[Holiday Content] * Dwarven Kingdom is looking more festive * Gift tree added to the Dwarven Kingdom, spawns holiday loot with each return * Added Kobold Cookies * Added Candy Cane Axe * Added Candy Cane Pickaxe * Added Egg Nog * Added Holiday Hat * Added gift trees which now spawn in the caves * Kobolds will be seen wearing festive hats * Main Menu looking more festive * New Kingdom music * New easter egg
[Tweaks] * Lodestones now spawn on Layer 2 * Tweaked spawn chances of some creatures in Arid Sands biome * Nerfed torch burn effect
[Fixes] * Addressed some other UI issues
[Tweaks] * Tweaked the spawn chances of some creatures in the desert biome on Layer 2.
HOLIDAY UPDATE!
Below the Stone's Holiday Update is here!
We're releasing a day earlier than we had scheduled, so you can get an early start on some of the exclusive holiday loot we added to the game. The dwarven halls we call home are looking a little more festive this time of year, so check out the new holiday decor, open presents under the tree, and enjoy some kobold cookies by the fire.
We'll be posting a full changelog later today for those looking for a list of new items and features.
Thank YOU for being part of Below the Stone's early access journey. This humble time of year has given the Strollart Studios dev team a huge reminder of why we're so thankful to the people who are part of our community, and love indie games. Reading your reviews, seeing you on our discord, letting us know your suggestions. All of these things have been getting the team even more excited to deliver the game to you.
Thank you, and Happy Holidays!
- Mike & Strollart; Below the Stone
Alpha 0.2.2 Hotfix is live.
Just a small set of fixes based off of recent feedback on our Discord. Trying to make sure that controller players have a stable experience.
Below The Stone - Alpha 0.2.2
Hotfix
[Fixes] * Fixed not being able to click on/type in textboxes, like the one for typing the name of a new character on the main menu screen. This also applies to any other text box in game and any other UI elements that have focus. * Fixed an issue where selecting the profile trash can button with controller would play the select sound twice. * Fixed an issue where clicking the profile trash can button with controller would cause the code to be double executed, due to Unity shenanigans.
[Tweaks] * Tweaked the spawn chances of some creatures in the desert biome on Layer 2.
Final Remarks: Please let us know if there are any persisting issues regarding UI with either the keyboard or controller. We know there are people who are having trouble playing the game at all due to the controller bugs. So we want to make sure they are all fixed so those people can now play.
Alpha 0.2.1 Hotfix is live
Sorry for the holdup with the bugs that came up in Alpha 0.2
This update just fixes some issues that basically made it impossible to play due to UI based dimming not being disabled in some cases. This was because it was basically old logic that never got fully removed. So now it is all fixed.
Thank you for your patience.
Alpha 0.2 is Live! QOL Features/Bugfixes
Here is the change log:
Below The Stone - Alpha 0.2
Quality of Life Features / Bugfix Update
[Controller] * Fixed issue where you could not select anything in the audio settings menu. * Fixed an issue on the player save screen where selecting, then deselecting the trash icon would cause you to be stuck on that option, which made some people accidently delete their saves. * Improved left stick controller UI navigation. * Removed "Activate Control" from controller UI hints. * Added item stats display to crafting and shop UIs for controllers.
[New Features] * Added lodestone (with special structure) that players can use to find other nearby dungeons. * Added titanium sword * Added titanium axe * Added silver sword * Added silver pickaxe * Added "damaging exhaust" to escape pod that B U R N S nearby creatures when you take off.
[Tweaks] * Increased spawn chances for the mission ores (prismium, corbomyte, rosalite). So these missions should be a lot easier now. * Refactored bones (skeleton) ai so that there is one skeleton object. This allows us to make it so the chances of skeletons wielding crossbows is less likely, which is what we did in this case. So now, skeletons have a 25% chance of wielding crossbows. * Added titanium to material filter list for blacksmith. Along with some other QOL tweaks to the filter UI. * Rebalanced all existing melee weapons (with some exceptions) to line up with the existing balancing of tin/copper melee weapons. This change mostly applies to tin,copper,iron,titanium,silver,platinum. * Tweaked the "mining strength" of pickaxes so each next one is better than the last. Some pickaxes didn't have better stats. * Some tiny tweaks to the player's main light, should look a bit more "reddish" around the edge. To look more like torch light. * Item tooltip now shows up in blacksmith when you mouse over any part of the crafting item button. Before, it only showed up if you moused over the item image. * Removed "collect fossil" mission from foreman mission pool. (May come back at some point) * Reduced the amount of items you can get in tutorial area from boxes and other breakable things. * Made "ui background dimmer" even more dimmer. Which helps make the UI contrast more with the background now. And bring it more into focus. * Added notification that pops up when you press the "summon escape pod" button. This only happens for the first few times of going down into the caves. So it won't happen every time.
[Fixes] * Fixed frost troll movement bug. * Fixed problem where profile slot trash icon was not animating on mouse over. * Fixed the glow weed in swamp biome being unpickable (replaced old prefab with new one) * Updated toad's bestiary description. Sorry, toads don't fly anymore :( * Fixed being able to open the journal while on pause screen. This issue also applied to being able to interact with other things on the pause screen that you probably shouldn't have. * Fixed creature icons in bestiary being squished (now has fixed aspect ratio). * Fixed scroll bars of creature descriptions in bestiary starting in the middle. They now start at the top, as they should. * Fixed an issue where a dialog window that transitioned into another UI menu (like blacksmith) would "undim" the background. Even though it should've stayed dimmed. †
[Misc] * Added trademark to main menu
[Footnotes] † We may have introduced some other bugs while fixing this bug, so please let us know if you encounter them so we can fix these asap.
200 Very Positive reviews! Thank you!
WOW. What an amazing milestone.
Thank YOU for taking the time to write us a review for Below the Stone, either already, or in the near future. It's amazing getting to wake up in the morning as an indie developer, and read so many of your positive reviews. Reading your reviews is what gives little indie studios like us the motivation to get up in the morning.
Many of you already know, the game is quite early, and we plan on sending you MANY big updates in the future to fill your content cravings, both for the end of this year, and many years to come. Make sure you keep up with us on the Discord and stay tuned for the mini quality of life update later today which will be addressing many of your suggestions, and Holiday update next week!
Again, thank you for taking the time to review Below the Stone!
- Mike @ Strollart; Below the Stone
Below the Stone End of Year Plans - Holiday + Content Update
December plans:
We want to have at least two smaller scale, immediate content updates, with a large focus on bug/issue fixes. We want to address immediate player requests before focusing on the next big content updates we have in mind for next year. 2024 will be a huge year for our studio and the game as a whole, so come join us in the festive gifts we want to give to you!
December 9th Quality of Life update:
- Player guidance. - New content (such as lodestone) which will help with player guidance. - Combat/progression balancing. - New weapons/Tools. - Controller bug fixes. - Address immediate bugs/issues players discovered.
Holiday update releasing December 15th!:
- Holiday content update, fun things for players to do during their holiday off, farm some unique holiday items in the game - Holiday healing items - Gifts waiting to be opened at the kingdom! - Candy Cane tools to acquire - Things are looking much more festive around home! - Closes at the end of December
Content update for December 21st:
- Additional content for layer 2 biomes (Such as the Mole, and Stone Golem enemies) - Combat/progression balancing - More quality of life additions
In the new year, we're going to begin a devlog style series on the official Below the Stone/Strollart YouTube channel. We'd also like to do regular monthly music videos featuring new biome tracks being created for the game, and regular dev streams by Below the Stone team, aiming to stream on Friday/weekends. We want to be more open with our development since we just launched into Early Access to show what we have in mind for the game's future.
Please let us know what you think we should focus on next, and join our discord too if you hadn't yet!
- Mike @ Strollart; Below the Stone
Below The Stone 0.1.1 Bugfix Update Out Now!
