Flotsam News

Hey all!

The Scouting Update is now live!
This update brings a full pacing rework, Map Exploration, an introduction to Scouting and an introduction to the Energy System.

We took our time to rework the game's pacing, making workshops more prominent in the early game.

A new iteration of the World Generation brings Overworld Fog, an introduction to the scouting mechanics and a new way to move using Energy.

Enjoy the new update!

[h2]Early Access 0.3.6: The Scouting Update[/h2]
General

• First iteration of scouting feature:
  
• New Construction: Watch Tower
  
• Information regarding nearby landmarks can now be obtained by building the Watch Tower.
  
• Information regarding nearby landmarks can now be obtained through drifters that join your town.
  
• New Construction: Pedal-Powered Generator.
  
• Implemented the energy system.
  
• Town movement requires energy now.
  
• The Athletics Attribute now increases drifter energy creation speed.
  
• Added construction category: Energy.
  
• Temporarily removed the Oil Refinery Construction.
  
• New construction specific resources:
  
• Floaters
  
• Wooden Planks
  
• Metal Plate
  
• New Construction: Ropecrafter.
  
• New Construction: Small Drying Rack.
  
• Seaweed Patches now spawn in the water.
  
• Screw, Plastic Nets and the Pipe resources have been removed.
  
• World Generator Updated
  
• Fog of War added to the Overworld View.
  
• Zooming added to the Overworld View.
  
• Scouted landmarks clear Fog of War in a radius.
  
• Reworked Town Movement to be able to interrupt town movement with new path.
  
• Added double-click functionality for new town movement paths.
  
• Reworked map cursor.
  

Visuals

• Added a planning line for planning town movement.
  
• Added Watchtower construction visuals.
  
• Added Ropemaker construction visuals.
  
• Added Pedal-Powered Generator construction visuals.
  
• Added Small Drying Rack construction visuals.
  
• Reworked Plastic Recycler construction visuals.
  

UI

• Added Landmark cursor for the map.
  
• Reworked some of the HUD.
  

Performance

• Persistence management has been refactored to reduce lagspikes when the game is saved.
  
• Flotsam inventory has been factored out to avoid unnecessary memory allocations.
  

Balancing

• Size of the world has been significantly increased.
  
• Pacing has been adjusted: Workshops are now more prominent in the early game.
  
• Increased starting energy amount.
  
• Altered start amounts of food and water.
  
• All building costs have been changed to reflect the changes.
  
• All production times have been scaled down to reflect the changes.
  
• Number of resources found on Landmarks has been reduced.
  
• Number of resources in flotsam patches has been reduced.
  
• Number of flotsam patches spawned has been increased.
  
• Factory landmark temporarily gives Metal Scrap and Books.
  
• Increased spawn rate of landmarks with Metal Scrap.
  
• Floaters now appear in Flotsam patches.
  
• Townheart Engine is repaired by default.
  
• Increased Fish Spawning around landmarks.
  

Fixes

• Fixed issue where mooring point couldn't be deconstructed.
  
• Fixed issue where different language could empty all text in all windows.
  
• Fixed issue where save menu would not update after saving.
  
• Fixed issue where boats could get stuck on the "Long Island" landmark.
  

Ahoy drifters!

We have another update ready to test for you all: The Scouting Update. (name can change)
This patch brings the first iteration of the scouting feature to Flotsam.
During development we made changes to the world generator and started making some rigorous changes to the pacing of the game.
We wanted to get these changes out to you as soon as possible in order to gather feedback.
As such, the feature is in a very early stage and a bit rough around the edges.

As part of working on the next Major Update (0.4) we revised the pacing of the game, giving workshops a more prominent role in the game. As a result, we've also 'split' the base resources into 'raw' and 'processed'. Where raw resources can only be used as ingredients, while processed resources can be building resources, fuel, etc,..

