Solace Crafting News

Today's patch cleans up a few loose edges brought about by recent patches include new icons for the new enchants, but more importantly I've added a feature that lets you "use any acceptable" resources when paying for something. Currently this is only implemented with recipe unlocking, but I think it should be available wherever resources are used.



The picture above is showing that the Enchanter wants 1x T0 Common Amethyst and 1x T0 Common Sapphire to teach me the recipe I've selected, but that I have (0) of them. Now, if I opt to "Use any acceptable resources," it will look through my inventory and find the cheapest match(es) it can find. In other words, they must be the same kind of item, and at least or better the same tier and rarity. In this case I have (10) T5 Uncommon Sapphire and Amethyst on me, so it is going to use 1x of each of them if I click learn.

This does not yet search through bags, though I will set it up to also be able to do that as well.

I've also added a couple of new commands, for dedicated servers. If you've ever opened the servercfg.dat file, you may have noticed these lines:

"allowAdmin": false,
"adminPassword": "password",
"allowModerator": false,
"moderatorPassword": "password",

By default, admins and moderator are turned off, but they can now be turned on and a password can be saved in the config file. Currently the moderator role does not have any abilities, but I assume in the future it will be nice to have a less powerful role that can for example maybe only mute, or maybe kick players from a server when necessary, both of which are also currently not available actions, but they will most certainly need to be implemented at some point. The admin role has full access to all console commands and should not be given to anyone you don't trust.

Two common admin commands that I've used are:

/admin mypassword /forcesave
and
/admin mypassword /serverbroadcast some message

These commands are issued in-game from a client connected to the server. There is also a windows-only command prompt script provided publicly by Facepunch, the creators of Rust, though I have been reluctant to implement it as I've always hosted my dedicated servers on Linux. At some point I will very likely implement that as well, which would allow anyone with access to the actual server itself to simply type commands into the console without having to log on as a client.

Another tweak I added to this patch is a slight smoothing to mouse movement. It's practically unnoticeable during normal game play, but when there is a lag spike, such as an auto-save, it now greatly reduces the "spin" that these uncommon but extra long frames can cause. Ultimately improving performance and finishing the multi-threading of the save methods will reduce if not eliminate entirely the majority of such lag spikes.
I was not able to notice the smoothing during normal game play, but I know some people are much more sensitive to those kinds of things than I am. If there is a need to I will make the amount of smoothing available as an in-game setting.

PS: I had a mild fever off and on for the past 4 days, and still have a nasty cough, but am feeling much better today. I was hoping to get this up last week along with a few other things, so I've got some catch up to do this week!


v 0.7.7.7 2021.10.05
- Added /admin password & /moderator password commands
- Added smoothing to camera mouse movement reducing the "spin" from lag spikes
- Added icons for the new enchants
- Added "Use any acceptable" button to recipe unlocks
- Improved the town crafter recipe unlock interface
- Fixed the icons for the updated claw, nail, fang, and horn resources
- Improved the performance of a lot of building pieces

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!

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

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Yesterday I patched in 21 new items, consolidated a number of overly specific drops into more generic forms, and removed a couple of unused drops that have been lingering around for a while. Most of the new drops come directly from the now six types of world encounters: Caves, Goblin Dungeons, Undead Dungeons, Lava Caves, Water Caves, and Floating Islands. Each encounter has two unique monsters along with a unique "boss" or rare monster.



It also introduced a new material "Mirrenium," which has thread, leather, metal, lumber, and stone versions. The recipes for these are a little special and so a little off right now, I should be able to fix that up tomorrow though.

This patch introduces 31 new enchants, all available for purchase on the Enchanter, one of the highest tier town buildings. I still want to improve the current interface used for unlocking things from townspeople, and the new enchants do not yet today have icons to represent them. It's getting late though and I wanted to get this up as is, and can definitely get in icons for the new enchants tomorrow.

I also want to change the current unlock costs that exist in a number of different spots where they may for example ask for a "T1 diamond," which is frustrating when you've got a bucket full of T5 diamonds, but no T1 diamonds. I think it's fair to just have the costs be something like "T1+" meaning anything at least T1 or better, but I also don't want to have such systems automatically eat up whatever is in your inventory. For example if you only have a T10 Legendary Diamond in a bag in your inventory, it would be a waste to use that to pay for a T1 Uncommon Diamond cost. I want to try some different methods, but might just end up adding a "pay with anything" check box that will try to find the lowest quality yet still acceptable method of payment.

I wanted to also point out that the math for all of the sockets and pretty much everything in game are going to be reworked shortly when we move on to version 0.8. There are currently some stats in these new enchants, such as minion damage, that are not actually beneficial under and currently possible circumstances. There are a number of new stats also not yet added to actual items that I want to add in this week as runes to generate a better use of stone, such as life steal, fire damage, and so forth.

v 0.7.7.6 2021.09.27
- Added 31 enchants to the Enchanter
- Consolidated all types of claws, fangs, and nails into shared generic types
- Increased the number of mobs capable of drops claws, fangs, and other items
- Changed a variety of guaranteed rewards to common rewards for fully harvesting an animal
- Improved town building recipe unlocks to be able to list multiple costs

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!

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

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

This patch adds a bunch of new monsters. These satisfy the minimum amount of monsters in different places that I was aiming for for a 1.0 release. I still need audio for the majority of them, but am first working on different drops for each of them and their areas to adds a wide variety of new recipes into the game in the next couple of patches.

v 0.7.7.4 2021.09.21
- Added 11 new monsters
- Changed earth/stone elemental colliders to capsules
- Changed a number of monster spawning locations/spawn types
- Fixed up a number of small graphical errors with desert shrubbery
- Fixed the biome indicator reading ocean in a lot of places even when above water

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!

