Winkeltje: The Little Shop News

Greetings shopkeepers!

Customers from across the land have traveled far in search for ways to heal, cure, charm, seduce, and protect. The customer is king and so the shopkeeper has spent sleepless nights building, furnishing, and researching to produce ... The Alchemy Station!


Yes, that's right! As of this update you are able to create alchemical items and use several new ingredients to satisfy the ever-growing demands of your clientele. With customers flocking to your shop, let's have a look at some of the new features that will surely impress and dazzle your consumers.

[h3]Alchemy[/h3]

Alchemy introduces 10 new craftable items and 4 new resources to use as ingredients. Some of the items you can look forward to are Healing Potions, Beauty Creams, and Cough Remedies. Of course, these products require ingredients with beneficial properties such as Chamomile, Lavender, Mandrake, and Sage.

[h3]Quick Restock[/h3]

Quick restocking has been improved by allowing you to restock pinned items without having to open the restocking menu. In addition, you can now also restock all pinned items in the radius of the player. On top of that, you can see which displays can be restocked by looking at the pulsating outline of displays.

[h3]Interaction Selection for Controller[/h3]

A previous update enabled controller functionality, letting players select which furniture would be picked up by holding the pick-up button. With this update we have extended this behavior to the interaction button. This means that when you hold the interaction button, you can specify what object you want to interact with.

Of course, there is a lot more to this update. Check all the notes below for the things that changed in Winkeltje with the help of your feedback.

We hope you enjoy the changes and hope you will consider leaving a review. If you want to get in touch you can reach us on Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje) or leave a message here on Steam community.

[h2]New[/h2]

• Alchemy - Added Alchemy Table.
  
• Alchemy - Added Alchemy Audio for crafting and the idle station.
  
• Alchemy - Added 10 new items to craft, and 4 new raw materials.
  
• Alchemy - Added 6 new decorations linked to Alchemy.
  
• Alchemy - Added 9 new objectives to unlock Alchemy items.
  
• Community Feedback - Controls - Pressing R will now restock the highlighted display.
  
• Community Feedback - Customers - Customers are now civilized and pay at the counter instead of throwing money on the floor.
  
• Music - New spring music.
  
• UI - Walking while the crafting radial menu is open will now close the menu.
  
• Controls - Added additional hotkey for Buy (B) and Build (N).
  
• Controls - Holding the restock button will restock pinned items in range.
  
• Controls - Holding interact button on controller will now allow for stick selection of furniture to interact with.
  
• Furniture - Displays that are in range of the shopkeeper that can be restocked will now have their outline slowly pulse to draw attention to it.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Events - Lowered Bandits length to 1 day and set its earliest starting day to day 10.
  
• Events - Set the Recession earliest starting day to 15.
  
• Events - Mining Rush coal & iron price modifier changed from 0.8 -> 0.6. Tool price modifier changed from 2.5 -> 2.0
  
• Furniture - Pallet price lowered from 100 -> 75, capacity increased from 9 -> 10
  
• Furniture - Long Pallet price lowered from 200 -> 150, capacity increased from 18 -> 20
  
• Furniture - Large Pallet price lowered from 300 -> 225, capacity increased from 27 -> 30
  
• Furniture - Pallet price lowered from 800 -> 525, capacity increased from 60 -> 70
  

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Community Feedback - UI - Added a new warning message for when a player has enough items to deliver a commission, but does not have enough items of the required quality.
  
• UI - Shop saved notification has been moved to underneath the objectives HUD.
  
• Scenarios - New games now start with 0 items.
  
• Scenarios - Starting money increased from 200 -> 260.
  
• Scenarios - Lowered the increment of the loan on Very Hard by 0.03.
  
• Trader - The first time a trader shows up, it will always have an item from the player's specialization (if one has been established).
  
• Trader - The first time a trader shows up, the items will be cheaper.
  
• Trader - Trader price range has been changed from 50% - 150% to 50% - 130%.
  
• Commissions - Commission items now show a quality outline in the list of available commissions.
  
• Performance - Optimized bush rendering.
  
• Performance - Improved prompt switching performance by no longer toggling the active state of the prompt GameObjects.
  
• Commissions - Removed the randomized commission.
  
• Commissions - Changed food commissions to be actually possible now. Since food has no qualities they require 1.5x as many items to be delivered.
  
• Prompts - Added restock (R) hotkey when a display has pinned items and can be restocked.
  
• Community Feedback - Objectives: The debt objective now shows a counter with how many payments are left.
  
• Objectives - Tutorial order has been changed to force the player to order items from the counter before opening the store for the first time.
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Catalog - Furniture descriptions should be back again.
  
• Objectives - The build button should now only become usable when at the appropriate step in the tutorial.
  
• Shop Builder - Fixed error that would be thrown if the player was in build mode when hovering over a wall with the mouse and then using the right thumbstick to edit the wall.
  
• Shop Builder - Fixed an error when the player would use a controller to Interact with the shop builder while it was hovering over a wall.
  
• UI - The initial width value of the progress bar text on objective tasks did not have a default value resulting in an occasional text wrap issue.
  
• UI - The shop save date should now also be localized.
  
• UI - Long cases of "Shop Saved" translations should no longer appear underneath the time dial when saving the game during day time.
  
• UI - Some controls in the game settings were not showing descriptions.
  
• UI - Added a check to the game settings descriptions to prevent an attempt at translating an empty string.
  
• UI - Month notation in load shop menu should now be localized and capitalized.
  
• UI - Initial event prompt had excessive padding.
  
• UI - Updated controls section in game settings to reflect hotkey changes.
  
• UI - Updated outdated controls section in game settings.
  
• UI - Controller input would not be ignored while the confirmation window was visible.
  
• UI - Switching from entrance view and canceling build mode would give you the shop changes for free.
  
• UI - Walking away from a crafting station will now only close the radial menu if the cursor is not over a crafting option.
  
• UI - The hidden time dial should no longer block mouse clicks.
  
• UI - Added difficulty scenario label in the bottom of the game menu to make it easier to know what the current scenario is.
  
• Customers - Customers would sometimes have a buggy rotation when switching tasks.
  
• Customers - Customers now 'reserve' an access point, which should result in a lot less clipping when they're browsing & buying from displays.
  
• Customers - Customer Request UI is now disabled when moving to pay for previously bought items.
  
• Trader - Trader reminder now shows up once again.
  
• Commission - Commission board particles were not animating due to delta time being scaled.
  
• Commission - Added a minimum value of commissions that's equal to the sell price of the items.
  
• Commission - Commission fallback code was using a wrong list, resulting in "general" always being picked.
  
• Objectives - Added a 1 frame delay to the check to see if you have enough money to pay your weekly debt.
  
• Camera - Switching between build tabs using mouse/keyboard input would cause the camera to focus either between the player or the selector.
  
• Camera - The build camera will now always start on the player when entering build mode from play mode.
  
• Camera - Switching from entrance view in build mode will now put the camera back at the previous position.
  
• Camera - Player orientation would affect camera rotation when coming out of build mode.
  
• Events - When an event starts, the counter pricing would not update until the shop closes. It now wipes the list also when the shop opens to force a recalculation.
  
• Other - Fences surrounding the shop weren't added to the season controller.
  
• Prompts - Removed the options prompt because it's now a button in the bottom bar that also has a prompt for controller support.
  
• Controls - NPCs would be the preferred interaction option when nearby if playing with controller due to the interactable class being enabled and muted.
  

• Fix - Crafting Skill Points should now be calculated correctly when loading an older save in which the total amount of points changed.
  
• Fix - Lavender was not included in the list of unlocks.
  
• Fix - It was possible to walk away during crafting which would result in an error and a loss of resources.
  
• Fix - An alchemy craft requiring a not yet unlocked ingredient would default to an icon that is no longer in the game.
  
• Fix - Interacting with a crafting station using a controller would automatically start a craft if there was only one option and the crafting ingredients were available.
  

Update: v5267
Hotfix: v5288

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