Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to be highlighted when they didn't have any available interactions.
Fix so that the reagent teacher in Bat Saha now gives the player Keen Eye as intended.
Fixed a bug that let players use unlearned skills by using the filters in the skill HUD.
Fixed an issue of Stiff Trait that made the player unable to run.
Fixed issues of trading stacks of items that would make items disappear. When selling stacks of 99x will now separate on new trading slots.
Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to stop being highlighted by tab after hovering over them with the mouse pointer.
Fix to boarding and disembarking trains and boats
Fixed issue where Discord integration not working on OSX was interfering with game operation
Fixed walking with WASD making combat UI not show up and not interrupting combat
Fixed a bug that enabled you to write map notes that were too long for the text box.
Fixed a bug that caused selection circles to remain under NPCs feet after highlighting them with tab.
Fix to walking out of camera view with keyboard
Fixed an issue of gambling not working
Fix to pet animals
Fixed version number text display in main menu
Jumping from a train during level transitions no longer results in infinite loading screens
Cursor size is now consistent across all platforms
Custom text fields in character creation no longer retains input from a previous creation session
Fix to missing water in some world areas.
Fixed fading objects when going towards camera.
Fixed rare occasion desync issue when leaving and entering Shelters/Fireplaces that made the hud icon get stuck.
Fixed a bug that caused players to be teleported to a random level if they tried logging in while in an Outmark level.
Fix for some chickens not drawing correctly(!)
Fix for crossing rivers near bridges (based on water depth)
Fix for “You need assistance to solve this” prompt after failing an endeavour.
Fixed some achievement triggering issues for new achievement unlocks
Fixed issues of houses not lowering the sound volume when entering them. Sound volume will now reduce when logging inside houses.
Fix to cloud brightness at dawn/night
Fix to butterfly shader
Fixed a bug that caused the character model in the character sheet to disappear
Reduced volume to 25% on NPCs umbrella rain sounds
Fixed a crash that occurred when returning items to a player's or trader's inventory after filtering
Changes
Added 44 new achievements
You can now see your selected character in the Character Select screen.
The illumination range of offhand lanterns and lights is now affected by their item quality
Added alternate debug menu binding (Left Ctrl + Left Alt), and ability to go backwards in menus (hold Shift + any debug menu binding)
Change to make fishing area effect less subtle
Created a new NPC system that will enhance performance.
Players can no longer stand in the middle of a boat ride by spam clicking.
Trade Good Currencies now shows their description when right clicking in the inventory.
Tab now only highlights interactable NPCs in range.
The Unstuck Me button works correctly when the player is in a vehicle
Players should be able to move after being thrown to a safe spot
Players may need to log out and log back in before they will be able to board a vehicle again after being thrown to a safe spot.
Players will now leave their group if they are too far away from their closest group member for too long
Change to critter particles
Changed frequency of weather changes
Changed server time to winter time.
Critters adjustments
Don't Show Tutorial button in the tutorial popup will now work as intended. You can now press Don't Show Tutorial in the tutorial popup without entering the tutorial.
Added a fisher to the "Journey at sea" start who gives the player a small gift.
Added a unique description for every "Ring Equipment" item.
Added a unique description for every "Belt Equipment" item.
Added a unique description for every "Head Equipment" item.
Implemented a new trading interface. More slots for the player, filtering, and a text showing the players' total trade value.
When raining the wet effect will apply as it should. Umbrellas will protect you from the rain when leaving and entering shelters. Umbrellas will still continue to shelter you from rain when switching levels. When wearing an umbrella, the umbrella rain sounds will now work as intended and no longer deactivate itself when going in and out from shelters . You will now be sheltered from the rain inside trains. When entering shelters and leaving during rain, the wet effect will now apply and remove as it should.
Updated the layout and text of the character creator to make the experience smoother and clearer.
Added a randomise page button (die roll) on every screen of the character creator to allow for quick yet novel character creation.
Improved NPC performance in Western Harvest Route.
During all starting scenarios, players will receive knowledge for the conversation interactions that are a part of those scenarios.
The laughing child audio in the Travel By Land / West starting scenario will now play less frequently.
A missing walk-by poem in the Journey By Sea / North starting scenario should now display correctly.
Reduced the volume of the boat horn that announces upcoming departures
Content Drop: 1 Year EA Anniversary Digital Goodies
Dear Traveller,
We hope you're having a fantastic holiday season. As you know, it's been over a year since we launched Book of Travels into Early Access and the world got to explore this world of Braided Shore that we've worked on for over half a decade. And even though there's been bumps in the road we are still fully committed to making Book of Travels the best game that it can be. More importantly, we see how much you - our players - share our belief in our vision for this world.
We appreciate you very much. And as a small token of that appreciation, we're releasing piece of downloadable content that we call 1 Year EA Anniversary Digital Goodies.
This free fan kit art bundle includes a collection of pieces of art, music tracks, wallpapers and more. It’s a small token of our appreciation of your continued support and passion for Book of Travels, and something to hold you over while you wait for the next big in-game content drop. Here's a download link to a zip file with the contents, if you'd rather have it that way!
2 BoT Cover images, Digital art (HD): The First Cover.png The Second Cover.png
3 Hand painted Forms, Digital Art (HD) The Crested.png The Goodward.png The Veiled.png
4 Hand painted Digital Art (HD): Kettem Rajh.png Kettem.png Maisu.png Saida the Sea Fury.png
1 Timelapse video: Painting Ketten Rajh.mp4
Music: Two free songs from the Soundtrack as MP3s: Paths (Main Theme).mp3 The Elden Road.mp3
1 Map: A new map of Braided Shore (Updated artwork, HD) Wallpapers for desktop and smartphones - a selection of beautiful and hand painted art from the world of Book of Travels: Maps, art with forms and creatures you can play or meet in the game, items, clothes, food and much, much more: 14 x 1080 x 1920 (smartphone) 7 x 1920 x 1080 (desktop) 7 x 1920 x 1080 (desktop) 5 x 1920 x 1200 (desktop) 6 x 2160 x 1920 (desktop)
We hear from a lot of you that you'd love to get some high definition Book of Travels art in bulk, so we hope that this will come as a nice little surprise. Again - thank you for being with us as we continue to grow and improve Book of Travels. You'll hear from us again soon!
May your tea never grow cold!
Best wishes, Oliver & the team at Might and Delight
Have a Map of Braided Shore On Us
Good afternoon Traveller,
And a happy Friday to you! This is going to be a quickie, because we just wanted to put out a map of Braided Shore for you to do whatever you want with. Save it, use it as a wallpaper, a screensaver or print it or do absolutely nothing - choice is yours!
In a little while we'll all go home for the weekend but you can rest assured that we're working on very cool stuff for Book of Travels. In the meantime, stay magical and may your tea never grow cold.
Best wishes, Oliver & the team at Might and Delight
Live Update 0.22.5 Change List
Changes
Minor engine upgrade to Unity version 2021.3.10 (previously 2021.3.3)
Minor Text Changes on some Poems and new messaging around boarding vehicles
New Server system first trial using smaller "Headless Build" creation
Added Rich Presence for Steam and Discord
Improved performance of level prop visual fading
New Vehicle UX for boarding and resting whilst travelling
Players can now look at their map and inventory without accidentally triggering jumping off of the train
Vehicle smoke now varies based on whether a train is stopped, accelerating, decelerating, or moving at full speed
Station masters and boat hands on train platforms and docks now announce upcoming vehicle departures
Newly added boats horns announce when a boat will depart soon
Players now rest while riding trains and boats
There are consequences for players who choose to ride boats in storms and jump off of trains
The vehicle departure progress bar has been removed
There are updates to how vehicles are implemented overall, that should result in a reduced number of disappearing and stuck trains
Updated several map names.
Added a unique description for every "Trade Good" item (around 800)
Added a unique description for every "Shoe Equipment" item
Proofread and polished in-game dialogue.
Change to the way roads are handled – this will not yet be apparent to players but will allow more accurate road usage in the future.
Keys in the Control Settings will now change based on your keyboard layout.
The NPC “Resna” will now value Knot of Thankful Wishes to same price even when traded.
Fixes
Fixed stuttering in Main Menu camera movement
Fix for initiating combat
Fixed issue where an NPC would give the player unlimited item duplicates
Improved usability of screenshot section of the feedback menu
Fixed a bug that caused map notes to not appear when pressing the note button in the map screen
Fix to arrow marker so it no longer rises up when navigating with keyboard. Arrow marker will now disappear when clicking underneath the player's feet
Fixed several places where you could walk through objects
Players in Mist Keeper's Toe can now see themselves on the world map
Fixes to occlusion culling in various areas
Objects will now fade faster when camera is too close and when a player is behind objects
Fix to reduce memory consumption over time
Tricks of the Messenger will now be more accurate when walking on roads
You can now zoom in and out with the camera again
You can no longer offer items when there are no items in the offering window.
Inventory will now be saved after making an offering.
Fix to floating item icon at offering shrine when leaving.
Fix to blurry clothing.
Items added to the trade window will now always have the same value as the UI tells us.
Fix for UI becoming stuck in front of some shrines.
Various Text changes.
Various performance tweaks.
A Year of Travel
Dear Traveller,
It has now been 12 months since we released Book of Travels, the Tiny MORPG (MMO-Lite) to early Access on Steam. Whilst initial momentum was beyond expectation, seeing us hit the top 10 most popular games on Steam, server instability and a number of frustrating bugs showed us that we had some issues we needed to solve.
The first thing we looked at was the team. It may have not been explained very well at the time but we essentially took the team that had made the very successful single player focussed Shelter series and asked them to deliver a multiplayer experience. It became clear, and was poorly communicated at the time, that we needed to re-asses the team and hire different competencies. This had additional impact on the Shelter 3 release and the on-going support for Meadow and is a challenge to solve whilst remaining an independent developer.
A new team
The creative core and art direction was working well, but we needed different skills around multiplayer gameplay elements, server infrastructure and a different type of “production pipeline” to accurately release frequent updates for an MMO-Lite style of experience. Over the past 12 months we have hired a large number of engineering staff whilst keeping the majority of the art, stories and design the same, with the aim of improving on what we have. In order to deliver the existing Feature Set we have planned, and outlined as part of the new Road Map, some 7000 hours of development work remain ahead of us. This is before we add in things like bug fixes, design tweaks and adjustments based on feedback. Adding in a new Beta infrastructure allows us to playtest some of these new features early and work on fixes and tweaks as the features develop and ultimately will lead to cleaner update releases in the future (but we are not there yet).
The Pillars of Creation
Part of the rethink of the Feature Set has led us to look at the games positioning in your gaming library, where MMO-Lite sits and what we offer that makes us stand out from other games on the market. Our key focus can be divided up into pillars which are: Survival, Exploration, Trading and Mystery. As we deliver DLC in the future (and PDLC where applicable) we will touch on these four pillars both as the core DLC for each pillar, but also a percentage of change in each of the 4 in each DLC. So, we may release a DLC focussed on Survival, but it will contain elements that touch the other 3 pillars.
Long Term Pricing
Whilst many of our reviews comment on “what do I do?” the vast majority of our players have spent hundreds of hours in the game world with some spending in excess of 1000 hours. We will address the starting scenarios to better introduce players to the game world, even “holding their hands” for at least the first 20-60 minutes, but after that point the players will be free to explore and survive in a large and growing open world environment where dangers and mysteries lurk in unpredictable and often hard to find places. As content is released and the world grows, the number of “seats per server” will increase so the chance of encountering a player remains at the same level even though the world is larger. This growth is balanced against overall game client and game server performance that was addressed as part of our main tech rebuild (and is a constant area of improvement). To this end, the overall price of the game will increase as and when more content is added, the first of which is expected mid-November.
In Summary
The launch was far from ideal, and we had lessons that we needed to learn. We have had a major rethink and addressed these lessons and remain committed to delivering the vast world of Braided Shore. Book of Travels has performed well enough for us to remain dedicated to it for the long term and we are pleased with the reception, the player reviews and the excitement we hear in our community. We have a lot to show you over the next 12 months and look forward to watching your journey.
May your tea never grow cold. Joe.
Live Update 0.20.3 Change List
General Fixes:
Fixed issue where "You are already logged in" message was shown erroneously
Fixed a bug that caused keyboard movement to not work when the mouse hovers over an unwalkable area
Fixed water not being placed correctly in West_22
Fixed interaction, forgot an exclamation mark in front of player being in combat
Fixed flickering on certain UI elements
Fixed a bug made it possible to use the scroll wheel to move the merchant inventory
Fixed a bug that caused buttons to flicker when hovering over them.
Changes:
Dockhand NPC will not give you repeated knowledge by talking to them anymore
Added log entry for client graphics device type
You can now start running when at above 5% stamina instead of 30%
You can no longer interact while an NPC is in a defeated state.
A Robbery event will no longer remember old values. A Robbery event will now value your items correctly when putting them in and outside the inventory boxes.
Trade Modifiers that increase/decrease values will now be more precise.
Reduced inventory slots on Ornate Fig Beads from 3 to 0
Implemented some new effect cards
Added tooltips to items in Character creation.
Reworked the GUI prefab to be more workable around branches.
Ghosts will now disappear correctly when disabling Reveal Ghosts effects (ex. Sighted)
Live Update 0.19.4 Change List
This version contains all previous Beta updates as below. Additionally we have the following known issues in this version:
WASD Movement still tracks mouse cursor position. If you are unable to walk please ensure your mouse is in the center of the screen.
Player may become stuck on boats: You should be able to press the Right Alt Key (Alt GR) and select unstuck should you encounter this issue.
Update to a new Unity Input System to allow for new control schemes:
Added WASD movement.
Changed how the "Tab functionality" works. Previously it showed all the nametags of interactable NPCs, now it does so in a range around the player while also highlighting pickups and other interactable objects in the world.
Added foundations for future controller support.
Added functionality for Key-binding in the settings menu.
Implemented some previously unavailable items in the Settings Menu:
Voice Volume slider
UI Size dropdown. Choose between Small, Default, Large.
Reset Interface Positions. Resets all user moved UI to their default positions after closing the menu.
Always Notify Effect Cards. Toggle to always show effect card notifications.
Small Emotes. Toggle to show smaller-sized emotes.
Always Show Party Names. Toggle to always show your party members' nameplates.
Show Selection Circles. Toggle to show selections circles around the character you have currently selected.
Show Area of Effect Range. Toggle to show the AoE circle for skills.
Show Combat Circle. Toggle to show the circle around a combat encounter.
Show Walk Arrow. Toggle to show the walking arrow when you use click to walk.
Disable Unity Analytics. Toggle to enable/disable Unity Analytics.
Show Effect Cooldown. Toggle to show the effect duration when hovering over an effect card.
Tool Tip Speed. Slider to choose the speed at which tool tips appear when hovering over UI elements.
Emote Opacity. Slider to choose the opacity of emotes.
Changes to Resolution settings
Platform Specific Fixes:
Changed anti-aliasing method for OSX clients
Updated Steamworks .NET to 20.1.0
General Fixes:
Fixed a bug that caused combat to not initiate properly.
Fixed a bug that caused NPC nametags to not appear when pressing Tab until they had been interacted with at least once.
Temporarily removed dockhand worker to stop slide backwards and other movement issues
Tea effects will now stack properly
Poems will not appear when in menus anymore
Calm Trait will now increase energy replenish to 1.25% instead of 1% when eating edibles.
Glutton Trait will now decrease energy replenish to 0.75% instead of 0% when eating edibles.
Self-Sacrifice Trait will now decrease energy replenish to 0.75% instead of 0% when eating edibles.
You now cannot cancel a trade anymore after a trade has been confirmed.
Wasteful trait will now have a chance to discard 2 - 3 items instead of only 2.
NPC Interaction adjustments so the speech bubble will now appear on the first click
Gave every wearable "Body" item a unique description.
Fix for if your inventory is full when receiving a quest item the quest will break
Change to item UI for value layout so value appears at the top
Fix for Kasa Incident quest during Night time encounters.