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

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Some bug fixes for the current live version. As there are some changes still in production on the beta branch, these fixes are not quite ready for publishing on beta.

v 0.7.6.5 2021.09.14
- Improved Goblin Dungeon performance
- Fixed harvesting experience not scaling properly across levels
- Fixed tier 0 resources not providing any experience after reaching harvesting level 5
- Fixed seaweed not rewarding stalks
- Fixed rare animal icons remaining on the map after being harvesting
- Fixed "Get seeds" not working properly on plants in chests
- Fixed some non-hide creatures still going rare
- Fixed ice spikes not aligning to the ground on steep hills
- Fixed the meteor explosion not aligning to ground properly
- Fixed area target skills not working in world encounters
- Fixed goblin boss chest loot/interaction
- Fixed goblin boss health bars
- Fixed some goblin specific drops not displaying their names properly on the right-hand floaty indicators

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

First and foremost, I really appreciate the support I received from everyone after posting my last video in early August talking about needing to take a break from Solace Crafting. I'm still only four years into running my own personal game studio, and being open and honest about things like that is scary given that I don't yet have a fair sized chunk of profit in my business account, which makes the potential backlash of my actions feel much more potentially dangerous regardless of how necessary they may sometimes be.

This post is again me being honest and open about my current situation, as I don't like to leave our community in the dark as to where am I and what's going on. Having said that, August was hands down the weirdest month I have every lived.

The first week of August I spent working on my second title, Solace Kingdoms. The first several weeks of any project of any notable size are very much focused on just getting the code base set up, initial user interface creation, basic game-play mechanics like camera controls, data structures, and so on. On the weekend after that first week, unfortunately, my wife's mother was diagnosed with late stage cancer. We ended up spending the entirety of the second week at their house, helping them clean, organize, and in general get ready for chemotherapy. My wife and her siblings are very close, and we had a lot of teary discussions late into the evenings. I personally am a very positive minded person, and am looking forward to a full recovery for her mother, but there is nothing scary than the unknown and the feeling of helplessness that often comes with illness.

Every year in mid to late August my high school buddies and I always get together for a guys weekend up in the mountains of western Washington. I already had bought my tickets, and it was agreed that I should continue on with my trip. I wasn't able to attend last year due to the pandemic, but having received both of my vaccinations recently I was ready to see my friends and family for the first time in two years. This is where things got even weirder.

Getting into the US was no problem. I had to pay a hefty fee to get a PCR test confirming that I was not infected before being allowed into the airport, and ticket prices were almost double what they used to be, so I was unable to take a direct flight, instead flying backwards to South Korea before then flying to Seattle. In what universe that translates to a cheaper ticket cost still baffles me, but no big deal. The trip was great. I purposefully did not bring a laptop, though I did borrow one for a day when there was nothing going on, and generally just tried to unwind and spend a lot of time catching up with everyone.

The return flight worked out that I would have a one night layover in South Korea, so I had booked a 1 star hotel just to have somewhere to sleep for the night. Upon landing in South Korea however I was told that if I left the airport I would be required to quarantine for 14 days. I actually had a business meeting setup with a potential investor who was waiting for me outside the airport, but they wouldn't let me out, and they wouldn't let him in. I ended up having to cancel my hotel reservation and stay in a ridiculously overpriced airport hotel, which was located in terminal 2, while my gate was located in terminal 1. For some reason passengers are not allowed to travel between terminals 1 and 2 and I had to have a security guard escort me between the two terminals both to get to my hotel room, and to get back to my gate the next morning.

Landing in Japan the next day, the entire flight was escorted to a long series of folding chairs setup in the corridors of Narita airport. We underwent two hours of questioning, saliva testing, mandatory cell phone quarantine app installation and setup, and a handful of us were separated from the rest of the group. Apparently Washington State was on the "high risk" list, and I ended up waiting several hours along with a variety of other passengers until hotel reservations and a bus could be secured for us. We were being quarantined into hotel rooms for 3 days after which a second saliva test would be conducted to confirm we had not been exposed to Covid-19. One girl that I spoke to was a university student who was now going to be missing her first day of classes, but it seemed that everyone, like me, was taken by surprise.

I'm still banned from public transportation and am now self-quarantining in my house, but in total it was 20 days before I made it back to my own bed. I still receive frequent requests from the apps that were installed on my phone to report my location and sometimes even to respond to an AI operated video call to confirm that I am indeed at my location and not just making someone push a button on my phone.

So, it's been a very relaxing, and a very stressful August full of surprises. I took a couple days to unwind and get back into my normal rhythm, and here I am now updating everyone on the strangeness of it all! I don't not understand why the precautions were taken, but I sure wish it had been made clear to everyone at some point that we would have to go through all of this. On the other hand, everyone that didn't visit a "high risk" area walked straight out of the airport and got on their trains and buses towards their final destinations, so I do question the effectiveness of the whole ordeal, but we're all just trying to do what we think is best. I'm not begrudged or disgruntled, but it was not fun being stuck in a tiny hotel room for 72 hours after nearly 48 hours of transit.

I hope that doesn't leave a sour taste in anyone's head, it is what it is, I just wanted to update everyone on what's going on, and why I don't yet have more development progress ready to show off and talk about.

I wish you all the best, stay safe, and happy gaming.