Solace Crafting News

There are still a number of upgrades and improvements being made to the new town building functions, but there were a few bugs on the live branch that make it worth pushing this patch live even if it's imperfect. If there are any problems, please just let me know and I should be able to tidy them up within 24 hours.

Note that this will wipe town buildings, wells, and ground torches for players that have not been playing on beta but on the live (default) branch as changes had to be made to the way some things are saved and loaded.

I also added in a number of crafting skills for each profession, but have turned them off for this patch and will turn them on tomorrow with the next beta patch.

With a number of new town building types in and working, I can now add recipes for "purchase" to all professions. With the crafting skills I'm working on I can also now add them as unlocks for reaching certain levels in crafting professions, for example. I for one am looking forward to lots of new armor, weapon, and enchant sets.

I want to spend some time further upgrading multiplayer, and then hope to start working primarily on the new villagers systems next.

The condensed live patch notes are as follows:

v 0.5.2.4 2019.06.26
- Added bonus armor, speed, and damage as possible variables to item templates
- Harvester town buildings now generate per hour instead of per day
- Added "Open Journal" to keybindings
- Added the Limestone Quarry town encounter to the desert biome
- Added Recurve bow to the Fletcher (initial test)
- Added Limestone and Coal as items (to be mined via towns, WIP)
- Added Mason, Engineer, Arcanist, Arable Farmer, and Pastoral Farmer town buildings
- Town building deconstruction now refunds 100% of the costs of the most recent upgrade
- Player buildings and building upgrades now refund 100% of their cost
- Added crafter buildings: Tailor, Leatherworker, Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Toolsmith, Woodworker, Fletcher, Artificer, Stoneworker
- Added unlockable recipes to tailor, leatherworker, and armorsmith
- Added carpenter building that crafts wooden construction supplies needed for Hamlet+ buildings
- Resource scanners are now craftable items that can be placed on ground or buildings
- Storehouses can no longer be deconstructed while other town buildings are present
- Solaces can no longer be deconstructed while town buildings are present
- Changed the way that wells and ground torches are saved, forcing a wipe of all wells and ground torches
- Changed the way that town buildings are saved, forcing a wipe of all town buildings
- Added town building placement obstruction and underground checks
- Initiating town building placement will now place the "dummy" 6m in front of players close to the ground
- Servers now properly updating their player count
- Server list temporarily not showing player count, ? instead, server details will show player count when selected
- Facility owners can now lock facilities they own preventing others from interacting with them
- Solaces can now be locked making them not show up for other players on the travel list
- Added an automatic unstuck attempt post teleportation if the player is found to be underground

The latest v0.5.2.4 patch notes are as follows:
v 0.5.2.4 2019.06.26
- Fixed limestone quarry and coal mine interfaces not refreshing their details
- Changed item template bonus armor and damage from a percentage increase to a flat integer
- Fixed storehouses overflowing past their storage limit
- Harvester town buildings now generate per hour instead of per day
- Fixed the crafter town building "crafting" button not working
- Interacting with a non-building material crafter town building will now go straight to upgrades
- Fixed construction supplies recipes secondary ingredients not remaining at tier 0 as they are intended to

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!

I'm working to stabilize the current beta build as much as possible while adding a few finishing touches to the new town features so that I can push a stable build live tomorrow. This patch addresses a number of small bugs and semi-rare problems.


This patch also adds signs to most town buildings, though I still want to give each building a more unique look as far as the shape and designs go. This also adds the "harvesting" tab to harvesters which will be used for more in the future, but for now allows quarriers to be assigned to local limestone quarries, and miners to local coal mines. Assigning a harvester to one of these resources is the only way to attain them.


Finishing up a rule-based addition to the terrain generation I started a while ago it's now possible to add encounters with a single line of code, as was the case with the new limestone quarry (once the extremely low quality model was finished, sorry it's not more interesting). Encounters can now be assigned to a specific biome, and as such coal mines are now only found in the mountains, including the snow biome, while limestone quarries can be found in the desert. Note that if playing on a old save, areas that you have previously visited may have saved coal mine or limestone quarry locations on the map that are no longer there (if they were in the wrong biome).


I've also finished upgrading a step forwards in equipment management that now allows a percentage of bonus armor, speed, and or damage, to different equipment recipes. For starters I have added an extra +10% armor to all of the recipes available for unlocking on the armor crafters, as well as a recurve bow recipe on the fletcher with +10% damage. Mostly for testing purposes at this point. If all goes well I will add a variety of recipes to all of the crafters locked behind increasingly higher levels of resources.

