Solace Crafting
Hotfix v 0.7.6.5
v 0.7.6.5 2021.09.14
- Improved Goblin Dungeon performance
- Fixed harvesting experience not scaling properly across levels
- Fixed tier 0 resources not providing any experience after reaching harvesting level 5
- Fixed seaweed not rewarding stalks
- Fixed rare animal icons remaining on the map after being harvesting
- Fixed "Get seeds" not working properly on plants in chests
- Fixed some non-hide creatures still going rare
- Fixed ice spikes not aligning to the ground on steep hills
- Fixed the meteor explosion not aligning to ground properly
- Fixed area target skills not working in world encounters
- Fixed goblin boss chest loot/interaction
- Fixed goblin boss health bars
- Fixed some goblin specific drops not displaying their names properly on the right-hand floaty indicators
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
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Follow development live on Twitch!
Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!
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Developer Update
This post is again me being honest and open about my current situation, as I don't like to leave our community in the dark as to where am I and what's going on. Having said that, August was hands down the weirdest month I have every lived.
The first week of August I spent working on my second title, Solace Kingdoms. The first several weeks of any project of any notable size are very much focused on just getting the code base set up, initial user interface creation, basic game-play mechanics like camera controls, data structures, and so on. On the weekend after that first week, unfortunately, my wife's mother was diagnosed with late stage cancer. We ended up spending the entirety of the second week at their house, helping them clean, organize, and in general get ready for chemotherapy. My wife and her siblings are very close, and we had a lot of teary discussions late into the evenings. I personally am a very positive minded person, and am looking forward to a full recovery for her mother, but there is nothing scary than the unknown and the feeling of helplessness that often comes with illness.
Every year in mid to late August my high school buddies and I always get together for a guys weekend up in the mountains of western Washington. I already had bought my tickets, and it was agreed that I should continue on with my trip. I wasn't able to attend last year due to the pandemic, but having received both of my vaccinations recently I was ready to see my friends and family for the first time in two years. This is where things got even weirder.
Getting into the US was no problem. I had to pay a hefty fee to get a PCR test confirming that I was not infected before being allowed into the airport, and ticket prices were almost double what they used to be, so I was unable to take a direct flight, instead flying backwards to South Korea before then flying to Seattle. In what universe that translates to a cheaper ticket cost still baffles me, but no big deal. The trip was great. I purposefully did not bring a laptop, though I did borrow one for a day when there was nothing going on, and generally just tried to unwind and spend a lot of time catching up with everyone.
The return flight worked out that I would have a one night layover in South Korea, so I had booked a 1 star hotel just to have somewhere to sleep for the night. Upon landing in South Korea however I was told that if I left the airport I would be required to quarantine for 14 days. I actually had a business meeting setup with a potential investor who was waiting for me outside the airport, but they wouldn't let me out, and they wouldn't let him in. I ended up having to cancel my hotel reservation and stay in a ridiculously overpriced airport hotel, which was located in terminal 2, while my gate was located in terminal 1. For some reason passengers are not allowed to travel between terminals 1 and 2 and I had to have a security guard escort me between the two terminals both to get to my hotel room, and to get back to my gate the next morning.
Landing in Japan the next day, the entire flight was escorted to a long series of folding chairs setup in the corridors of Narita airport. We underwent two hours of questioning, saliva testing, mandatory cell phone quarantine app installation and setup, and a handful of us were separated from the rest of the group. Apparently Washington State was on the "high risk" list, and I ended up waiting several hours along with a variety of other passengers until hotel reservations and a bus could be secured for us. We were being quarantined into hotel rooms for 3 days after which a second saliva test would be conducted to confirm we had not been exposed to Covid-19. One girl that I spoke to was a university student who was now going to be missing her first day of classes, but it seemed that everyone, like me, was taken by surprise.
I'm still banned from public transportation and am now self-quarantining in my house, but in total it was 20 days before I made it back to my own bed. I still receive frequent requests from the apps that were installed on my phone to report my location and sometimes even to respond to an AI operated video call to confirm that I am indeed at my location and not just making someone push a button on my phone.
So, it's been a very relaxing, and a very stressful August full of surprises. I took a couple days to unwind and get back into my normal rhythm, and here I am now updating everyone on the strangeness of it all! I don't not understand why the precautions were taken, but I sure wish it had been made clear to everyone at some point that we would have to go through all of this. On the other hand, everyone that didn't visit a "high risk" area walked straight out of the airport and got on their trains and buses towards their final destinations, so I do question the effectiveness of the whole ordeal, but we're all just trying to do what we think is best. I'm not begrudged or disgruntled, but it was not fun being stuck in a tiny hotel room for 72 hours after nearly 48 hours of transit.
I hope that doesn't leave a sour taste in anyone's head, it is what it is, I just wanted to update everyone on what's going on, and why I don't yet have more development progress ready to show off and talk about.
I wish you all the best, stay safe, and happy gaming.
Development update
https://www.patreon.com/posts/54465402
In summary, I'm taking a short break from Solace Crafting development, just to recuperate my ambition and drive that I've been really working into the ground this year to try and finish the last several remaining months I need to complete 1.0. I'm still 100% on board with Solace Crafting, I'm just going to work on a second title that I've wanted to get started for a long time, again, mainly just to step away from SC for a little bit, as four years, every day, behind one screen, in one chair, has really taken it's toll on me these past few months. I just need to recharge my batteries a bit and am looking forward to coming back with renewed vigor. Taking breaks where I'm constantly beating myself up for not working day and night on SC hasn't worked at all! So I'm starting on a second, much "simpler" to developer title I hope to have up here on Steam some day as well!
Frightening because I'm Human, and the internet can be a scary place! But you've all (almost all) always been very supportive of my health and mental health, and again, I don't want to leave anyone worrying about why there hasn't been any patches or updates for a couple weeks.
If you want the full story, please check out the video, and I'd love to hear your input on the subjects it covers.
Best wishes,
Kyle Postlewait
Big Kitty Games
Hotfix 0.7.6.4 / 0.7.7.2
This patch is being applied to both live and beta simultaneously.
v 0.7.6.4 2021.07.27
- Fixed several instances of MP data being able to exceed the maximum per packet size
v 0.7.6.3 2021.07.26
- Fixed a flora spawn desync problem in multiplayer when returning to an already visited area
- Fixed not being able to select a structure via an obelisk in MP
Beta:
v 0.7.7.2 2021.07.27
- Fixed several instances of MP data being able to exceed the maximum per packet size
v 0.7.7.1 2021.07.26
- Fixed a flora spawn desync problem in multiplayer when returning to an already visited area
- Fixed not being able to select a structure via an obelisk in MP
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.
Join us in Discord!
Follow development live on Twitch!
Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!
Check out the bug / suggestion tracker
Beta v 0.7.7.0
(The new lava caves)
Currently I'm working on revising loot tables and working out new enchants and other socketables in a more organized system where I'm localizing drops based on the area of difficulty for different locations. To summarize I'm planning progression as:
1 . Open world, above ground encounters, town resources.
2. Caves, goblin dungeons, undead dungeons.
3. Floating islands, lava caves, water caves
4+ TBA
Each level of progression is currently "locked" behind underwear progression, as that is what increases your temperature resistance. Clearing each layer of temperate locked content should reward you access to the resources required to make the next grade of materials required to upgrade your underwear, as well as your equipment and things as well.
(The new vampire lord in, boss of the undead dungeon)
I haven't quite gotten into it yet, but I also want to change the current schematics system, which can pile up quite quickly, to a system of learnable sockets, not unlike the current schematics "word" system. This will allow for higher rarity socket recipes and socket set recipes to drop in more difficult areas.
The focus of 0.8 which I hope to start soon will be focusing almost entirely on combat, skills and attributes (both players and monsters), loot, and difficulty. So getting these new encounters and new monsters in is a nice first step in that direction. For now most of these new monsters don't have abilities, or even sounds for that matter, but hopefully in the coming month or so that will all start to change, and combat will not only be more interesting, but more rewarding as well.
I do still want to uphold my belief that full pieces of equipment dropping from monsters is weird, but I think random sockets dropping once in a while would be a lot of fun, letting you stick them right into your equipment now that they are items instead of equipment bound "enchants".
