Solace Crafting
Beta v 0.7.4.3
Had to roll back the ocean noise change temporarily, and was only able to do so for Windows. Will up a similar change for Linux in the morning, and fix whatever's wrong with it with some good new data I've received.
v 0.7.4.4 2021.04.28
- Rolled back ocean noise changes temporarily
Original Post:
This patch fixes a number of small but impactful bugs with yesterdays patch. The largest of which is something that has been hiding since the biome update, and unfortunately may cause the ground to shift a bit at places where a biome is blending with the ocean biome. This should smooth the biome shifting overall, and create more natural looking features. The map certainly shows the more interesting formations, and there were still some sharp artifacts showing up near the starting area that this change also fixes.
In the event that a shift in height noise has put a building in a funky spot, I've updated the console command:
/forceworldupdate
This will turn the loaded worlds version number backwards, so that when you return to the main menu it will require an "update" which will mark buildings for repositioning. I do not forsee any more changes to noise math in the near future, but this one was important to get in before pushing these changes from beta to live.
v 0.7.4.3 2021.04.28
- Map now updates tiles near the player first
- Updated /forceworldupdate console command
- Fixed the noise offset also offsetting the starter area
- Fixed ocean noise unnecessarily lowering other biomes height math which could also cause sharp edges near the start
- Fixed map tiles going underneath other map tiles sometimes while the map redraws
- Fixed a rotation error positioning icons on the map improperly
- Fixed colors on the map going darker than intended in some cases
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.
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Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
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Beta v 0.7.4.2 - Map improvements
I tried several different ways to get what's called torodial updating to work, wherein you move tiles from the left edge to the right edge or top to bottom and vice versa. It doesn't sound very difficult, but when you're doing it on an undetermined scale, in two dimensions, in varying step sizes, and you're bad at math like me, it ends up being a serious puzzle.
In the end it feels like it was an exercise in simplification. I'm now using a method that tracks positions, checks them against the current desired tiles, and sends those that have fallen out of range to an "unused" bin for recycling, similar to a common system used in game development called pooling.
This system is now generating the map data based on the noise math in runtime, rather than waiting for a terrain to generate it's splatmap when it turns on for the first time and write that out to disk. That means that you can now drag the map around to anywhere and it will load it in, whether you've been there or not. The final step in this series of updates will be to predetermine the locations for encounters, town resources, and rare resources separate from the spawning rules for everything else, so that the map and resources scanners will also be able to show all of those things, whether you've visited them or not.
There are however still some minor problems with the map interface I want to address tomorrow, such as the rulers on the side of the map are not giving correct values (more math), and the map is loading from the bottom to top, as opposed to starting from the middle and building outwards. I wanted to first get the changes as are, up so that our beta testers could give them a whirl and hopefully give me some input or spot any problems I haven't yet uncovered.
There is also still a variety of ways I could make the map load much faster. For example right now, each map tile is 100x100 pixels, and there are 20x20 tiles on the map. Changing each tile to 50x50 pixels would make drawing the map 4 times faster. And that could be a user setting for people to set themselves if they're running on a lower end machine. I'll see how it feels to other players first though.
Additional changes to this patch include player icons with names on mouse over for when connected to multiplayer, as well as the ability to now mouse over solaces to see their names. This too could be a toggle, to be displayed always, without mousing over... I've yet to actually try that, but it wouldn't be hard, and may be better. Please let me know what you think.
I'm supposed to get my stitches removed tomorrow, but it's far from back to normal. Sorry for the sudden delay in everything.
v 0.7.4.2 2021.04.27
- Updated map tile and icon drawing and management methods
- Added other players to the map when in multi-player
- Fixed a math error causing sharp edges around the biome starting area
- Offset the initial noise to reduce the chance of the starting area being surrounded by ocean for new worlds (will not affect already created worlds)
- Added player and solace names to the map on mouseover
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
Had to take a couple days off
Beta v 0.7.4.0 - Biome Generation
When I stopped using a third party tool for world generation last year due to its increasingly slowing performance, it was up to me to develop my own system for biome creation. I always had it in my mind that there would be some day in the future when there would be either procedural biomes, or dozens of hand-crafted biomes. I developed two very different systems to "force" biomes into certain locations after rolling a random number on a table that could do just that, generate any number of biomes. Unfortunately both systems were chunky, very unnatural, and not very perfomant.
