Winkeltje: The Little Shop News

Hello Shopkeepers!

With the summer holiday over and the days growing colder we once again spend more time indoors. And what better way to do this than with some new stuff to play with in Winkeltje?



This update marks the first update in a line of updates which will have some part of the UI updated to a new look. We are currently hard at work overhauling the UI to be clearer and just feel nicer in general, an added bonus is it becoming more modular for possible future features. In this update the Game Menu and Confirmation Window have both gotten some much needed love and are looking better than ever!


A much requested feature was a way to have control of the order in which crafting options unlock. With this update we added crafting skill points which can be gained at level 3, 9, 13 and 20 with which you can unlock crafting stations. Whenever you have unlocked a new crafting skill point the unlock window will open automatically, allowing you to unlock a new crafting station if you wish.


The Starter and Stucco and Brick set gain a few extra options, to help you create the shop of your dreams.


With this update we updated the engine for Winkeltje to Unity version 2019.2 to be able to make use of the awesome new features and fixes. To ensure there wouldn’t be any incompatibilities for shops caused by the engine upgrade we gradually updated the game with this in mind since version 3818. So if you’ve played in your shop since update 3818 you won’t have to do anything and you should be able to open up shop right away! Neat huh?

But say you took a break since before Update 3818 and now decided you wanted to open up shop again. If you were to go straight from pre-3818 to this version there will be incompatibilities with your save. But all is not lost! Included in Update 3906 is a save converter which will convert your shop save file and make it all ready for this version and beyond. Simply load that version from steam, load up your shop and you’re good to go to update to the latest update.

Instructions for how to do this can be found here: Fix: "Error loading save file. File is likely outdated."(https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791463886720/announcements/detail/1597010908188855828)

And lastly... with the end of the summer holiday a new internship period has begun, and so we welcome Densin onboard as a new Game Design intern for the coming period.

Read Densin’s introduction here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/949290/discussions/0/1635291505036745726/

For the full patch notes, you do not need to look further than just below this line!

• Community Request: Crafting Unlocking Choice - You now unlock crafting skill points when you reach certain levels (3, 9, 13 & 20), with these you can unlock the crafting stations in any order you wish!
  
• Shopbuilder - New wall options for the Starter and Stucco and Brick kits (3 total) for your corners and to spruce up the place.
  
• Engine Update - Updated the engine to Unity version 2019.2
  

• Game Menu - The Game Menu UI has been updated with a sleek new look!
  
• Confirmation Window - The Confirmation Window UI has been updated with a new look!
  

• UI - Bushes would not pulse red when placed in invalid positions.
  
• UI - Cloning a planter while hovering over the original would cause the farming UI to bug out.
  
• UI - Furniture unlocked by either level or objective would appear twice in the unlock menu
  
• Events - The plague event wouldn’t start before the 40th day of any year .
  
• Events - Events never took longer than 1 day to finish up after they were active.
  
• Events - Events didn’t have proper price normalization while an event finishes up.
  
• Trader - Traders would not correctly apply the modifiers for crafting resources.
  
• Trader - Player can no longer collide with the trader.
  
• Player - When pushed out of bounds, the game should now put you back faster and more consistently
  
• Shop Builder - When reverting the shop builder, pillars would sometimes not be rotated correctly.
  
• Shop Builder - Crate collision box was inside the floor, causing collision issues when changing the floor.
  
• Shop Builder - Stucco and brick Window shutters are no longer stubborn and will open up the correct way.
  
• Shop Builder - Walls with windows that should have shutters will now always have shutters when there is no floor on the other side of the wall.
  
• Shop Builder - "Cost" string will now translate correctly when swapping languages while in the shop builder
  
• Shop Builder - Stucco set wall had incorrect shadow casting settings that made some walls appear dark during the day.
  

• Norwegian - The game is now available in Norwegian! - Thanks to Birk Fjeldbo Berg
  

• Crafting - The initial crafting unlocks for crafting stations would not unlock correctly
  
• Shop Builder - Shelves would not be marked as invalid when they should’ve been.
  
• UI - Interactables would sometimes not de-highlight correctly when an object had multiple colliders.
  

You wanted to play Winkeltje and suddenly you shop does not load anymore? Converting your shop file may be the fix you are looking for.

In short, you will need to load and re-save your shop using Winkeltje v3906 in order to make the shop compatible with future versions of Winkeltje. Below are the detailed steps on how to do this.


First make a backup of your 'Saves' folder in case something goes wrong. This folder us usually found in a sub-folder of your Steam installation folder such as: "C:/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/Winkeltje".

Hey fellow shopkeepers!

Another heat wave, another update. This time Winkeltje is receiving some new content for the Shop Builder. Each structure style has received a half wall and shutter version.




Something that has been planned for a while is updating Winkeltje's game engine to a newer version. This resulted in incompatible shop save files. Over the summer we have worked on a way to make sure you do not lose them. This Winkeltje update you can convert your shop save file and next Winkeltje update we will update the game engine.

