Winkeltje: The Little Shop News

Salutations shopkeepers.

We hope you are doing well this summer period. In this update we are happy to present you with an overhaul of the Unlock Menu!


While today's update may seem small when you look at the notes, it's actually a massive overhaul to the unlock menu. The old unlock menu is one of the last remnants of the old UI that we have been working hard to replace. The goal of the unlock menu is to see how you can unlock stuff. Additionally, there are some things you can choose to unlock such as crafting stations and shop builder options. Hopefully this will address some of the confusion and frustration you have voiced over using the old one. Please let us know how you get along with the new menu.

Thank you for all your feedback on Steam and Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje).
We look forward to sharing more update news with you soon!

[h2]New[/h2]

• UI - Community - New unlock menu.
  
• UI - New unlock and reminder icons.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Art - Changed furniture special icons.
  
• Art - Community - Changed furniture special icons.
  
• UI - Catalog menu should now remember filter and sort settings per tab.
  
• UI - Tweaked all furniture preview bounds to better fit within the preview window.
  
• UI - Added a preview appearance component to all furniture to simplify switching materials on furniture.
  
• UI - Improved preview display rendering.
  
• UI - Added fade in/out between scene switches for a smoother transition.
  

Update: v6274

Hello shopkeepers!

Summer is in full swing and hopefully you are staying safe and hydrated while enjoying yourselves out there. Today there are two menu overhauls being added to Winkeltje which bring us close to wrapping up on the major interface updates you have been seeing.


The events menu has been updated to allow you to inspect all events in addition to the currently active ones. Knowing the starting day enables you to prepare for certain upcoming events. Some events gradually increase or decrease in intensity over time and with the new menu this is now much more visible. Knowing when events reach peak intensity enables you to potentially transition your wares to profit from an event's effects.


Many veteran shopkeepers are keenly aware that the shop specialization has been a notoriously vague, but ultimately rather interesting, game mechanic. The aim with the new specialization menu was to provide a concise description in addition to providing insights in the temporal nature of this mechanic. With the updated specialization menu you can now inspect the recent sales history of each specialization and see how this affects specialization of your shop.

Thank you for all your feedback on Steam and Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje). We look forward to sharing more update news with you soon!

[h2]New[/h2]

• UI - Community - New events menu.
  
• UI - Community - New specialization menu.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Art - Tweaked the atlas packing system and compression settings so icons look slightly better.
  
• Art - Adjusted the preview bounds of the counters so it fits better in previews.
  
• Balance - Moved the Evil Ward to unlock at level 33 instead of 34.
  
• Gameplay - Increased the collision capsule of the trader so clicking on it should be easier.
  
• Language - Updated objective titles and task descriptions in favor of consistency and uniformity.
  
• Language - Updated translations on major languages.
  
• Objectives - The legacy objectives Clothing Seller, Craft Lottery, Food Seller, Resource Seller, Rotten Apples, Thanks Me Trader, Tool Seller, Tunic Seller, Unlock, and Watering have been hidden from the objectives menu because removing them from the database would result in a crash when loading old shop files with history on any of these objectives.
  
• Objectives - The Large Rustic Table unlock as been removed from the Tunic seller objective and can now only be unlocked by leveling.
  
• Objectives - The Rustic Table unlock has been removed from the Cash on hand objective and can now only be unlocked by leveling.
  
• Objectives - The Large Rustic Cupboard unlock has been removed from the decoration3 objective and can now only be unlocked by leveling to be in line with other furniture of that level.
  
• Commissions - Changed the way commissions are calculated so that they can't ask for items anymore that you can't craft.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Build - Crossing 2 double width walls will no longer place a pillar in the center.
  
• Commissions - Commission icons in on the board are now set to the highest quality item that's required for that commission.
  
• Controls - Reverted the change that fixed the Steam Controller issues, because it was causing crashing issues for others.
  
• Objectives - Switching from a scenario with payment objective to a scenario without payment objective would cause an error because the payment key would be missing from the objectives dictionary.
  
• Objectives - Net Value 4 & 5 would not be unlocked correctly.
  
• Objectives - Community - Removed multiple objectives that cannot be started anymore from the Objectives UI.
  
• Physics - Removed all collisions between preview layers and other layers as this would manifest in unwanted preview collisions.
  
• Settings - Setting the vsync setting would also check against the wrong value for the target frame rate.
  
• UI - Resetting the gameplay settings in the main menu would cause an error in the random item rotation setting.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue where the radial menu would spawn multiple times when pressing the radial button in the bottom bar.
  
• UI - Controller prompts on the bottom bar went missing after picking up furniture.
  
• UI - Objectives in the objectives menu should no longer show the expansion box if there's no progress or deadline bar to show.
  
