Winkeltje: The Little Shop News

Greetings Shopkeepers!

This week we're dropping off a new difficulty and a lot of bug fixes.

[h2]New difficulties[/h2]
Something that comes by quite often is how difficult the game is when you play it on Normal. We recognize that our tutorial does not explain all of the mechanics very well (such as specializing your shop and how effective that is), and as such will probably push the player towards a more challenging playthrough than intended. After having worked on the game for so long, it is difficult to see how challenging your game really is, so please keep that feedback coming!

For now we've made a couple of changes to the difficulties. We added 1 new one: Very Hard. We have made Easy, Normal and Hard easier than what you were used to, and made Very Hard slightly more difficult than the current Hard. We hope that this will allow for a smoother introduction to the game experience.


[h2]New[/h2]

• Difficulty - Added new difficult Very Hard.
  
• UI - The catalog menu will now prioritize showing the a favorite variant over the first variant.
  
• UI - Selecting the entrance tab in the build menu will now frame the entrance.
  
• UI - The build menu now also shows a preview of what will be placed.
  
• Other - When placing items at night, they are now automatically pinned.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Difficulty - Made Easy slightly easier.
  
• Difficulty - Made Normal easier (in-line with the old Easy).
  
• Difficulty - Made Hard easier (in-line with the old Normal).
  
• UI - The entrance tab in the build menu will now only show if there is more than one option available.
  
• Balance - When starting the game, the player now starts with 3 apples, nails & shirts
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Art - Default shop sign was not set to use the Winkeltje shop bell.
  
• Art - Shop sign should default to the correct sign at the start of the game.
  
• UI - Unfavoriting an item in the catalog menu using controller would not disable the favorite button but show an unhovered version for mouse input instead.
  
• UI - Unfavoriting structure items in build mode did not work as intended.
  
• UI - The door lock explanation did not stop time while it should.
  
• UI - Likely fixed the issue of completed objectives remaining visible.
  
• UI - Spamming the entrance interaction could cause a happiness smiley to not fade out correctly.
  
• UI - Added a null check to prevent an error when trying to show a prompt that was not found.
  
• UI - Updated default task label width to fix a wrapping issue.
  
• UI - Tabbing right from Displays without having a CraftingStation unlocked would not allow for reaching the Storage section.
  
• Controls - It was possible to enable the controller furniture pickup while the shop is open.
  
• Controls - Planting using a controller would cause a slight nudge to the player.
  
• Farming - Loading harvestable planters with water level below threshold would cause crops to be withered.
  
• Other - Resupply was not working as intended anymore.
  
• Other - When playing with controller it would sometimes show a cursor.
  

Greetings shopkeepers!

As days are getting hotter it seems that more people are warming up to the idea of running a little shop. Welcome to the new shopkeeps in the community. We hope the summer season brings you great profits! Of course you want to know what's new and changed so skip past this mercantile babble to see what's what.

First off we want to express our heartfelt thanks and appreciation towards Densin who has worked on Winkeltje for the large part of a year improving the game's design and systems, listening to the community, providing the community with these handcrafted update notes, and much much more. We hope this is not the last we see of Densin but for now we wish him all the best in the future. You can leave him a message in his goodbye post here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/949290/discussions/0/2272575584131757195/


This update contains quality of life improvements to Winkeltje and fixes to issues that were reported by the community. With this update we try to address some frustrations that could be encountered when playing Winkeltje. To highlight some of these improvements we would like to show you the changes to the farming UI, controller controls when moving furniture, and the ability to hide the objectives.

[h3]Farming UI[/h3]


After seeing some confusion leading to frustration about farming and the withered state of crops it was apparent that this needed more clarity. Planters now show little water droplets to clarify how much water is in the soil. When a day passes without any water in the soil the crop will wither. Withered crops already appeared with a different model but now also reflect withered state with a particle effect and a different HUD.

[h3]Controller improvement[/h3]


Last update we introduced the catalog menu that makes it easier to buy and build. While mouse and keyboard players benefitted the most from this update it also revealed that controller players could only pick up closest furniture with the catalog menu open. Previously it was possible to cycle through furniture selection usind the dpad on the controller. With the catalog menu, dpad is now used to navigate the catalog. For controller we wanted to fix this by reimagining the best way to pick up furniture. After a promising prototype and several iterations we arrived at the behavior where tapping the pick up button still picks up the closeset furniture. But to select furniture in range of the shopkeep you can now hold the pick up button to enable a radial thumbstick selector to pick up the furniture that you want. If the feedback on this feature is positive we may consider similar behavior for interacting with furniture.

[h3]Hiding objectives[/h3]


After the update to the objectives HUD in the top right of the screen we have been monitoring feedback and we noticed several players asking for a way to hide the objectives HUD. This is now possible by clicking, hotkey, or controller button. Please see the controls section in the game settings for current bindings.

The feedback from the community is great in improving the game so please let us hear what you think of these changes and if you run into any issues. The best place to reach us is either on Discord (https://discord.com/invite/winkeltje) or here on Steam.


[h2]New[/h2]

• Community Feedback: Farming - UI - Added a withered feedback state to the crops and HUD.
  
• Community Feedback: UI - It's now possible to hide the objectives by pressing the triangle next to the header or press O on keyboard or dpad up on controller.
  
• Controls - Improved furniture pickup with controller by holding X/Square to select furniture.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Community Feedback: Art - Reduced the size of of large tables for Kit0 and Kit2. Reduced collision size of small table of Kit2.
  
• Community Feedback: Balance - Decoratons - "Fall" painting now has the Autumn property.
  
• Community Feedback: Farming - Once a crop has matured it should no longer wither.
  
• Community Feedback: Farming - UI - Farming HUD should now show many days of water is left before withering.
  
• Community Feedback: Utility - Trashbin is now allowed to be placed outside.
  
• AI - Customer wishlist is no longer merged, which should allow for a better randomization in what customers ask for.
  
• Art - Updated preview images of updated large tables.
  
• Balance - Displays - Simplified calculation of appeal for displays to more easily balance and make more sense for gameplay.
  
• Balance - Objectives - "Starting Seller" objective now rewards 60 silver instead of 3 tunics.
  
• Balance - Objectives - "Clothing Seller" objective now rewards 2 wool, 2 linen and 2 leather instead of 2 dresses, 2 tunics and 2 shoes.
  
• Balance - Objectives - "Food Seller" objective now rewards 4 grain, 2 cheese and 2 apples instead of 2 bread, 2 grain, 2 cheese and 2 apple.
  
• Balance - Objectives - "Tool Seller" objective now rewards 6 iron instead of 1 hammer, 1 pitchfork, 1 axe and 4 iron.
  
• Balance - Objectives - "Catering" objective now rewards 200 silver instead of 4 bean seeds.
  
• Controls - Dpad up/down/left/right is no longer used for cycling through furniture selection.
  
• Controls - Wall masking is moved from left thumbstick press to dpad down.
  
• Controls - Removed furniture select using dpad.
  
• Controls - Improved on furniture placement using controller.
  
• UI - Prompts - Updated prompts to reflect furniture selection and wall mask interactions.
  
• UI - Prompts - Updated prompts to reduce clutter and reflect changes to controller select.
  
• UI - Settings - Controls section is updated to reflect control changes.
  
• UI - Updated controls section in game settings to use icons for PC controls and reflect changes to controller select.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Community Feedback - Stockpiler 2 objectives required 150 items instead of 15.
  
• Community Feedback - Fixed the "Delivery in Progress" bug.
  
• Community Feedback - Customer wishlist generation was using an incorrect starting value for its randomization.
  
• Fix - When the last of an item was removed from the shop inventory, the key would not be correctly removed from the dictionary resulting in some objectives not updating correctly.
  
• Fix - Fixed error that happened when switching between controller & mouse in build mode.
  
• Performance - Using a controller in any menu with a prompt box would do an expensive Find call when a manager class was null. Fixing this resulted in ~4ms frame time improvement.
  
• UI - Catalog - Fixed a critical error that could occur when placing furniture.
  