Added four more poems for the train headed west from Crossings.
Wrote 4 poems for every different departure of ferries and trains.
Added a more descriptions to arm and glove items. (Around 5000 words)
Edible items without a unique description have now received one.
Endeavour tutorial text change
Added around 7000 new words worth of item descriptions for Edible items (Bread, cakes, etc) and fixed a couple of text errors.
Fix for boat leaving the player in the water in West_09
Fix for Endeavour requirements flash when loading Endeavour
Character customization should now work in game
Fix for Large Dried Fish wrong item type
Fixed a bug that caused the debug menu to always display the current weekday as Monday
Temporary time adjustments
Improvements to water reflections
A Trainload of Vehicular Improvements Is Coming
Dear Traveller,
We are working on a lot of exciting things, as well as fixes and optimisation (some of which you can try out before it goes on the live environment by logging on to the beta branch) - but today I'd like to take a quick moment to shine a light on what improvements we are doing specifically for the vehicles of Braided Shore.
We all love trains and boats but we know that, in our game, they could function better and be more intuitive to use. We wanted to change that, and the changes that I'm going to detail in this post are expected to begin rolling out in the coming weeks.
Screenshot by Steam user "Lunafreya"
First off, when you board a vehicle you will immediately sit down and begin resting. There's no sense in straining yourself when occupying a cosy vehicle, right? You will also be able to check your map and inventory without automatically disembarking your mode of transport, which will be handy for plotting out your next course of action.
Currently, as you may know, there is a time-to-departure progress bar that indicates how long you have to wait until the vehicle in question starts heading out. Instead of that, we're rebuilding the system to convey that information to you in a more immersive way through visual and auditory cues like horns, whistles, smokestack changes, and announcements from the conductor.
On top of that station masters and dockhands will provide you with information about expected arrivals and departures for the trains and boats of Braided Shore. You will also be required to have a train or boat pass to take the trip, which will be consumed from the inventory upon boarding. Of course, we're also working on ironing out bugs and glitches causing you and your vehicle to end up in unintended places.
Lastly, the team is looking at ways to enable the player to... partake in some ill-advised travelling etiquette. Obviously, no one at Might and Delight formally recommends you to, say, take a boat ride during a storm. Or jump off a train mid-journey. Or try to sneak onboard a vehicle without paying for a pass. But we kind of do want you to be able to, and then face the consequences of those actions. Let's call it a "dismantling of safety measures". Because what fun are those?
Until next time! May your tea never grow cold.
Best wishes, Oliver and the team at Might and Delight
The scribes are hard at work, chronicling the world of Braided Shore
Dear Traveller,
Today we wanted to talk about how our work looks in regards to the story of Book of Travels. We're thinking a lot about how we want to present the larger story of the game to the player, and how to expand it over time while still holding true to our original vision and design philosophies about not wanting to hold the player's hand too tightly or spoon feed them.
When it comes to story in the world of Braided Shore, there is much to do. We are both looking to introduce more lore details to the world, and to expose the intrigue of the Prologue so that more players have the chance to find and play through it.
We’re introducing new lore both through item descriptions and, eventually, new encounters and events. We want the storytelling of Book of Travels to feel intuitive, and like something you unveil as you travel. With every item in the game world telling you bits and pieces of information, we’re hoping to add another layer to your roleplaying and immersion.
We also want the world to feel alive, whether you’re wandering through the deep woods or bartering in a bustling town. Ensuring that interactions with NPCs feels worthwhile, and that the world highlights the quests and events available to you, is also a major focus of our current work.
When looking at the steam achievements, and talking to the community, we can tell that the main intrigue of the Prologue is incredibly hard to find, and that many players simply have not played through it. We want to expose this story to the player, and ensure that the way we tell the story is in line with how the game is played; what if there wasn’t a one singular path to the great city of Kasa? What if there was a way for Travellers to find many clues that point to the city, and the cause of its peculiar lockdown?
This autumn and winter, you can expect hundreds of new item descriptions in-game (our story team has already written over 15 000 words of new lore in the past two weeks), many new dialogues and small encounters, as well as a mystery that seems to permeate the lands of Braided Shore.