This comes with a rough first iteration of the scouting. A watchtower will enable you to spot nearby drifter landmarks. Rescuing drifters might provide rumors of nearby rare landmarks.

We invite you all to test this update and give us your feedback.

When bugs occur, provide as much information as possible to help us resolve these faster!
Read here how to submit and track the current bugs in the game.

This patch is still in development and can be tested on the experimental branch to give feedback.

This is how you can enable the experimental branch of Flotsam. This will only work when you're not in a game:
1. Open Steam Library
2. Right click Flotsam
3. Select Properties
4. Go to tab 'Betas' at the top.
5. Select 'Experimental' in the drop-down.

Enjoy the new update!

[h2]Change Notes[/h2]
General

• First iteration of the scouting feature:
  
• New Construction: Watch Tower
  
• Information regarding landmarks can now be obtained by building the Watch Tower.
  
• Information regarding landmarks can now be obtained through drifters that join your town.
  
• New construction specific resources (names may change):
  
• Floaters
  
• Wooden Planks
  
• Metal Plate
  
• New Construction: Ropecrafter
  
• New Construction: Small Drying Rack (may be removed later)
  
• Seaweed Patches now spawn in the water.
  
• Screw, Plastic Nets and the Pipe resources have been removed. (may return later)
  
• World Generator Updated
  

Balancing

• Size of the world has been significantly increased.
  
• Overhauled the pacing of the game:
  
• Workshops are now more prominent in the early game.
  
• Increased starting fuel amount.
  
• Altered start amounts of food and water.
  
• All building costs have been changed to reflect the changes.
  
• All production times have been scaled down to reflect the changes.
  
• Number of resources found on Landmarks has been reduced.
  
• Number of resources in flotsam patches has been reduced.
  
• Number of flotsam patches spawned has been increased.
  

Performance

• Persistence management has been refactored to reduce lagspikes when the game is saved.
  
• Flotsam inventory has been factored out to avoid unnecessary memory allocations.
  

Saving/Loading

• Experimental: Scouting is currently not persistent
  

Hi all!

We've fixed an issue where untranslated phrases would show as blank instead of reverting to english.

[h2]Patch notes[/h2]
Fixes

• Fixed bug where untranslated phrases would show as blank instead of reverting to english.
  

Hi all!

We've fixed an issue where saves wouldn't load due to untranslated phrases.

[h2]Patch notes[/h2]
Gameplay

• Drifters with assignments that are the same will now prioritize tasks they have higher attributes in.
  

Fixes

• Fixed save not being able to load previous item production limits.
  
• Fixed bug where untranslated phrases could cause the loading of a saved game to fail.
  
• Fixed bug where agents would not haul items to the townheart storage if the townheart water storage was full.
  

There are still some known issues with untranslated text not reverting to English and showing blank, we're working on resolving this issue asap.

Hey all!

The Crew Update is now live!
This update brings Drifter Attributes and Backstories, a daily Captain's Log and a Day/Night cycle.

We took a good look at the Crew, a.k.a your drifters.
Your drifters now start out with 90 possible Backstories giving them starting Attributes. These will increase their efficiency in certain aspects.

This update comes with a Day/Night cycle as well, where your drifter's schedules will revolve around.

Internally, we worked on our animation system and character clothing system to enable more variations in the future. Unfortunately, that will cause previous saves to break.

Enjoy the new update!

[h2]Early Access 0.3.5: The Crew Update[/h2]
General

• Drifters now have attributes that will affect the speed at which they do things:
  
• Construction: Determines a drifter's building speed.
  
• Athletics: Determines a drifter's walking and swimming speed.
  
• Nautics: Determines a drifter's boat travelling speed.
  
• Desalination: Determines a drifter's desalination speed.
  
• Crafting: Determines a drifter's crafting speed.
  
• Research: Determines a drifter's research speed.
  
• Cooking: Determines a drifter's cooking speed.
  
• Fishing: Determines a drifter's fishing speed.
  
