immediate goal is smoothing out the game's rough edges. We are shifting our focus toward bug fixing, fleshing out our current systems, and adding much-needed Quality of Life (QoL) improvements. We want to elevate Solace Crafting so that it offers a much more professional, comfortable, and polished "presentation" from the moment you log in. While some additional content in the forms of improved NPC interactions and NCP towns are on the near horizon.[/p][p][/p][p]For those who missed last week's letter, all of these structural changes are part of a larger ecosystem we are building. The mechanics of Solace Builder are finally bleeding directly into Solace Crafting, bringing in new building parts, new furniture, and eventually, the ability to import/export and share your buildings via Steam Workshop. The best features from which will continually find their way back into Solace Crafting to enhance the main game.[/p][p]I hope everyone enjoys the new building system, and I'm looking forward to publishing more new content soon![/p][p]Happy gaming![/p][p][/p][p]What You Can Do To Help If you wanna push us up, either one of these will support us more than you know
- Keep up the kind words on our Steam posts and the Likes
- You can get and support the builder here: itch.io
- Drop by our IndieDB page to help make it visible: indiedb.com
- And of course, support on our Ko-fi page here: ko-fi.com[/p][h3]
Join us in Discord![/h3][p][/p][p]Abbreviated changes from the last live patch:[/p][p]- Improved character controls and animations
- Solace Builder features implemented with improvements specific to Solace Crafting
- Added 45 new building pieces
- Added 51 new pieces of furniture
- Added 86 new decorations
- Added several new light sources
- Upgraded Unity version to 2022.3.62f2[/p][p][/p][p]Latest changes from last beta patch:[/p][p]v 1.1.1.6 2026.02.25[/p][p]- Starter platform is now built using Solace Builder objects
- Grass biome grass given a new shader
- Some tree trunk materials causing an odd separation at around 1 meter height fixed
- Steam harvesting achievements will recheck their unlock status every 500 harvests
- Lowered the character slightly to reduce the feet looking like they're floating
- Redid all the player movement code and several non-combat animations. Rather than punishing a small character with reduced movement speed, creating an excessively large or small character can still throw the movement speed and animations off to make the foot speed and ground movement not line up properly, though I plan to improve this in the near future.
- Movement is now paused while a harvesting action is taking place
- Fixed a bug with Solaces spawned via the new building interface
- Temporarily disabled the building tutorials and move terraforming and solaces to be awarded after the starter tutorial
- Implemented new building interface building material requirements+spending[/p]

[p]Hello everyone, and welcome to the ninth Producer’s Letter for Solace Crafting.[/p][p]I’m Fab and today will be yet another dense producer’s letter, as a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes, so let’s get into it.[/p][p][/p][h3]A quick recap[/h3][p]We previously discussed the plans and work in progress regarding new buildings and locations for Solace Crafting. Over our posts and response to comments, we’ve detailed our vision and approach for this little Solace ecosystem. We weren’t always as clearly spoken or as clearly heard as needed but with this first update it’s finally time to make big steps towards implementation. [/p][p][/p][h3]Solace Builder Into Solace Crafting[/h3][p]Over the past year, most of our work has gone into structural things, the kind of stuff that’s not immediately visible and that might even look like a sidetrack at times. Some has been behind the scenes and by nature invisible, some, in the form of Solace Builder’s releases, you’ve seen. The time has now come for us to start rejoining these different streams of work, and this begins with this update: Solace Builder’s mechanics come into Solace Crafting, with new content in the form of new building parts and lots of new furniture.[/p][p][/p][h3]The Method to the Madness[/h3][p]This is a first step. Right now, all the functions you’ve seen or heard about are part of this update and, as previously announced, content exclusive to Solace Crafting. This, too, is an important step towards modding SC since, as you remember, Solace Builder has an import/export function. This paves the way toward sharing your buildings but also to Steam Workshop integration of said buildings. Now that the integration is done and pipelined, ulterior updates to Solace Builder will easily come into Solace Crafting.[/p][p]  [/p][h3]Controller and Gameplay Updates[/h3][p]The past year was us working out qualitative updates. For those of you who followed, with the work made towards Solace Keeper and Solace Builder, we went towards making things look better and handle better. One of the major shortcomings of Solace Crafting has long been ergonomy and presentation and the overall comfort of play. Our work on the parallel tracks that are SK and SB has allowed us to explore controller improvements and better handling of menus and placement mechanics. The latter is what you’ll find in this new release, the former will come down the pipe.[/p][p]What’s Next[/p]

• [p]Builder Updates: Solace Builder is poised for further updates, particularly when it comes to new function such as the ability to save not just your buildings and scenes but also composite objects. For instance, you have this dressed table full of nice plates, or that bookshelf you manually inserted tomes and artifacts in. If you want to replicate it, you shouldn’t have to rebuild it from scratch everytime. Similarly, landscape features are poised to take on a greater breadth of customization, allowing you to build cliffs, hills, and the structures that go on top of them. That too is meant to make its way directly into Solace Crafting.[/p]
• [p]Solace Keeping: As it fully diverges from Solace Crafting into its own thing, Solace Keeper will be the Solace-Centric playground, set to enable us to explore a more world-shaping, Solace-centered gameplay, lighter on content and slicker on mechanics and play. As we have just done with SB into SC, the fun and SC-enhancing features we build for it in its smaller, tighter scope, will find their way in. It’s that ecosystem we’ve been talking about, with interconnected products that benefit to one another, entertain different audiences, and make this whole operation more viable and sustainable. It will be separated from the version that is currently marked on the beta branch and come into a new, clean MVP release.[/p]
• [p]SC Towns: The new assets and ability to create new buildings thanks to the Solace Builder mechanics will enable to pick up where things got left off over a year ago: explorable non-player towns will finally make their way in the world, populating it. This is another long overdue feature that got 95% done way back and, due to issues with the NPCs spawning there, got relegated. But its time is finally coming. With the added experience acquired since, Kyle will be able to solve these problems and make it work.[/p]

[p][/p][p]In Closing[/p][p]It’s been a little rocky, a little messy, and certainly difficult but no vision worth pursuing is an easy and smooth sailing. Turning Solace Crafting not just into a better, more advanced game into a fertile spring for various experiences that still all feed into one another was never going to be this easy ride, especially as in 2025, life certainly got in the way. But we’re here, we keep pushing with patience and conviction, and are grateful for those of you who’ve kept on supporting us.[/p][p]🔗 Join us on Discord[/p][p]Thank you, truly, for being here.[/p][h3]What You Can Do To Help[/h3][p]If you wanna push us up, either one of these will support us more than you know[/p]

• [p]Keep up the kind words on our Steam posts and the Likes[/p]
• [p]You can get and support Solace Builder here:  itch.io and here: ko-fi[/p]
• [p]Drop by our IndieDB page to help make it visible[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Patch notes[/h3][p]v 1.1.1.3 2026.02.10[/p][p]- Solace Builder capabilities added into Solace Crafting
- Added 45 new building pieces
- Added 51 new pieces of furniture
- Added 86 new decorations
- Added several new light sources
- Fixed several snow tree billboard shader errors
- Fixed a number of new prefabs throwing errors with the navmesh generator
- Fixed floating island shader error
- Fixed a problem teleporting to certain world encounters via solaces
- Fixed the console commands for /dayspeed /nightspeed and /biomeblenddistance[/p]

[p]Hey folks,[/p][p]Had a bit of an asset mishap bringing stuff into SC that wasn't supposed to be there. Not just that it doesn't fit the art style, but it was not built to work with the same systems so was popping up lots of harmless but annoying error warnings. I've rolled the patch back for now, and am working on fixing it up to bring it back online.[/p][p]We'll be in touch again soon![/p]

