Alpha Update 0.9.5 Controller Support, Bug Fixes, and Improvements!
A quick overview of fixed bugs, improvements, and new things added in this update.
New In Little Hats:
Controllers now have feedback when falling, or going really fast with speed plants, and other events.
More special effects have been added to make things more fun, -Picking berries now causes some leaves to break off the bush. -Making rope from the rope plant now also shows some effect of the plant breaking apart, and mud and ground coming up from the ground as if it's being uprooted. -Carrots now also have new effects, making it look like carrot is actually being taken up out of the ground with the earth coming up. -Pumpkins now also have effects. -Mushrooms, rocks, logs, and metal now also have new effects when picking them up.
The corner on the mountain in the beginning, the road to Ravenwoud, now has a lookout and some trees have been removed making the castle in the distance clearly visible and showing the big open world.
A small new montage/open world reveal has been added inspired by Skyrim's opening when leaving the cave, when first standing on the new lookout an owl will fly over and some music will play.
You can now craft a fairy house which will give you access to a teleport fairy from anywhere you place the house, and you will also be able to be teleported back to your base from any other teleport fairy, which will make it so you won't have to walk all the way back to your base.
Fixed Bugs and Improvements:
Controller support has been improved. The layout should now be better and work better for all gamepads.
Controllers should now work properly again in all in-game menus such as work benches, shops, and dialogue.
Settings menu now works fully using the controller whereas previously it would skip some options.
Having an object in front while in ghost looks (Ready to be placed) still allowed for interaction with other items, food, and objects, which would cause the object such as the workbench to be spawned as a ghost object, with no interaction until reloading save. And upon hitting inventory a white square would appear. This has finally all been fixed.
The guide menu now also works with a controller, making the full game work completely with controllers! :D
default gnome clothes have been made slightly brighter to stand out from the environment some more.
fairies and some of the new humans now show interact-message when looking at them.
Player spine rotation when walking looks normal again when using a controller.
Fox, the boat, and Deer now work better using a controller.
Both fox and deer controls and movement effects have been further improved.
Fox and deer looks have been improved.
The fox now aligns with the ground or slope angle making movement seem more natural.
The fox now has more feedback when walking or riding, it also now has land animations when falling or jumping making movement more realistic.
Human boat going around the river has been made slightly more detailed, now having rope, and something to block the transparent part of the mast through which the player could look which was a glitch.
Berry no longer spams back and forth from closeby the player to far away from player when trying to place it somewhere.
Humans will now be able to enter houses with green or blue doors again, where previously they got stuck in front of the door.
Gnome rescue animation from bird cage has been improved.
You can now change the M key in settings to not make it open the map, or make the open map key bind something else.
Resetting controls to default no longer wrongly assigns controller inputs.
Zooming in and out using a controller is now more precise and allows for a few different zoomed-out distances.
Carrots should no longer fall through the ground.
An option has been added to disable controller force feedback and vibration.
player character skin texture has been improved.
Grass, plants, leaves, and underwater plants have all been decreased to increase performance while maintaining good looks.
Humans should no longer get stuck inside the walls of their houses.
Humans should not get stuck or walk against low-hanging lanterns, shutters, or rain pipes anymore when holding the player.
No longer able to look underneath the storage house in Hoogenbos, the ground has been raised slightly.
Rope plants and other items such as rocks, logs, and mushrooms no longer spawn on a path or stony ground, only on grass, leaves, and mossy ground.
The game guide has been updated.
Animations of holding items such as frogs would go away when entering into the rapid river, they now stay and the player no longer has swim animation, making it look a little bit more realistic.
Being picked up by humans now looks much better, the player runs to the right position and right rotation and the camera doesn't glitch back to first person as much.
When picked up by an owl or other creature rain effects would be hidden, but the ground would still be wet and the rain sound kept playing, now all stops.
Some moons in the Craterlands now rotate a little.
Ravenwoud front castle tower now more accessible.
Player should no longer glitch into the ground when trying to talk to Folkmod.
V logo has been removed from human Dutch flag, also the flag texture has been optimized.
Redshirt no longer goes hidden when holding a lantern and looking up.
Holding Rock, Metal Ore, and Log animations have been improved and made more accurate, now looks more like the player is actually holding item rather than it floating in hands.
Holding Axe, pickaxe, demolish tool, primitive axe, and primitive pick axe, now all have hold animations for the hands of the character.
Quickly taking food out of inventory and then putting it back within .2 sec, caused the food hold animation to be still played, while food was already back in inventory. This has been fixed. It also caused some internal errors which could have caused some lag spikes.
Craftable campfire now also has a light, before it only had fire effects.
Level required to craft Demolishtool, window frames, stairs, and doors, have been lowered.
Running with a weapon in third person no longer makes the player look at the floor and run with a bend back, now runs with normal animations.
Axe swing animation has been improved, legs don't glide across the ground anymore.
Snake has been made slightly more dangerous and the model looks better.
Fall damage amount has been increased.
You can now press E on a human boat or wagon to enter.
Some tips on loading the screen went out of the screen, these have been adjusted.
Trying to place something in no build zone rarely would spawn the object instantly in the air. When it spawns now it will instantly demolish so you get the resources back. It should still happen rarely, the cause has still to be found.
The bug where if you pressed build on object or item in the crafting menu, and had sufficient logs but not rocks, it would still remove the logs, has been fixed. It now only removes the recourses from inventory when the object/item is crafted.
When dying light would be loaded too bright in Craterlands, now the light remains right.
Alpha Update 0.9 Achievements, More Humans, Better Looking Game, And More!
A quick overview of fixed bugs, improvements, and new things added in this update.
New In Little Hats:
Little Hats now has 25 Steam achievements which you can unlock!
Rocks and metal ore now crumble after destruction instead of just disappearing.
The game now has a horse-drawn carriage going around the map, that you can use to safely travel. It also adds much to the atmosphere of the game and makes the world feel more connected and alive.
A moving human boat has been added which goes up and down the river.
More clues have been added to the Steyndike mazes, there are now sounds that you can follow to reach the exit, or... a troll camp if you follow the wrong one. There are now also some more landmarks such as small camps and others inside the maze of travelers who never found the exit... This should make finding the exit a bit easier.
The Steyndike maze has been improved look-wise, and now has overgrown rocks and much more plants and more foliage.
The game now has new tree models which will look much better from a distance, and are cheaper which means they can now fully cast shadows making the forest feel much more realistic because now the leaves of the trees make everything darker underneath.
There is now a reference to the most famous gnome meme, you can now officially be gnomed, he's not a goblin.
5 new human characters have been added to further fill up the world/make it feel more alive.
Some chimneys now have smoke coming out of them.
The player character now has jump-land animations.
More useful human dialogue has been added to the game with the new characters, making finding out what to do easier and expanding on the lore.
A new but familiar character has been added to the intro of the game, with dialogue and tips.
Fixed Bugs and Improvements:
Grass and the look of large open fields have been improved.
Gnomes no longer spawn double, there was an error with saving the gnomes location, then upon reload it spawned two of them, then sometimes 4, going up infinitely. Now they no longer save, and respawn each time at their original location.
Gnomes sometimes not spawning at all has also been fixed, also had to do with the save system.
The bug where you couldn't interact with anything and the game kept saying drop or place held item has been fixed. It was caused by putting food in inventory, each time the player did this the game kept thinking food was being held in hands.
When moving or destroying storage container or item display, item will now spawn instead of disappear. Clothing storage won't destroy when containing clothing until clothing system has been updated and clothing can be stored as items, then they'll also spawn when destroyed or moved.
Game colors have been enhanced and should look less washed out most of the time now
Picking up item while holding weapon caused weapon not to be destroyed in hand, but also not be usable, this has been fixed.
Jumping into intro movie or respawn movie while looking back at castle or in other direction than big moon from first person caused the player to be wrongly rotated, this has been fixed now, player should now always have proper rotation.
items should no longer fall through terrain anymore.
overall game looks have significantly been improved.
Fox controls have greatly been improved, and Fox gets stuck less often now.
Fox now casts a shadow.
Folkmod sometimes spawned as a woman npc instead of himself, this probably also happened with other story relevant NPC's, they have now all been replaced with a better working system, which in the future will allow me to update all dialogue and even character looks based on the current part of the players story/quest.
crouching has been improved slightly.
When using speed plant while holding animal, food or other item with custom hold animation, the hat will not fly off so that the custom anim remains.
Giant gnome in shop wagon near Huyne Holes has been shrunk back to proper size.
Owl should no longer cause the player to be dropped through the ground when releasing player, or standing on ground while holding player.
The owl now also shows the space to struggle message when picked up.
Northward Valley has had some improvements done.
floating sleeping gnome in tent camp near Hoogenbos has been fixed, and not being able to pick up apple has also been fixed.
unable to pick up cookie top floor Ravenwoud castle has been fixed.
intro area inside the old hunter house has been made more clear.
player is no longer able to rotate head when waking up in forest, and it's also morning now when first waking up in forest.
In-game LH logos have been updated.
transition of almost all foilage has been made way way way better, you no longer see them pop in and out of existence at a distance, they instead gradually fade away, making it really hard to notice.
looking down while jumping or going into sneak showed part of face when in first person mode, this has been fixed.
The crater lands have been made a little less dark and the lens blurs are also less intense making looking around for say... easter eggs, a lot easier ;)
feet no longer go through the floor when jumping
strange leg movement upon landing has been fixed
bug where the player floats in the air but still walks, caused by rapidly pressing crouch when stuck or blocked, has now been fixed.
More textures have been reduced in quality to increase performance, quality loss is not clearly visible though.
All npc spawn and despawn radii have been optimized, most should now despawn quicker to further increase fps.
Deer have been optimized.
Rocks with moss no longer completely pop into a covered moss model when moving away from them.
you can now change the speed of the dialogue text.
Another option has been added to settings to disable the dialogue sound effect.
When trying to ride a deer that is resting it will now tell you it's resting and cannot be ridden until ready.
Owl no longer despawns leaving the player stuck in mid-air when flying too close to human towns or gnome towns.
An option to disable auto first-person mode when trying to interact from third person has been added.
Food sometimes disappeared when held in hands after being dropped, this has been fixed, food now only despawns when not held by player.
Human code has been optimized, causing some errors during the night before which in turn caused some lag.
use spirit bottle message now only shows first 3 level ups instead of first 5.
Item or food will despawn message no longer shows when putting item or food in inventory or eating food, only when dropped as it should.
You can no longer see water and stars through dark door texture.
Some walls did not cast shadows inside castle dungeons.
Ground being open from the side at Reins tools shop, allowing the player to look through ground mesh has been fixed.
Green low gnome closet doors no longer block the player, when doors were open it would sometimes block an entrance or exit making it look like the player was stuck.
Hit boxes of gnome chairs were inaccurate and kept player in certain cases from interacting with thing behind it, such as apples on table in Ravenwood castle, now fixed.
Tree hitboxes have also been made more accurate, allowing player to walk past them more smoothly also when riding animals.
When talking to quest-relevant NPC, the player no longer keeps getting level-ups, but only one, as intended.
Hole in the ground in begin area has been fixed.
Begin area of the map has fewer resources now and less food to push player further out and keep them from lingering in the beginning.
Third floor in/bar (Big building) Klein Kampen not properly loading has been fixed.
Some sounds have been made less loud.
You can now also open the map using the M key.
Alpha Update 0.7 Gnome Hunters, Owls, Fairies and Much More!
A quick overview of fixed bugs, improvements, and new things added in this update.
Note: There are still a few bugs left to fix, and some things that need to be patched in this new update, but because everyone has been waiting a long time for an update I have decided to upload it, will try to patch the remaining bugs in the following days. Tim : )
New In Little Hats:
Gnome Hunter AI has finally been added to the game! One of the things which should have been added long ago! You will now have to face the gnome hunter when out and about in the forest, if he catches you he will take you to his hunter house, lock you up or sell you to one of the human towns.
The game now has a spider! Big ones and smaller ones. They will spawn on certain occasions and hunt for the player.
The game now has an owl! So keep an eye on the sky, he's not friendly.
Faries have been added to the game also! You can talk to them as well and some of them can teleport you across the map!
About five fairy towns have been added to the map, also some small fairy tree houses in some places.
There are now gnome traps that will spawn every ten minutes or so, in them, you can find free coins, and you will have a 50/50 chance at taking the coins and getting away with it, or... Getting trapped means that the human hunter will come to take you to his hunter house or sell you to a rich villager!
The game now has a Field of View slider, and the default has been increased from 90 to 100, making the slightly more visible and things a little less claustrophobic.
Churches in human towns now have churchbell sounds for more and better ambiance and emersion.
The game now has Guard AI. Guards will now spawn at certain places and go after the player and once he has lost the player he will go back to his original guard location. If he catches player he will put them in the sell box, the same one the hunter uses.
There are now 6 underground gnome houses throughout the map, they will get NPCs added to them in future updates.
Gnome AI has been upgraded, there are now gnomes that perform certain tasks and some gnomes who will walk around.
You can now find gnomes in the forest that will have some valuable information.
Your gnome hat will now fall off when jumping or falling from tall heights, once you hit the ground it will fall back on your gnome head.
When running really fast using the speedplants, your gnome hat will now come loose and your character will grab it and pull it back so as to not lose his/her hat.
A big storage box has been added which can be relatively cheaply built to store up to 4 items.
A small storage box can now be built which can store 1 item, this box can be cheaply made from your mobile crafting inventory to easily save items.
House Sparrow now has bird sounds.
More music has been added for when humans are chasing you, and the existing soundtrack has been altered.
5 more small caves have been added.
You can now find treasure chests in caves and other places.
The slow-day troll has seen some updates, now is not always as slow anymore, and also shakes the player unconscious, then the player wakes up in a boiling pot of troll stew.
Two new gnomes have been added.
