Solace Crafting News

Not gonna lie, it's been a rough few weeks. Made some bad calls, rushed out some patches, and have been scrambling to get things sorted out. Unfortunately, I got so sick last week that I couldn't even watch TV for more than 15 minutes without getting dizzy. Heat exhaustion is weird, and I still haven't recovered 100% 10 days later.

This recent series of patches has sorted the majority of the problems out but there are still some smaller problems I am working on. In particular, a lot of people's skill points got messed up with a localization error several patches ago. This most recent patch should sort the majority of these out, though they may still reset if you load a character in a different language than they were last saved in. I will continue to improve those and other systems so these side-effects don't linger.

v 1.0.4.12 2023.07.19
- Fixed terraforming data not being properly factured when being sent to clients causing general loss of control of characters
- Fixed an issue with skills getting overriden, this may cause an initial reset of bought skills in some skill trees

v 1.0.4.11 2023.07.18
- Fixed a subsequent timing error causing the first 4 terrains to load using an incorrect world seed

v 1.0.4.10 2023.07.18
- Fixed several intialization timing issues causing a number of multi-player problems

v 1.0.4.9 2023.07.17
- Fixed a performance issue with AOE attacks
- Fixed an incorrect map marker
- Fixed an issue with disappearing towers
- Fixed a bug causing some skill descriptions to not show up

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

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

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

I have received a number of reports that the F key for interacting with objects is not working for some first time players but have not been able to reproduce the problem, nor is it something most players are encountering. In order to help track down the cause, if anyone experiencing this problem could tell me their OS, OS language, whether they have any controllers or joysticks plugged in, and if possible send me their cfg.dat and player.log files found under:
C:\Users\\AppData\LocalLow\Big Kitty Games\Solace Crafting\
That would be most appreciated 👍

v 1.0.4.8 2023.07.14
- Added tooltips to hotbar buttons
- Added a tips to the initial loading screen
- Fixed a prominent teleport bug and added several checks to help debug any further errors
- Fixed a prominent shader error
- Fixed a collision problem with some town buildings
- Fixed several localization errors
- Fixed a goblin archer sound
- Fixed the quarrying animation not playing
- Fixed an AOE skill error

The recent review summary has become "mostly negative," something I've never had before, and it's my full-time job to try and make sure that doesn't happen. So I'm trying to better understand the main reasoning behind that to make sure I spend my time wisely over the next few weeks trying to correct the problems causing this.

A couple of important mentions first:
1. It's impossible to please everyone, especially with a (currently ~) $11.50 indie game made by one guy. There will always be negative reviews that I can do nothing about
2. There seems to be two annoying bugs going on right now, one with ranged bow attacks, and one that seems to only affect first time players causing the default interact keybind of F to not work. If you run into the interact key problem please try clearing the keybind and then setting it again.
3. I was briefly hospitalized on Sunday and have not been able to work since and may be unable to for another day or two, otherwise I would have fixed those bugs by now.

Having said that, I think one of the main things first time players are complaining about is the control scheme. We spent a lot of time and effort adding the RMB to move camera and click to target WoW style controls thinking that would make casting, ranged attacks, and UI interaction easier overall. For players that prefer a locked camera there is a toggle (default is V), but it seems a lot of people don't know there is a toggle and do not like the RMB controls.

Now of course there are a lot of little QoL things that can be improved and that will be my focus after we clean up the current issues, make sure the new multilingual system is working properly and get full controller support onto the beta branch. But this post is not about those.

I'm asking the people that left a negative review, or would consider leaving one still for responses along the lines of:
"I couldn't get the controls to work,"
"RMB to move the camera was terrible,"
"I didn't know I had to target mobs to attack them,"
"I didn't know there was a help window,"
"I couldn't figure out xxxx and gave up."

Things that caused you to go beyond "well that's kind of annoying," into "I don't like this game and what the developer is doing with it."

Some things I am considering to try and improve the new players experience:
- Adding tips to the loading screens
- Adding more buttons linking to the help window
- Adding pictures to and improving the help window
- Offering a return to the aim to shoot (no targets) locked camera controls

We talk about a lot of these things in the SC Discord server, but I know there are plenty of people, especially those willing to write a negative review, that aren't interested in joining Discord. I'm hoping this will reach some of those people so I can get a better grasp on how to best use my time improving things from here on.

Thank you and happy gaming!

More little fixes patching up the recent new bugs.

v 1.0.4.6 2023.07.05
- Now automatically recalculating skill points on load
- Fixed language resetting to OS on startup
- Fixed one of two spent skill point displays not working properly
- Fixed an item description issue due to recent changes
- Fixed a bug causing targeted creatures to rendered through walls
- Fixed snake scale missing translations
- Fixed a General achievements & Town achievements menu bug

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

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

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

The allure of the Steam Summer Sale got the best of me, and the big patch last week ended up bringing in a number of debilitating bugs unfortunately. First and foremost, my apologies for that. We've remedied the majority of them with this 5th hotfix, but there are still some after effects affecting some players, in particular messed up skill points. I've received some bugged player character saves from affected players and am looking into a way to retroactively remedy the problem. Worst case scenario I will a full skill reset with a small patch tomorrow so that we can get everyone back to where they should be.

v 1.0.4.5 2023.07.04
- Refactored a portion of the localization code to prevent future errors
- Fixed the hotbar resetting sometimes after changing language

v 1.0.4.4 2023.07.03
- Fixed a missing German translation
- Fixed translation problems preventing the game from loading

v 1.0.4.3 2023.07.02
- Fixed obsidian golem & glowing mushroom name errors
- Fixed broken item requirement text in crafting menu
- Fixed weapon recipe description text

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

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

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker