Steam Summer Sale, Bug Fixes and The End of the Hipster Bun.
Hello Everyone, I've just set the latest build live containing a big bunch of bug fixes for things reported by players. As always, thank you so much to everyone who have sent in comments, bugs and suggestions. You're awesome!
The main fixes in this build are:
Fixed loading of technology save game file from old save games.
Fixed bug where the floor tiles wouldn't change when you have more than one area unlocked.
Fix some missing animations which caused a logic issue with staff using equipment. Added a default animation for the staff to prevent any possible similar issues.
Fixed bug where staff would wait literally forever to serve if there was food already on the serving station.
Fixed a bug where the game would complain about there being no free chairs even though there were some.
Fixed a bug where the customers would fail to use an object and then break when leaving.
Fixed a bug where the hot take timer would stay on screen even though the hot take bonus was finished.
Many other small fixes.
In addition Hipster Café is 20% off for the Steam summer sale right now!
Onto something more personal. When I decided to make Hipster Café, I had already been growing my hipster hair bun for quite a while. In fact the Scandi-hipster in the game may bear more than a passing resemblance to yours truly.
I started telling people that I wouldn't cut my hair until I had released the new game. The only problem is, that was in 2018, and the hipster bun kept growing. Games are a lot harder to make than you'd think!
Now the game has been out in Early Access for a while, and it was time to make good on my threat to cut my hair. The last time it met the scissors was actually in 2012, just around a decade ago, and by this point had reached a whooping 83cm length!
So this week, it was finally time to go to the hair dresser and get it chopped off. The hair has been donated to The Little Princess Trust who make wigs for children with cancer. You can help support their work here: https://www.littleprincesses.org.uk/
'til next time fellow hipsters!
Faster mid - late game research, increased effect of staff equipment
I've just set the latest build live. This one includes a whole bunch of fixes to the staff equipment, including new animations for some of the equipment that didn't have them.
The staff equipment now has a much bigger impact on how fast the staff will perform the different tasks, so there should be a more visible improvement in speed when they're using the upgraded equipment.
In addition the research point cost for the mid/late game tech has been reduced quite a bit. This means that the speed of research in mid / late game should be much faster, especially if you also upgrade the research equipment.
There is also a bunch of smaller fixes, spelling and other string corrections.
Thanks again to everyone who have provided and keep providing feedback. You're awesome!
Faster loading, Quality Assurance and new Demo version.
I've just set the latest version live. This build improves the loading times to get into the game as requested on the forum. It also focuses a lot on quality assurance, fixing lots of bugs and making small improvements that have been reported by players.
Loading time to get into the main menu should be significantly faster (if you click any button to skip the video).
Staff should be less likely to get stuck in different places now.
Selling / Moving equipment should cause a lot fewer problems.
Fixed a bunch of spelling mistakes in tutorials.
Fixed a few more areas within the tutorials where it was possible to get stuck.
Plus many smaller bug fixes.
I have also updated the Demo version to be more in line with the current state of things in the game.
Thanks a lot to everyone who has provided feedback on the game so far. You're awesome!
Improved Latte Art & yet more bug fixes
This update is focused on improving the Latte Art portion of the game and other small improvements based on player feedback.
First of all the settings for the brush should be a bit better by default now, with a bit lower liquid speed and smaller brush by default.
You can now click the hipsters in the latte art to get a drawing hint.
The dotted outline that appears is one example of a drawing that the hipsters should recognize. If you click the hipsters more times, it will swap between a few different examples.
If you trace the outline with the milk brush, you should get a drawing that is close to what the hipsters are looking for.
The latte art should also be much less likely to crash due to high numbers of brush strokes now.
Additionally I've fixed a number of smaller bugs and improvements.
A big thank you to everyone who have kept sending feedback and bug reports! You're awesome!
Early Access Update Numero Uno
Hello! I've just set the latest Early Access build live. This one includes a bunch of changes and fixes suggested by our players in the first week of early access.
Employees now have a chance to level up their skills when they do a task. It still takes them a while to master the art of shooing though!
Changing the staff task settings should now save and load properly with your save game,
All the different audio settings you choose should now stick from one session to another, if you don't like the sounds of the ocean, then you'll only have to turn it off once. Good riddance.
Changing the decoration colours should now save properly with your save game.
The menu requests now draw behind the mouse over tooltip, fixing some problems where it wasn't possible to read the tooltip.
The tooltips for menu requests in the coffee / food makers are now a bit more informative.
There will be at least a few toots about the trending hashtag when a hot topic start trending on Tooter.
The music shouldn't get stuck on the same song anymore. I mean it was my favourite and I was going to play it on repeat forever anyway, but I guess you might want to hear a different one eventually.
Plus a bunch of other small fixes & tweaks.
There's been some lovely streams and preview-reviews out this week already. It's equal parts heart-warming and nerve-racking to see people finally play it! Here are a few of the ones I really enjoyed this week:
Miss Multi-Console tries to make mushrooms stay on the damn sandwich:
Be sure to let me know if you spotted any fun streams in the wild.
Hotfix - A few bug fixes from EA
This is just a quick update with some important bug fixes discovered by our players in Early Access.
Staff tasks should get less easily confused after selling or moving the equipment.
Microsoft C++ 2019 Redistributable should now install if you don't have it installed already, so Coffee scene should appear correctly on the computers where it was broken.
