Solace Crafting News

Had some small fixes that I wanted to get patched in before pushing live, but ended up with a busy weekend and a gale that kept my up all night last night! Assuming there's nothing that needs immediate attention, I'm again looking to push this patch live tomorrow. It mostly addresses some small bug fixes, but also includes a number of updates to the player animations.

Character controllers are a tricky business, and I have neglected ours for a long time. Still very much a work in progress, I've updated most of the armed and unarmed animation as well as blended them all together rather than the twitchy immediate changes we've had up until now. I've also updated some of the bow animations, but some of the backwards and strafing movements are still pretty bad. I also need to work on swimming as well as combat animation in general.

v 0.7.2.0 2021.02.23
- Updated and blended a number of player animations (WIP)
- Removed combat stance timing out to idle. Instead equipped weapon and whether it's sheathed or not is used to determine animations.
- Added a Goblin Dungeon map icon
- Fixed water, fire, and tannin font recipes not showing up

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'm looking to push this patch and all the recent changes to the live public build tomorrow if all seems well after simmering on beta for a day.

First off in today's patch are enchanted torches:



These special, currently wall only, torches have a settings interface that will let you specify their color, range, and intensity. I wanted some of these components for use in procedural content like the goblin dungeons, and so just extended things a bit and built an interface with some customizable "preset" color slots, and so forth.

I've also added breathing potions and "light range" potions to the alchemy tree. Breathing potions are pretty self-explanatory, and the light range potion applies a buff with a new stat called "light range". This increases the range of the player's light aura, brightening up a larger area either at night, underwater, or in caves, for example.

I've also fixed a few small problems that had been bothering me like procedural areas turning on and off repeatedly when you cross back and forth over a distance threshold. This happens very often at the starting platform because it is spawned right in the corner of 4 areas. Areas to be marked for despawn will now have 1 extra unit of allowed distance (128m) than areas being marked to spawn to prevent that. Grass not joining together properly at the seams causing long straight bald lines to appear every 128m has also been repaired.

I've already started working on the character controller and animations, something I've been putting off for a long time that is very a common issue with players that leave a negative review here on Steam. It's almost midnight here, but even after just a couple hours of working on it it's already looking a lot better. I've only updated the out-of-combat movement animations though and it was too late to export the changes into this patch. All-in-all I think I've no other choice but to buy some better animations for the combat stance as the running caveman animations I'm using right now just don't do anyone any good.

Updating the controller and animations is the first of several "presentation" upgrades I want to make over the next few patches, as I've really only focused on "features" for a long time, and the poor presentation of them is turning away players and press that otherwise might find a quite enjoyable game. I'll be looking to finally implement some lore and am in the processes of consulting with some peers on UI improvements for which I've already garnered some great advice.

Thanks as always to everyone joining in for early access, and a special thanks to all of my Patreon supporters!

v 0.7.1.9 2021.02.19
- Added a "Light Range" potion that increases the range of the players light aura
- Added a breathing potion that allows breathing under water
- Added console commands for resource spawn rates, though they should not be used unless necessary
- Added enchanted torches with color, intensity, and range controls
- Glowing mushrooms in caves are now harvestable
- Increased the "area" despawn distance by 1 to prevent repeated spawn/despawn when walking back and forth over threshholds
- Brightened underwater fog (WIP)
- Fixed turning all the cave resource spawn settings to max causing iron and copper to become unable to spawn
- Fixed grass "areas" not overlapping properly, leaving obvious gaps

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

One lesser know aspect of creative mode finally gets a button in this patch. The item editor allows you to create most types of items, except for potions and sockets, and then even upload them to the Steam Workshop for Solace Crafting. I've also fixed a couple of small problems that were preventing structures subscribed to via the Steam Workshop from showing up in game via the building / load / workshop tab. I'm hoping to add a preview screenshot capability for uploading to the Steam Workshop as well.

Tomorrow I'm looking to add a couple of new building customization tools that will hopefully make for even more interesting uploads.

This patch also adds an empty button to monster drops, tombstones, and monoliths, as well as a fill button to chests.

v 0.7.1.7 2021.02.16
- Added an "Item Editor" button to the main UI in Creative mode
- Added "Empty" and "Fill" buttons to chests / tombstones / loot
- Added new icons for not yet updated enchant sockets
- Fixed workshop subscribed buildings not listing / loading properly
- Fixed saved structure load placement doubling the placement height modifier (Q/E)
- Fixed strong harvesting skills not working on elemental stones
- Fixed the new Armor and Alchemy recipes on the skill trees from leveling up beyond level 5
- Fixed socket icons not loading properly in storage chests and bags

I've been working on cleaning out old files and improving some of the data structures that manage enchants and skills in particular. This patch rearranges some of the skill trees and moves the 3 starting armor types, cloth, leather, and metal, to the skill trees, using the updated item template system instead of hard coded recipes. I'm still a bit on the fence whether these work better entirely on the skill trees, or if maybe the first level of them each should be awarded to new characters for free. We'll try it out though and see how things feel.

Also, due to popular demand, I've added a deconstruction bench, that allows old gear to be broken down into some of its original components. Only resources such a lumber and metal can be recovered in this way, and only half of them rounded down will be rewarded. Items that do produce returns due to the previous two rules will be ignored by the bench.

v 0.7.1.6 2021.02.14
- Added deconstruction bench
- Moved armor sets to skill trees
- Removed up a variety of scripts, textures, and models no longer in use
- Fixed a number of harmless errors printing to console/log during startup

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 had to put out a small hotfix for some long standing fog/cloud/weather timing and color issues that were amplified by last nights patch causing flickering at certain times of the day. All in all this smooths out a few different problems that were present with the light/color timings, and instant weather changes and some things.

I generally stick to 1-2 topics to work on, making "passes" at different systems that need improvement or work. I hadn't touched weather lightning/clouds/fog in a long time, and it is looking a lot better now with just a bit of work. Still not the desired end result where I want to program an entirely dynamic weather system, which won't be difficult, it's just hard to justify prioritizing something like that when there's so much to do. Glad with the outcome of these unanticipated repairs though.

v 0.7.0.26 2021.02.11
- Improved weather/fog/cloud coloring
- Fixed weather flickering

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