• UI - Added a subtle fade transition to objective task descriptions in the objective menu so it does not pop so jarringly anymore.
  
• UI - Character was not centered in available space in the character creator.
  
• UI - Selling furniture before the bottom UI bar was done animating would cause it to remain hidden.
  
• UI - The item info tooltip remained on screen after closing the commission menu.
  
• UI - Completing the debt objective without having it pinned to the HUD would cause an error.
  
• UI - Paying off the debt should no longer cause a weird animation in the objectives HUD when trying to word wrap when there is no need to.
  
• UI - Community - The stock item amount label could get stuck displaying a color by having it's color transition routine interrupted.
  
• UI - Walls in the shop builder preview were masked out.
  

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• Steam Controller doesn't work again due to the revert in change from last patch. The change caused crashing issues for some players so we decided to go for the lesser of 2 evils for now while we investigate a better solution.
  

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]

• v6236 - Objectives: Enabled and hid an old legacy tailoring objective to prevent a critical error.
  
• v6237 - Player: Attempting to load an empty character appearance struct would cause an error. Now when this is the case, the default shopkeeper appearance is loaded.
  
• v6240 - UI: Rewrote farming HUD depth sorting to fix an error and generate less garbage.
  
• v6241 - Farming: When all plants are harvestable, harvesting will now be the first interaction on that planter.
  
• v6242 - Fix: Fixed up some issues with the mouse-over and prompts regarding to farming.
  
• v6243 - Testing: Updated the nav mesh obstacle carve test to have better coverage and reporting.
  
• v6244 - Performance: UI particles were looping and costing performance even when not being visible on screen because the UI particle script was not enabled and disabled correctly while the particle systems depending on this script were.
  
• v6245 - Fixed a major performance regression when switching input systems in shops with a lot of furniture.
  
• v6246 - UI: Moved GUI activate/deactivate callbacks when fading GUI to the same frame to ensure important callbacks are executed.
  
• v6247 - UI: Rapidly scrolling through the objectives menu using a controller could cause an error.
  
• v6248 - UI: Opening the objectives menu in creative mode using a controller would cause an error because it would try to navigate to a non existing menu item.
  

Update: v6235
Hotfix: v6248

Good day shopkeepers!

Summer is creeping around the corner and we hope everyone is having a good time. With temperatures rising and friends and family taking time off we can't help but enjoy these moments as we hope your are too. Despite all this we are still very much committed to developing Winkeltje and push it towards a satisfying release. There is much happening behind the scenes that we can't share with you just yet but it should be pretty cool when we get there. What we can share with you today is another menu that was due for an overhaul.

Winkeltje was released into Early Access with a simple objectives menu. Over time the reasons to overhaul the entire game's UI became overwhelmingly apparent and so today we get to the new and improved objectives menu.


It took a long time to design and implement but we proudly present to you the new objectives menu offering a lot more insight and features. A cool feature is that you can now decide which objective you want to see in the HUD by pinning the objective in the menu and the details panel in the menu lets you discover useful information about an objective.


While designing this menu we listened to you, the community, and together discovered that the initial on-screen objectives HUD was obscuring too much of the game view. To alleviate this you can now choose to make the objectives HUD transparent. In addition to that you can choose how the objectives are sorted and what the maximum number of objectives on the screen is allowed to be. We hope this will let you alleviate many of the frustrations that came along with the old menu and embrace the power and utility of this new one.

As always we love to hear your feedback and hopefully we can work together in making this game better with each update.

[h2]New[/h2]

• UI - Community - New objectives menu.
  
• UI - Community - Objective HUD sort options have been added to the game settings.
  
• UI - Community - Added a transparent mode toggle for the objective hud to the game settings.
  
• UI - Updated the inventory HUD with the ability to show number of items displayed in your shop and the option to tweak the HUD appearance to your preference.
  
• UI - Added settings for Vsync & Framerate cap.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• UI - The game settings description panel is now permanent in panels containing options with descriptions to prevent confusing scroll behavior.
  
• UI - Updated the objectives HUD header in favor of an icon and info to fit better with the updated inventory HUD and updated objectives menu.
  
• UI - The bottom bar will now toggle off when picking up furniture to prevent players from selling parts of the shop while holding an invalid piece of furniture which causes an error when you accept the changes and agree to selling the furniture you are still holding.
  
• Community Request - Gameplay - When interacting with farming stations that have mixed beds, the watering interaction will happen before harvesting.
  
• Language - Removed Finnish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Czech languages as supported languages from the Winkeltje Steam store page due the respective community translations becoming increasingly unsupported.
  
• Lighting - Tweaked lighting settings in the main scene to reduce visible artifacting.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• AI - Increased the size of the navigation agents to be equal to the collider size.
  
• Art - Community - The alchemy station was missing a light on its candle.
  
• Gameplay - Loading a shop where the shopkeeper is next to invalid furniture should now correctly show the furniture as being invalid.
  
• Objectives - Harvesting objectives would all be started at once, instead of in a chain.
  
• Save/Load - CommisssionObjective could be loaded even when no commission was active, resulting in (non-critical) errors.
  
• Save/Load - The character appearance could in rare cases be saved as null causing issues on load. The character appearance is now initialized to be the default shopkeeper if that's the case.
  
• Save/Load - Upgraded displays had their appeal applied twice when loading a save.
  
• Tech - Resolution was not applied correctly when loading the game.
  
• UI - The game settings panels will now autoscroll when navigating the options with a controller.
  

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]

• v6170 - Resetting the gameplay settings in the main menu would cause an error in the random item rotation setting.
  
• v6171 - Switching from a scenario with payment objective to a scenario without payment objective would cause an error because the payment key would be missing from the objectives dictionary.
  
• v6173 - Fixed an issue where the radial menu would spawn multiple times when pressing the radial button in the bottom bar.
  
• v6174 - Controller prompts on the bottom bar went missing after picking up furniture.
  

Update: v6169
Hotfix: v6174

Salutations shopkeepers. Today marks a major update due to the sheer number of changes required for this update. A grand total of 85 new furniture options are available with the introduction of hybrid storages and display storages allowing for more variety in how your shop can look. On top of that, you can now enjoy much better light effects on 7 decorations and 6 counters. Finally, footstep sounds are now supported for 5 times more surfaces than before. If that gets you excited you should surely keep on reading.


Display cupboards now have partial storage options allowing for some slots to be used to display items, and some slots to be sacrificed to increase storage capacity.
In addition to hybrid storages, you now also have the option to dedicate all display slots of a cupboard or shelf to storage. This allows for more customization options for your storage room.
Hybrid storage and dedicated storage displays are unlocked alongside the original display. We look forward to hearing your feedback on this feature.


Point and cone lights were initially explored as a feature for Winkeltje several years ago but sadly abandoned due to poor performance and feature support in the game engine at the time. After finally reaching feature parity we could upgrade the game engine last February allowing us to revisit this feature with much better results.
With the introduction of lights it now also makes sense to add Bloom as a post-processing effect option. This basically adds a soft glow around really bright areas on the screen. Please let us know how it looks and performs on your computer.


You will no longer have to listen to the same footstep sounds on all surfaces as footsteps now sound more varied with the introduction of unique footstep sounds for dirt, grass, wood, stone, and snow.

[h2]New[/h2]

• Art - Seasons now transition continuously instead of discrete.
  
• Audio - Added footstep sounds for dirt, grass, wood, stone, and snow.
  
• Furniture - New hybrid storage displays and shelves as variations of existing displays and shelves.
  
• Furniture - New storage options where displays and shelves are purely used for storage instead of displaying.
  
• Lights - Community - Added lights to certain furniture pieces.
  
• Lights - Community - Decoration lights now default to NightOnly. Clicking on decoration lights allows for cycling between NightOnly, AlwaysOn, and Off.
  
• UI - Community - Added hotkey "i" to open the inventory menu.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Art - Tweaked color channels on room divider, tub, and logs texture to be slightly less pale.
  
• Balance - Changed how display buyprices are returned in order to correct prices.
  
• Balance - Lowered the price per storage capacity of storage cupboards a little to better convey the difference between the idea of compact storage of pallets and the less compact new storage cupboards.
  
• Lights - All counters should now have a lantern light.
  
• Performance - FPS cap was mistakenly disabled. It should be capped to 60 for now.
  
• UI - Changing shadow settings will now also affect furniture lights where shadows are allowed.
  
• UI - Refactored labels to use the same system (furniture labels, tutorial hints, general warnings, dynamic appeal, overburdened).
  
• UI - Reduced the size of the cost indicator and added it to the labels system.
  
• UI - Tweaked screenshot settings for better image quality at similar file size when saving a shop.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Art - The glow shader on the Stove was not rendering correctly.
  
• Art - Fireplaces were not correctly showing glow and distortion effects.
  
• Customers - Customer would remain interactable after their patience would run out.
  
• Furniture - Increased the collision boxes of some of the pallets to prevent clipping with wall objects.
  
• Furniture - Community - Hybrid displays would initialize after being loaded, resulting in conflicting data.
  
• Furniture - The divider will no longer remain highlighted when placed. Furniture that has colliders in child objects would not unhighlight or highlight when these colliders exited or entered the influence range of the shopkeeper.
  