• UI - Catalog - Sort/filter dropdowns had a rare chance of causing an index out of range error. The dropdown items now use an index incrementer instead of relying on a sibling index.
  
• UI - Customer - Added a check to prevent coroutine starting when the gameobject is disabled.
  
• UI - The farming HUD could cause an error when trying to run a routine without any HUD elements present in the manager dictionary.
  
• UI - Newly added items to the shop dictionary could allow for a critical error when trying to directly sell it to a customer.
  

• Controls - Running would be disabled when placing an item.
  
• UI - Spamming water refill on planters could cause a coroutine error.
  
• UI - Overburdened message would remain while in build mode.
  

Greetings shopkeepers!

After the smaller intermediary update from last time, it is now time for what we could not include then. This update marks a major milestone for the UI overhaul, with the largest overhaul done yet. So have a seat, get yourself something nice to drink and strap yourself in, we've got a lot of cool stuff to go over. Of course I can only tell you so much about it, the real kicker is in the experience, so after you're done reading, why not give the new features a try and play some Winkeltje for yourself? Browsing, buying, placing and expanding have never been easier.


We have teased it in the previous update, but now the next installment of the UI overhaul is finally here. The furniture and structure catalogs are a complete rework of the UI for buying furniture and building your shop.

[h3]New Grid Based Browsing[/h3]
Using the new grid based catalogs you can now browse, buy, place furniture, and select your floor and wall faster than ever, no more scrolling endlessly until you find the furniture piece or wall you want to place.

[h3]Preview with properties[/h3]
Previews have been redone to more elegantly show the information for each different piece, with properties of each piece clearly expressed with icons.

[h3]Favoriting[/h3]
Favorite furniture, walls and floors to quickly find them again using the new sorting and filtering methods.

[h3]Sorting and Filtering[/h3]
Sort based on price, appeal, item slots, wall type, favorites and more to find what you're looking for much faster than before. Use the filter to show only those things you really want to see in the catalog, filter based on favorites or any of the specific properties of a piece. And of course they both work together, now you can find that most expensive winter decoration piece in a cinch.

[h3]Variants[/h3]
Variants of the same type of item are collapsed under one base instance, so no more seeing all 8 different bushes in the list with all items. Just one bush is in the list, but you can easily go to the different variants and quickly switch between them there as you're tending to your garden.

Let us know what you think of this update in the comments or join the Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje) where you can get in touch with us and the rest of the community. On the Discord you can also sneak a peek at the change logs as the game is being made so you know what to look forward to or what you can expect on the unstable branch where all the changes will be immediately playable.


[h2]New[/h2]

• Community Request: Favoriting of Furniture/Wall/Floor - Favorite furniture, wall and floor pieces so you can quickly find them later.
  
• Community Request: Filtering of Furniture/Wall/Floor - Filter pieces in the new catalog to only show pieces that fit a certain filter.
  
• Community Request: Sorting of Furniture/Wall/Floor - Sort the items in the new catalog based on various sorting methods.
  
• UI - Added bottom bar UI
  
• UI - Added catalog menus (buying & building)
  
• Audio - Added new autumn night music.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• All - Numerous changes to support new catalog menu features
  
• Objectives - Removed prompt for using tab to manage the shop from "Placing Furniture" tutorial objective to reflect the new catalog changes.
  
• Objectives - Table is now only unlocked after completing the "Placing furniture" tutorial objective, instead of at level 1.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Customers - Customers should get stuck in queue less often
  
• AI - Fixed multiple AI issues with the commission pickup.
  
• UI - The shop open/closed contextual prompt was not updated correctly when the shop was opened.
  
• Objectives - "Placing items" tutorial objective could be soft locked if tables with items were placed before the objective activated.
  
• Translations - Dynamic text which isn't found in the loaded language should now also revert to English by default
  

• Objectives - Issues occured during the "Item Placement" tutorial if a furniture piece without accesspoints was selected for placement.
  
• Tutorial - Rotating furniture prompt should now correctly show shoulder buttons prompt when playing with controller.
  
• UI - Picking up furniture using controller will now toggle the L2/R2 prompts to avoid confusion.
  
