Solace Crafting News

Note: It is highly recommended that you use the /forceworldupdate console command if you're playing a save that has been updated in one of the recent patches prior to this.

Had one last problem with the noise math unfortunately, blending the grass biome into ocean improperly. That is fixed with this patch, along with the possibility for areas with too much ocean influence to end up going barren.

I've also improved the world update function to better position town buildings, farming plots, and miscellaneous things not attached to structures. There was a couple reports of items going missing from chests I was looking into at the same time and it turned out these were also caused by the world update. As a storage chests runtime data changes it has to report its contents to the save files for updating. That data is stored within the structure that the chest is attached to, so first it attempts to locate the structures save data based on its location in the world. After a world update buildings reposition their height so they're back on the ground, which caused that step in the lookup process to fail. Although the runtime data looked like it was behaving, the save data not actually getting updated properly. This patch will address that, if you invoke the /forceworldupdate console command, but cannot automatically restore already lost items.

It's been a rough couple weeks on beta. I know that's frustrating for players helping me out with spotting these bugs so that I can track them down and squash them. That's exactly why the beta branch is so very important though. I don't have any outstanding new reports of problems at the moment, and hope to be going through the bug tracker and the forums over the next couple days, but if something shows up, I'll snap to it!

In other words, thank you so much to everyone helping out in beta! Sorry it get frustrating like this sometimes. I assure you it's just as frustrating for me!

v 0.7.4.6 2021.04.30
- Fixed a problem with certain areas going barren
- Fixed a problem with grasslands blending into ocean improperly
- Fixed misc objects not attached to a building not repositioning themselves properly after a world update
- Fixed town buildings that end up in water after a world update repositioning themselves under water
- Fixed storage chests attached to repositioned buildings breaking

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 updated yesterdays patch notes pretty quick explaining I'd found a bug and had to roll back a part of the code. Turned out the save that I was working with, which I had received from a player, had all of the biome frequency settings turned up to 200%. This was causing the math to get out of control, but is definitely something it should be able to handle. So I've upgraded the noise math to be able to cope with any combination of settings, and this has also allowed me to fix the last of the blending issues we were having in some parts.

Hopefully this is the last time I will need to mess with the noise for a good while as that's really the only reason that buildings ever need to be repositioned.

As posted yesterday, I'm not going to force a "world update" with this patch, but there may be changes to ground height at areas near the water, or in saves that had their biome frequencies not set to default. If you want to mark a world save for update, which will mark all of the buildings for repositioning onto ground level, please use the console command:
/forceworldupdate

v 0.7.4.5 2021.04.29
- Fixed ocean noise unnecessarily lowering other biomes height math which could also cause sharp edges near the start
- Fixed resource scanner range circles not drawing on the map
- Fixed a problem with calculating biomes when biome frequency settings don't total 100% (ex: all at 200%)

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

Update:
Had to roll back the ocean noise change temporarily, and was only able to do so for Windows. Will up a similar change for Linux in the morning, and fix whatever's wrong with it with some good new data I've received.

v 0.7.4.4 2021.04.28
- Rolled back ocean noise changes temporarily

Original Post:
This patch fixes a number of small but impactful bugs with yesterdays patch. The largest of which is something that has been hiding since the biome update, and unfortunately may cause the ground to shift a bit at places where a biome is blending with the ocean biome. This should smooth the biome shifting overall, and create more natural looking features. The map certainly shows the more interesting formations, and there were still some sharp artifacts showing up near the starting area that this change also fixes.

In the event that a shift in height noise has put a building in a funky spot, I've updated the console command:
/forceworldupdate
This will turn the loaded worlds version number backwards, so that when you return to the main menu it will require an "update" which will mark buildings for repositioning. I do not forsee any more changes to noise math in the near future, but this one was important to get in before pushing these changes from beta to live.

v 0.7.4.3 2021.04.28
- Map now updates tiles near the player first
- Updated /forceworldupdate console command
- Fixed the noise offset also offsetting the starter area
- Fixed ocean noise unnecessarily lowering other biomes height math which could also cause sharp edges near the start
- Fixed map tiles going underneath other map tiles sometimes while the map redraws
- Fixed a rotation error positioning icons on the map improperly
- Fixed colors on the map going darker than intended in some cases

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

Regardless of my surgery, which is still very sore, the world map interface is definitely one of the most difficult things I've created. The old map, still on the main branch, had a number of things slowing it down, a big one of which is the runtime creation of textures and sprites. I knew for sure that I needed a way to recycle the textures and to set up a multi-threaded solution for altering them in runtime, but that doesn't mean there's a book I can refer to that says: "Ah yes, in that case, write it like this."

I tried several different ways to get what's called torodial updating to work, wherein you move tiles from the left edge to the right edge or top to bottom and vice versa. It doesn't sound very difficult, but when you're doing it on an undetermined scale, in two dimensions, in varying step sizes, and you're bad at math like me, it ends up being a serious puzzle.

In the end it feels like it was an exercise in simplification. I'm now using a method that tracks positions, checks them against the current desired tiles, and sends those that have fallen out of range to an "unused" bin for recycling, similar to a common system used in game development called pooling.

This system is now generating the map data based on the noise math in runtime, rather than waiting for a terrain to generate it's splatmap when it turns on for the first time and write that out to disk. That means that you can now drag the map around to anywhere and it will load it in, whether you've been there or not. The final step in this series of updates will be to predetermine the locations for encounters, town resources, and rare resources separate from the spawning rules for everything else, so that the map and resources scanners will also be able to show all of those things, whether you've visited them or not.

There are however still some minor problems with the map interface I want to address tomorrow, such as the rulers on the side of the map are not giving correct values (more math), and the map is loading from the bottom to top, as opposed to starting from the middle and building outwards. I wanted to first get the changes as are, up so that our beta testers could give them a whirl and hopefully give me some input or spot any problems I haven't yet uncovered.

There is also still a variety of ways I could make the map load much faster. For example right now, each map tile is 100x100 pixels, and there are 20x20 tiles on the map. Changing each tile to 50x50 pixels would make drawing the map 4 times faster. And that could be a user setting for people to set themselves if they're running on a lower end machine. I'll see how it feels to other players first though.

Additional changes to this patch include player icons with names on mouse over for when connected to multiplayer, as well as the ability to now mouse over solaces to see their names. This too could be a toggle, to be displayed always, without mousing over... I've yet to actually try that, but it wouldn't be hard, and may be better. Please let me know what you think.

I'm supposed to get my stitches removed tomorrow, but it's far from back to normal. Sorry for the sudden delay in everything.

v 0.7.4.2 2021.04.27
- Updated map tile and icon drawing and management methods
- Added other players to the map when in multi-player
- Fixed a math error causing sharp edges around the biome starting area
- Offset the initial noise to reduce the chance of the starting area being surrounded by ocean for new worlds (will not affect already created worlds)
- Added player and solace names to the map on mouseover

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

Just wanted to chime in due to the latest patch not being out yet. I ended up undergoing a small surgery this morning, and had to go back later and some details I will spare everyone. I'm fine, just exhausted and need to lay here and be still for a bit. Be back shortly.