Solace Crafting News

Went through as many bugs as I could today off the new bug/suggestion tracker, all while streaming live on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. I'm still figuring out how everything works, but it was actually very motivating and fun to talk openly about what I was doing, knowing that people are watching and cheering me on.

I've set up a streaming schedule of Tuesday -> Friday, 8AM -> 12PM, 1PM -> 5PM, with ten minute breaks at 10AM and 3PM, and that is Tokyo time (GMT +9). I plan to stick to this schedule for the foreseeable future, so come and say hi! It is unfortunately just me doing my job, not shooting aliens in a fast paced online tournament or anything like that, but I enjoyed it very much today and hope it helps bring our community closer together.

v 0.7.0.10 2020.12.01
- Autorun now defaults to run even if always run is disabled
- Added icons for poultry, white meat, snake scales, feathers, fur, and chitin
- Campfires can now cook white meat and poultry
- Fixed newly harvested vegetables not being edible
- Fixed basic resources not rewarding resources upon harvesting
- Fixed towers not repopulating properly when leaving the immediate area and coming back
- Fixed several navmesh/AI problems
- Fixed building pieces at or above structure level y130 throwing errors when deconstructing
- Fixed not being able to jump while holding down shift
- Fixed monsters getting stuck if still returning to their spawn while leaving the player's sphere of enabling
- Fixed other players going invisible in MP when in first person

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

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

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

This patch brings the current live branch up to pace with beta along with today's most recent changes. There may be some new small bugs I admit, I changed quite a bit of code regarding harvesting, and am heading to bed for 8 hours after I post this. But if there are any new bugs they should be small and I should be able to patch them up first thing in the morning.

Long story short, I want to get the live branch caught up with the current changes to beta before the Steam seasonal sales start up as there are some pretty obvious improvements to performance.

I also recorded a short video today detailing what I've been up to the past few days and where I'm taking all of this (testing new cam/mic... don't think I'll be using them):

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Basically, there are still some client side optimizations that I'm working on, but there are also a variety of developer side upgrades that I'm working on while I move towards adding new items and recipes in. With this most recent patch I've rewired the HarvestableObject class that used to be spread out to HarvestableTree, HarvestableThis, HarvestableThat, etc., with lots of ifs ands and buts into a single smooth flowing script with exposed variables so I can setup each type of harvestable object as detailed as I like.

While doing this I've added a number of new items such as feathers, fur, chitin, and others, which don't actually yet have icons for them so you will get a temporary question mark icon for some of the newer items, but again, I will link those up tomorrow.

I'm simultaneously working on some monster AI updates to better control what they're capable of dropping and am looking forward to adding in a few new mobs this week as well. After cleaning up and improving the AI scripts a bit I'm hoping to add some basic skills like a snake bite or a fire ball, with the ultimate goal of adding more flavor to combat before proceeding forward with new types of encounters, locations, and monsters.

Also, if there is an influx of new players on the BKG server it might crash as I have an ongoing theory there isn't enough RAM to support more than a couple players. If that proves to be the case, and it crashes this week, I will look into upgrading it.

Condensed live patch notes:
v 0.7.0.8 2020.11.25
- Upgraded pathfinding navmesh generation system to prevent a variety of pathing problems
- Increased resource respawn check to collide with towns and encounter instead of just player buildings
- Revamped all harvestable resources to a new system of management
- Fixed object spawning giving priority to objects alphabetically (causing wolves to be rare for example)
- Upgraded to Unity 2019.4.14
- Enabled incremental garbage collector
- Disabled network object proximity checks for clients/single player
- Added a random offset to network object proximity checks to keep them from happening all at once
- Increased near and far terrain pixel error forgiveness considerably
- Spred building loading out across frames
- The default storehouse town building now uses an actual structure that can be modified after placing which allows for the placing of crate boxes to increase storage
- Town "ranks" are now upgraded by a specific building for each rank
- All town buildings can now be built custom and assigned with summoning circles
- Facilities are no longer used to assign custom town buildings
- Town population limits removed
- Several new town buildings are still works in progress with no current functionality
- Town buildings are now capable of requiring an amount of inspecific funiture
- Town buildings are now capable of requiring specific pieces of furniture
- Town buildings are now capable of requiring other town buildings built first
- Structures now require a minimum number of building pieces to be assigned as custom town buildings