(the new water caves)
Anyways a lot of work going on. I'm also working on some complicated math for the combat changes ahead of us that ultimately make things in a way much simpler, but are not your standard linear scaling up to 1,000,000+ damage at level 80, or whatever tends to happen with MMORPG expansions. The system I'm working on is really designed to allow play to continue up to level 1000 and beyond, as we've had players reach those levels with the current math and it really just starts to get ridiculous, and does bring in some serious shortcomings... I'll be explaining more about that in depth when we get there.
v 0.7.7.0 2021.07.17
- Added lava caves (lava cave sections will no longer spawn in normal caves)
- Added water caves
- Added undead dungeon
- Added navmesh carving to dungeons props
- Added mummies, skeletons, harpies (to floating islands), and vampire lords
- Added aquastone resource
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.
Join us in Discord!
Follow development live on Twitch!
Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!
Check out the bug / suggestion tracker
Hotfix 0.7.6.2
v 0.7.6.2 2021.07.12
- Fixed an item duplication bug when transferring all to storage chests
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
Join us in Discord!
Follow development live on Twitch!
Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!
Check out the bug / suggestion tracker
Hotfix v 0.7.6.1
Working on a number of new encounter types to up to beta this week. And as we have a lot of new players, I thought I would go ahead and show my current road map that I'm working on as there are often questions about job and class skill trees, as well as combat in general. Keep in mind these are only the major changes, so things like new recipes, new monsters, building pieces, etc., aren't specifically listed:
Version 0.7 milestones
- Lava Caves
- Undead Dungeons
- Water Caves
Version 0.8 milestones
- Combat (math) rework
- Monster attributes, traits, randomization
- Skill system rework
- Skill tree UI improvements
- Monster Skills
- Jobs and Classes
- Combat animations
Version 0.9 milestones
- Performance optimizations
- Full controller support
- Multi-lingual support finalizations
As you can see I'm hoping to start getting into v 0.8 very soon. There is a long list of secondary and tertiary milestones as well, and certainly a lot of things to do post 1.0, but as I've been mentioning lately, the goal for 2021 is to get out of Early Access with a solid 1.0 release.
Also, please note that these changes have not yet gone live on the public beta branch, as there is a bit more work I want to finish up tomorrow before pushing the latest changes to beta.
v 0.7.6.1 2021.07.05
- Added a loop music setting
- Fixed an error with socketing
- Fixed an error with the "transfer all to container" button
- Fixed an error with rare cacti not spawning as rare
- Fixed an error with non-rare animals becoming rare
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
Join us in Discord!
Follow development live on Twitch!
Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!
Check out the bug / suggestion tracker
Death of a server
To replace it I've purchased a Digital Ocean server that is faster, has way more disk space, and is half the price. It takes a little work to get a fresh Linux server setup, but it's up and running a new world now, and I was able to connect to it just fine. It is set to reboot the server thread every 12 hours, and I'm going to try and setup some monitoring so that it can reboot the whole OS if it somehow gets stuck in a loop as it seemed to earlier today on the Amazon server. If that happens again tracking down the cause of the loop will be my top priority, but as I can't even access the Amazon server anymore I can't look at any of the log files to try and debug what went wrong ːsteamfacepalmː
Sorry for the loss of data for everyone that was playing on the BKG server. Hopefully the new server will be easier to manage!
I've got a few bug reports involving multiplayer resources incorrectly respawning on clients, rare cacti not loading properly, and some trouble with transferring items in and out of bags via the transfer buttons I will be looking into Monday (tomorrow for me) morning.
Now live! v 0.7.6.0
Please note that due to changes in how things are spawned, resources and encounters may shift around if playing on a save game from a previous version. The new updated methods used to determine town resource locations, for example, will no long be shifted around due to changes in decorations. Predetermined now are, in order: Large encounters, town resources, rare resources, tower ruins. Everything else is still generated on a per-area basis and subject to change if/when changes are made.
Tower ruins are a new addition just this week that have the first interactable source of the "light" currency. These are very common encounters and as such monolith spawns have been turned down a bit. I think it's important to point out that I do hope to use different assets for these rather than the standard building player pieces they're using right now, but I'm trying really hard to stick to my schedule of moving things forward towards 1.0. There is always more to do, and I don't want to get hung up on every little detail.