Eventually we'll want to have enchanting recipes, armor sets, and much more available for research and unlocking at towns, and other town buildings not yet added.

v 0.5.2.3 2019.06.24
- Added "Open Journal" to keybindings
- Added the Limestone Quarry town encounter to the desert biome
- Added Recurve bow to the Fletcher (initial test)
- Quarriers can now be assigned to harvest from local limestone quarries
- Miners can now be assigned to harvest from local coal mines
- Recipes bought from town crafters now produce 10% extra armor or damage (initial test)
- Upgraded town encounters to be biome specific (Coal Mines are mountain/snow)
- Removed the leaves from the beach/underwater terrain texture
- Fixed procedural towers setting their terrain location to 0,0 causing teleporting to solace place on cleared procedural towers to send the player to terrain 0, 0
- Fixed monster drops attempting to save with claimed procedural towers throwing errors after reloading
- Fixed a bug making procedural towers spawn even when premade towers should be
- Fixed the chat interface locking controls in certain cases
- Fixed not being able to use Strong hit on "basic" cave resources (boulders/stalactites)
- Fixed the Steam client attempting to restart when returning to the menu
- Fixed UMA throwing an error in multiplayer
- Fixed an error when receiving resource data for an already disabled terrain
- Fixed town encounters shifting twice as much as they should on the map
- Fixed an error that could spam per frame when a targetted solaces data can't be found
- Fixed death and revive animations not always working 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. The beta is not available to 32-bit users.

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

New buildings, town fixes, and crafter recipe fixes.



Here is a rough list of the current buildings and their purposes, keeping in mind this is not at all a complete list of the planned buildings:


Stockpile I-IV (Outpost)
Storehouse I-IV (Hamlet)
Warehouse I-IV (Village)
Depot I-IV (Town)
Vault I-IV (City)
These allow for storage of raw resources, and are where harvesters will store their harvested resources. They also define the maximum population allowed in a town, and the "rank" of a town.


Forager I-III
Arable Farmer I-III
Pastoral Farmer I-III
These generate the towns food. Fishers, Inns, and other buildings are also planned.


Reaper I-V
Hunter I-V
Miner I-V
Logger I-V
Quarrier I-V
These are the main resource harvesters. The amount of resources they gather is now dictated by two factors, the level of the building, and the biome of the town. In the near future the villager assigned to work as the harvester as well as their equipment will also affect the amount of resources gathered.


Carpenter
Mason
Engineer
Arcanist
These specialist crafters can prepare construction supplies that are required to craft most buildings that require the town rank of Hamlet or above. The Carpenter currently only requires lumber and metal to prepare wooden construction supplies, however the Mason requires limestone, the Engineer requires Coal, and the Arcanist requires ??? in order to prepare stone, metal, and enchanted construction supplies. Coal mines were added in the past for this purpose and limestone quarries will also be added, though the process of actually connecting them to gather coal and limestone is not yet working.


Tailor I-IV
Leatherworker I-IV
Armorsmith I-IV
Weaponsmith I-IV
Toolsmith I-IV
Woodworker I-IV
Fletcher I-IV
Artificer I-IV (staves and wands)
Stoneworker I-IV
These are/will be the main source of crafting recipes beyond those that players start with. Other planned buildings include enchanter and alchemist.

The basics are in and working. The biggest problem I need to solve next is getting coal mines and limestone quarries working so that the higher ranked buildings can be constructed. Currently a lot of the buildings are also placeholders and look the same, which is no fun.

Because I intend to change the look of many of the buildings, and because some of the building upgrades will most likely require making the buildings bigger (farmers for example) I have made both player buildings and town buildings provide 100% refunding for deconstruction. I was thinking of adding a "move" feature for buildings, but deconstruct and reconstruct is nearly as good. Keep in mind this only refunds the most recent upgrade for town buildings.

Resource scanning was updated in the last patch, and soon auras will be brought back in via a new craftable/upgradeable shrine system which I will talk about when we get there.

v 0.5.2.2 2019.06.18
- Had to reset foragers once more
- Fixed armor set recipes only showing up for Tailor
- Added Limestone and Coal as items (to be mined via towns, WIP)
- Added Mason, Engineer, Arcanist, Arable Farmer, and Pastoral Farmer town buildings
- Added higher ranks for most buildings
- Relaxed town building obstruction checks a bit
- Fixed town building obstruction checks on rotated buildings
- Town building deconstruction now refunds 100% of the costs of the most recent upgrade
- Player buildings and building upgrades now refund 100% of their cost

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 Windows users.

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

I've added a new section to the item template system now allowing for anything to be "unlockable" via town buildings. In other words, Tailor I now has the Mage and Cleric armor sets available for purchase. I've tentatively set the price for the 8 armor sets at T1 Uncommon resources. These sets were actually already in-game as drops from champions, but there's nothing in-game that actually tells you that, so I wouldn't be surprised if not everyone knew that!



Now, once I finish upgrading the item system to be able to treat one piece of equipment as stronger or weaker than another, we will have all the tools needed to create an endless number of equipment recipes. The displaying, storing, unlocking and everything is all automatic, so long as the item templates are there. I don't yet have an image importer setup for importing item icons from the hard disk, but I did write a JSON importer that can import text files in order to allow players to feed items into the game. If anyone is waiting on that, let me know, and I'll write some instructions on how to use it.

None of the building styles are set in stone either, I've actually redesigned them somewhat, and am working on Village+ "rank" buildings being a mix of stone and wood, etc. I'm certainly open to different styles if anyone wants to take a swing at it!

A new type of ingredient is also now required in order to construct any of the crafter buildings: Wooden Construction Supplies. This is a special item that only the Carpenter, a new type of building, can create. Currently it's just a mix of lumber and metal, and maybe that's all it should be, but I like the idea of more buildings with different purposes.

Once I get the other buildings and "ranks" in and a few recipes for each of them, I will start working on the upgraded villager system.

v 0.5.2.1 2019.06.14
- Added crafter buildings: Tailor, Leatherworker, Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Toolsmith, Woodworker, Fletcher, Artificer, Stoneworker
- Added unlockable recipes to tailor, leatherworker, and armorsmith
- Added carpenter building that crafts wooden construction supplies needed for Hamlet+ buildings
- Deconstructing town buildings will now refund 80% (rounded down) materials used (only most recent upgrade)
- Foragers have been reset due to some bugs

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!

WARNING: This patch has two important patch notes:
- Changed the way that wells and ground torches are saved, forcing a wipe of all wells and ground torches
- Changed the way that town buildings are saved, forcing a wipe of all town buildings

I try to avoid wipes, but the changes were to drastic with these two subjects. This patch sets up the foundation for a lot of upgrades to town buildings I have planned and posted a bit about on Tuesday. The new town system is also currently limited to only Outpost rank, though I hope to get the new crafter buildings, and possibly others, in tomorrow. As villagers will be the next big topic for upgrading, villagers are not currently being summoned/used in this build. Instead each building has a sign on it for interacting with, that will be used to assign villagers.

One of the biggest "upgrades" to this system is building levels. In this patch the Storehouse now takes on a central roll, being what determines the maximum allowed population. The "Storehouse" actually starts out now as a "Stockpile" and can be upgraded through levels I - IV, which will then allow you to upgrade Stockpile IV to Storehouse I. These upgrades are visual, and also provide increasingly more storage with each upgrade. It is possible to get stuck inside during the Storehouse I upgrade, so try not to stand actually inside the stockpile when you upgrade it! And I will add a collision check to that tomorrow.

Harvester and Crafter building upgrades I don't quite have working yet in this patch, as they require new items from other buildings, but soon further upgrades (and in the near future, better/different villagers) will be the primary source of unlocking new recipes. Now that we have a wardrobe system in and working I'm looking forward to adding more weapon and armor recipes, even if at the beginning they don't all have their own unique 3D models and textures.



One piece of new content in is the new resource scanners. Instead of being an "aura" purchasable from town harvesters, they are now craftable, placeable objects, than can be picked up and moved. They can be found under Masonry Facilities for now, though I plan to lock them behind town harvesters as something that can be learned. Note that they can only be placed in an area of equal or lesser tier than themselves, though their range can still reach beyond that, and they can be upgraded indefinitely. This is one of several steps being taken to remove the -need- for more than one to three towns

There are a number of small but annoying bugs on the live build right now that I would very much like to patch, so I want to first get the upgraded town system back to a basic working state along with all the new functionality and push it live before continuing on with new recipes and villagers and everything else.

v 0.5.2.0 2019.06.13
- Resource scanners are now craftable items that can be placed on ground or buildings
- Storehouses can no longer be deconstructed while other town buildings are present
- Solaces can no longer be deconstructed while town buildings are present
- Player locked chests and facilities are now always openable in single player
- Changed the way that wells and ground torches are saved, forcing a wipe of all wells and ground torches
- Changed the way that town buildings are saved, forcing a wipe of all town buildings
- Added town building placement obstruction and underground checks
- Initiating town building placement will now place the "dummy" 6m in front of players close to the ground
- Fixed save structure window throwing errors on structures with furniture
- Fixed fruit trees interaction
- Fixed procedural tower crates interaction
- Fixed harvesting essences interaction
Multi-player:
- Servers now properly updating their player count
- Server list temporarily not showing player count, ? instead, server details will show player count when selected
- Fixed bows, wands, and staves during "host" mode
- Fixed "host" mode not saving the host's data
- Fixed a bug stopping multiplayer hunger and thirst
- Fixed switching from single player to multiplayer not resetting "world shift"
- There is a harmless error that will show up on dedicated servers that try to load a save with old towns

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!