Instead, I've for the first time (personally) written a much more normal noise based system that produces very random biomes:
This also brings back the ability to customize the frequency of each biome during world creation, as well as the size of the starting area, the blend distance to be used between biomes, the general scale, or frequency, of the noise used to determine biomes, as well as a new optional archipelago setting:
The archipelago setting will separate mountains and swamps from grasslands and desert with channels of water (whose width you can customize) make travelling around with boats a very viable system, and honestly just makes a lot of cool land formations. I love building on islands and sheer cliffs for some reason. Because of the extreme difference in height between the mountain biome and the ocean biome it is now possible to have quite steep cliff-sides, so I've upgraded the object spawning systems to be able to understand terrain steepness, and can now assign a maximum or minimum slope to any object:
All-in-all I hope it makes for a much more interesting landscape, but the improved performance and capabilities that it offers me under the hood are very real. I have fixed the funky lines that show up on the map in this patch, but for the most part have yet to switch on the new features that I'm working on with the map.
This patch will require a world "update" which will attempt to reposition buildings to the now changed surface height of the new biomes wherever they may end up. Or of course this would be a great time to start a new world, into which you can bring any already made characters. The map update will reset some of the spawned objects and rare object positions, but it won't mess with the biome noise, which is really the only reason I ever need to force a world update.
Outside of all that, I've fixed a few problems with multi-player, and animations in general. One bug that looks like it has been around for a long time was only affecting clients connecting to servers or hosts that turned up their stone spawn frequency, causing server and client resource positions to not match up. Found today and fixed, thanks to a player report!
Thank you so much to everyone that has put up with my mistakes and adventures in coding as I try to bring Solace Crafting to a solid 1.0 release. I know we were in the middle of working on animations, but there was an increasing number of problems and performance issues cropping up due to the old biome system, and wounded ego aside, I'm quite happy to be rid of it.
Work on map improvements continues!
v 0.7.4.0 2021.04.14
- Replaced circular "forced" biome system with a noise based system
- Reduced maximum ocean depth (meaning less deep)
- Added an "archipelago" setting to world creation
- Updated world setting restrictions and added more descriptions
- Added the ability to check the slope of an area for object spawn rules
- Updated MP nametags to reposition themselves based on the height of the player
- Fixed a number of animal animation running twice
- Fixed a number of animals not playing their attack animations
- Fixed MP animations jerking funkily
- Fixed a bug causing clients to load resoures different in MP worlds than the server if the stone spawn frequency was altered
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 0.7.3.6
v 0.7.3.6 2021.04.13
- Improved multi-threading of distant terrain generation
- Disabled an unneccesary physics check eating performance in single player
- Disabled player bound render probe causing performance drops for some players
- Fixed fish throwing errors in multiplayer
- Fixed player animation in multiplayer reverting to a constantly falling animation
- Fixed monoliths not unlocking properly in multiplayer
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 0.7.3.5
Taking a break from that today I answered a few bug reports and made some improvements to general monster AI as well as goblin dungeons. I ended up making the goblin dungeons pretty dark, darker than I had shown while streaming, but added much more prominent light sources with randomized color, so they should still be largely well-lit, with patches of darkness.
I've also gone through all of the building pieces and a lot of in-game decorations making sure that shaders and batching settings are set as they need to be to squeeze out better performance.
There was also a problem where running around the world zero, or any point where four terrain corners meet, would cause terrains to spawn and despawn due to the terrain occupied by the player changing in rapid succession. I fixed this problem a couple weeks ago, but the grass was actually still behaving this way causing lagg spikes. That should now be fixed in this patch as well reducing lagg spikes while running around in a set area such as the starting platform.
v 0.7.3.5 2021.04.06
- Improved a variety of shaders used by different objects
- Improved batching of building pieces
- Improved monster turning, stopping, tracking, and acceleration
- Darkened lighting in goblin dungeons
- Randomized color of torches in goblin dungeons
- Monsters killed will no longer block movement/skill target checks
- Fixed some pathing issues in goblin dungeons
- Fixed grass turning on and off around the starting area causing lag
- Fixed a missing material on standing torches
- Fixed scanners not being placeable in creative mode
- Fixed a bug that could reset game settings when creating a new world
- Fixed goblin dungeons being able to spawn staircases directly underneath staircases creating inaccessible routes
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 0.7.3.4
Since I was working on the character creation interface I cleaned up the code a bit and better situated the camera and zoom functionality so that you can get right up on a characters face, etc. I do also hope to add an edit option to already existing players to let you go back in and change them should you see fit to do so.
