Hi guys,

Here is the planned update for the last week of 2017. Unfortunately not all features we have planned for the "Building Material" Update did make into this weeks build, as we want to make sure all features are as polished as possible. Here's the changelog:

"Renderer Update"

- A number of render optimizations for lower-end videos, resulting in both higher fps and smaller (and fewer) hiccups
- Smaller video memory imprint, especially optimized for lower VRAM adapters (2GB and smaller, respectively)
- Game detects if video RAM is smaller than recommended (1GB). It switches to the alternate (smaller) renderer then
- In case of multi video card systems (laptops) game detects if it is run on the weaker video and informs player to switch the better video on. It should work still, but on the mentioned smaller renderer (until started with the better video on)
- Running with alternate render, video options are disabled (preselected automatically for smallest memory footprint)
- Added option for flat terrain for better optimization, automatically switched on for best performance preset
- Warning when playing with flat terrain option, terrain does not modify physics - for instance there will not be a plough groove if playing in flat terrain mode
- Restored (but smaller than before) bumpiness on the field introduced while working on the field. It does not get introduced with flat terrain option however, so it is optional (depends on terrain settings)
- Terrain detail density on highest terrain setting has been further increased (by 50%), so it may be a few FPS slower on lower video cards - but still it is optional, and better looking
- A bit optimized game loading time (at the crucial 90%). Need feedback on this one though.

NOTE: This is a first version of an alternate render, and working for DirectX11 cards with memory below hardware requirements.
A lot of effort has been put for it to work correctly, but there still may be a few bugs. Please report these, they will be fixed accordingly.

"Building Material Update" - Partially
- Crane minivan (HDS) has crane operational (rotation, extension)
- Building materials are bought in the store (cheaply for now - 10 Eur each set)

NOTE: That said as for a moment we are having bugs with transporting materials using crane and saving/loading these, so bugged functionality is locked for a time being. We should upload a patch with this fixed by Tuesday, January 2nd 2018.

Additional

- Increased harvester fuel usage.
- Fixed mouse vertical movement when in player TAB menu or in dialog choice with Invert Mouse enabled
- Introduced double check for old achievements to make sure older-made achievements are better synchronized with steam achievement system
- Condition shown as health and food altogether, but both health and food can be recognized separately
- Added weather forecast for the next 2 days
- Weather changes differently. If a forecast for a given day is stormy, it can still be sunny in the morning, but it will change later
- Weather for a given day shows the actual prediction for a given day, not the weather at a very given moment. If an icon shows rain and it is still sunny, it will be rainy soon - so the icon is not the actual state, it is a prediction for the rest of the day
- Tow truck can be called not only for a vehicle driven by player. If out of a vehicle but looking at one, tow truck can be called too. This way player can pull out his trailers, headers, ploughs and so on. Just look at a vehicle and turn on TAB menu
- Tow truck used to move to a road quite a bit from a current position. Right now it pulls a vehicle to a nearest point on one of main roads (not all roads, mind you, at least for now, before traffic is introduced)
- Map has railroads marked differently, also a bit more detailed (new compression)
- Increased effectiveness of a new harvester
- Fixed tree and a pole that were hanging in the air behind the Agro store
- Fixed floating fences on Lydia's farm
- Smooth terrain by the store entry
- All the walls in the cellar can be fixed and plastered
- Concrete ceiling in the cellar can be plastered as well
- Handrails on staircases are properly repairing
- Fixes to repairing woods by stairways to the cellar and to the roof
- Chimney in player home can be rebuilt
- Improved effects of plastering ceilings
- Fixed floating air brick wall in the barn (not hanging in the air after repair)
- Fixed glass in the cow barn (after impregnating)
- Dog house can be rebuilt
- Wall in the child room behind the wardrobe can be fixed
- Fixed upper wall in the garage, can be plastered
- Fixed Andrew's gate (it was causing the crash)
- Fixed Andrew's missing scaffolds
- Flat and smooth physics below the manure pump
- More belanced (and lowered) prices for several vehicles
- Better bounding box for HDS
- Proper names for new headers

We wish y'all a great start into 2018!

Your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys,

Here is the planned update for the last week of 2017. Unfortunately not all features we have planned for the "Building Material" Update did make into this weeks build, as we want to make sure all features are as polished as possible. Here's the changelog:

"Renderer Update"

- A number of render optimizations for lower-end videos, resulting in both higher fps and smaller (and fewer) hiccups
- Smaller video memory imprint, especially optimized for lower VRAM adapters (2GB and smaller, respectively)
- Game detects if video RAM is smaller than recommended (1GB). It switches to the alternate (smaller) renderer then
- In case of multi video card systems (laptops) game detects if it is run on the weaker video and informs player to switch the better video on. It should work still, but on the mentioned smaller renderer (until started with the better video on)
- Running with alternate render, video options are disabled (preselected automatically for smallest memory footprint)
- Added option for flat terrain for better optimization, automatically switched on for best performance preset
- Warning when playing with flat terrain option, terrain does not modify physics - for instance there will not be a plough groove if playing in flat terrain mode
- Restored (but smaller than before) bumpiness on the field introduced while working on the field. It does not get introduced with flat terrain option however, so it is optional (depends on terrain settings)
- Terrain detail density on highest terrain setting has been further increased (by 50%), so it may be a few FPS slower on lower video cards - but still it is optional, and better looking
- A bit optimized game loading time (at the crucial 90%). Need feedback on this one though.

NOTE: This is a first version of an alternate render, and working for DirectX11 cards with memory below hardware requirements.
A lot of effort has been put for it to work correctly, but there still may be a few bugs. Please report these, they will be fixed accordingly.

"Building Material Update" - Partially
- Crane minivan (HDS) has crane operational (rotation, extension)
- Building materials are bought in the store (cheaply for now - 10 Eur each set)

NOTE: That said as for a moment we are having bugs with transporting materials using crane and saving/loading these, so bugged functionality is locked for a time being. We should upload a patch with this fixed by Tuesday, January 2nd 2018.

Additional

- Increased harvester fuel usage.
- Fixed mouse vertical movement when in player TAB menu or in dialog choice with Invert Mouse enabled
- Introduced double check for old achievements to make sure older-made achievements are better synchronized with steam achievement system
- Condition shown as health and food altogether, but both health and food can be recognized separately
- Added weather forecast for the next 2 days
- Weather changes differently. If a forecast for a given day is stormy, it can still be sunny in the morning, but it will change later
- Weather for a given day shows the actual prediction for a given day, not the weather at a very given moment. If an icon shows rain and it is still sunny, it will be rainy soon - so the icon is not the actual state, it is a prediction for the rest of the day
- Tow truck can be called not only for a vehicle driven by player. If out of a vehicle but looking at one, tow truck can be called too. This way player can pull out his trailers, headers, ploughs and so on. Just look at a vehicle and turn on TAB menu
- Tow truck used to move to a road quite a bit from a current position. Right now it pulls a vehicle to a nearest point on one of main roads (not all roads, mind you, at least for now, before traffic is introduced)
- Map has railroads marked differently, also a bit more detailed (new compression)
- Increased effectiveness of a new harvester
- Fixed tree and a pole that were hanging in the air behind the Agro store
- Fixed floating fences on Lydia's farm
- Smooth terrain by the store entry
- All the walls in the cellar can be fixed and plastered
- Concrete ceiling in the cellar can be plastered as well
- Handrails on staircases are properly repairing
- Fixes to repairing woods by stairways to the cellar and to the roof
- Chimney in player home can be rebuilt
- Improved effects of plastering ceilings
- Fixed floating air brick wall in the barn (not hanging in the air after repair)
- Fixed glass in the cow barn (after impregnating)
- Dog house can be rebuilt
- Wall in the child room behind the wardrobe can be fixed
- Fixed upper wall in the garage, can be plastered
- Fixed Andrew's gate (it was causing the crash)
- Fixed Andrew's missing scaffolds
- Flat and smooth physics below the manure pump
- More belanced (and lowered) prices for several vehicles
- Better bounding box for HDS
- Proper names for new headers

We wish y'all a great start into 2018!

Your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys,

We have pushed a Non-Roadmap Update live. Here's the changelog:

- Increased distance of seeing NPC names in ES
- Increased capacity of a new trailer (to 11,000)
- Old manure spreader capacity increased to 10,000
- Field price increased by 30%, cents eliminated
- Area seen as fertized is precisely the same as actually fertilized
- More strict and accurate calculations of field status. For example using manure for the whole field will result in 100% manure coverage (it used to lose a few percent in info display)
- Increased hungry animals death day to 9, to avoid them dying while player is in long rest (they will die however if have been hungry before the rest, just not while they actually get hungry while player is resting)
- Fixed bumping and shaking on a cultivated/sown field. It was felt especially with larger vehicles like harvesters. BUT these have to be cultivated/sown - old fields (loaded from save) will remain bumpy until worked on again
- New and additional English voice overs
- Added separate slider controlling voice volume only

Happy Holidays,
your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys,

We have pushed a Non-Roadmap Update live. Here's the changelog:

- Increased distance of seeing NPC names in ES
- Increased capacity of a new trailer (to 11,000)
- Old manure spreader capacity increased to 10,000
- Field price increased by 30%, cents eliminated
- Area seen as fertized is precisely the same as actually fertilized
- More strict and accurate calculations of field status. For example using manure for the whole field will result in 100% manure coverage (it used to lose a few percent in info display)
- Increased hungry animals death day to 9, to avoid them dying while player is in long rest (they will die however if have been hungry before the rest, just not while they actually get hungry while player is resting)
- Fixed bumping and shaking on a cultivated/sown field. It was felt especially with larger vehicles like harvesters. BUT these have to be cultivated/sown - old fields (loaded from save) will remain bumpy until worked on again
- New and additional English voice overs
- Added separate slider controlling voice volume only

Happy Holidays,
your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys, as you can read in the Roadmap thread in the Forum, we had to push back the "Controller Update". Instead here we go with "Maintenence Update 2" - this is the changelog:

- Shortened growth cycle in greenhouse by approx. 30%
- Crops ripe faster by around 30%
- Initial border for sowing crops to survive to next season moved earlier, to the beginning of August (so sown after beginning of August should be ok next season)
- Added option to rest for a week (also player bed, but with Enter key) with proper prompt
- Fixed bugs of seeds being remembered from a previous game after starting new game without exiting
- Fixed rare bug of messing with field states during loading older game from a current game

Best,
Your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys, as you can read in the Roadmap thread in the Forum, we had to push back the "Controller Update". Instead here we go with "Maintenence Update 2" - this is the changelog:

- Shortened growth cycle in greenhouse by approx. 30%
- Crops ripe faster by around 30%
- Initial border for sowing crops to survive to next season moved earlier, to the beginning of August (so sown after beginning of August should be ok next season)
- Added option to rest for a week (also player bed, but with Enter key) with proper prompt
- Fixed bugs of seeds being remembered from a previous game after starting new game without exiting
- Fixed rare bug of messing with field states during loading older game from a current game

Best,
Your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys, following the Roadmap here is the changelog for the "Maintenance Update":

- A bit more visible effects of manure and artificial fertilizer
- More shallow plow ridge (easier plowing work).
- Fixed possible saving problems while not connected to Steam
- Max inventory item amount increased to 9999
- Cow price reduced to 500
- All crops should survive seasons (within reason, these are not immortal)
- Found and fixed bug of crashing during harvesting large fields
- Properly sorting displayed hay, so that it should always show ok
- No plowing quests should be directed to fields with growing crops
- Increased award for plowing quests (by 100%)
- No seed destruction
- Increased condition warning repeating time by 50% (hungry, sleepy)
- Faster detection of bales to pick up & put on trailer
- Faster detection of eggs to pick up
- Increased amount of eggs added if henhouse is fixed
- Increased amount of milk given if cow barn is fixed
- Improved grass (planted) lods
- Quests from NPCs ("!") should properly delete waypoint upon completion (not for quests continued from save, should be ok for all new quests)
- Building store door open, to (temporarily) pick up building materials from there as well

Best,
Your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys, following the Roadmap here is the changelog for the "Maintenance Update":

- A bit more visible effects of manure and artificial fertilizer
- More shallow plow ridge (easier plowing work).
- Fixed possible saving problems while not connected to Steam
- Max inventory item amount increased to 9999
- Cow price reduced to 500
- All crops should survive seasons (within reason, these are not immortal)
- Found and fixed bug of crashing during harvesting large fields
- Properly sorting displayed hay, so that it should always show ok
- No plowing quests should be directed to fields with growing crops
- Increased award for plowing quests (by 100%)
- No seed destruction
- Increased condition warning repeating time by 50% (hungry, sleepy)
- Faster detection of bales to pick up & put on trailer
- Faster detection of eggs to pick up
- Increased amount of eggs added if henhouse is fixed
- Increased amount of milk given if cow barn is fixed
- Improved grass (planted) lods
- Quests from NPCs ("!") should properly delete waypoint upon completion (not for quests continued from save, should be ok for all new quests)
- Building store door open, to (temporarily) pick up building materials from there as well

Best,
Your Toplitz & UMEO Team

Hi guys,

just fixed the small bug introduced with 0.49, 2017 12 17. Changelog:

- Fixed bug of auto unhitching 3 point attachments (The "Can't unhitch" bug)

Hi guys,

just fixed the small bug introduced with 0.49, 2017 12 17. Changelog:

- Fixed bug of auto unhitching 3 point attachments (The "Can't unhitch" bug)