Winkeltje: The Little Shop News

Dear Shopkeepers,

It is time for the Pre-Launch Update as Winkeltje is inching closer to release. This time the update is focused on fixing bugs, correcting mistakes and setting the stage for the Launch Content Update. Read on for more information on what the next month or so will look like.

[h2]Price Increase[/h2]
As announced earlier, the game will increase in price to $14.99 (or your regional equivalent) on the 4th of March. You can read the details in the initial announcement post.

[h2]Launch Content Update[/h2]
As some of you know, we have been working on a large content update for the 1.0 launch. If everything goes well you can expect to see the Launch Content Update deployed on the unstable branch for public testing in the coming week. Since this is a large and important update for the 1.0 launch, we need to take the time to test and fix issues that we find to ensure the game is stable when it finally releases. You can help by playing on the unstable branch and report any issues you find in the #bug-reports-unstable channel on Discord. Instructions on how to switch to the unstable branch can be found in the #information channel on the Winkeltje Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje)!

[h2]Key Rebinding[/h2]
A much requested feature has been key rebinding. After carefully analyzing the required changes we sadly had to come to the conclusion that at this stage we cannot take the risk to go for such a major change. The current implementation of user input & feedback (like the buttons you see on screen in the UI & Prompts) is very fragmented. Changing that at this point would be a multi-week effort in a lot of core systems which would introduce a huge amount of risk this close to launch. We're still looking at options and feedback to see if we can support limited rebinding.

[h2]New[/h2]

• Audio - Updated the main menu music with a new theme track.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Art - Bushy shaders should now get snow covered when outside and stop waving in the wind when placed inside.
  
• Art - Made the fire shader a smidge more yellow to closer resemble the feeling of fire.
  
• Art - Tweaked the table and chair colliders so chairs can fit underneath tables.
  
• Art - Tweaked the snow transition and snow materials to look better during the transitional period.
  
• Art - Adjusted the thickness of the centered structure beams on some of the wall pieces so they will not clip through paintings anymore.
  
• Art - Updated the shadowcasters on variant walls.
  
• Art - Reduced Solstice tree radius from 0.52 to 0.49 to make it easier to snap fit next to other assets.
  
• Art - Reduced the collider radius from the washing bucket to fit more tightly around the model.
  
• Art - Reduced the collider radius from the coat rack to fit more tightly around the model.
  
• Art - Made the darker leaves of bushes brighter to match better with other bushes.
  
• Audio - The restocking plop and thud sound effects are now in world space.
  
• Controls - Changing the wall masking preference using the keyboard hotkey should now be possible while the catalog menu is open.
  
• Effects - Updated the snow effect by covering the top of outside objects and masking out indoor objects.
  
• Farming - Community - Highlighting planters will now pulsate the seeds and crops in the inventory overview if possible.
  
• Language - Removed numbers from hybrid storage translations as a previous change to unlocking multiple furniture pieces has removed the confusion when unlocking several hybrid storages.
  
• UI - The crafting menu now has hotkeys to increase and decrease the amount of items to craft by using the Q and E keys.
  
• UI - Furniture labels will now also display the storage capacity of a furniture piece.
  
• UI - Buying or selling furniture will now list the furniture name in the transaction notification.
  
• UI - The scenario select should now scroll to, and focus on, the normal difficulty by default.
  
• UI - Scrolling through the credits using the controller has been made a bit faster and now supports d-pad navigation.
  
• UI - Fading between screens will now mention that the game is loading. This message is more for consoles that load slower than PC.
  
• UI - Improved the switching and navigating in the scenario select menu.
  
• UI - Moved the saving notification to be above the money counter.
  
• UI - Commerce UI will now close if you click outside of it.
  
• UI - Changed the direct selling message to include customer name.
  
• UI - Replaced the uninteractable sell button with a message when an item is not in stock in the direct selling prompt.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Achievements - Hard & Very Hard achievements would not trigger correctly. Reloading the save file should trigger these as intended.
  
• Animation - The crafting and planting animations played back in real-time causing issues when recording gameplay. The animations will now play back depending on the time between frames while respecting the time scale where appropriate.
  
• Animation - Restocking multiple shelves while walking should now animate from the player position.
  
• Art - The character customization scene was covered in snow during winter.
  
• Art - A customer should no longer display an outline of a disabled mesh.
  
• Art - Reduced the size of the roof colliders and lowered the height.
  
• Audio - The pre-game letter should have its writing sound playing again.
  
• Input - Community - Changing between 'qwerty' and 'azerty' keyboard preferences did not apply the preference unless the shop was reloaded.
  
• Lighting - Balanced the brightness of the wall mounted lanterns and lantern stand.
  
• Lighting - Updated the shadowcasters on walls to prevent light from leaking through.
  
• Other - SDK would initialize twice on PC.
  
• Other - When placing objects, they would move into view within 1 frame causing it to briefly appear and then move to its correct position.
  
• Other - Disabled menu hotkeys when in the character creator.
  
• Other - Potential fix for persistent.data sometimes not being writeable.
  