I've also improved a couple of small but important methods used during object spawning that will cause spawning order to jumble up a bit and could cause rocks and things to spawn on or around player buildings and town once more. I've also improved the colliders, LOD groups (draw distance managers), and shaders used on a variety of new objects that should increase performance and stop things from spawning insides of some of the new rocks that weren't setup as properly as they should have been.
v 0.7.3.4 2021.03.23
- Improved character creation camera positioning/movement
- Improved biome spawn calculation checks
- Improved player and NPC model generation speed
- Ocean objects can now spawn anywhere underwater regardless of biome
- Fixed sleeping and pausing not working in creative mode
- Fixed cave monsters not working properly due to recent changes
- Fixed fallen logs/stumps not harvesting properly
- Fixed eye coloring
- Fixed some outdated methods interfering with weather patterns
- Fixed cloud coverage average being too high
- Fixed world preview camera
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 0.7.3.3 - Fish, sharks, and octopi
To go with the new ocean biome we now have a few fishies, sharkies, and octopi...ies. To go with new creatures we've got new items include fish meat, ink from octopi, and scales from fish.
I had to craft a new form of AI for the aquatic creatures, and improve the spawning system to be able to spawn underwater things not just on the ground, but anywhere between the ground and the surface of the water. I've also cleaned up the swimming animation transitions a bit, but the main swim animation is still based at the feet of the player making the positioning awkward. I'm hoping to improving swimming next and segue from there into combat animations next week.
As has become common of late I'll first be looking to go through bug reports and forum posts at the start of the week. It's not very efficient for me to be bouncing between a lot of different tasks and builds every day if they're not so severe that they can wait for a few days.
v 0.7.3.3 2021.03.19
- Added pike, salmon, octopi, sharks
- Added ink, fish scales, raw fish, cooked fish
- Land animals should no longer be able to wander or chase into water
- Recall and exit scrolls now require ink
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 0.7.3.2
The ocean biome now has a variety of coral and rocks in it. I've realized today that I'm going to need a new type of AI for aquatic creatures as they'll need to move in 3D, so that's my main goal for tomorrow.
Pushed a first wave of this last night, but had some problems with the fog math. The weather math is still a bit of a work in progress, but it's nearly finished. And now my wife is telephoning me from the bedroom because it's way past my bedtime!
v 0.7.3.2 2021.03.18
- Updated the core weather system to a completely random yet highly controlled system
- Added fog and sky colors to the biome/weather management system
- Added coral and rocks to the ocean floors (WIP)
- Fixed a couple problems with fog math in yesterdays patch
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
Live hotfix v 0.7.2.5
As for this patch, I've added a few new items, bug fixes, and some quality of life features in response to community requests.
On the alchemy skill tree you can now find recall scrolls and exit scrolls. The recipes for these are planned to include some items I'm hoping to add later this week, so they're pretty easy to make right now, but basically one will send you back to your home solace (which you can set to wherever you like) while an exit scroll will take you out of an encounter, such as a cave or a floating island.
Currently exit scrolls are setup to move you directly to the surface of wherever you are. In other words if you travel 500 meters west through a cave system, an exit scroll will move you up to the surface 500 meters west of the cave entrance. I think I'm going to change this to have it return you to the entrance, and will be looking for input on that tomorrow.
As for quality of life improvements, large rocks that can be found in the desert and the grasslands can now be harvested to the point of destruction. They have a base of 450-550 stone and their tier does scale, though they are incapable of spawning as or rewarding rarities. The main reason for this being to provide the option to remove a rock if it's in a spot that's really impeding your building plans, or if a change in the spawning math has caused on to appear on your front door step, as was the case for some players with recent changes to the beta flora.
Crate boxes will now also award greater storehouse storage capacity based on their rarity to the amounts of 100, 150, 300, 500, and 750 for legendary.
Lots more to come!
v 0.7.2.5 2021.03.16
- Added recall scrolls and exit scrolls as alchemy recipes
- Crate boxes will now provide increased storehouse storage based on rarity (replace at least one to recalculate)
- Large rocks in the desert and grasslands are now harvestable
- Fixed town buildings not building for free in creative
- Fixed storehouse torches being marked as owned by Malkere and locked
- Fixed a couple of rare errors in the building UI
- Fixed globes of water not being able to be stored
- Fixed a problem causing shadows to stutter (already implemented on beta)
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