• Furniture - The divider will no longer remain highlighted when placed. Furniture that has colliders in child objects would not unhighlight or highlight when these colliders exited or entered the influence range of the shopkeeper.
  
• Gameplay - Fixed error when leveling up your store when no counter is placed.
  
• Lights - Community - The light on the solstice tree was offset appearing elsewhere in the shop as a rogue light.
  
• Objectives - "Decoration 2" & "Decoration 3" were never started, resulting in unobtainable unlocks.
  
• Planters - Huge Planter did not have its navmash obstacle enabled.
  
• Traders - Traders would sometimes not have an inventory due to spawning with the wrong specialization.
  
• UI - Dynamic appeal label for anywhere objects will now only show when the appeal is actually higher than 0.
  
• UI - Selecting a shop builder option would not be clearly indicated in the preview when subsequently hovering over other options.
  
• UI - Long names in the catalog menu inspector will now be wrapped.
  
• UI - Camera zoom would put overhead icons at wrong positions.
  
• UI - Community - The commerce menu item sub-total should now correctly show the amount of items you have of that quality.
  

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]

• v6065 - Unlock notification would show for the shop upgrade when it shouldn't
  
• v6066 - When the customer pays at the counter, it now clears its AI queue. Hopefully preventing a rare issue where the customer goes back into the queue after paying.
  
• v6067 - Placing an "anywhere" object and then moving it out of bounds would throw an error.
  
• v6069 - Indirectly removing a light using the shop builder should now remove the light from the manager class.
  
• v6071 - Optimized farming HUD instantiation and activation effeciency.
  
• v6071 - Optimized icon lookup efficiency.
  
• v6072 - Fixed a critical loading issue for that 1 person who managed to keep a save file around using a scenario that shouldn't be usable anymore.
  
• v6073 - Attempting to place a variant in the shopbuilder before selecting it could cause an out of range error.
  

Update: v6064
Hotfix: v6073

It's time for another update, as our overhaul of the interface continues. In this update you'll find the newly updated Inventory UI and in addition to that you can look forward to checking out some sweet new decorations to spruce up your store alongside a slight decoration rebalance. Let us get to it!


This time around the Inventory UI received it's long overdue overhaul. It is now a lot easier to see what you have in storage (and on display!) and there's more information available for all items.


A new set of decorations have been added to the game which can be unlocked by simply leveling up your shop, these decorations will surely give your shop a more cozy feeling.

[h2]New[/h2]

• Decorations - Added a new set of decorations that can be gradually unlocked by leveling up the shop.
  
• Community - UI - Unlocking farmable items will now indicate you can grow it instead of craft it.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Community - UI - Updated the inventory menu.
  
• Decorations - Adjusted colliders of several decoration pieces.
  
• Decorations - Adjusted appeal value of several decoration pieces.
  
• Decorations - Decorations with a circular footprint had incorrect calculations to calculate the appeal and now have more accurate appeal values taking their footprint into account better, these will all see a rise in appeal.
  
• Decorations - Basket now has a capsule collider instead of a box collider to allow better placement fitting the shape.
  
• Decorations - Flower Barrel now has a capsule collider instead of a box collider to allow better placement fitting the shape.
  
• UI - Unlocking the ability to farm or craft an item will now only show if you have the relevant station or planter unlocked.
  
• Art - Seasons now transition continuously instead of discrete.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• UI - Changing filter mode in the catalog menu would not refresh the selector.
  
• Gameplay - Removing furniture with items on it would cause an error.
  
• Community - UI - Fixed an issue where the wall masking and auto hide catalog settings were not set, stored, reset or applied correctly.
  
• Trader - When a specialized seed trader would have to show up, an error would be thrown.
  
• Other - Corrupted persistent.data shouldn't crash the game anymore.
  
• Other - Loading a shop would not always unlock previously unlocked items.
  
• Performance - Removed 2-3 get component calls per shop object when loading the shop by pattern matching the derivative class.
  

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]

• v5989 - Placing a display for the first time causes an error when it shouldn't.
  
• v5990 - Opening an empty inventory menu with a controller would cause an error.
  
• v5991 - Opening an inventory menu with a controller after having obtained an item would not clear the menu correctly.
  
• v5996 - Pot of the Stove crafting station did not have a collider and could clip with wall decorations or double shelves.
  
• v5999 - Hovering the cursor over a catalog item after having clicked on a different item would use incorrect item settings.
  
• v6002 - Changing the shop entrance would not correctly update the shop sign icon
  
• v6003 - Reverting double-width walls would in some situations not destroy the temporary wall.
  
• v6004 - Added an additional index reset before adding modes to the dataview dropdowns.
  

Update: v5988
Hotfix: v6007