You can now buy inventory upgrade potions that will increase how much you can stack per inventory slot.
The game now by default has a blur effect when in third-person, which makes everything look much better and the gnomes much smaller! It does come at a slight performance cost but can be easily turned off or increased using a slider in the settings. You can also enable it for first-person mode.
You now get a refund of your materials and resources used to build objects when you demolish them!
There is now a small piece of intro music that plays each time you re-enter the game.
The game should now have near full controller support, but the controller settings will be improved soon, as they are now mainly set for Steam controller but also still not optionally set.
The game now has a completely new epic intro, slightly changing the story, and making it closer to the original vision for Little Hats.
Dying has been changed, you now return to a place called the Craterlands, which is also where you came from in the story, and where the intro takes place. Upon returning to the Craterlands as a dead gnome you simply have to take another leap of faith and jump back toward the world to respawn, this sequence serves as a new loading screen.
Respawning has been improved, and will now take less long.
There is now a gamma slider in the graphics settings.
You will now see your house-building station, or workbench on the map with the same symbol used in the compass, allowing you to more easily find your base.
You can now craft a candle in the simple workbench.
Fixed Bugs and Improvements:
Humans not having any hitboxes has been fixed.
The game colors have been changed and the look is slightly different now, should be less washed out, a little less saturated, and a bit darker.
The NPC duplication bug should now be fixed but will require further testing to ensure it's gone permanently. If you are currently playing on a save that had the duplication bug pre-update, then I highly recommend starting a new game. I apologize for this bug and the loss of progress, but the number of NPCs per area is designed so as to not cause lag, having them be duplicated even twice could heavily decrease performance and allow for lag spikes.
The landscape acting strange when going fast using the speed plant has been fixed.
Human towns and castles now have glowing lights during the night at a distance also.
The gnome furnace in the fireplace now has proper shadows at all distances.
The player will now get a message telling to drop a small animal such as squirrel in order to interact, otherwise player might get confused as to why E key was not working.
the combat system has been improved, especially on the player side of things, fighting should feel much better.
Crouching animations have been improved.
Looking up and down in first-person mode will now actually make the gnome bend forward or backward to look up, making checking boxes easier, and when looking up you will no longer see the gnome's forehead.
it will now no longer rain when player is standing underneath something, so rain will also stop in player-built houses. The gnome will also not become wet anymore when it's raining outside, and will now dry up when going inside.
Rain effects will now certainly disappear when rain is over, whereas before the rain particles sometimes kept existing.
Player character will now get a wet effect when going into the water, and will slowly dry up upon leaving the water.
Movement has been improved, and new animations have been added.
Player will also now get a message when holding item and wanting to pick up item that he should drop or store held/carried item first, as to not confuse the player on why he/she can't pick something up.
Not having enough coins but clicking on sleep anyway now exits the going to sleep menu properly before player was stuck or had to click left mouse button to regain control.
A lot of small errors have been fixed which should make the game play more smoothly, also cause fewer lag spikes.
The bug where you unlock a new part of the main quest and then go back and talk to a previous character, and he resets your quest to when you first spoke with him has been fixed.
Friendly human male talking to gnome anim has been slowed down, before character seemed to breathe very rapidly.
Bolderberg AI will no longer hide in garden areas but stay on the path.
Intro level was not unloaded because of bug when beginning to play, now it is.
See-through color for objects has been changed, this time for real from red to green.
More frog people have been placed around the map, but they are still hard to find! They also have a bigger walking radius now, which means they won't likely stay in the same loc for too long.
Items such as food and resources now despawn between 60 to 180 seconds after they are dropped on the ground to prevent lag by having too many items spawned around the map and being loaded all at once.
Metal should no longer refine on a campfire without logs or fire.
Resources and items should no longer fall through landscape nature assets or player build objects.
No longer able to infinitely hit night trolls or humans without them fighting back and them remaining stuck in hit animations.
First couple of times you are about to place an object you will now get a tutorial message that says how you can rotate it.
Humans are no longer able to grab you through walls
Humans have had lots of improvements AI wise, they no longer always know where you are and will now search for you when they no longer see you and don't know what way you went.
AI navigation of the world has been enhanced, they should now bump into fewer things and also know their way around the world better.
The intro part of the world has been improved and now looks more like a proper forest.
Picking up in-game spawned items such as resources on the ground or items from the storage dresser has been made easier, now picks up the item instantly instead of spawning it first and the player then having to grab it once again as a spawned item.
Gnome towns and houses have had further optimization.
Ducks now spawn again...
Candles fires and lamps now have flames in them that behave more like real flames, giving everything around them a more beautiful aesthetic feeling. The candle mesh has also been improved, had some lighting errors.
Humans and trolls now have a slight delay before being able to pick up player again after dropping player.
The trolls have been made a bit easier.
You can now stack up to 20 items per inventory slot (And buy upgrade potions to increase this to an unlimited amount).
Disabling DOF no longer gets rid of interact text when looking at interactive object in-game
Bug where player returns to standing animation when eating while sitting has been fixed, player can now no longer eat while sitting.
water pomps now have sound effects.
Campfires were sometimes invisible, should now be fixed.
Fire particles have been optimized for better performance.
Player wasn't able to drop human dishcloth.
Instruction for using dish cloth and cleaning human plates has been made more clear.
Swamp fog has been made more realistic.
swam fog no longer looks strange above the swamp water from certain angles.
Key that was unable to be picked up in one of the klein kampen houses now can be picked up.
Human footsteps hearable from everywhere has been fixed.
Troll 1 and humans should no longer sometimes be invisible, yet the exact cause of this bug has not been found, the current solution might not hold up and might continue further fixing.
Boats not showing up after reloading save has been fixed. Boats were previously saved but not spawned, meaning that they should all spawn again now, even on old saves. I do however recommend starting a new game in this update as much has changed and to ensure that all works well it would be best to start over, and we also have a new intro which is pretty cool haha.
first few time food or certain item is dropped player will get notified that item or food will despawn in a minute or so, if despawn is enabled for that item or type of food.
human houses now have better navigation data which means the human NPC's are better able to traverse around the towns, and won't be walking against walls.
Third person camera has been positioned slightly higher, making things feel a bit better and also making the transition between the first and third person look better.
Pressing e on an item while holding an item simply puts the current held item into the inventory and picks up the item on the ground making picking up lots of items a lot easier.
when one inventory slot was stacked to the max, and you tried putting in another item of the same kind, even though there was another slot available it would say slot full, this no longer happens items no go in more smoothly, simply to the next slot.
You can now decrease the number of plants, leaves, bushes small rocks etc, in the graphics settings to increase performance at the expense of the beauty of the world. Useful for people who play Little Hats on low-end gaming computers.
Gnome towns have been better optimized, for CPU.
Ravenwout in particular has been optimized much better for both cpu and gpu, lots of the old merged-together interior assets have been replaced with new ones, making the game also take up less space on your computers. The interiors have also slightly been improved.
last of the merged assets which created big expensive meshes have been replaced, causing the game to shrink in disk size more and also increasing performance.
The game had about 1200 tree saplings to cut down, all as loose objects which decreased performance, we now have 2210 tree saplings using a new system, which has increased performance!
The metal rocks in the game have also been replaced and perform better now, but still remain at a total count of 220 to keep them rare.
The game had about 500 rocks to mine, all as loose objects which decreased performance, we now have 725 at better performance
Fox AI has slightly been improved and he should no longer be able to move around while sleeping!
trees have better textures, more detailed.
All of the hitboxes have been optimized further making the game run better and lighter on the CPU.
Animals should no longer be getting stuck in the water.
Gold spawn system has been changed in human interiors, further optimizing the game.
Cave spikes have been nerved and have improved looks.
Trolls spawning in caves have also been nerved.
Speed plants are now easier to use, just running is now enough to activate them.
you can now hear the golden horn sound every now and again from its hiding place.
A few more road signs have been added along human road toward Witberg Castle.
Some nature assets have been improved, and now look way better.
part of the landscape texture such as the leaf ground and mossy textures are now 3d making the ground more detailed.
A fairy has been added to the deepest cave, next to the golden tuning fork, so you won't have to walk all the way back once you've made it, and the same goes for the golden horn in the tower.
Not being able to eat food from berry bush or other wild food should be fixed and no longer freezes to where you can't pick any berries anymore.
Main menu has slightly changed, as well as the text that is shown when choosing Normal Mode or Passive Mode.
No longer able to get stuck in human fountains.
you can now drink from human fountains, they now also have water effects, and slash effects.
Human outside water pomp now has sound effects and splash effects, player becomes wet when walking through water.
rope plants have been made a little more rare.
Player-built or bought candles now fade light at distance for better performance.
invisible church inside in klein kampen no longer visible, church windows now work same as other windows in-game.
floating knife no longer floats in steynstad house, hotel/inn.
sleeping bag can now also be crafting from simple crafting station.
gnome houses and bridges now look more detailed, higher texture res.
What used to be the High option for view distance in graphics settings is now the lowest you can go and is now Low, to avoid NPCs and other things looking really bad. Other new options such as foilage percentage should allow you to increase performance to balance it out.
Wooden doors now have a proper ghost look when preparing to place them.
putting resources into working station now should sound little less loud.
rivers have been updated, now are more optimized, and work slightly better, but will need further improvement in the future.
keep holding E to destroy message no longer appears when trying to put all gathered resources into a crafting table at once.
you can now mine metal ore from metal rock using the primitive pickaxe but it will not spawn as much metal as when using the other pickaxe.
