Solace Crafting News

I started a survey last week that is still and will remain open for a while. If you didn't catch it last week you can fill out here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8XYVZSD

Here are the averaged results thus far:



















Imagine that, the community for a game called Solace Crafting would be interested in more crafting! =D It warms my heart.

Before getting back to deepening crafting, there are few things that I need to stabilize a bit, primarily with towns. I will also be out of office visiting my family in the States, from the 30th to the 9th. I'm a designer by heart, so I will enjoy the time away from programming to flesh out the upcoming improvements in my array of notebooks.

Today I also have a patch, that brings some fixes for both single and multi-player, including the binding of multi-player client accounts to their Steam ID. This is optional, and can be disabled in the servercfg.dat after it has been updated to the latest version by opening the game once.

There is also a new console command /targetframerate that will cap the frame rate at the set value, which is now set to 90 by default. There is not a input field in the settings window yet, though I will add one. Note that vsync will override this setting unless turned off. This was added primarily because without any form of capping the CPU or GPU can basically end up running full tilt at 200+ fps on stronger machines, and it's just not necessary/can cause heat problems. This and other commands can be seen by typing /help in the console.

This patch will go live on the beta branch first, and assuming nothing is out of order will be pushed live tomorrow.

v 0.5.3.5 2019.07.22
- Added /targetframerate to console commands
- Turned off demon pathing
- Changed initial equipment loading to end with holding main hand weapons instead of sledgehammer
- Fixed weapons/tools with missing 3D models (recurve bow) from throwing errors/stalling loading if saved while equipped
- Fixed "craft" button unintentionally showing up on schematics in chests and bags
- Fixed a number of spelling errors
- Fixed recurve bow not displaying a 3D model
- Fixed bow idle stance animations not turning off when swapping weapon sets from bow to empty handed
Multiplayer:
- Saved games are now bound to client's Steam ID (if server requires it, default: yes)
- Login attempts using a character name already registered to a different Steam ID will report: "Kicked: Save name + Steam ID mismatch"
- Login attempts to servers using a different version than clients will report: "Kicked: Game version mismatch"
- Login attempts to a server requiring a Steam ID with a client not connected to Steam will report: "
- Reset multiplayer hotbar buttons
- Fixed wand and bow basic attacks
- Fixed enchanting table and transmogrifier not picking up properly
- Fixed enchanting skill purchases not updating immediately
- Fixed enchanting skills not saving/loading properly
- Fixed distant water not loading on clients

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. The beta is not available to 32-bit users.

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

I get the feeling I've been working on too many things at once lately. It's understandable because there is so much I still want to get done from here on, regardless of how far we've come, but it feels like there are too many "unfinished" features in-game right now. I'm actively working on towns, villagers, crafting skills, and multi-player, more or less all at once, with 5-6 other things I'd really like to get started, all while trying to clean up the project to get ready for the possibility of additional staff.

In light of which, I'd like to take this opportunity to reassess where priority should be given, both in my opinion as well as the communities. I have prepared a small survey to try and gauge how the community feels about how things are, what's to come, and would very much appreciate everyone's time in answering:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8XYVZSD

As for my own thoughts, here are the things I am working on right now:

1. Multi-player
Multi-player has 1-2 major bugs at the moment I'm actively working to fix. I am also working on improving the connection process both to better explain the current state of an attempted connection, and to bind server-side saves to client SteamIDs, and/or offer per-character password protection for servers not interested in requiring an active Steam connection.

A number of features are currently turned off in multi-player, most notably caves and towns. Caves and floating islands shouldn't be very difficult to get working and more than anything just have not been tested yet, and should make there way into multi-player soon. Towns will no doubt require a bit more work, and are not currently planned to be added to multi-player until they are further fleshed out in single-player.

Multi-player specific features such as partying and being able to tell where your friends are on the map or compass, I do want to get the basics of in and working, but for the most part plan to dedicate most of my attention to single-player most likely until we have additional staff.

2. Town buildings and villagers + Steam Workshop
The current town system has a strong base, but is still missing a lot of meat. I want to re-enable the custom building + villager summoning options with less strict building requirements as the primary (cheapest) means of summoning villagers rather than the current pre-made structure plop method. While still of course offering the plop method for people that aren't as interested in building. This also plays into the first phase of Steam Workshop integration which I have been researching lately. In short, an in-game way to upload saved structures to Steam Workshop for sharing with other players around the world. Steam Workshop integration once working, will eventually branch off to items, skins, quests, and more, but with most of those types still further down the road.

Villagers, or town NPCs, were temporarily turned off while undergoing some changes, and have remained off for too long. I want to get them at least appearing again as soon as possible, but ultimately am looking to upgrade them into having stats and skills that grow over time. This may be more of a luxury system than something needed right now, and judging by the results of the survey may be pushed to the back burner.

3. Crafting and harvesting skills and facilities
One of the biggest "eye-openers" I've come to accept over the past couple months is that Solace Crafting is not a game where player level is the deciding factor as to where a player can travel and survive. It's not difficult for a level 20 player to craft and enchant gear strong enough to let them survive just fine in level 25 or 30 territory, for example. That switch in mentality, that it's more about gear and skills than it is actual player level has done away with my hesitation to add more crafting and harvesting skills. I was worried about making already "overpowered" equipment even stronger, but realize now: that's ok! I want to add an "offensive rating" and "defensive rating" showing roughly what level monster your offensive and defensive capabilities should be on par with. This will be pending some equipment math changes as there is some multiplication currently being used that gets out of hand at higher levels.

The current enchanting skill tree gives a decent example of where I want to take crafting and harvesting skill trees. Providing higher level recipe unlocks as well as improved skills to be chosen and unlocked over time. With the recent implementation of schematics we have already started to introduce more powerful equipment, and soon with skills like "smithing melee damage" it will be possible to specialize specifically to your characters play style, slowly making their equipment stronger and stronger. This also plays into the benefits of multi-player play, as one smith can focus on armor, while another can focus on weapons. Note that there will of course never be any skill caps added in single-player limiting anyone from upgrading both armor and weapon skills, for example, it will just take longer to try and "master" both by yourself.

4. Continuing towards version 1.0
There is a lot that I was originally planning to get in prior to 1.0 that I think now will actually be better after 1.0, the biggest of which is the elemental planes. They will add a lot of depth to exploration, new resources, new monsters, and so on, but I think some of the more obvious features that we are still missing and general optimizations should be checked off before we dive too deep into more "advanced" features such as that. Some of the features I consider important for version 1.0 include cooking, fishing, monster skills, and quests, as well as adventuring jobs and classes.

I should make it loud and clear, here and now, version 1.0 will be no where near the end of development for Solace Crafting. It's a major step to transition out of "Early Access" into "Released" and is also a prerequisite for many players and organizations that are tired of early access games being abandoned and so just don't cover/play them at all. Releasing version 1.0 is most likely not something I can do on my own, as optimization and polish is a big part of it. But, as sales slowly increase, the prospect of additional staff grows closer and closer to reality.



As always, feel free to comment here, start a discussion on the discussion boards, or join us in Discord at discord.gg/solacecrafting and thank you everyone for your support!

Kyle Postlewait
Big Kitty Games

Due to some extra information that was added to the base Item class for schematic support, item comparison checks were failing causing similar items to not stack properly. This patch addresses that.

v 0.5.3.4 2019.07.12
- Fixed an item comparison error causing items to not stack properly

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

A "smaller" live patch since we patched live last week, this patch primarily brings in schematic drops along with a wave of bug fixes. Last weeks last live patch actually "leaked" crafting skills, which are turned off again for this patch, though they will be on and working in the next beta patch.

Our Discord server is also now an official discord server and can be searched for via the Discord server discovery button or directly via:
discord.gg/solacecrafting

Condensed live patch notes:
- Added [/help commands] to the console to display a list of console commands
- Added "Craft" button to the inventory when a schematic is selected
- Added a "Discord" button to the start screen that opens a link to the official Discord server
- Added crafting schematics as general drops to all monsters and chests
- Reset known enchants
- Enchanting point and spent points should now auto-correct themselves if they do no properly reflect how many enchants have been unlocked on the enchanting skill tree

Latest patch notes:
v 0.5.3.3 2019.07.11
- Added [/help commands] to the console to display a list of console commands
- Improved the stone texture on the medium round building parts
- Fixed an error where the schematic generator would try to generate tools
- Fixed "dead" monoliths adding their icon back to the map
- Fixed building structure load windows not resizing to allow for scrolling when more than 14 premades exist
- Fixed a bunch of broken console commands
- Fixed holding control to snap structure placement mode throwing an error
- Fixed larger building pieces not placing properly when manually loading a rotated structure

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

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

It's Saturday! But, no rest for us indie devs!

The schematic system was a bit over complicated in the way the code was separating itself from the standard item system. I was able to simplify it quite a bit by rewriting a number of things, though unfortunately at the cost of losing all schematics up until now. My apologies for that. This should fix the storage problems schematics were having.

v 0.5.3.2 2019.07.06
- Added "Craft" button to the inventory when a schematic is selected
- Fixed deconstruction of buildings that require light return an item called light to the inventory
- Fixed a number of storage problems with schematics

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. The beta is not available to 32-bit users.

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