• UI - Catalog grid items are now set to be interactable when item values are set to prevent a rare case where grid buttons are no longer interactable.
  
• UI - Fixed a critical error that could occur when placing furniture.
  

Greeting shopkeepers!

As we're all continuing to work from home through these strange times we are currently hard at work on an update to the Furniture Purchasing UI and Shopbuilder UI. This is proving to be a bit more work than we initially expected so it will be a little longer before we can hand that to you all. But while we're working on that we of course don't want to keep you waiting for a new update for too long. Today we have a smaller scale update to address some issues that have popped up and to add some new summer music to the game.

Let us know what you think of this update in the comments or join the Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje) where you can get in touch with us and the rest of the community. On the Discord you can also sneak a peek at the change logs as the game is being made so you know what to look forward to or what you can expect on the unstable beta branch where all the changes will be immediately playable.


[h2]New[/h2]

• Audio - Added new music for nights during the summer season.
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Decorations - Reduced the size of the collision box of the Winter Garland slightly so they can be placed on both walls in a corner.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Gameplay - When selling an item directly to a customer, the item would sometimes be null
  
• Customers - List of customers would be shuffled at the incorrect time, resulting in the same customer type walking in all the time.
  
• Customers - Customers would go to a newly placed item when their original target would still be there.
  
• Customers - Under rare circumstances, a customer could be standing in queue but not be correctly set as being in queue.
  
• Objectives - New objectives that were added through the levels would not be updated correctly when loading in an older save file.
  
• Objectives - Opinion thresholds for "Customer is King 1" and "Customer is King 2" were not updated to match the new opinion max values.
  
• Objectives - Loan task in the Objective UI would not complete when paying debt + loan at the end of the day.
  
• Objectives - Players could get infinite loans when they didn't have enough money to pay the debt if they paid off their loan when opening the shop.
  
• Events - Events loaded from a save file would not have its progress correctly loaded
  
• Audio - Background music would sometimes stop playing.
  

• Objectives - Item Placement Tutorial would not update when items were placed on tables.
  
• Shop Loading - Loading a shop file that was saved on a payment day would throw an error.
  
• Customers - Customer list would not be loaded correctly
  
• Customers - Added a fallback for older save files, which should now shuffle the customer list when loaded
  

Hey there shopkeepers!


It's been a troubled few months for everyone in the world. With much of the world switching to remote working, we have not stayed behind. We are fortunate to have already had the infrastructure in place to continue working from home, which should hopefully minimize the impact the current situation has on the progress on the game. We hope you all stay safe and healthy.


For the longest time we've been working on overhauling the customer behavior for Winkeltje and this has been hinted at for about as long as we have been working it. Due to other more pressing matters popping up this has been pushed and pushed to a later date but with this update we can finally share the new customer behavior. Customers will now be browsing your store more and when they can't find anything they will queue before your counter where you can ask the first person in line what they're looking for. You will then be able to sell them the item they're looking for or send them away.

With this update the maximum amount of shop levels has been raised to 40, of course we didn't stop just there, we rebalanced how fast levels are gained and the unlocks for each level. What this means is that what was previously level 30 is now level 35 and 35 to 40 will be new territory, your levels will automatically be updated to reflect this change. Of course any unlocks you may have had before the rebalance will remain unlocked, so you will not be losing access to these because of this change.

Let us know what you think of this update in the comments or join the Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje) where you can get in touch with us and the rest of the community. On the Discord you can also sneak a peek at the change logs as the game is being made so you know what to look forward to or what you can expect on the unstable beta branch where all the changes will be immediately playable.


[h2]New[/h2]

• AI - Customers now queue up at the counter when they want something that isn't on the shelves. This also fixes the issue where customers would sometimes wait around even when an item was placed on a display.
  
• AI - Customers now show up in a more limited pool, allowing the player to more easily increase the happiness of customers.
  
• AI - Customers actually use their budget now, and will as a result buy more items if they're of a lower price. This should make farming more viable as you can sell more items to a single customer.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Levels - Shop Levels have been increased to 40.
  
• Unlocks - Level unlocks are spread out over the new levels to lessen the amount unlocked at once.
  
• Unlocks - Item unlocks through the shop level are now in order of how much money each item makes and are unlocked close to items that require it for crafting.
  
• Events - Summer; Wood, Turf and Coal are all less sought after in Summer.
  
• Events - Autumn; Tools are now affected by Autumn and are slightly more expensive.
  
• Events - Winter; Meals are now affected by Autumn and are slightly more expensive. Wood, Turf and Coal are all more sought after in Winter.
  
• Events - Blacksmith Convention; The price adjustment for Tools have been reduced (2.5x -> 2x).
  
• Events - Tailor Convention; The price adjustment for Clothing have been reduced (2.5x -> 2x).
  
• Events - Chef's Cook-off; The price adjustment for Meals have been reduced (2.5x -> 2x). More customers now show up on this day.
  
• Events - Harvest Day (Spring); The price adjustment for Bread has been reduced (4x -> 2x).
  
• Events - Harvest Day (Autumn); The price adjustment for Bread has been reduced (4x -> 2x).
  
• Events - King's Day; The price adjustment for Clothing has been changed to be percentage based.
  
• Events - Tournament; The price adjustment for Tools have been reduced (2.5x -> 1.2x). Tools are slightly less sought after than before (7x -> 6x).
  
• Objectives - Seasonal objectives now reward 100 silver each time they are completed successfully in addition to any unlocks when they're completed the first time. ("Prepare for ..." objectives do not get this extra reward)
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Art - Updated the look of the Terracotta floor tiles.
  
• Art - When picking up the commission board items, the trader will now spawn without a backpack and get one after picking up the items.
  
• AI - Base budget is now calculated based on the average of all the items a player owns.
  
• AI - Set the minimum budget of customers to 30.
  
• Customers - Defined more customers which should result in audible sighs to fit the customer's name and model.
  
• UI - You should now be able to press escape to exit out of the commission menu.
  
• UI - The game will now be paused while the commission menu is open.
  
• UI - Customer patience now counts down instead of up
  
• Objectives - "Sell 30 Tunics" objective will no longer start in new shops as it no longer fits the progression.
  
• Objectives - Disabled the starting of Avoid type objectives ("Rotten Apples", "Thank Me Trader", "Craft Lottery") as we evaluate how to make them more fun.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Art - Made the walls look better when masked.
  
• Art - The bushes in the main menu were not changing with the displayed season.
  
• Gameplay - Access points would sometimes not be marked as invalid.
  
• Gameplay - Customers would sometimes request seeds
  
• Gameplay - Player rotation would not be loaded correctly
  
• Objectives - The Max Appeal Upgrade Tutorial now autocompletes if the shop already has been upgraded once before.
  
• Objectives - Cheese was not unlocked when Quiche was unlocked through crafting.
  
• UI - Fixed an error that could occur by rapidly clicking the accept button when the last commission in the commission menu was selected.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue that could let you buy/order items twice within a single frame if clicked fast enough.
  
• UI - The detail panel in the commission menu had the wrong background.
  
• UI - The outline colour of the trader icon would sometimes not reset its colour correctly when using a pooled prefab.
  
• UI - Wall masking hotkey 'H' is now disabled when a menu is open.
  
• UI - Renaming the "Shop" tab to "Shop Upgrades" broke the description in the unlock menu.
  
• Main menu - Main menu animated backgrounds should now have wall masking disabled.
  
• Audio - Music in main menu was not looping anymore.
  

• Customers - Customers would default to an opinion of 0 instead of 50.
  
• Customers - Old save files with the customer identity set to "random" would always load in as the Male Villager instead of correctly picking a random model.
  
• Customers - Customer opinion was clamped between -5 - 15, instead of 0 - 1000.
  
• Customers - Customers now get 1 opinion when being sold something via the counter.
  
• Objectives - Paying off your debt with a loan would sometimes throw an error
  
• UI - Customers show a happy face again when buying something.
  
• System - Delivery monoAgent wasn't being cleared correctly.
  
• System - Ordering supplies from the counter twice while the shop was open should no longer softlock the game.