Latest beta patch notes:
v 0.7.0.8 2020.11.25
- Upgraded pathfinding navmesh generation system to prevent a variety of pathing problems
- Increased resource respawn check to collide with towns and encounter instead of just player buildings
- Revamped all harvestable resources to a new system of management
- Fixed rain collision
- Fixed some instances of building pieces colliding with acceptable pieces preventing building them
- Fixed town hall not building
- Fixed the anonymous error reporting toggle in the main menu not loading the saved setting (though the setting was saving properly)
- Fixed settings scrollbar on main menu settings not working
- Fixed the current resolution text not updating after changing resolutions
- Fixed a multi-player specific error related to swamp mushrooms

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

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

Take the Solace Crafting Fall Survey 2020

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

I'm very to glad to have heard from several players that the game is running much smoother since yesterday's patch. There were some new bugs and still some old that I'm working on, and will continue to do so this week.

One problem involved a tweak with the way that objects are spawned as there was a problem involving the alphabetical order of things. This may cause objects to appear where previously there was nothing, and may upset resource scanner data, a system that currently saves relevant information from areas when you visit them.

v 0.7.0.7 2020.11.18
- Fixed the area being loaded/teleported into loading twice
- Fixed crates being picked up from a once but no longer storehouse throwing an error
- Fixed new villager types being labelled as "Null"
- Fixed new villager types not showing their stats nor upgrades
- Fixed object spawning giving priority to objects alphabetically (causing wolves to be rare for example)
- Fixed some fruit trees not being harvestable
- Fixed a lot of animals/mobs going invisible in single player

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!

Take the Solace Crafting Fall Survey 2020

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

This patch is going out to beta first with quite a few changes aimed largely at optimizing the general frame rate and trying to keep it steadier while loading in new terrains and objects as you move. Optimization is kind of an unending process, there's always more you can do, but I did find and polish quite a few little dents in the machine. There's still a number of different things I've written down that I'd like to improve, but there's a lot more to be done and I think this was a good pass at things. There may also be some new small bugs due to the Unity upgrade.

One thing to note about this patch is that screen resolution is now set in-game, but only currently via the main menu settings. I'm going to expand the settings window in-game to include resolution options, as well as other performance affecting settings as the opening splash screen is no longer built-in to Unity 2019.

I also made a video last week talking about why I chose to stop and make a pass at performance though posting it now is ending up making it a bit odd timing wise:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In any case, there might be some things I need to address with the new patch, but for the most part I'm looking to focus on bug fixes for the rest of the week. Hopefully I can clear out all of the non-cosmetic, at least, bugs before moving forward. I do want to make another video talking about that, and hope to be posting it tomorrow, and maybe even making that a weekly thing for Patreon.

v 0.7.0.6 2020.11.17
- Upgraded to Unity 2019.4.14
- Enabled incremental garbage collector
- Disabled network object proximity checks for clients/single player
- Added a random offset to network object proximity checks to keep them from happening all at once
- Increased near and far pixel error forgiveness considerably
- Reverted grass to Unity's
- Spred building loading out across frames
- Fixed planters not going in and out of inventory properly in MP
- Fixed neighboring terrains not matching their LODs causing visual holes from a distance
- Fixed arctic wolves not spawning

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!

Take the Solace Crafting Fall Survey 2020

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

This patch is mostly a number of bugs off of the new bug tracker, I'll push most of these to live in a near future update.

v 0.7.0.5 2020.11.03
- Fixed storehouses not saving/loading properly
- Fixed servers not sending changes to spawn settings causing resource spawn location discrepancies
- Fixed multiplayer client cave generation stalling
- Fixed some monsters loot hitboxes not enabling for multiplayer clients
- Fixed the cursor not coming on after pausing
- Fixed certain ambient sounds not responding to the ambient volume controls properly
- Fixed facilities not fully locking 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.

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