Solace Crafting News

This patch pushes 1.0.0.3 and 1.0.0.4 to the default "live" branch, as well as 0.4 to the beta branch.

1.0.0.3 brings in improvements to server world generation speeds, so hopefully we will see a drop in what people are labeling as "desync" where again when you run around on a multiplayer server with several other people and monsters seems to not spawn or resources don't seem to interact properly.

I've also fixed a number of more annoying multiplayer bugs that people were running into. More to come tomorrow o/

v 1.0.0.4 2022.08.09
- Fixed skill points spent not always updating properly in multiplayer
- Fixed some multiplayer achievement errors
- Fixed familiar not spawning nor firing in multiplayer
- Fixed chain lightning lingering for multiplayer clients
- Fixed backstab criticals multiplying way too much

v 1.0.0.3 2022.08.08
- Improved multi-player dedicated server world generation speeds
- Enabled password protection for servers
- Upgraded quest system to work in multiplayer

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord! Follow development live on Twitch!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

I'm totally swamped trying to keep up with e-mails, discord chat, and Steam posts. Sorry again for anyone that hasn't yet gotten an answer to anything. I'm trying to prioritize some of the bigger problems that are going on before I tackle the small stuff.

One major problem I've seen a few people run into so far is a lack of enemies in multiplayer. This is caused by the server not keeping up with the connected players. If, for example, there are 6 players all running in different areas of the world, the server has to be constantly generating all of those areas in order for the player to be able to engage with anything as everything is server authorative. There is still a lot of room for improvement on this front, but I've tweaked a few server specific methods that should speed things up.

The starter quests/tutorials not working in multiplayer has also been a problem for families and friends that start their very first character in multiplayer. This patch upgrades the system to work properly in multiplayer.

As there are some bigger than small changes in this patch I will push it to beta for a bit of testing before I push it to the default live branch, but expect to push it over tomorrow assuming there aren't any serious problems.

v 1.0.0.3 2022.08.08
- Improved multi-player dedicated server world generation speeds
- Enabled password protection for servers
- Upgraded quest system to work in multiplayer

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Not everyone is happy about Solace Crafting coming out of early access in a less than could be state. In this video I talk a bit about how the other options open to me were much more dangerous for the game, how sales have been doing well these first 3 days of launch, and what I hope to do be able to do with those sales in the coming months.

To recap a bit using text, I had completely run out of money, and the slow draining of my bank account down to literally zero was a psychologically and emotionally demoralizing experience. The options before me were either to get a full-time job and likely end up abandoning Solace Crafting some years down the road due to a of lack of time to develop it and through that an inability to keep people interested in it, or try to make the best of what I have. It was a bit of a gamble, and some people are upset with me, but the majority is enjoying what I've accomplished thus far, and looking forward to improvements.

As sales are doing quite decent, I have completely regained my morale, and more importantly once the sales actually make it to my business account, I should have enough to hire on freelancers to help improve the game where it needs it most, and in ways that I would never have been able to do properly on my own.

To me it feels like the first big step on the larger journey towards what Solace Crafting can really become. There is so much that I've had to put down and cross off my lists, simply because there's only so much one person without any funding can do. With this initial burst of funds I hope to take Solace Crafting to the next stage to attract even more players with an ever better product, and then to the next stage, and so on, just as so many of my favorite games have done over the years.

From what it seems like to me, most of the negative reviews I'm receiving come from 1 of 3 things:
1. The graphics aren't good enough.
To me, graphics are, and always will be, less important than gameplay and content. That doesn't mean that, of course, Solace Crafting has a lot of room for improvement in the graphics department, but I don't think this is the proper stage to be worrying too much about improving the graphics. It's certainly not something I could do on my own, with any sort of efficiency at least. I do certainly understand that at some point along the way, the graphics will need to be improved, but I don't think that is top priority.

2. The controls are too clunky.
This I very much understand. The controls honestly bother me very little, it's just not the way my brain works, but I do very much understand what people are talking about when they bring this up. Animation blending, combat distancing and movement, jumping and swimming transitions, etc. This is one of the first things I hope to put funding towards as soon as I am able to. Again, it's not something that I can bring to a high quality level by myself, and would be better left to someone that has a lot of experience working specifically on this subject.

3. The user interface is bad.
This, I also very much understand. The current UI is largely grey and sometimes you need to click 4-5 buttons to get to a specific window. There is a lot of room for improvement here, and like with the controls, if sales keep up at all in the volume that they are currently going I will be very interested in hiring on someone specifically to redesign the in-game UI completely. I will make a list of all the needs and end-goals of the UI for now and the near future, and work with a specialist to improve it.

The plain truth is though that I never would have been able to address these problems properly on my own. I know some people are worried that I've made a bad move, but I think this is just the beginning, and I am ready to get the ball rolling faster and faster as we improve, expand, and realize Solace Crafting to its full potential.

So thank you to everyone that has stuck with me through Early Access, to everyone that has joined us these past few days, and especially to all the positive reviewers that recognize that this is not the end of the road!

Best wishes and happy gaming!

Kyle Postlewait
Big Kitty Games

Another small patch that fixes what for some has been a couple of big problems.

One is the frost nova spell. Part of it seems to be crashing certain graphics devices. This patch should stop that.

Another is resource desyncing between server and clients. This has been an elusive problem only affecting some people for several weeks. I was able to track it down together with some friendly new players that ran in to it today and fix it.

Bug fixing will always take priority, so I've got a number of new reports and things that I'm looking into. Again though, please do let me know, preferably in Discord if you run into anything specific.

Happy Gaming!

v 1.0.0.2 2022.08.04
- Fixed some spots that still said "early access"
- Fixed the Frost Nova spell causing crashes on certain video cards
- Fixed encounter resource clearing throwing errors for clients not in the encounter
- Fixed the multiplayer server list not masking and scrolling properly
- Fixed multiplayer server versions not printing properly
- Fixed instances of multiplayer resources falling out of sync between server and client

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Thank you to everyone that has joined us over the past 24 hours!

I'm a little swamped with e-mails, some obvious scams, friend requests, etc. I'm hoping to focus on improving multi-lingual support to open up access to the non-English world, as well as get a threaded save test up to beta later today.

This small patch is actually what I did with some free time yesterday. Up until now I've often patched in a days work and then gone to bed, but once in a while I'll mess something up and then be asleep for 8 hours and not notice people telling me I messed up! So I'm going to start patching in the morning instead. I also usually will post the majority of changes to the beta branch first to be safe, but these are small enough changes that they shouldn't affect anything serious.

Almost all changes/fixes are brought on by player feedback. If something is not working as intended please let me know and I will fix it!

v 1.0.0.1 2022.08.02
- Added keybinding settings for the WIP item creation UI in creative mode
- Tweaked cloud coloring/coverage
- Fixed an incorrect instance of the I key being bound to open inventory
- Fixed the "loading" screen not being open in the first frame, showing a white/empty world
- Fixed clouds often rendering a charcoal sketch effect over white parts
- Fixed the quest helper starting up every session even if you turned it off last session
- Fixed the default crating materials to level saying 50 instead of 25 in the world settings UI

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting? Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker