Hey everyone, I think it’s about time we gave you some insight into how development of our next major update is going. Spoiler alert: It’s going great!
Just to remind you, this update is not live yet. This update contains some ambitious plans, the main features we mentioned before are:
Friendship and Roomie System
Our next update mainly concerns Staxel’s quirky villagers. We’re adding tons more dialogue content and progression to them and you’ll be able to get to know them all a whole lot better.
If there’s a particular villager you’re getting along with super well, you’ll even be able to roomie up with them!
Pet Shop
This will be the main hub for anything related to your fluffy companion. The store will sell pet accessories, tools, and even some new pets - sorry Fido!
Pets are one of the aspects we’ve received an overwhelming amount of requests to add on to. Having this system in place will mean we can easily add new pet breeds to Staxel without too much fuss.
New Festival
As development continues we’re trying to add more and more festivals. The 1.3 update includes a mysterious new Springtime festival, but I don’t want to give away too much on it just yet. We’re sure you’ll all love it though!
So now that we’ve covered what you’ve got to look forward to, let’s talk about the current stage we’re at with everything.
All of the new dialogue and quests have been written up and are currently with the translators. There’s a whole bunch of new text in this one as you’d expect, we really wanted to put the focus on the villagers and give them a lot more depth. In the meantime, we’re busy making sure everything is implemented correctly and we’re about to enter the testing phase, (we need to make sure that absolutely everything is working correctly and that none of the new features could possibly end up breaking the game).
Besides being busy with that, we’ve been sprinkling in some all-new content along the way! While most of the team are busy with implementation and testing, others have been working on some fun new items you’ll be able to get in the game. (Particularly some Summer-themed ones!) Now, I have no intentions of spoiling all the new content but I can give you a cheeky glimpse at some of the new Summer stuff at least.
Along with these delicious summery treats, we’re adding swimsuits, beach gear, and toys! Take some time off from the farm and go enjoy the beach! Did somebody say water gun fight?
I’m going to stop it here though before I get in trouble.
We can’t wait for 1.3 to go live, we’ve all been working very hard on it! This update contains a lot of changes to how Staxel will be played, and we think everyone will enjoy what it will bring to the table. The villagers are much more fleshed out now, and with another festival in the pool you will all be able to celebrate the release of 1.3 in style!
Thanks everyone for giving this a read, I hope you’re all as pumped for 1.3 as we are! I can’t give you a specific release date, but what I can say is it’s not long now!
Early Development
Hey everyone! Today I thought we’d do something a little different. This article is going to take us back to Staxel’s humble beginnings where we’ll take a look at some old screenies and concept art. Enjoy!
Staxel’s been through a lot these past 4 years. Starting in 2014 it was originally going to be a puzzle game until the team decided to steer it towards the farming, village-life game it is today!
Originally you were going to be based on a farm that was transported into the middle of a waste land, along with other ‘divots’ of land from other parts of the world. These ‘divots’ were going to contain a puzzle to solve. The reason we moved away from this idea was because creating these divots proved to be far too time consuming to create just one, where we wanted a lot more.
The first two years were heavily focused on engine work. Staxel uses a custom engine which has been developed in-house since the start of the project. While we’re constantly working and improving on our engine, the real content only started being put in a couple of years into development. As you can see above it was well worth the effort! We still have this server somewhere, and us devs boot it up once in a blue moon for a lil’ bit of nostalgia.
Here’s the first mockup we did for one of our original Staxel characters, “Jen”. It’s actually pretty close to the mark when you look at the style we finally settled on. The main differences being the upper body and the level of detail each villager has.
And here is the very first Staxel character, our mascot, Harry. I don’t remember exactly what we were working on when we were adding these but I think it might have been rendering. We had hundreds of these titans scattered across the game world, forever looming over the players. I must say, logging in was much less terrifying once these were taken out.
Here’s a screenie of when we were working on the render distance. This one was taken before we’d done any fine tuning on the world gen, and before we had thought of the idea of an island. Back then the world generated infitely. We decided to go with an island because we felt the player didn’t need an infinite amount of space and thought it would take focus away from the farming and village life aspect of Staxel.
I’m going to finish up with this old gem. This one was taken within the first couple months of development, where we jokingly titled it ‘Wardrobe Simulator 2014’. It’s always so bizzare going through these old screencaps and realising how far Staxel has come! While Staxel is all well and good now, I sure am going to miss all those wardrobes.
1.3 Update
Hi Staxivilians
We've been quite busy with bug fixing and design but we're ready to share news of our next major update.
💞 Friendship System Work has started on our friendship system, this will consist of the following
Each Villager has a storyline to follow
Give gifts, help them out or talk to them to increase your friendship level with your favourite villagers
Once you reach a new friendship level new events will trigger to learn more about them.
At the highest level you can get your favourite villagers to become your roomie
🐶 Pet Shop
You will be able to build a pet shop in your town which will allow you to buy new pets, customise them and some other small features
There may be some new pets to choose from too, but you'll have to wait and see!
🌽 Crop Quality
You will be able to grow and cultivate better quality crops depending on the soil you plant them in and how you take care of them while growing
Better quality vegetables will give you more money, better recipes and may even win you a prize
There may even be some rarer vegetables to grow for the ultimate farmers out there.
🎆 More Festivals
Keep an eye on Max as he tries to bring more festivities to your little village
🐛 General Bug Fixing
As usual we will continue to work on bugs to make your play experience even better
Patch Notes for Sapling 1.2.21 (180406a)
Patch Notes from Sapling 1.2.13 (180311a) to Sapling 1.2.21 (180406a):
Thanks for sticking with us. A couple of new features have been added and a lot of bugs have been fixed.
Some Important announcements:
Those who are running into a black screen issue, we may have a new solution to the problem. You can try the following;
Find Staxel in your Steam library.
Either Right Click on Staxel and select “Launch Game without MSAA” or Start up Staxel and select the same launch option.
Staxel may be able to start now.
As well as that, there is now an option in Modmanager to completely wipe all mods from the game. This will remove any forgotten files as well. It is recommended to do the following if you have been playing with mods since more than a month ago.
Start Mod Manager.
Once started, click on “Tools” and then “Remove all Modded Files”.
You can reinstall all mods after doing this. (Doing this will also no longer spam as many notifications.)
New:
Sponge tool. You can collect and place water with this.
Achievement rewards. You’ll receive a mail on how to get these when you get your first reward.
You can regrow trees by planting saplings. (You can find the recipe for Saplings in the crafting tab.)
New options menu option. Horizontal 3rd person offset.
Added a Slight Camera Smoothing effect.
A sound will play when night transition is finished.
Changes:
Multiple animations should now blend together better. You can drink properly while you sit now.
Recipes now correctly show what item you get from them.
Removed the human ears on Caiths. Hairstyles should also be more consistent. (Not missing jewels etc)
All animal stats are now stored when crating. (Even pets) No more free reseting.
Museum now checks for tile categories instead of tiles.
Stick bugs have been rotated and now will appear on the side of wood blocks. This increases the rate at which you can find them.
The regions of Postboxes/Signs has been slightly extended vertically. Takes affect on new worlds or when breaking/replacing them.
Trees can now have colour variation.
Merchants will wait a moment before restarting their dialogue again when being spam clicked.
Loading screen is now shown when teleporting the player.
Removed the postbox on the farm as the player is given one.
Changed the Clocks in the Town Hall to not all make sound on new worlds.
Made the transition in/out Map Mode nicer.
The launcher will now stay up until the game launches. It will also have an icon during this period.
Sometimes when finishing dialogue, a notification will appear saying that the journal has been updated.
Added some debugging tools to work out the Black Screen Bug.
Fossil rocks now have collision.
/toggleTimePassing was added to toggle time. /stoptime will eventually be changed.
Letters and balloons have been rotated in the hand.
A number of placeholder models have been changed.
Volume of placement sounds were raised.
Festival totems are now unbreakable during festivals.
Clock hands now go into the middle.
Chat is now hidden on night transition.
Some decorative plants now drop themselves.
The pet house from the Creative Menu will always spawn a random pet now.
Hedges now have auto tiling.
Changed how the Client works to better hint drivers.
Camera Command now gives feedback on what went wrong.
Slowed running animation slightly.
Adjusted Farm Fan’s movement and leading mechanics to not require the player to be as close.
Allow you to switch colours for the Character Generator background.
Fixes:
Polishers counting to Fossil achievements.
Fix pets being permanently ill.
Fixed a bug where pets would get their hunger incremented twice per day.
Fixed an issue with pets that shouldn’t be alive due to not having a house anymore.
Farm Fan will now repeat “Find Max” dialogue when talking to her after completing the tutorial but not handed in the registration letter. (Also gives an extra copy of the letter if needed.)
Fixed double/overlapping music.
Fixed music no longer fading between tracks.
Fix seeds going to where the cursor is, rather than the place they were meant to be placed.
Some plants with BreakOnSeasonChange, will now delete the tile if the player is around on Season Change. This does not affect tiles further than a bit away. (i.e. Some snow piles will dissappear, but not all.)
Fixed an issue where player list will never update with some players.
Fixed inventory selling not using the correct stack of items.
Fixed creative catalogue buying replacing full sized stacks.
Fixed old notifications showing when changing worlds.
Fixed an issue where certain blocks caused a jittering effect on the camera when walking up them.
Fixed the game’s resolution not defaulting to monitor resolution on resetting options.
Try to give an actual error to the client when the server disconnects them.
Fixed an issue with waking up at midnight while in the middle of fishing.
Fixed some issues with Multiplayer Server list not updating correctly.
/enablecheats and /op now correctly allow the Debug options menu to appear.
An issue with beach edges not counting as beach biomes.
Fixed an issue where docks could find a null entry and pass that on.
Fixed issues with parts of the Player not resetting between worlds. This caused issues with the journal.
Attempt to remove old duplicate bug entities from older worlds.
Fixed some recipes being carve instead of tile.
Fixed an issue where you could get the Talking with Farm Fan by clicking on her while too far away.
Fixed the wrong notification displaying for shipping dock in certain circumstances.
Fixed a hardcoded spawn offset in spawners. They will change depending on tile height.
Hardened the game against modded collectables disappearing. These caused issues after removing a mod.
Fixed some memory leaking in some functions.
Allow the player to interact with things while the debug tools and Creative shovel are in hand.
Fixed another money overflow issue.
Fixed certain tiles (e.g. clocks) not having the right model show. Also fixes collision on these tiles.
Changed how some of the chunk detailing worked.
Attempt some sneaky fixes to try and get the graphics driver to use the right graphics card.
Fix not all translations showing when the list got too long.
Fix parsing multiple of the same argument to the client.
Fix an issue with mail after opening the journal.
Fix firing off too many threads on machines with low powered cpus.
Modding:
Mod Manager now displays much much less Notifications when installing files. (When installing a lot of new mods, it will display 1 message per mod with DLLs. When reinstalling mods it won’t show any messages.)
Fixed Mod Manager reinstalling all files, instead of just the ones needed updates, when detecting updates.
When Sxlmods no longer exist, show a single message rather than multiple.
Made Mod Manager more tolerant of a missing mod folder.
Reduced the number of notifications when mods install outside of mod manager.
Added an icon to the content builder window. And bring that window to the front.
Modmanager will no longer run certain content build validations. Should be faster to complete as well. (Content Builder itself will still use these.)
Cleaned up some code with Mod manager’s startup. Should be slightly faster.
Tile States on Tiles are now checked on a revalidate.
(Code) Universe.CanRemoveTile can optionally output a notification when failing.
(Code) Added CanInteractWithTile and CanInteractWithEntity to ModHookV3. (Which inherits ModHookV2)
Items now have a “usableRange” property which adjusts how far you can use the item. (Defaults to 10 blocks.)
(Code) Added TryGetTotemsOfType in Village. Allows you to get all totems with the same code within the village.
Fixed the Hard limit on Species count in Character Generator.
Some Assetmanager bindings have been updated.
Fixed an issue in AssetManager where editing a path would almost always fail.
Added “placementPreviewVariant” to Tiles. This makes sure the right alt model is always used for preview. (Defaults to random alt when not used.)
Added “iconVariant” to Tiles. This shows the specified alt model in the hand. (Defaults to random alt when not used).
“duration” on crafting reactions must now be non-zero if they are included in the file.
Translations now properly support having duplicate replacement values. (e.g. “notif.text={0} {0} {0}” is now supported.)
(Code) Notifications now use “GetTranslatedText” which should return an already translated string.
(Code) Items now have “GetItemTranslation” and “GetItemDescription” which will give the item name.
(Code) Items can now be used in Notification Params. (Used primarily by dialogue).
Client Console now only needs a file that starts with “showconsole”
Patch Note Compilation (02/03/2018 to 20/03/2018)
There have been a number of updates since the Journal and Museum update 2 weeks ago. We have been working hard in order to make the game more stable, and have fixed a large number of issues.
We won’t be posting any new patches until the 28th. This is due to some of our Dev team being in the middle of a trip. However the next update after that time will feature a large number of fixes!
Here is the list of patch notes since the 1.2 update;
New:
Left-handed mode is now working again after a long time out. Can be found under Other in options menu.
Camera Height option is added to the options menu.
Journal and Selfie mode are now rebindable from the defaultControlBindings.config
New server option added. noPause. Disables pausing when noone is on the server.
Added Spanish, Brazilian and Russian languages. (New russian font since 1.2.7)
Changes:
Lowered size of objects on shelves.
The fancier displays can no longer be bought from Catalogue. You’ll need to earn them now.
Animals can be pushed around better now.
Fossil polisher output adjusted to not sink into table.
Changes to some food models and petal models.
Fossils spawn about 20% as often as before.
Slight increase in most crop prices. Small changes to other prices.
Fixes:
Added client side verification of bundles given by servers.
Removed SlimDX from Staxel and use FNA’s controller handling instead. Should no longer have issues with SlimDX not being found.
A try at fixing locked controls when alt-tabbing.
A try at fixing the Grey screen reappearing after waking up from night transition.
Fixed Bugs/Fossils having a reduced spawn rate under certain conditions.
No longer spawn more than the single vorlen spawner when the player has one already.
Fix Smoker not interacting with the top half of apiaries.
Changed windowed mode transition, should perform closer to expected now.
A number of background changes when dealing with data.
Increased the size of smaller outlines.
Fixed Mail crashing due to parsing an old staxel version from file. (Pre 1.0 versions.)
Remove old collectable items if they no longer exist / no longer have a collectable component.
Added some achievement verification.
A number of background changes to engine code.
Fix animals not respecting doors.
Fix a crash when looking at a bug with the Net.
Fix another case of getting the wrong bug when catching.
Other Catchable bug fixes.
Fix a null pointer when a pet desync from their house.
Other Entity Fixes.
Fixed a bug where you couldn’t maximise the window after changing from fullscreen/borderless.
Some achievement crashes.
Fixed a null reference when audio system failed.
Fixed some compaction issues with Networking.
Some other fixes to networking issues. (Specifically issues appearing while joining modded servers.)
Some other behind the scenes issues.
Fix for very old worlds allowing infinite catching of bugs.
Fix world crashing due to broken rights conflict. It will rename the broken file and generate a new one instead.
Fix beaches not counting the shoreline as beach.
If a corrupted world happens, continue the game rather than hard crashing.
Added a buffer to steam networking. Send fewer small packets.
Change to handling of chunks which speed up the game.
Some other changes behind the scenes.
Remove old entities, that can't be made, from the world.
Some changes to logging/debugging behind the scenes.
Modding:
(Code) TextureVertexDrawable is now public.
(Code) You can add in your own dialogue commands in by inheriting IDialogueCommandBuilder.
Mods are added to our logs now.
Use /debugGraphics to see Debug graphics. (Code) You can draw debug graphics using the DebugGraphics class.
Removed some unused stuff in Reactions. (“allReagents” no longer exists.)
Mod manager now uninstalls using the .manifest file, only falling back to the sxlmod when it fails to read.
Clarified some item spawning errors.
Dialogue commands now verify a lot of their input before starting the game.
Introducing Staxel 1.2!
Staxel 1.2 is here!
With Staxel 1.2 we bring new features, countless bug fixes, and a more stable experience. In this post we'll be walking you through some of the most noteworthy changes that we’ve implemented.
The journal is our realisation of an incredibly useful feature that many of you have been requesting since launch. In its present state (as of 1.2), the journal provides an overview of all your ongoing quests. In future revisions, it will also provide detailed logs of your conversations with the villagers, keep track your relationships, let you jot down important notes you don't want to forget, and provide access to a nifty calendar!
Finally, a place to show off and display all of your discoveries! The museum will bring a dash of history to the village and its surroundings. Visitors near and far will marvel at your latest finds! That is, if you decide to donate them to the museum instead of keeping them for your personal collection!
With the addition of the museum, there are new collectables to find! Perhaps you’ll come across a Murmur merchant selling an antiquated work of art, or maybe you’ll excavate the bones of an ancient creature!
Max has finally managed to secure postal coverage for the village! The postal system will turn your static post box into a working one! Receive newsletters from the mayoral office, advertisements from the stores, gifts from the villagers, and all the other joys (and aggravations) that come with any mail service!
Excavate rare fossil stones you find dotted around the island and put them through the fossil polisher. If you’re lucky you might find the remnants of a terrifying predator!
Decorate your home with your findings, or put them on display in your new Museum—under Max’s rather lax policies, whatever you find is yours to keep!
The villagers will now be much more grateful when you help them out of a jam! Better rewards and more acknowledgment can be expected for a job well done.
The village is always growing, but perhaps not quite in the ways you might expect. In 1.2, you’ll welcome two new villagers to the island, but they won’t be coming by the usual routes! We hope you’ll give them a warm welcome and solve their rather...unique situations!
We've been constantly tweaking the economy ever since release to try get it to a more sustainable and enjoyable place. While there are still improvements to be made, we believe we're much closer to the mark now!
That's all for the larger features in this update, but there are many more adjustments and tweaks that you might notice during gameplay. You can find full patch notes that detail these changes below:
____________________________________________________________
Changelog 1.2
Updates from 1.1.51 to 1.2.4
Big things:
Mail system. You can now receive mail.
Journal. Press J to see your current daily quests and main quests.
Museum sign. You can make a museum now.
Two New NPCs.
A lot of stuff to put in the museum.
A large number of item prices have been changed.
New reward items.
New:
Added “/plantwithering”. Turns on/off plant withering. Only recommended for large servers/build servers.
You can turn stone and wood back into their original blocks.
Added Sushi and Ice-cream recipes. Updates to other food recipes.
Name tags now show on map
Changes:
Food doesn’t get used in creative mode.
Pot plant beds don’t trigger house bed counts.
Commands can now except blobs again. (e.g. /spawnitem {“kind”: “staxel.item.NullItem”})
Wooden Pole Fence T and X appear in autotiling.
Trough should be clearer about why it can’t be filled.
Fixes:
Forced a minimum size of particle. (Fixes crashes due to 0 size.)
Lots of catchable fixes (catching bugs should no longer give you the wrong bug).
Fixed double Music track issues.
Fixed music playing in Mono.
Fixed ambient sound carrying to Main Menu.
Fixed totems displaying a notification on new scans.
Fixed a number of Steam Networking issues.
Sound should be playing in the correct ears now.
Selfie mode is disabled when going to sleep.
Catching all bugs should now be possible.
Fix fishing bobble particles not showing.
A number of behind the scenes changes/fixes to Entity Saving and Loading.
Fixed UI paths failing when they have spaces in them
Fixed Aristaeus achievement failing to trigger
Modding:
Patch Note Compilation
From this point onwards, patch notes will be compiled and shared in a biweekly post. This way, we won't clutter the announcements section while still giving major improvements and additions to Staxel the spotlight they deserve.
