Solace Crafting News

I've been working on an upgrade to resource scanners that ties into a lot of different systems including the map and resource node spawning. All in all it's been a difficult endeavor, but should generate a lot of benefit and I'm looking to improve the map quite a bit, performance wise, while I am it.

Taking a break from that today I answered a few bug reports and made some improvements to general monster AI as well as goblin dungeons. I ended up making the goblin dungeons pretty dark, darker than I had shown while streaming, but added much more prominent light sources with randomized color, so they should still be largely well-lit, with patches of darkness.



I've also gone through all of the building pieces and a lot of in-game decorations making sure that shaders and batching settings are set as they need to be to squeeze out better performance.

There was also a problem where running around the world zero, or any point where four terrain corners meet, would cause terrains to spawn and despawn due to the terrain occupied by the player changing in rapid succession. I fixed this problem a couple weeks ago, but the grass was actually still behaving this way causing lagg spikes. That should now be fixed in this patch as well reducing lagg spikes while running around in a set area such as the starting platform.

v 0.7.3.5 2021.04.06
- Improved a variety of shaders used by different objects
- Improved batching of building pieces
- Improved monster turning, stopping, tracking, and acceleration
- Darkened lighting in goblin dungeons
- Randomized color of torches in goblin dungeons
- Monsters killed will no longer block movement/skill target checks
- Fixed some pathing issues in goblin dungeons
- Fixed grass turning on and off around the starting area causing lag
- Fixed a missing material on standing torches
- Fixed scanners not being placeable in creative mode
- Fixed a bug that could reset game settings when creating a new world
- Fixed goblin dungeons being able to spawn staircases directly underneath staircases creating inaccessible routes

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! 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

So... Somehow there's some kind of a mesh deformity on the female models breasts that produce oversized nipples on certain graphics cards... Unfortunately my graphics card is not affected for whatever reason so I was not aware of the problem, though it sounds like it's been around for months. In bringing it up in Discord recently a number of players sent me screenshots showing the problem so I've put forth some effort to try and remedy the problem with this patch. Unfortunately I can't tell if I've fixed it because it doesn't happen on my computer, so I'm patching this in despite a few more things I was hoping to get done with this patch.

Since I was working on the character creation interface I cleaned up the code a bit and better situated the camera and zoom functionality so that you can get right up on a characters face, etc. I do also hope to add an edit option to already existing players to let you go back in and change them should you see fit to do so.

I've also improved a couple of small but important methods used during object spawning that will cause spawning order to jumble up a bit and could cause rocks and things to spawn on or around player buildings and town once more. I've also improved the colliders, LOD groups (draw distance managers), and shaders used on a variety of new objects that should increase performance and stop things from spawning insides of some of the new rocks that weren't setup as properly as they should have been.

v 0.7.3.4 2021.03.23
- Improved character creation camera positioning/movement
- Improved biome spawn calculation checks
- Improved player and NPC model generation speed
- Ocean objects can now spawn anywhere underwater regardless of biome
- Fixed sleeping and pausing not working in creative mode
- Fixed cave monsters not working properly due to recent changes
- Fixed fallen logs/stumps not harvesting properly
- Fixed eye coloring
- Fixed some outdated methods interfering with weather patterns
- Fixed cloud coverage average being too high
- Fixed world preview camera

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! 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

To go with the new ocean biome we now have a few fishies, sharkies, and octopi...ies. To go with new creatures we've got new items include fish meat, ink from octopi, and scales from fish.

I had to craft a new form of AI for the aquatic creatures, and improve the spawning system to be able to spawn underwater things not just on the ground, but anywhere between the ground and the surface of the water. I've also cleaned up the swimming animation transitions a bit, but the main swim animation is still based at the feet of the player making the positioning awkward. I'm hoping to improving swimming next and segue from there into combat animations next week.
As has become common of late I'll first be looking to go through bug reports and forum posts at the start of the week. It's not very efficient for me to be bouncing between a lot of different tasks and builds every day if they're not so severe that they can wait for a few days.

v 0.7.3.3 2021.03.19
- Added pike, salmon, octopi, sharks
- Added ink, fish scales, raw fish, cooked fish
- Land animals should no longer be able to wander or chase into water
- Recall and exit scrolls now require ink

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! 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

New biome colors and flora have made their way onto beta!









The ocean biome now has a variety of coral and rocks in it. I've realized today that I'm going to need a new type of AI for aquatic creatures as they'll need to move in 3D, so that's my main goal for tomorrow.

Pushed a first wave of this last night, but had some problems with the fog math. The weather math is still a bit of a work in progress, but it's nearly finished. And now my wife is telephoning me from the bedroom because it's way past my bedtime!

v 0.7.3.2 2021.03.18
- Updated the core weather system to a completely random yet highly controlled system
- Added fog and sky colors to the biome/weather management system
- Added coral and rocks to the ocean floors (WIP)
- Fixed a couple problems with fog math in yesterdays patch

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! 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 did end up pushing an initial patch to beta before the weekend started last week and I was looking to push all of the recent bug fixes from the default/live branch into beta and push another patch out for it today, but there's still a good share of new things I haven't really had a solid look at so I'm going to hold that off for another day. Unrelated to this patch, but I do have the various fog and sky colors working with the new biome system and should be able to patch them in tomorrow.

As for this patch, I've added a few new items, bug fixes, and some quality of life features in response to community requests.

On the alchemy skill tree you can now find recall scrolls and exit scrolls. The recipes for these are planned to include some items I'm hoping to add later this week, so they're pretty easy to make right now, but basically one will send you back to your home solace (which you can set to wherever you like) while an exit scroll will take you out of an encounter, such as a cave or a floating island.
Currently exit scrolls are setup to move you directly to the surface of wherever you are. In other words if you travel 500 meters west through a cave system, an exit scroll will move you up to the surface 500 meters west of the cave entrance. I think I'm going to change this to have it return you to the entrance, and will be looking for input on that tomorrow.

As for quality of life improvements, large rocks that can be found in the desert and the grasslands can now be harvested to the point of destruction. They have a base of 450-550 stone and their tier does scale, though they are incapable of spawning as or rewarding rarities. The main reason for this being to provide the option to remove a rock if it's in a spot that's really impeding your building plans, or if a change in the spawning math has caused on to appear on your front door step, as was the case for some players with recent changes to the beta flora.
Crate boxes will now also award greater storehouse storage capacity based on their rarity to the amounts of 100, 150, 300, 500, and 750 for legendary.

Lots more to come!

v 0.7.2.5 2021.03.16
- Added recall scrolls and exit scrolls as alchemy recipes
- Crate boxes will now provide increased storehouse storage based on rarity (replace at least one to recalculate)
- Large rocks in the desert and grasslands are now harvestable
- Fixed town buildings not building for free in creative
- Fixed storehouse torches being marked as owned by Malkere and locked
- Fixed a couple of rare errors in the building UI
- Fixed globes of water not being able to be stored
- Fixed a problem causing shadows to stutter (already implemented on beta)

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

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