For a behind the scenes peek at what we’re up to, you can find our work on the Beta, where it will be featured alongside bug fixes, polish of features, and experiments with new gameplay mechanics. We’re hoping that, from the very start of the game, you’ll feel the call of the open road, and that the stories you encounter along the way will not only entertain, but stay with you whenever you brew a soothing cup of tea, or when you walk past a grassy field and feel like you might spot omin hiding amongst the underbrush.
You'll hear more from us in the coming weeks. As always, we encourage you to sound off in the comments and on the forums about what you think of any new information we put out.
Until next time, Traveller. May your tea never grow cold... Best wishes, The Might and Delight team
3 Month Tech Work Progress update
We want to thank you for your patience. As you are aware we had some significant issues that we needed to take time to solve that we estimated would take 3 months. We are now 3 months and 1 week after that and finally have some news for you as well as a new Beta Test Environment for you to use.
If you followed our Tech Blogs you would have seen that we were doing “things” but as it was all short comments aimed at internal users it may not have made a lot of sense. In essence, what we have done is change some of the core tech the game uses as well as streamlined some of our production pipelines. That main change with this is an update of the Unity Engine from a 2019 version to the newer 2021.3.3f1 version. If you look this up you will see that yes there are newer versions, however we needed one that offers Long Term Support as well as not jumping too far ahead from the 2019 version.
Updating the engine comes with several benefits. You should initially notice that the game *feels* a bit smoother but mostly it allows us to add some new technologies in that we can use in the near future to give you better gameplay, from things like a new Input System (affecting mouse movement and potential controller support) to new cinematic cameras and live real time events. Now this stage is complete we need to present you with an updated Road Map which will be coming in the near future that will explain what we will fix and change as well as provide some detail on new content that we know you are all excited to hear about and play.
As well as the engine update we have started to make other performance improvements by re-writing portions of code and changing some visual effects to give a higher frame rate. The area you will see the biggest change here is with water. We use a very detailed reflection system which lead to water being always on, which is very costly. We have now managed to improve this system so only a small amount of water around your character is rendered leading to a significant frame rate improvement.
Overall one thing we need to avoid is making things worse. The problem with game development, especially in small teams, is being able to test all of the content to make sure its bug free and smooth before it gets released. This is one of the benefits of early access but also one of its greatest curses. One thing that greatly aids in this is a Beta environment, and that is what we want to share with you today.
Please understand – a version released on the Beta environment will be more unstable than one released on retail. It will also be a lot more restricted. However it allows us to have people play test updated versions without impacting the majority of players. We have now prepared an updated version of the game and propped it on the Beta Environment for you to try out if you wish to take part in testing new features.
Also it is important to realize that we have only addressed underlying core tech issues and general performance. Many of you wait for specific issues to be fixed regarding quests etc and these are not delivered as part of this update but will be addressed soon.
Be aware of the following:
The Beta Environment is more unstable than retail.
The Beta Environment will be turned off and restart at random with no notice.
Characters created on the Beta environment will be wiped periodically – do not use this for long term game play.
Only 7 seats exist per region – therefore only a total of 28 people can play on Beta at any one time.
On Beta you will occasionally see content that is not fully known by other players. Please avoid Spoilers.
This gives us the following development pipeline so you can understand how we will release content going forward, where the quality of the game needs to be higher in each stage before it can be released to the next. This environment is Windows PC only.
Local Development environment –> Internal QA environment –> External Test environment –> Public Beta environment –> Public Retail environment.
Our goal is that a version will spend a week on the Public Beta environment before moving to retail. For those of you who play the current build on this Beta environment please be aware of the following issues:
Boats will periodically teleport you when they reach docks – this might lead you to landing in water and having to walk to land.
Some water has rapid wave effects (most notably in Siram Fields)
The game client might hang during logout. You should be able to close it with Alt+F4
You may join with the password BetaShore2022 - for details on how to join a Steam Beta click the "Discuss" button below.
Thank you for your patience, Joe & the team at Might and Delight
