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Winkeltje: The Little Shop News

Customer Update

Dear Shopkeepers,

Today's update is packed with updates, changes, and fixes so read on and let us know what you think.

Customer Update

The character models have gone through several iterations since they were created. With each iteration we found better ways to render and customize the player and customer models while staying lightweight in performance and improving the way we mange this customization data. With this iteration we can finally say goodbye to the old low poly villager model that has been one of the first characters to make it into the game and say hello to the updated models that now make use of the same technology that drives the shopkeeper models.

General Store Buffs

One of the first thing Winkeltje players find out when struggling with making profit is that shop specialization is can earn you more than being a general store. In today's update we are adding a buff that will increase the amount of customers that visit your shop depending on the number of specializations your shop is known for. We are very excited to hear what you think of this change.

Money UI Update

Over the last year or so we have been gradually updating the game's interface to be more useful, stable, easier to maintain, look better, and function for mouse and controller players. Looking at the list of interfaces that needed updating this was a monumental task for our tiny team. One of the last things on the list for the new interface vision is the money overview. The change is minor but it comes paired with an option that allows you to see sales pops for that extra gratification.

[h2]New[/h2]
  • Balance - Being a general store now adds 20% more customers per category, capped at 80% more.
  • Options - Community - Added an accessibility feature to make camera transitions instantaneous to address reports of motion sickness.
  • UI - Community - The commission menu now indicates if you have the required amount to complete the commission.
  • UI - Updated the money overview in the bottom right corner.
  • UI - Added an optional overhead transactions feature to see transactions as they happen.

[h2]Changes[/h2]
  • Animation - Adjusted the feminine avatar definition in order to relax the shoulders a little.
  • Art - Community - Updated Customers & Trader models.
  • Balance - Changed Shopping Night customer modifier from x2.5 to x2.
  • Balance - Capped the maximum amount of customers in the store to 100.
  • Language - Community - Hybrid storage cupboards have been renamed to address confusion in the unlock notifications.
  • Language - Community - Applied a couple of community suggested improvements for English and Dutch.
  • Language - Community - Improved the exit game message.

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Achievements - Community - Large Shops would not correctly trigger the final achievement.
  • Achievements - Community - Creative Large shops would still allow for achievements to be obtained when it shouldn't.
  • Characters - Fixed a jitter when the customers would walk into the store for the first time.
  • Scenarios - Creative Large shops would not use the correct pricing for creative shops.
  • UI - Community - The commission menu should now select the first available category even when a different category was selected when closing the menu prior.
  • UI - The translation ID's for the camera transition option were not correct.
  • UI - Hidden objectives should now also hide from the objectives overview in addition to the objectives menu.
  • UI - Initial item selection in the commerce menu should now pulsate the respective item in the inventory overview.
  • UI - Selecting a crafting/planting input/output in the crafting and planting menu should now give you an item info tooltip.
  • UI - The level progression animation is no longer affected by timescale.
  • UI - The crafting skill point message should no longer appear in Creative modes.
  • UI - Failing a commission without a commission board in the shop would result in an error.
  • UI - Sorting and filtering the inventory menu would reset the category selection.
  • UI - The inventory menu would not show displayed items without having at least one of that item in the inventory.
  • UI - Attempting to filter displayed items by favorite could cause an error if a favorited item was not present in the shop.
  • UI - Discovered duplicate translation IDs causing the winter and autumn events to use the furniture tag description instead of the event description.
  • Customers - Fixed a jitter when customers would first walk into the shop.

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]
  • Art Some character materials were renamed and will revert the shopkeeper to the default appearance when these materials attempt to load.

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]
  • v6374 - UI: Starting a new shop will now first fade to black for a smoother transition.
  • v6375 - UI: Added some checks to code in the commerce menu to in an attempt to prevent an error when selecting an item.
Update: v6371
Hotfix: v6375

Radial Menu Rework

Hello Shopkeepers,

Schools are back in session, job life has started to pick up, and summer time is slowly passing by. We hope you had a relaxing time and are looking forward to another improvement to Winkeltje.

Radial Menu

The Radial Menu has been redesigned and rewritten from scratch as part of an effort to sunset legacy interface code.

Experimental Shop Size

By popular request you can now experiment with larger shop sizes. We look forward to your feedback on this as we monitor how a larger shop affects gameplay and performance.

[h2]New[/h2]
  • UI - Enabled the Experimental tab in the new game UI.
  • UI - Updated Radial Menu.
  • Scenarios - Community - Experimental - Added scenarios with a 15x15 shop size.

[h2]Changes[/h2]
  • Audio - Decoupled audio calls from UI wrappers for more control over what sound plays when.
  • Audio - Additional audio has been added to using tabs, sliders, and using menus.
  • Audio - Added additional audio feedback to clicking commissions in the commission menu.
  • Balance - Community - General stores get 25% more customers.
  • UI - The favorite icon no longer requires code to apply a gradient and caused the favorite icon to look strange.
  • UI - Updated the sort options dropdown so that clicking the same option will cycle between ascending and descending order in the catalog, commerce, crafting, events, display, inventory, objectives, and unlock menus.
  • UI - The inventory menu now lets you trash items using a new slider pop-up.
  • Objectives - The trashbin objective has been removed from the game.
  • Furniture - Trashbin has been removed from the miscellaneous and added to the decoration tab.
  • Furniture - The trashbin no longer opens a radial menu to trash items.
  • Language - Smithing milestone objective is now slightly more concise in wording.

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Code - Reloading the game would not remove calls to device binding switches resulting in errors.
  • UI - The favorite icon no longer requires code to apply a gradient and caused the favorite icon to look strange.
  • UI - Community - Pillars in the asset previewer did not scale with the UI scale.
  • UI - Community - Shop upgrades were not correctly charging for the upgrade cost.
  • UI - Community - The unlock menu should now make the unlock button unusable if you don't have the required money.
  • UI - Community - Pressing bumper buttons on the controller would play sound without anything happening.
  • UI - Community - The buy and build hotkeys were not working anymore.
  • UI - Community - Selling cloned furniture would not correctly trigger the bottom bar to come back.
  • UI - Community - The scenario select tab should now correctly highlight when toggled.
  • UI - Community - Changing the translation would not update some of the dropdown menu content.
  • Language - Community - Forcing a proper reload of translations whenever the translator is initialized.
  • Language - Community - Updated the German language to fix a translation that was translated in Spanish.

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]
  • The item trash objective remains in the objectives overview while this should be hidden. This will be fixed in the next update.

[h2]Hotfixes[/h2]
  • v6305 - Input: Prompt switch calls added to the player on start should now also be removed.
  • v6307 - Input: Some events were being added but not removed resulting in errors.
  • v6308 - Input: Changed an event listener to be removed on disable instead of destroy.
  • v6310 - Input: Fixed up the AppManager prefab with the correct InControl settings.
  • v6311 - Input: Attempt at fixing issue with controller switching.
  • v6312 - Input: Game would not correctly handle removed objectives when loading an older save file.
  • v6316 - UI: The delete button in the inventory menu should no longer show if the item can not be deleted.
  • v6318 - Objectives: The item trashing tutorial should no longer be started but the objective ID should remain to prevent an error.
Update: v6304
Hotfix: v6318

New Unlock Menu

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!

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

Events and Specialization Menu Overhaul

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.

Events Menu

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.

Specialization Menu

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

Objectives Menu Overhaul

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.

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