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Now live! v 0.7.6.0

Now live! Patch 0.7.6 adds our first set of Steam achievements, auto-looting, new camera controls, lots of new map features, and of course lots of bug fixes.

Please note that due to changes in how things are spawned, resources and encounters may shift around if playing on a save game from a previous version. The new updated methods used to determine town resource locations, for example, will no long be shifted around due to changes in decorations. Predetermined now are, in order: Large encounters, town resources, rare resources, tower ruins. Everything else is still generated on a per-area basis and subject to change if/when changes are made.



Tower ruins are a new addition just this week that have the first interactable source of the "light" currency. These are very common encounters and as such monolith spawns have been turned down a bit. I think it's important to point out that I do hope to use different assets for these rather than the standard building player pieces they're using right now, but I'm trying really hard to stick to my schedule of moving things forward towards 1.0. There is always more to do, and I don't want to get hung up on every little detail.



Speaking of which, I'd like to open up about my plans moving forward a bit. Tomorrow I want to start the process of finishing up the six encounter types that I have planned for progression. Currently you need silkenthread underwear to survive the temperature in certain areas and I want to expand this system with further "ranks" of materials.
Caves, Goblin Dungeons, and the soon to be Undead Dungeons will all be Cold 1, meaning that normal health/energy/mana regeneration will stop unless you have silkenthread underwear on. At the end of each of these 3 encounters will be special resources used for crafting the third rank of materials.
With rank 3 underwear you can proceed to temperature 2 zones: floating islands, lava caves, and water caves. Each of which will in turn have another set of special resources that will allow access to temperature 3 zones, though I don't plan to work on temerature 3 zones just yet.

Once these encounters are in and working I want to move into 0.8 where I plan to revamp the combat math, attributes, and skill trees, as well as finish the job and class trees. During this phase I'll also be working on combat animations and controls, as well as monster skills and abilities.

Moving then into 0.9 I largely plan to focus on improving performance, the user interface, color schemes, better controller support, as well as finishing up multi-lingual support. During 0.9 it's most likely that I'll be adding a main story quest line, though not set in stone.

The real goal is to get a version 1.0 game out that is bug-free, stable, and worth 15-20$, keeping in mind that nothing is capable of pleasing everyone. It's a really hard subject for me to talk about openly, but I haven't really made much profit from early access these past years, and have really just been funding myself with the money I make. Which is pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but Solace Crafting could be so much more if I had enough money to pay for an artist and an animator, for example. That's the real goal for a 1.0 release Q4 2021, because there's still a LOT of stuff we CAN add to make the game everything that it can be. Luckily 99% of the Steam user base has still never heard of Solace Crafting, so there's still a lot of potential to make that dream come true, and is why I think sticking to the core plan towards 1.0 is important.

All in all, progress continues, and there's a lot to look forward! As always I welcome everyone's comments on direction and features. We get into some great discussions in Discord. And a huge thanks to my Patreon supporters that very seriously make all the difference in allowing this project to continue!

Happy gaming!

Condensed patch note v 0.7.5.0 -> 0.7.6.0

- Added 62 Steam Achievements
- Added procedural tower ruins with lootable light sources
- Added rare stalk and timber nodes to underwater areas
- Rare resources and town resources are now generated on a per terrain, deterministic system
- Increased the default spawn rate of rare, elite, and legendary resources
- Changed 3 large cacti to trees for rare spawns
- Removal of items changed from displaying on the right as red to using the color rarity of the item
- Rare resources are now spawned 1 per terrain on default settings, resulting in less uncommon resources
- Toned down swamp flora a bit

Multiplayer
- Home solaces can now be set in multi-player on a per player basis
- Resource scanners now work in MP

System
- Upgraded terrain flattening to allow multiple inputs during generation
- Improved several AI scripts performance
- Added three new world settings and console commands: /showBiomes /showEncounters /showResources
- The will no longer be entirely visible if /showBiomes is disabled in world settings
- Large encounters and town resources can now be seen anywhere on the map if /showEncounters is enabled in world settings
- Rare resources can be scanned anywhere on the map if /showResources is enabled in world settings
- Increased inventory item tier and amount text resolution and added a shadow
- Added the ability to zoom the camera in and out when in targetting mode
- Added the ability to raise and lower the came with shift+mouse wheel
- Added shift+interact to auto-loot monsters
- Camera state and position in regards to player are now saved

Latest patch notes to live/beta:
- Fixed the possibility of tower ruins spawning too close to terrain borders causing errors

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

Beta v 0.7.5.9

Small patch to improve the new towers and map features a bit, as well as some single-player/client performance improvements.

v 0.7.5.9 2021.06.23
- Upgraded terrain flattening to allow multiple inputs during generation
- Now flattening area around
- Improved several AI scripts performance
- Fixed the /showEncounters command not working properly
- Fixed an outdated method causing some town resources to disappear
- Fixed the description for the enchanting table unlock

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

Beta v 0.7.5.8

I spent the majority of the past two weeks studying up and testing a variety of performance tricks, especially targeting rendering and lighting. I'm still just toying with the different possible improvements, but lighting is by far the biggest destroyer of performance in Solace Crafting right now.

Putting that stuff to the side for a bit, I've added a new type of procedural tower to the world spawns. These new tower ruins have pedestals with glowing light on them that can be looted for a small boost of light, the main currency used for building and upgrading solaces, among other things.

After a discussion on Discord I've also added 3 new world settings along with console commands for them. The true or false commands are:
/showBiomes
/showEncounters
/showResources
These all relate to the way that the map will handle itself. If showbiomes is off biomes (map colors) will only be drawn for areas that you have been to. Likewise, showencounters will only show large and town encounters for areas that you have been to. Showresources will then only show resources within scanner range of areas that you have been to.

Implementing this into multiplayer I decided to make the list of "visited areas" a global list, so any player that visits an area will unlock that map section for everyone else on the server. We'll try it out on beta first and see how things feel before pushing this lot live.

v 0.7.5.8 2021.06.22
- Toned down swamp flora a bit
- Added procedural tower ruins with lootable light sources
- Added three new world settings and console commands: /showBiomes /showEncounters /showResources

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

Beta v 0.7.5.7

Some more little fixes for recent changes and multi-player.

I've also added 18 more achievements, Achievements take a fair amount of time to plug-in and make the graphics for them, but I hope to add more and more over time.

This patch also increases the text resolution for the Tier and Amount texts over inventory icons and adds a small outline around them to make them easier to read. Unfortunately it looks like some of them are positioning themselves a little too far to the point that they're bleeding over the top right a little. I'll tweak that in next patch though.

If all seems well, this patch might be good for pushing live. I want to give another look at stalk scaling, and still have some storehouse things I'm looking at.

v 0.7.5.7 2021.06.04
- Added 18 new achievements for upgrading towns, solaces, and ley line teleporters
- Increased inventory item tier and amount text resolution and added a shadow
- Fixed rare trees above water spawning as fruit trees
- Fixed some click to transfer inventory problems with storehouses
- Fixed limestone quarries and enchanted stone not spawning
- Fixed equipping and removing sockets in multi-player

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

Beta v 0.7.5.6

Mostly was just bug hunting today, and found some of the problems I was looking for. Along the way I started playing with some things to speed up testing and thankfully came up with some useful new options.

Most of all, the player camera can now be adjusted in two different new ways. The "targeting mode," which is enabled via the tilde key (usually above tab) by default, will now follow the same zoom as the normal chase camera, so you can move it forward and backward to your preference. You can now also adjust the cameras height by holding the left shift key while scrolling the mouse-wheel. I actually find it quite a bit easier to look at in targeting mode with the camera moved up a little bit. These settings will also be saved between sessions so if you were last playing in first person for example, the game will reload in first person.

I also added shift+interact as a sort of quick-loot for monster drops. It will also print out what, if anything, you looted on the right of the screen color coded for rarity.

There were also a number of weird duplication and/or item amounts going negative reports over the past little while here. I believe I've found what was causing them and fixed it. There were also some "out of bounds" errors I've fixed, and a lack of limestone and magical essence that I'm still looking into.

v 0.7.5.6 2021.06.02
- Added the ability to zoom the camera in and out when in targeting mode
- Added the ability to raise and lower the came with shift+mouse wheel
- Added shift+interact to auto-loot monsters
- Camera state and position in regards to player are now saved
- Changed 3 large cacti to trees for rare spawns
- Removal of items changed from displaying on the right as red to using the color rarity of the item
- Fixed a problem with the possible animal lists generated per biome used to spawn rare animal
- Fixed saturation and post-exposure in-game settings not working properly
- Fixed an inventory error causing items to become stacks or negative numbers in some instances
- Fixed a "pickup" option showing for monoliths on the radial menu

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