Producer's Letter #9 + Beta v1.1.1.3

[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]