• Salvaging: Determines a drifter's salvaging speed
  
• Quirks have been replaced (for the time being) with Drifter Backgrounds. Every drifter now has 2 backgrounds to describe their life story. These backgrounds will determine the starting attributes of the drifters.
  
• The game now starts with a crew selection window where you can see the looks of your new crew, combined with their backstory. You can re-roll characters here in case you're not happy with one of your crew members.
  
• Added a day / night cycle to the game.
  
• Your drifters will now go sleep at the same time, once the night hits.
  
• They will eat and drink at the same time, when the day starts.
  
• Introduced debuffs.
  
• Reworked the way drifters handle their vitals. Health is no longer a statistic. Instead, drifters will perish after not being able to eat or drink for the 4th time.
  
• Not eating, drinking or sleeping in a bed will impose a debuff to your drifters. These debuffs depend on which vital is low, and they will lower the attributes of the specific drifter.
  
• A daily report is now available to track how many items your colony has collected and produced. This is always available, but a notification is sent at the start of each night.
  
• Added additional drifter names.
  
• Added construction:
  
• Buoy Lamp: A decorative building to make your town more de-LIGHT-ful at night.
  

Visuals

• Added a variety of new looks for the drifters.
  
• Increased size of drifters by 35%.
  
• Added animations depicting each drifter attribute.
  
• The character portrait shown on drifter select will now show an animation related to one of their highest attributes.
  
• Added night-time visuals.
  
• Added a rotating sun.
  

UI

• The house panel has been reworked to be more in line with the birdhouse panel.
  
• The boat panel has been reworked to be more in line with the birdhouse panel.
  
• Added a drifter overview with the heads of all your drifters. This also shows their current activity and debuffs. Clicking on the head will select the drifter.
  
• Removed the drifter portrait from the drifter, boat and house panel.
  
• Disabled the warning bubbles for drifters when a project could not be run.
  
• Added a clock to the screen to show which time of day it is. This has been removed from the birdhouse panel.
  
• Reworked the vitals section in the drifter panel to show the amount of days have passed without food, water and rest.
  
• Added drifter backgrounds to the drifter panel.
  
• Removed drifter diet from drifter panel.
  
• Assignment panel now shows the drifter's respective bonusses.
  
• Added a decorative buildings category.
  
• Added 'Help us translate' button on the main menu.
  
• Added next update to the main menu.
  
• Updated text asset on the language dropdown.
  
• Survival Guide has been slightly updated to reflect the new changes.
  
• Some text has been rewritten.
  
• Right clicking stacked notifications now closes all the notifications at once.
  

Performance

• Improved birdhouse performance.
  
• Reduced overall lag spikes when drifters were idling.
  

Balance

• A day is 15 minutes, with the night lasting 10% of that time.
  
• Drifters now drink far less, as they only drink once per day. This means the drifters drink 3 times less. We've reduced the amount of water found accordingly.
  
• Attributes can now speed up the production process. As such, the default time for production on all producers that require drifters has increased.
  

Fixes

• Fixed issue where auto-saves could exceed the max amount set in the settings.
  
• Fixed issue where storage wouldn't get checked when salvaging landmarks.
  
• Fixed edge scrolling not working with multiple monitors.
  
• Fixed camera being offset at the start of the game if edge scrolling is active.
  
• Fixed assignment not loading.
  
• Fixed drifters not checking their assignments between production projects.
  
• Fixed issue where birds would get stuck in the birdhouse if they had to salvage nearby flotsam.
  
• Fixed issue where continue button would not be shown in main menu if only autosaves existed.
  
• Fixed drifters getting stuck in producers.
  
• Fixed status on disabled buildings saying "Athletics" instead of "Inactive".
  
• Fixed disabled icon not rotating when disabling / re-enabling buildings.
  
• Fixed report notifications re-appearing after a save & load.
  
• Fixed water or food staying reserved when a drifter dies.