Thank you all for your patience while we are finish up this next update. This update addresses a lot of the bugs we missed in our Early Access release. And also introduces various tweaks which should help bring us closer to having a proper level of difficulty for a roguelike while still being fair to players in the appropriate places.
Here is the change log!
Alpha 0.1.1 - Bugfix Update
[New Features]
* Introduced a proper "object" for a layer exit when you kill the cave troll. It is now a Portal that will randomly appear. This may change in the future as dungeon generation evolves.
[Combat]
* Improved bones (skeletons) to have a warning blink + delay before shooting; some initial necessary telemetry. * Tweaked knockbacks of Kobold's, Mimic's, and Skeleton's to not be so ridonkulous. * Tweaked algorithm that determines armor damage resistance, which should slightly nerf armors overall. * Various tweaks the creature's health's, base attack damages, and loot drops. * Fixed a really silly bug where the player could not swing their sword (or use other items) right after being hit. This was due to the "screen blood effect" being a ui object and blocking input. And we all just assumed it was a stun-lock... * Slightly nerfed bone shaman helmet * Buffed dynamites max explosion damage from 50 to 75. * Reduced the player's "stun duration" from 0.5 seconds to 0.3 seconds.
[Fixes]
* Fixed an issue where being near the cave edge would break the "call escape pod" button, and player would be stuck in cave. * Fixed a bug that caused the sounds on the "descent completed" screen to be really loud. It was because the game was playing a bunch of the sounds all in 1 frame. Pretty goofy if you ask me. * Fixed issue where player could not easily turn pages of the bestiary, in journal. Currently, the page turning keys are now "Q" and "E". † * Fixed a small issue related to the Journal UI refreshing at the wrong times. * Pages in journal will now "turn properly". Meaning, page 2 will no longer appear on the left side after turning the page to the right once. So it functions like an actual book now. * Fixed an issue where certain save files would not load and be usable. † (read footnotes for more info) * Fixed the very bizarre (but funny) bug where the Frost Troll would not stop playing its "rolling attack" sound. Eventually leading to a chorus of moaning Frost Trolls. * Fixed a really old issue where the game would not update the "z order" or wall sprites. So you would get situations where the player would be behind a front wall. * Fixed issue where player could consume (use) certain items while a dialog window or menu window was open. * Fixed name of "Mole Hammer" item still being called "Lead Fury Hammer", among a few other fixes to Mole items.
* Fixed silver ore having the wrong "mining tier", so people could mine it early. * Fixed "Titanium Shoulder Pads" not having their name setup. (Was "Iron Shoulder Pads") * Fixed a super rare issue where you would get stuck on the cave generation screen when the game was generating a random number in the range [0,1], and it just so happened to pick "1". * Fixed a bug where projectiles (arrows, bullets) would glitch out in the kingdom, or when the hit the world edge. (both caused by different code bugs)
[Tweaks]
* Spooky sounds happen less often. * Tiny nerf to drop rate of spotcaps. * Mole Trader random positioning changed so he will no longer appear near the player starting point (0,0) * Tweaked spawn positioning of the "exit holes", so they might be a bit easier to find now.
[Misc]
* Removed some unnecessary log messages, but also introduced new ones to help with diagnosing possible future bugs.
[Footnotes]
† You can still use left arrow and right arrow to turn the pages, but you will still get the issue for them. In fact, the issue will resurface if you use those buttons to turn pages. From looking at our own code, it does not appear to be an issue in our own code, but it may be an issue of the input handling library that Unity uses.
† This was due to item name_id's not being present in the game's database. For now, we are handling this by skipping that item. So that means you would loose that item, and we will log a message to file about the lost item. In the future, we will make sure that this does not happen to a greater degree. And instead assure that your item's name_id's get converted when you load the save file. In fact, in the future we will probably introduce a warning message to warn players they may loose items if they continue. So players can choose if they want to load that save.
Alpha 0.1.1 Bugfix Update Out Now!