• Other - Added an additional check to ensure that whoever is fast enough placing & deleting a counter in 1 frame doesn't throw an error our way.
  
• Options - Options weren't correctly applied when going from the main menu -> game scene.
  
• Physics - Some NPCs were colliding with the doors which could result in very funky physics.
  
• Save - Old shops with customer data but without employee data could cause errors.
  
• Scenarios - Changed the Large scenario grid size to 16x14 for symmetry.
  
• Shop Builder - Fixed an issue where placing a double wall with a stone border in the middle would place a pillar.
  
• Storage - Slightly reduced the height of the collision box on the long and large pallets so that they may fit under a wall mounted lantern.
  
• UI - Initial crafting station interaction should now slot a crafting material if this is available.
  
• UI - The inventory overview item will no longer pulse when 'Show displayed items' is disabled and a customer takes an item.
  
• UI - Fixed a typo in the controls section causing a button prompt to appear as the Esc key instead of the E key.
  
• UI - You could still try to load invalid save files, even when you shouldn't.
  
• UI - Using left bumper in the scenario select menu would throw an error.
  
• UI - The initial fade from black in the main menu should now wait until the background scene is loaded in.
  
• UI - Updated Discord Rich Presence icon to the new one.
  
• UI - Community - Objectives marked as hidden should no longer count towards the total pinned amount.
  
• UI - Community - Removing the last of an item would not update the inventory overview.
  
• UI - Community - The inventory overview category and item sort were not applied when starting up the game.
  
• UI - Added an init check and moved a UI call to address a potential null reference error.
  
• UI - Loading a shop should now correctly apply the auto hide catalog preference setting.
  
• UI - The UI could occasionally be called before it was instantiated resulting in a critical error.
  
• UI - The top bar will now go up higher when hiding the UI to avoid the reminder icons showing when playing with a huge UI scale.
  
• UI - When opening a display it would not correctly select the first empty slot.
  
• UI - When using a controller, pressing X while having a display window open didn't do anything.
  
• UI - The bottom bar buttons should now enable in the right order when going through the tutorial.
  
• UI - The pre-game text should no longer flicker when loading into the next scene.
  
• UI - Appropriate button bar prompts should now be shown when initiating the tutorial.
  

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Performance - The Alchemy Station should no longer animate when not in view.
  
• Performance - The shop sign should no longer animate when not in view.
  
• Performance - NPCs using a rig builder component should now toggle the component before and after use to prevent overhead costs.
  

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]

• Placement - Repeatedly placing a bush could cause a null reference error.
  
• UI - Removed the 'Own' filter from the inventory menu as it was confusing and not very useful.
  

Update: v6699
Hotfix: v6702

Greetings shopkeepers,

As Winkeltje is approaching its 1.0 launch, the price will be increased from $12.99 to $14.99 (or your regional equivalent). This price increase will happen on 4th of March, 2022. Make use of this opportunity to save yourself some money by getting a copy of Winkeltje for yourself or someone else before the price increase happens.

[h2]3 Years, 50 Updates[/h2]
Winkeltje has received 50 updates over the past 3 years since the game was released into Steam Early Access. That is close to 1,4 updates per month! A full list of updates since launching into Early Access can be found here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/949290

[h2]Pricing History[/h2]
For full disclosure, Winkeltje has increased its price once before. On February 19th 2019 you could obtain a copy of Winkeltje for $9.99. 13 months and about 20 updates later, the price increased to $12.99. Now, roughly 2 years and some 30 updates later we are going to reflect the increase in value one last time by setting the launch price of Winkeltje at $14.99.

[h2]Launch Sneak Peek[/h2]
With the 1.0 launch of Winkeltje you are going to be receiving a lot of new content and a much requested new feature to help you run your shop. To prepare for this huge update we hope that you will join us in testing a preview of the 1.0 update on the unstable branch on Steam when we are ready to deploy it. We hope you will enjoy this little preview of what you can expect. ;)

Dear Shopkeepers,

We hope you like the new face of Winkeltje as this update marks the point where Winkeltje gets a new logo and icon for a fresh new in-game and online presence. This update once again appears light on the surface as work on the full release of Winkeltje is still very much progressing steadily. Some of the keen fans on Discord may have noticed some hints of what is to come. Unfortunately, we can't share this with you just yet until everything is ready and the time is right.



[h2]New[/h2]

• Art - Winkeltje now has a fresh new logo and icon!
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Art - Updated the Winkeltje logo.
  
• Art - Updated the game icon.
  
• Art - Updated the cursor icons.
  
• Balance - Community - Reduced the appeal of the Table Candlestick, Wall Candlestick, Lantern Stand, and Wall Lantern.
  
• Balance - Community - Lowered the amount required to complete the Master tailor, Master smith, Master chef, and Master alchemist objectives from 70 to 65.
  
• Objectives - Community - 'The smith' objective will now activate when the shop opens after having completed 'Sickle smith'. This will require some effort to complete but it will enable specialized blacksmiths to obtain the coveted sword before it naturally unlocks at shop level 38.
  
• UI - Split up the New Game Menu to have difficulty & scenario separated.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Items - Community - Not all displays had some default rotation applied causing the random item rotation option in the game settings to do nothing.
  