We will keep this section readable and succinct. For more detailed and technical patch notes, see http://wiki.playstaxel.com/Changelog
Brief Overview:
New Stuff:
Staxel is now running in 64 Bit:
Staxel now uses FNA.
Cards and Emotes are now avaliable!
Steam Networking.
New camera mode, “Selfie Mode”, when pressing X.
New hats.
New recipes.
Flowers drop petals for crafting.
Commands can now get players with spaces in names by surrounding names with “”. (i.e. /kickplayer “Hah You Can’t Kick Me”)“
Tutorial Skip for players who have been through the tutorial once before.
Text Speed option. It can be made 5x faster.
Due to 64bit, the following changes have occured:
Less Out Of Memory Errors. Less Purple Screens.
Improved lower end performance. Performance Stability should be increased.
Graphics Card usage is down.
Disk Usage is down.
Note: Reported memory usage (RAM) is up. This is due to Staxel not hiding memory in the Page File anymore.
Changes:
All postboxes and signs (Totems) have two tiers. Shops won’t immediately die when you take their boxes. Important signs also give a warning when you break them.
A lot of price changes have been made.
A lot of work has been done to lower Hard drive usage. It is now under control.
World generation and Level Of Detail generation have been sped up.
Tutorial changes, most for those not the admin of the server.
Animal behaviour is more reliable. They also have more trouble jumping over fences. (Still an area we are working on.)
Fixes:
A large number of fixes were made. Game should crash less, and more systems should work as expected.
Staxel is now 64bit :) (Sapling 1.1.51)
Staxel is now 64bit with the help of the FNA and SDL libraries :)
Moving off the old DirectX9 and 32bit limits unto OpenGL
This should fix a number of crashes, fix the annoying 'purple screen' bug and allows us to put more content into the game without running out of memory so quickly :)
This update might break some mods, please update the mods or uninstall them, if issues persist please try the following:
New:
*The steam launcher will ask to reinstall dependencies if the game doesn’t start.
Changes:
*All non-festival totems are searchable again.
*Stone and Sand had their buy prices and sell prices lowered.
*Light Wooden block has been increased to 10 blocks per craft.
*Combining Station is now in the Building store.
*Cat House and Dog House are now limited to 1 per stack.
*Changes to Dialogue to make Daily Quests show up occasionally when talking to Riah or Emilia.
*Removed Infobox from character creator.
*Filter is case insensitive now.
Fixes:
*Aliza, Riah and Emilia will no longer crash while talking to them. (You can buy replacement totems again.)
*You can now walk through the Garden Arch and Japanese arch.
*Fixed crash after picking fruit from apple tree.
*Fixed notifications having the wrong name in them.
*Fixed a case where game version wasn’t being sent to server.
Modding:
*Asset Manager’s “Build and Validate” now Validates then Builds, rather than Build then Build. Also reload the system after doing so.
*Clarified an error when having multiple layers named the same thing in models.
Full Steam Ahead
Hi everyone! It’s been crazy since release so we’ve been busy processing all the feedback we’ve received.
We want to let you know our goals for the next major update so that you know what to expect.
1: Improved steam networking We know some people have had some trouble setting up servers and playing with their friends. Since this is a big part of our game we want to make it as easy as possible.
We’re currently looking into improving steam networking so it won’t be difficult for new players or people who don’t know how to port forward.
2: Journal to track your progress and goals After hearing that some people get lost or don’t know what they need to do in game, we’ve decided to implement a journal that will contain a lot of info and will track your progress along with any quests you have.
For example, what buildings you have been asked to make or who to deliver that package to!
We hope this will create a better experience for people who want to have all that info in one place.
3: Museum We’ll be adding a museum questline which will allow you to add a museum to your village.
Add your bugs and fish to complete it so that you and your friends can view your collections in style.
4: More quests and stories We’ll be adding more quests and stories for villagers so that you can continue helping out the people in your town.
This will also include better gifts for helping them out so it will be more rewarding !
In addition to that you will also see us upload small updates with bigfixes and small changes.
The very rough timeline we have for all these features to be implemented is around 1 month.
We look forward to sharing these updates with you soon and that they make your experience in Staxel better.