Fox no longer stays in wrong rotation when exiting riding fox on hillside.
Some more loading screen tips have been added, and some have been replaced that were outdated.
All gnome characters have had improvements, look better now, especially their lighting has been improved.
Trolls should no longer be able to hold you inside walls, and other objects and will instead rotate away from it so the player doesn't get stuck upon being released.
Human castle now has proper human ambiance.
There are now fairies in the caves to tell the player of what they need to be able to make it all the way to the special steyndike keys.
Putting on a new gnome shirt caused a lag spike, this has been fixed.
Entering a gnome house that had within it a gnome shirt also caused a lag spike, this has also been fixed.
Gerwini and king not despawning after saving and reloading the game before speaking to them has been fixed.
Help Make Little Hats Fantastic!
Dear Little Hats players,
What would you like to see added to the game? And or improved in the game?
I am very curious to know what the number one thing would be that you would like to see added to the game or improved in the game. What is currently the biggest problem you have while playing Little Hats, or what keeps it from being more fun?
If you have more than one idea I am of course all ears! I have planned some time before the next update to make the best few ideas a reality! and will continue improving the game based on your feedback in every following update!
Feel free to write your idea here in the comments or join the discord to easily share your idea and discuss anything else about the game! https://discord.com/invite/SuadgxS
Your feedback means a lot to me, and the success of Little Hats! Thank you all very much for the great and amazing support!
Tim
Ps, I know that there have been a lot of requests for a co-op mode, and I am more than excited to add this mode as soon as possible! But due to quite a long delay with other aspects of the game, I have had to push co-op development back to the end of march. I promised that my first priority for Little Hats would be to make the game extremely fun to play in single-player and still seek to make it so. But know that your requests have been heard! and I will do everything in my power to make co-op a reality before the end of this year!
Big Update Coming Soon!
Dear Little Hats players,
I have been working on a big update for the past month and plan to continue working on it until the end of this month to ensure that all works well. After this update, there will likely be one or two more updates before Little Hats finally transitions from Alpha to Beta!
Here are some of the things that are going to be added soon!
We will now have to watch out for Owls! Spiders! and Human Hunters who will actively seek out the player during the daytime, everywhere in the forest. They will also set traps!
There will be fairies! they will have multiple towns, even smaller than the gnome towns, and they will be able to teleport you across the map! Making traveling a little easier.
Both human and gnome AI have been upgraded, you will be able to find gnomes doing certain tasks such as fishing, washing, writing, reading, going to the bathroom... and more!
You will be able to also find underground gnome houses!
Along with tons of bug fixes, improvements, and some other additions to the game!
There will also be a new intro in the next update, along with a lot of visual improvements in every aspect of the game.
Thank you all very much for the fantastic support, and patience!
Tim
Alpha Update 0.5.4 Better Performance!
This update mainly enhances the game, not much has been added this time because my main priority is now to fix the lag spikes, here is a quick overview of fixed bugs, improvements, and new things added in this update.
New In Little Hats:
You can now invert the mouse X and Y input.
Fixed Bugs and Improvements:
Navigation systems have been optimized, which should help reduce lag, low frame rates, and lag spikes.
Long-distance meshes for most models have been improved.
Day night cycle has been made longer.
Shadows have been optimized.
Loading errors have been removed, these kept occurring while going into a new part of the map.
Most major lag spikes when moving through the forest and nature should be gone, or appear only upon first entering the game.
Rope plants should now spawn more often and be better visible.
The object see through color has changed to green again.
Food not dropping from hands when pressing Q has been fixed, and now it does drop.
Intractable objects such as gnome candles that were stuck in wall hitboxes of gnome houses have been removed so as to not confuse the player why E was not working.
Hit boxes of all gnome's houses have been checked and improved so that walking through them is now easier, especially Bolderberg.
When going fast on deer or fox, or speedplant, parts of the world will load faster to avoid them being invisible on arrival.
You now need to pay coins to sleep in most strangers' beds, yet some are still willing to let you stay for free.
The player screen now shocks when the character has died.
The player will now not be able to exit the game until the save is done saving, to make sure the save is successfully completed and not stopped halfway.
Double Jumping while holding food should no longer cause the holding animation to go away.
Houses and their interiors should no longer be invisible.
The crafting table that was placed on top of high lookout mountains has been removed (it was used in making the new trailer and was not removed by accident).
You will now get a message the first few times you reach a new level telling you what you can do with the Spirit Bottles gained by reaching a new level, which is to upgrade your character by buying upgrade potions.
Double jump has been made slightly higher making moving around human interiors easier.
You can no longer ride animals while holding items food, or small animal because it looked pretty strange.
You will now get spirit points for opening a low lands gate.
All models and meshes in the game have been optimized and are now less expensive for both the CPU and GPU, which should increase fps and help prevent lag spikes.
Fixing Lag Spikes, Increasing Performance
Dear Little Hats players,
As you have probably experienced, the game currently has a lot of bad lag spikes, my apologies for this.
I am quite a bit behind schedule and wanted to have added much more to the game by now. Instead, I have been working every day to optimize the game further so we can finally play without the lag spikes. It's taken a lot longer than expected and I still haven't been able to get rid of all of them, though the upcoming update should already have fewer lag spikes, and should also have overall better performance. I will continue trying to solve the lag spike issue and am determined to find a solution.
Thank you all very much for the amazing support, and patience!
Merry Christmas to all and a happy New Year!
Tim
Alpha Update 0.5.3 New Crafting Options!
A quick overview of fixed bugs, improvements, and new things added in this update.
New In Little Hats:
You can now pick up hedgehogs, which will later on in future updates also get a purpose besides being cute xD.
You can now also pick up squirrels, they'll sit on your back, same applies to them as to the hedgehogs.
You can now craft a campfire that can be used to refine metal ore into metal bars (It will also be a source of heat in the future clothing update).
You can now refine metal ore into metal bars, metal bars are a new item or resource with which you can craft.
Cloth has been added as a new resource with which you can craft new things.
You can now find a new resource, cloth, in human houses.
You can now pick cloth from human and gnome washing lines.
Humans now have washing lines around their houses sometimes.
Players can now craft a sleeping bag from mobile crafting inventory using cloth.
There is now a furnace with which you can refine multiple metal ores at once.
You can now store clothes inside the closet that you can buy from the furniture store.
A primitive hut has been added which will serve as a stepping stone between starting off and building a decent house, it will provide warmth in future updates and hide the player from evil humans and other angry creatures.
There is now also a miniature Klomp (Clog) boat toy that you can craft and use to decorate your house.
A Hat display can now be built to show off your hat collection (In future updates there will be more hats added to the game as well as the ability to carry hats/other clothes in inventory )
Rope has been added to the game as a new resource that can be made from some plants which will now spawn in the wild.
Clay has been added as a new resource but cannot yet be found, clay will be the replacement for stone in the lowlands where there is little to no rock to build from, you can however already see the clay icon in some menus and the systems behind making clay work and how you can find it in the upcoming lowlands are already in place.
You can now add a gnome fireplace to your gnome house!
You can now also craft a rain barrel that will fill with rainwater, you can then drink from it until it is empty.
An Item display can now also be crafted allowing you to display any item you wish to display, especially useful for special items such as the golden tuning fork or golden horn, or perhaps an expensive trumpet.
You can build a dresser in which you can store up to three items.
There is now also a craftable well, from which you can get unlimited water.
All crafting menus have been upgraded and now display more easily and consistently what you need to craft an item/object.
Fixed Bugs and Improvements:
The maps have been improved, and now give some clues on where to go.
Spikes found in caves are nerved and cause less damage.
Waterlilies no longer disappear completely as the player swims closer.
the human closet with 5 drawers can now all be opened.
Click on blackberry message has more space, and is better readable.
Talking to NPCs and unlocking new quests now autosaves the game.
Getting a spirit point now makes a sound.
Soldier AI turning their heads too far to the right has been fixed, they no longer have owl necks.
Some code has been simplified and optimized to help prevent lag spikes.
Some animals now spawn in previously animal empty areas.
Floating mushrooms and bushes near spawn have been removed.
When in the castle you can now see the Steyndike Mazes in the distance.
Ravenwoud has had further optimization.
Hitting a tree with your axe will now spawn some hit particles and move the tree slightly making it seem more like you're hitting it.
Hitting rocks will now spawn rock-hit particles.
Hitting Metal rocks will now also spawn special metal-hit particles.
Gnome king and Soldier have improved beard looks.
You can now use ESC to hide the map, quest scroll, and mobile crafting menu.
Textures have once again had many optimizations.
The game now has improved loading screens.
The appearance of in-game messages has been improved.
The grammar error in gerwini first dialogue has been fixed. Signs, ugh English xD.
Part of the houses built into the Steynstadt university was invisible and has been fixed.
the gates at the end of the mazes were accidentally assigned to the wrong keys.. a foolish mistake, now the southern gate is opened by the southern key and the middle by the middle key, instead of the other way around.
quil no longer disappears when close to it.
you can now rotate placeable objects using the right mouse button (Without first having to press Q).