[p][/p][p]Now pushing full Solace Builder capabilities into Solace Crafting live![/p][p]I'm Kyle, founder of Big Kitty Games, and this is a big step towards our long term goals.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Not familiar with Solace Builder?[/h3][p]Solace Builder is a standalone program built entirely for creating, editing, and sharing 'scenes'. We never intended it to be solely a building creator, we're envisioning it as a tool to create entire landscapes, castles, dungeon rooms, enemy camps, and more. It's not yet capable of doing all of that, but we've made a lot of progress on it, and it's already a very robust tool for creating buildings, interiors, and their surrounding spaces.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]How to use the new system[/h3][p]To access the new building system, just press the 'B' key on your keyboard, or whatever you have your Building UI key bound to.[/p][p]To access the old building system, you can still click the "Building" button at the top of the main inventory screen.[/p][p][/p][p]We've still got a few steps to bring Solace Crafting and Solace Builder closer together, in particular saving and loading scenes between both programs. After that, any new assets and features added to Solace Builder will be promptly reflected in Solace Crafting as well.[/p][p][/p][p]With these new tools not only are we planning to add new town buildings, NPC villages, enemy PoIs, and so forth, we're hoping that you, our wonderful community, will help us in these various creative endeavors! When things are a little more fleshed out, and we're not in the middle of a huge Steam sale, I'd love to run a little contest or two, see if we can't get some interesting winners for things like 'The best tailor's shop' or some different categories like that that we could use to replace our current square look-a-like town buildings and so forth.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Coming soon[/h3][p]As we add new content we'd also like to test adding some paid downloadable content for cheap. It's no secret that we don't make enough money off of Solace Crafting to fund even me, let alone Fab and Newbery as well. Many players have reached out to us over the years asking for something like a building skin pack, or a decorative solace set, or something cosmetic that they could buy to help support development beyond the initial $10-15 price tag. We know that's a touchy subject for some people, and we've sworn to never implement pay to win or gambling in anything we do, but think we're finally starting to reach a point where some furniture packs, flora and fauna packs, or different things like that could both help out with our finances, while also improving the game even for those that aren't interested in buying the DLCs. Meaning, the content would still exist in the game for everyone, but the ability to edit and create your own scenes using the objects available in the DLCs would be limited to those that purchase them.[/p][p][/p][p]I know it's been a slow year in terms of actual Solace Crafting specific updates, but we've been very focused on shifting from a solo indie dev game kind of dabbling in all manner of content without really finishing a lot of the already in-game systems, into an experienced, albeit small, game studio capable of designing and executing both the generation of new things as well as polishing existing content up to a higher standard. These sort of in-house, yet public, tools are part of our plan towards creating a wide reaching and long lasting multiverse of intertwined products and games.[/p][p][/p][p]As always, a huge thanks to those of you that have stuck with us all these years, we're still here! And we welcome everyone new to our community with open arms![/p][p][/p][p]Happy gaming![/p][p]
[/p][h3]Condensed patch notes[/h3][p]v 1.1.1.1 2025.12.20[/p][p]- Solace Builder capabilities added into Solace Crafting[/p][p]- Fixed many different furniture items not being editable[/p][p]- Fixed camera zooming during building edit mode[/p][p]- Fixed point light interaction[/p][p]- Moved interactable instructions to the left[/p][p]- Disabled material alteration on solace shards[/p][p]- Fixed legacy building editor throwing an error when clicking on new buildings[/p][p]- Fixed floating islands not rendering properly[/p][p]- Upgraded Unity version to 2022.3.62f2[/p][p]- Fixed light destruction error when spawning town building previews for placement[/p][p]- Fixed burst compiler error debug log generation[/p][p]- Fixed a dedicated server WeatherManager error[/p][p][/p][h3]What You Can Do To Help[/h3][p]If you wanna push us up, either one of these will support us more than you know[/p][p]- Keep up the kind words on our Steam posts and the Likes[/p][p]- You can get and support the builder here:  https://bigkittygames.itch.io/solace-builder[/p][p]- Drop by our IndieDB page to help make it visible: https://www.indiedb.com/games/solace-crafting-rebuild[/p][p]- And of course, support on our Ko-fi page:  https://ko-fi.com/bigkittygames[/p][p][/p][p]Join us in Discord[/p][p][/p][p]
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