Thank you all for your patience while we are finish up this next update. This update addresses a lot of the bugs we missed in our Early Access release. And also introduces various tweaks which should help bring us closer to having a proper level of difficulty for a roguelike while still being fair to players in the appropriate places.
Here is the change log!
Alpha 0.1.1 - Bugfix Update
[New Features]
* Introduced a proper "object" for a layer exit when you kill the cave troll. It is now a Portal that will randomly appear. This may change in the future as dungeon generation evolves.
[Combat]
* Improved bones (skeletons) to have a warning blink + delay before shooting; some initial necessary telemetry. * Tweaked knockbacks of Kobold's, Mimic's, and Skeleton's to not be so ridonkulous. * Tweaked algorithm that determines armor damage resistance, which should slightly nerf armors overall. * Various tweaks the creature's health's, base attack damages, and loot drops. * Fixed a really silly bug where the player could not swing their sword (or use other items) right after being hit. This was due to the "screen blood effect" being a ui object and blocking input. And we all just assumed it was a stun-lock... * Slightly nerfed bone shaman helmet * Buffed dynamites max explosion damage from 50 to 75. * Reduced the player's "stun duration" from 0.5 seconds to 0.3 seconds.
[Fixes]
* Fixed an issue where being near the cave edge would break the "call escape pod" button, and player would be stuck in cave. * Fixed a bug that caused the sounds on the "descent completed" screen to be really loud. It was because the game was playing a bunch of the sounds all in 1 frame. Pretty goofy if you ask me. * Fixed issue where player could not easily turn pages of the bestiary, in journal. Currently, the page turning keys are now "Q" and "E". † * Fixed a small issue related to the Journal UI refreshing at the wrong times. * Pages in journal will now "turn properly". Meaning, page 2 will no longer appear on the left side after turning the page to the right once. So it functions like an actual book now. * Fixed an issue where certain save files would not load and be usable. † (read footnotes for more info) * Fixed the very bizarre (but funny) bug where the Frost Troll would not stop playing its "rolling attack" sound. Eventually leading to a chorus of moaning Frost Trolls. * Fixed a really old issue where the game would not update the "z order" or wall sprites. So you would get situations where the player would be behind a front wall. * Fixed issue where player could consume (use) certain items while a dialog window or menu window was open. * Fixed name of "Mole Hammer" item still being called "Lead Fury Hammer", among a few other fixes to Mole items.
* Fixed silver ore having the wrong "mining tier", so people could mine it early. * Fixed "Titanium Shoulder Pads" not having their name setup. (Was "Iron Shoulder Pads") * Fixed a super rare issue where you would get stuck on the cave generation screen when the game was generating a random number in the range [0,1], and it just so happened to pick "1". * Fixed a bug where projectiles (arrows, bullets) would glitch out in the kingdom, or when the hit the world edge. (both caused by different code bugs)
[Tweaks]
* Spooky sounds happen less often. * Tiny nerf to drop rate of spotcaps. * Mole Trader random positioning changed so he will no longer appear near the player starting point (0,0) * Tweaked spawn positioning of the "exit holes", so they might be a bit easier to find now.
[Misc]
* Removed some unnecessary log messages, but also introduced new ones to help with diagnosing possible future bugs.
[Footnotes]
† You can still use left arrow and right arrow to turn the pages, but you will still get the issue for them. In fact, the issue will resurface if you use those buttons to turn pages. From looking at our own code, it does not appear to be an issue in our own code, but it may be an issue of the input handling library that Unity uses.
† This was due to item name_id's not being present in the game's database. For now, we are handling this by skipping that item. So that means you would loose that item, and we will log a message to file about the lost item. In the future, we will make sure that this does not happen to a greater degree. And instead assure that your item's name_id's get converted when you load the save file. In fact, in the future we will probably introduce a warning message to warn players they may loose items if they continue. So players can choose if they want to load that save.