The bug where you open the crafting station when picking up a newly crafted item has been fixed.
crafting/building systems have been optimized.
using the demolish tool to move and destroy objects no longer causes things to duplicate.
Save System for player build things has been optimized and reworked, and should now work better.
putting objects into inventory while building and holding an item such as an axe or demolished tool, the item would keep being put into the inventory and be duplicated, this has been fixed.
Crafting menus have been made more uniform.
Some craftable items now require less or more resources, and the system should be more balanced.
New Little Hats Trailer!
After one year of early access on Steam, and many updates, it was finally time for a new updated trailer!
The game is currently in Alpha 0.5, at 1.0 the game will go into beta, luckily the hardest part of the development is now behind us which means going from 0.5 to 1.0 won't take another whole year but probably a few months. 🥳 Enjoy the trailer! 😃
To stay up to date please check out my social media:
A quick overview of fixed bugs, improvements, and new things added in this update.
New In Little Hats:
Chickens have been added to the game and can be found often in human towns.
Chicken eggs are added to the game as a food.
Sometimes chickens will lay eggs, and you can steal them, but the chickens will attack.
More caves have been added and some have been connected, you can now also find the golden tuning fork inside the cave with which you can open one of the Steyndike mazes and go to the lowlands! However, in so doing, you might awake a new kind of troll!
A new kind of troll has been added, the dark troll! the dark trolls were imprisoned in the caves long, don't wake them up!
There are now 2 more gnome houses in the game.
The big castle is now finally available to explore! within it, there is even another small human village!
You can now find the Golden Horn with which you can open the Southern Steyndike gate.
There are now haybale models for human farm fields which will be added in the first lowlands update.
The player now finally has a jump-start animation.
Gnome camps now have NPCs who sell things.
There are now spike obstacles, that go up and down rapidly, mainly will be used in caves.
There are now troll elevators, made by kind trolls who live deep down in the caves, their traps are meant to keep out the big bad trolls, but can also be dangerous for players!
You can now find green and blue human doors which can be opened when you have drunk the right potion, the magical green door potion and the magical blue door potion to be precise, you will also need one of these potions in order to find the key to the southern Steyndike maze, and thus the lowlands.
More NPCs with dialogue options have been added, making the story clear and helping the player explore and discover.
Last but not least! you can now open the gates to the lowlands when you have found the right key and completed the maze!
Fixed Bugs and Improvements:
Box (thing lines) floating behind the player, seen in the intro and when sitting, and also when speed boosting has been removed.
The game has seen many optimizations in textures.
Music now fades when the wolf sees the player.
The player not sitting in the chair correctly is now fixed.
The map should no longer be blurry upon opening it.
Some smaller rocks now also disappear when the camera gets too close to them, like the leaves.
Caves and other things of interest are now easier to find, just follow the sounds :D
Some parts of the mountain area have been made more detailed.
Some parts of the forest have been made more detailed.
A lot of models have had further optimization.
Dialogue has been improved, it now has a sound, Capital letters, and the pacing of the words is better for reading.
You now get rewarded with spirit points after you've completed a dialogue with an NPC.
A part of the map has fewer or no floating rocks and grass, more of the map will have these errors removed in the future.
Some experimental 3d textures have been added to some trees to see if this looks better.
The camera now zooms back to the first-person mode when pressing E or Q, third-person mode was only added so the player can see themselves in high-density foilage areas or simply to look at the player character, the game is meant to be a first-person experience. There were multiple cases where people said E didn't work, but they were in third-person mode, now this should be more clear to players.
Recourses such as logs rocks and metal now occasionally light up with a small pulse to indicate that that rock or tree can be harvested.
Level up particle effect has been changed.
One of the waterfalls had a strange blocking volume attached, and no underwater effects, now it does.
Humans have slightly been enhanced, and the weird-looking necks have been fixed.
all gnomes and human NPCs now blink their eyes making them less creepy.
Humans can now walk up the stairs if they feel like doing so.
Night trolls now die after they get hit by sunlight for a while.
Pressing inventory while holding local key bug has been fixed, no white square will appear in inventory now.
Grabbing food while already holding an item has been fixed, no longer will a white square appear or a duplicated item in the inventory through this bug.
You can no longer sit down holding an item, as to prevent that item from getting stuck once standing up or spawning in the wrong place.
You can no longer drop or pick from inventory items and objects, while being held, driving the boat, sitting in a chair, etc. Removing the bug where the player suddenly gets different animation while in process of being held or sitting.
Clicking the left mouse button on the Speed plant kept opening and closing the plant without telling the player what to do, now it simply closes and gives instructions.
The game is currently in Alpha 0.5, at 1.0 the game will go into beta, luckily the hardest part of the development is now behind us which means going from 0.5 to 1.0 won't take another whole year but probably a few months. :D