Things should not error out if you try to move an item but there was no item properly selected.
Staff should not error out if they try to align with something that you have moved or sold.
+ Many other small fixes and edge cases.
Thank you so much to everyone who has sent in bug reports and feature suggestions. You're awesome!
Early Access Released
Since launching the free demo of Hipster Café in Steam Next Fest in February, we've had an incredible amount of invaluable player feedback. We want to keep working with our players to make sure the game is the best it can be, and we think the right next step for that is to enter early access. With that in mind I've just set the Early Access version live on the store.
A huge amount of content is already in the game, but naturally for early access some systems will still receive more balancing, tweaks and bug fixes based on player feedback.
Here are some of the things you can already do in the early access version:
Build furniture, decorations, equipment and entertainment items from a list of over 220 items in your Hipster Café. Hipsters just wanna have fun.
Make stupid food by combining 80 weird ingredients, serve it up on one of eight different "plates".
Manage your menu to impress over 30 different types of hipsters.
From filter coffee to cold brew, adjust the flavour of 10 types of coffee, and impress the hipsters by drawing what they ask for with the latte art in their coffee.
Keep up to date on the latest trends on social media. Send out a Toot with the right hashtags before the Hot Take timer goes out to gain bonus followers for your café!
Research to unlock the improved entertainment items, better café equipment and more ingredients.
Choose the colours and floors of your café, and design it's unique logo.
Hire and manage your very own staff from more than 30 hireable characters.
Call your dad when you run out of money, or just to ask "What's up?",
The demo version will remain free for those who prefer to wait for a final release.
We are looking forward to getting more feedback from you all. You can continue to use the in game feedback button, the steam discussion boards or just email us at steam@usefulslug.com with your comments.
Thank you so much to all the players that have given us feedback so far! You're awesome!
Better staff tasks, more bug fixes and early access on the way.
Over the past few weeks we've had the free demo available and the player feedback from that has proven invaluable in improving the game. However it's also clear that the game is not yet fully balanced and polished.
We want to continue to work with our players to make sure the game is the best it can be, and we think the right next step for that is to enter early access. I've recently submitted the latest full content version for review by Valve and hope that will be ready for you all to play very soon. I appreciate that some of you have been waiting patiently for a final version, but I hope you can understand that we believe working with the player feedback a bit longer will get us all the best version of Hipster Café. The Demo version will remain free if you prefer to wait.
I've just set the latest version of the Demo live. This one includes a big bunch of bug fixes and improvements from player feedback.
Customers shouldn't pepper the social media with pictures of their food quite as often. I wish I had this setting for Instagram too.
Staff should now be able to research on multiple research stations at once if the technology is advanced enough.
Events that previously removed a member of staff if you failed the missions now instead reduce their skills.
Saving and loading games should now be a lot more robust.
Fixed a number of issues where Tooter would render the messages strangely.
Removed some questionable/offensive content from the string builders that generate the Tooter content.
Fixed a lot of staff issues where their equipment was moved or sold.
Fixed a number of bugs with the in game feedback form.
Plus many other minor bug fixes.
I also found the source of a bug which breaks the coffee maker on some computers. If this happens on your computer, you need to make sure you have installed bot the X86 and the X64 version of the Visual C++ Redistributable from Microsoft. You can find these here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170
Special thanks to everyone who have provided feedback and bug reports. You're awesome!
Tutorials & Bug fixes
The latest version of the demo has just gone live. This build focuses on fixing bugs, and updates the starting tutorials with the changes that have been made to the gameplay over the last few months. This type of update maybe a bit less sexy, but it's important to make sure as many people have a good experience as possible.
The tutorials now let you know that you can play/pause the game, as well as how to queue up research and rotate food.
The autodetected graphics settings should be a bit improved on some displays.
You can now open the settings menu during a tutorial without the interface drawing oddly.
The tutorial text area should now resize to fit the text, preventing some bugs where it was overlaying onto buttons.
Running tutorials more than once should be more stable.
There should be fewer glitches with the hipsters after they have received their food.
Many other small bug fixes.
Big thanks to everyone who has been reporting bugs and sending feedback! You're awesome!
Graphics presets, performance and bug fixes.
I've just set live the latest build of the Demo.
This update focused on making sure it was more easily playable on a range of computers, as well as performance and bug fixes. The game uses a dynamic form of lighting that bounces the light around and traces reflections in real time. Even though the game style perhaps looks simple, these lighting calculations can be quite heavy for the computer and will definitely make it lag if you have a less powerful graphics card. With the new presets and auto-detection features, it should make it much more smoother across a whole range of computers, without the player needing to know the ins and outs of complex global illumination settings!
Here are the main highlights:
The game should now autodetect if you drop below 25 frames per second average, and suggest automatically detecting graphics settings if you do.
You can also run the autodetect graphics settings from within the Video settings.
There are also now 5 presets you can manually choose from, that will toggle a number of the video settings to give you gradually higher framerate while trading off visual accuracy.
Fixed a number of bugs related to placement on counters, especially after loading a game.
Fixed a number of smaller bugs.
Thank you again to everyone who have sent feedback via the in game and end of play feedback forms! You're awesome and have given me so much helpful feedback! Also big thanks to everyone who's streaming and making video reviews of the game. These are always really heart warming to see.