Welcome to Below the Stone - Early Access
Strollart Studios has been working on Below the Stone for 5 years -- from prototypes, to kickstarters, to publishers, to game conventions, to meeting Asmongold, to demos, and finally to Early Access. We want to thank everyone in our community who gave us the motivation to keep going, who loved this game, and who share the same dreams we do with this project. It's been a long journey for us, and we plan on spending many more years on our creation, as this is just the beginning.
CHANGELOG
Below The Stone - Alpha 0.1
[New Features]
* Added Layer 2 of the generated caves, among many new biomes, ores, and monsters to fear or kill! Currently, there are at least 6 new creatures added for layer 2. * Many new decor objects added for Layer 2. * Added cave sweeper (shotgun) weapon. * Added blunderbuss (shotgun) weapon. * Added "traveling mole" NPC that you can talk/trade with. * Added new "mole themed" items that you can get from the traveling mole. * Added a couple more secrets to discover. * Introduced the "tin sword" and "copper axe" to balance out the assortment of beginner melee weapons. (See "Tweaks" section for more info on this change) * You can now find "holes" which will take you to Layer 2. This is currently a temporary feature with how it's implemented. But you have to explore a lot to find these holes. * Added scotarog(?) * Brought back the "bog lurker" monster that was removed from the swamp biome spawns... for some reason... * Also, I hear there is a crazed goblin roaming around??? * Added titanium ore/ingot (including armor). * Added throwable snowball item.
[Tweaks]
* Tin and Copper weapons have been rebalanced so that axes and swords encourage different play styles; Tin Axe is not an upgrade to Tin Sword. * Updated how floor tiles are picked to create a more varying and interesting look for the caves in general. We call them "alternate sprites". * Updated the "alternate sprites" for the stone floor tile. (this will also happen to other floor tiles in the future) * Improved dungeon loot chests (both current kinds) to not give too strong armor, while also maintaining a nice variety of items to discover from chests. * Updated screen shake to be based off of a smooth curve, resulting in a smoother shake (smoothie shake?). Previously, it was based off of picking random numbers. * Attempted to also reduce screen shake in situations where it was too strong. We may have to do further adjustments in the future as well. * Updated descriptions of various items to help players learn how they are used. * Tweaked dungeon generation code so dungeons do not spawn near player spawn. * Updated loot spawns of wooden chests; average potion vials should be easier to get now. * Updated the bonus loot chests in kingdom to also not give you super OP items that you shouldn't be able to get in the early game. * Updated loot spawns of the breakable vases to not give you so much copper, but also made sure you would still get some interesting things from them. * Also made small changes to loot table of wooden crates. * Made it so kobold spears have a "soft collision", so when you walk into a spear, it will push you away a bit. So it is no longer a hard collision. The force can be adjusted. * Updated water generation code, so ponds should be a bit more spread out. * Updated ambient water sounds you hear near water. * Cave troll now has a bit more health, and also is a bit heavier too. (He's been eating more dwarves recently...) * Gave many items a base sell value so it's more worth it to sell certain items. * Added more information for tooltips of melee weapons. * Adjusted the armor values of some wearable head items. * Reduced the effect time (for the glowing effects) given when eating Gloweed and Luminous fungus.
[Fixes]
* Fixed bug where removing torches would lock aim direction. * Added character limit to the name field when creating a new character. * Fixed an issue where swinging a pickaxe at a plant/mushroom would result in giving the player 2 "rng rolls" on the loot that drops from that plant. * (Finally) Fixed the issue where you would see mining sparks far from where you were mining (typically near spawn). * Small fixes to the pivot positions of some sprites, so the y-position sprite sorting works properly for them. * Fixed pivots of many melee weapons and pickaxes so it looks like the dwarf is properly holding them now. * Fixed issue in Bestiary section of Journal where the description of a monster would overflow into the entry below it. We have now added a scroll bar to each entry so you can read everything now. * Fixed issue where pushing the Min. Craft button when you were missing crafting ingredients would default to 1 item, now defaults to 0 if you cannot afford item. * Fixed issue where after crafting an item to the point that you had no more ingredients left, it would not set the craft amount color to red.