What does this mean for you?

If you have played Winkeltje since update 3818, you will not have to do anything. If you have not played since then but would like to convert your save file at a later point, we will make Winkeltje version 3906 available as a separate branch on Steam. This way you can simply load a shop file and save it using version 3906 to convert the shop save file and make it compatible with future Winkeltje versions.

• Shop Builder - 9 New walls (5 half walls & 4 shutter wall types)
  
• Save File - Convert shop save file to be compatible with future versions of Winkeltje
  

• Graphics - Fixed an issue where the 3840x2160 resolution would not be applied correctly
  

Hey fellow shopkeepers!

These past weeks have been challenging to get an update out with a record breaking heat wave and 2/3 of the team on a summer vacation. Despite this, Winkeltje has another (albeit small) update.

New trader model!

• Trader - New trader model
  

• Farming - Increased the days it takes for plants to wither after they've grown to full size from 2 to 10.
  
• Storage - Lowered the base storage capacity in Creative Mode down to 15 to be in line with the other game modes.
  

• Shop Builder - Fixed collision of multiple objects so they will correctly be marked as invalid when removing shop tiles
  
• Shop Specialization - Shop Sign was not defaulted to the Winkeltje logo
  
• Customers - Customers would block raycasts, causing doors to not fade out as intended
  
• Scenarios - Game would not work correctly when no items tagged as "starter" are in the player's initial inventory
  
• UI - Switching to the Specialization tab in the Overview menu would not correctly update the info text.
  

• Brazilian Portuguese - Re-added.
  

• Optimization - Heavily reduced the amount of GUI refreshes done when placing furniture. This should remove the lag spike when placing things.
  
• Optimization - Spread out the pathfinding & accessibility checks when placing objects in a large shop over multiple frames.
  

This update to Winkeltje introduces a new shop sign and Specialization tab in the Overview menu. Together they help communicate how your shop is specialized based on how you are running your shop. As a reminder: To specialize your shop you simply have to sell items of your preferred specialization. After a few days, the customers will understand what you want to sell and will adjust their requests accordingly. The tab in the Overview menu will help communicate which items belong to what specializations and the sign outside your shop will reflect what store you are running.

A shop is considered specialized if 70% or more of the items sold in the last 5 days belong to the same category.



With summer upon us and internships coming to an end the team is saying goodbye to SailorOfMyVessel. He has been a valuable part of the team in the period from approximately Early Access until now. Most of his responsibilities came down to community management and game balancing but that did not keep him from improving many more aspects of Winkeltje. This departure and the impending summer holidays will unfortunately mean that upcoming updates may be a bit slimmer and sparse.

Read SailorOfMyVessel's goodbye note here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/949290/discussions/0/1639789306572835981/

Beyond this update there are some cool things in the works but these take some time to come to fruition. For now, please enjoy these changes available in Winkeltje today.

• Events - Increased the desire for clothes during King's Day for general stores.
  
• Traders - Traders now always carry crafting resources, they also carry more crafting resources.
  
• Traders - Greatly improved the minimal amount of items traders carry at later levels, marginally improved the maximum amount.
  

• Shop Specialization - Added Specialization tab to Overview menus.
  
• UI - Words that are too long for the radial menu will now be placed on a new line if possible or will use a smaller font size if a new line is not possible.
  
• UI - It is now possible to dismiss the trader.
  

• AI - Customers now no longer moonwalk when they've already left.
  
• AI - Displays are now randomized before a customer chooses one to go to.
  
• Coins - Game wont try to spawn a coin pouch with 0 silver when in creative mode anymore.
  
• Cursor - Hovering over planters in Shopbuilder will no longer show a glitchy cursor.
  
• Planter - Picking up a planter should no longer show or update the farming cursor graphic.
  
• Shopbuilder - Added additional check to make sure wall placement is correctly in bounds of the grid.
  
• Shopbuilder - Camera can now be controlled with WASD or arrow keys again.
  
• Tutorial - Tutorial would soft lock if you would place a counter, sell it and then place it again.
  
• UI - "Game Paused" string would not translate correctly.
  
• UI - Year & Day strings now translate correctly in the main menu.
  
• UI - A value change of 0% in the buy menu will now use white text.
  
• UI - The UI is no longer using solid green as it could cause some graphical issues with streamers using green screens.
  

• Italian - Game is now available in Italian - Thanks to Marcello Brancaccio.
  
• Brazilian Portuguese - Removed as a supported language due to falling below 80% finished rate.
  
• Latin American Spanish - Removed as a supported language due to falling below 80% finished rate.
  
• Spanish - Removed as a supported language due to falling below 80% finished rate.
  

Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish and Spanish are still available in-game, but you will see a high amount of English words mixed in when you select any of these languages. If you'd like to help us translate the game, head over to our Discord: https://discord.gg/winkeltje