• Items - Community - Enabling the item rotation setting would exit the loop early if an item slot was empty.
  
• Lights - Community - Reduced the light radius of the Table Lantern by half a unit to reduce overlapping light artifacts from showing.
  
• UI - The specialization histories group in the specialization menu was not visible.
  
• UI - Community - Loading a shop would incorrectly clamp the shop level to 39 instead of 40.
  
• UI - Community - Unlocking new items will now update the counter items so they may be purchased in the same day.
  
• UI - The planter menu would show a 'Craft' prompt when using a PlayStation controller.
  
• UI - It's now possible to close confirmation windows that have a single button by pressing any of the return keys on the keyboard.
  

[h2]Hotfix[/h2]

• Achievements - Achievements would only unlock in creative mode, instead of the other way around.
  
• Code - Changed converter 6414 to 6415.
  
• Code - Old converter would be triggered at the wrong time, causing a critical error.
  
• Customers - Moved the un-reserving of an access point to a slightly earlier point in the code when searching for a random place to move to.
  
• Employees - Fixed typo in the employee pool causing an error.
  
• Objectives - The stockpiler objectives were not updated when crafting which could result in the objective overview showing incorrect values.
  
• UI - Fixed a string that wasn't being translated.
  
• UI - In the load menu, added a check to ensure a saved variable exists before trying to use it.
  
• UI - Customers and traders should no longer sometimes have a red ring over their head.
  
• UI - Unlocking more than one piece of furniture will now show the notification: "You Unlocked - New Furniture" which should speed up the notifications.
  
• UI - The very hard description in the difficulty select would not fit in the description box.
  
• Language - Updated the English and Dutch translations to have more informative descriptions in the scenario select menu.
  
• Scenarios - Scenario constructor wasn't called, causing the payment objective to be enabled in relaxed mode.
  
• Scenarios - Creative mode did not have free shop building.
  

Update: v6502
Hotfix: v6522

Dear Shopkeepers,

Winter is upon us, and so we prepare for the solstice in the last update of this year! We hope everyone is doing well and staying safe in these crazy times during a crazy global pandemic. Our country announced another lockdown that lasts at least until next year. It is very unfortunate to miss out on seeing people but we hope that together we can stay positive and let the joy of Winkeltje take our mind off things for a moment.

This is the last update of the year. But fret not, next year you can look forward to more updates as we are continuously pushing Winkeltje closer to a full release. There are exciting things in the works that we can't wait to show once they are ready.

In the meanwhile you can enjoy several new winter flavoured outfits that fit the season. You can obtain these by completing the annual winter objectives in the game. We hope you enjoy these as we settle in closer to the fire and say a little prayer for a snowy white holiday season.



[h2]New[/h2]

• Art - Added 12 new cosmetic unlocks linked to the winter objectives.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Art - Reverting change that relaxed the shoulders of the female skeleton it was causing several issues with other outfits.
  

Update: v6414

Dear Shopkeepers,

Rejoice for there is another update with new content and news moving forward. Over the last month we have been making good progress on the console development side of things for Winkeltje by steadily resolving issues that stand in the way of a release. For you, the player, progress on this front does not immediately translate to the game getting better or receiving content but it will mean the game will reach a larger audience when the game is finally released. Meanwhile, you would probably like to see some new things added to the game so we hope you will enjoy the following modest additions and fixes.


With the introduction of lights to the game we noticed that early game shops are quite dark and sombre. To brighten up the day of new shopkeepers you can now unlock a couple of new lights at shop level 5 and 10 which will bridge the gap to when you can unlock additional light options.


While this patch looks rather small on the surface, it contains a major changes in the background. This update contains a lot of maintenance that we had been putting off (generally known as Technical Debt) that needed to be addressed to improve stability and maintainability in the future.

In addition that that, we're working hard on the console ports. Unfortunately we ran into technical issues that came up which required significant changes in the codebase. Fortunately these changes are now finished and we are currently full steam ahead to get the ports done.

Finally, we are also working on new content! Most of it will not be out for a while, but rest assured it's something a lot of people have asked for for a long time.

[h2]New[/h2]

• Art - Added 4 new early game light options unlocked at shop level 5 and 10.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Language - Updated all translations.
  
• UI - Major GUI code and project file refactor across hundreds of files for better GUI code management moving forward.
  
• IO - Refactored all file IO to be asynchronous.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• UI - Added a null check for a potential error.
  
• UI - Added additional characters that are not allowed in the shop name.
  
• UI - Probable fix for trader and counter menus not populating with items.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue where the display menu would appear empty.
  
• UI - The commerce menu will now close the frame after accepting a transaction to prevent the interact action from interacting twice from the same button press.
  
• UI - Fixed a prompt highlighting issue where picking up furniture would highlight the restocking prompt.
  
• UI - Community - After a change to the watering progress bar you could no longer pick up a planter after watering.
  

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]

• Trader - If a specialized trader would spawn when no items were available for that specialization it would throw an error instead of spawning a generic trader.
  

Update: v6406
Hotfix: v6407