Speaking of which, I'd like to open up about my plans moving forward a bit. Tomorrow I want to start the process of finishing up the six encounter types that I have planned for progression. Currently you need silkenthread underwear to survive the temperature in certain areas and I want to expand this system with further "ranks" of materials.
Caves, Goblin Dungeons, and the soon to be Undead Dungeons will all be Cold 1, meaning that normal health/energy/mana regeneration will stop unless you have silkenthread underwear on. At the end of each of these 3 encounters will be special resources used for crafting the third rank of materials.
With rank 3 underwear you can proceed to temperature 2 zones: floating islands, lava caves, and water caves. Each of which will in turn have another set of special resources that will allow access to temperature 3 zones, though I don't plan to work on temerature 3 zones just yet.
Once these encounters are in and working I want to move into 0.8 where I plan to revamp the combat math, attributes, and skill trees, as well as finish the job and class trees. During this phase I'll also be working on combat animations and controls, as well as monster skills and abilities.
Moving then into 0.9 I largely plan to focus on improving performance, the user interface, color schemes, better controller support, as well as finishing up multi-lingual support. During 0.9 it's most likely that I'll be adding a main story quest line, though not set in stone.
The real goal is to get a version 1.0 game out that is bug-free, stable, and worth 15-20$, keeping in mind that nothing is capable of pleasing everyone. It's a really hard subject for me to talk about openly, but I haven't really made much profit from early access these past years, and have really just been funding myself with the money I make. Which is pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but Solace Crafting could be so much more if I had enough money to pay for an artist and an animator, for example. That's the real goal for a 1.0 release Q4 2021, because there's still a LOT of stuff we CAN add to make the game everything that it can be. Luckily 99% of the Steam user base has still never heard of Solace Crafting, so there's still a lot of potential to make that dream come true, and is why I think sticking to the core plan towards 1.0 is important.
All in all, progress continues, and there's a lot to look forward! As always I welcome everyone's comments on direction and features. We get into some great discussions in Discord. And a huge thanks to my Patreon supporters that very seriously make all the difference in allowing this project to continue!
Happy gaming!
Condensed patch note v 0.7.5.0 -> 0.7.6.0
- Added 62 Steam Achievements
- Added procedural tower ruins with lootable light sources
- Added rare stalk and timber nodes to underwater areas
- Rare resources and town resources are now generated on a per terrain, deterministic system
- Increased the default spawn rate of rare, elite, and legendary resources
- Changed 3 large cacti to trees for rare spawns
- Removal of items changed from displaying on the right as red to using the color rarity of the item
- Rare resources are now spawned 1 per terrain on default settings, resulting in less uncommon resources
- Toned down swamp flora a bit
Multiplayer
- Home solaces can now be set in multi-player on a per player basis
- Resource scanners now work in MP
System
- Upgraded terrain flattening to allow multiple inputs during generation
- Improved several AI scripts performance
- Added three new world settings and console commands: /showBiomes /showEncounters /showResources
- The will no longer be entirely visible if /showBiomes is disabled in world settings
- Large encounters and town resources can now be seen anywhere on the map if /showEncounters is enabled in world settings
- Rare resources can be scanned anywhere on the map if /showResources is enabled in world settings
- Increased inventory item tier and amount text resolution and added a shadow
- Added the ability to zoom the camera in and out when in targetting mode
- Added the ability to raise and lower the came with shift+mouse wheel
- Added shift+interact to auto-loot monsters
- Camera state and position in regards to player are now saved
Latest patch notes to live/beta:
- Fixed the possibility of tower ruins spawning too close to terrain borders causing errors
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
Join us in Discord!
Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!
Check out the bug / suggestion tracker
Beta v 0.7.5.9
v 0.7.5.9 2021.06.23
- Upgraded terrain flattening to allow multiple inputs during generation
- Now flattening area around
- Improved several AI scripts performance
- Fixed the /showEncounters command not working properly
- Fixed an outdated method causing some town resources to disappear
- Fixed the description for the enchanting table unlock
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.
Join us in Discord!
Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!
Check out the bug / suggestion tracker