After an episode of heat exhaustion, my sympathetic nervous system broke down, and has yet to recover. It's been a very weird experience. Sometimes I fell fine and the next morning I'm a mess. It's apparently normal to take up to or even over a month to repair, and I'm coming up soon on one month. It is however likely I will not be online for another few days as I am trying to make sure that this goes away for good.

I know there are a number of small but debilitating bugs floating around, but I have to take care of this before anything else.

This was in part caused by my long running addiction to a certain very stress enducing video game and I'd like to take this moment to remind everyone how important your health, hydration, and sleep really are. Even more so after 40!

Stay safe, and happy gaming!

Kyle Postlewait
AKA Malkere

Due to a technical decision that was made early in the development of the recent localization revamp there ended up being quite a few unforeseen bugs brought into the game. Several patches were made slowly remedying the problems, but the underlying cause wasn't being addressed and more and more little problems kept cropping up. This patch instead, though it took longer, refactors the main problem from its origin and has fixed most of the problems based on initial tests.

As I should have done with the first wave of localization patches, this patch will first be placed on beta to be sure that it doesn't have anything catastrophically wrong with it. However, given the state of the current live branch, it's likely that this will be pushed live by tomorrow.

Once these more major problems are out of the way I am planning to shift my attention to focus purely on bug fixing and a variety of quality of life improvement requests that have been floating around for a while.

v 1.0.4.17 2023.07.27
- Refactored localization system to fix the root of a variety of recent bugs related to stats, skills, recipes, and monster abilities
- Improved breath and temperature logic
- Improved effect and buff logic
- Fixed effects reapplying repeatedly
- Fixed a skill upgrading issue
- Fixed players saving in caves reloading their position improperly in MP
- Fixed an instance where client data could be not saved properly in multi-player
- Fixed a harmless error related to monster sounds
- Fixed cave changes not being saved properly in some cases in multi-player

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

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?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Not gonna lie, it's been a rough few weeks. Made some bad calls, rushed out some patches, and have been scrambling to get things sorted out. Unfortunately, I got so sick last week that I couldn't even watch TV for more than 15 minutes without getting dizzy. Heat exhaustion is weird, and I still haven't recovered 100% 10 days later.

This recent series of patches has sorted the majority of the problems out but there are still some smaller problems I am working on. In particular, a lot of people's skill points got messed up with a localization error several patches ago. This most recent patch should sort the majority of these out, though they may still reset if you load a character in a different language than they were last saved in. I will continue to improve those and other systems so these side-effects don't linger.

v 1.0.4.12 2023.07.19
- Fixed terraforming data not being properly factured when being sent to clients causing general loss of control of characters
- Fixed an issue with skills getting overriden, this may cause an initial reset of bought skills in some skill trees

v 1.0.4.11 2023.07.18
- Fixed a subsequent timing error causing the first 4 terrains to load using an incorrect world seed

v 1.0.4.10 2023.07.18
- Fixed several intialization timing issues causing a number of multi-player problems

v 1.0.4.9 2023.07.17
- Fixed a performance issue with AOE attacks
- Fixed an incorrect map marker
- Fixed an issue with disappearing towers
- Fixed a bug causing some skill descriptions to not show up

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

I have received a number of reports that the F key for interacting with objects is not working for some first time players but have not been able to reproduce the problem, nor is it something most players are encountering. In order to help track down the cause, if anyone experiencing this problem could tell me their OS, OS language, whether they have any controllers or joysticks plugged in, and if possible send me their cfg.dat and player.log files found under:
C:\Users\<you>\AppData\LocalLow\Big Kitty Games\Solace Crafting\
That would be most appreciated 👍

v 1.0.4.8 2023.07.14
- Added tooltips to hotbar buttons
- Added a tips to the initial loading screen
- Fixed a prominent teleport bug and added several checks to help debug any further errors
- Fixed a prominent shader error
- Fixed a collision problem with some town buildings
- Fixed several localization errors
- Fixed a goblin archer sound
- Fixed the quarrying animation not playing
- Fixed an AOE skill error

The recent review summary has become "mostly negative," something I've never had before, and it's my full-time job to try and make sure that doesn't happen. So I'm trying to better understand the main reasoning behind that to make sure I spend my time wisely over the next few weeks trying to correct the problems causing this.

A couple of important mentions first:
1. It's impossible to please everyone, especially with a (currently ~) $11.50 indie game made by one guy. There will always be negative reviews that I can do nothing about
2. There seems to be two annoying bugs going on right now, one with ranged bow attacks, and one that seems to only affect first time players causing the default interact keybind of F to not work. If you run into the interact key problem please try clearing the keybind and then setting it again.
3. I was briefly hospitalized on Sunday and have not been able to work since and may be unable to for another day or two, otherwise I would have fixed those bugs by now.

Having said that, I think one of the main things first time players are complaining about is the control scheme. We spent a lot of time and effort adding the RMB to move camera and click to target WoW style controls thinking that would make casting, ranged attacks, and UI interaction easier overall. For players that prefer a locked camera there is a toggle (default is V), but it seems a lot of people don't know there is a toggle and do not like the RMB controls.

Now of course there are a lot of little QoL things that can be improved and that will be my focus after we clean up the current issues, make sure the new multilingual system is working properly and get full controller support onto the beta branch. But this post is not about those.

I'm asking the people that left a negative review, or would consider leaving one still for responses along the lines of:
"I couldn't get the controls to work,"
"RMB to move the camera was terrible,"
"I didn't know I had to target mobs to attack them,"
"I didn't know there was a help window,"
"I couldn't figure out xxxx and gave up."

Things that caused you to go beyond "well that's kind of annoying," into "I don't like this game and what the developer is doing with it."

Some things I am considering to try and improve the new players experience:
- Adding tips to the loading screens
- Adding more buttons linking to the help window
- Adding pictures to and improving the help window
- Offering a return to the aim to shoot (no targets) locked camera controls

We talk about a lot of these things in the SC Discord server, but I know there are plenty of people, especially those willing to write a negative review, that aren't interested in joining Discord. I'm hoping this will reach some of those people so I can get a better grasp on how to best use my time improving things from here on.

Thank you and happy gaming!

More little fixes patching up the recent new bugs.

v 1.0.4.6 2023.07.05
- Now automatically recalculating skill points on load
- Fixed language resetting to OS on startup
- Fixed one of two spent skill point displays not working properly
- Fixed an item description issue due to recent changes
- Fixed a bug causing targeted creatures to rendered through walls
- Fixed snake scale missing translations
- Fixed a General achievements & Town achievements menu bug

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

The allure of the Steam Summer Sale got the best of me, and the big patch last week ended up bringing in a number of debilitating bugs unfortunately. First and foremost, my apologies for that. We've remedied the majority of them with this 5th hotfix, but there are still some after effects affecting some players, in particular messed up skill points. I've received some bugged player character saves from affected players and am looking into a way to retroactively remedy the problem. Worst case scenario I will a full skill reset with a small patch tomorrow so that we can get everyone back to where they should be.

v 1.0.4.5 2023.07.04
- Refactored a portion of the localization code to prevent future errors
- Fixed the hotbar resetting sometimes after changing language

v 1.0.4.4 2023.07.03
- Fixed a missing German translation
- Fixed translation problems preventing the game from loading

v 1.0.4.3 2023.07.02
- Fixed obsidian golem & glowing mushroom name errors
- Fixed broken item requirement text in crafting menu
- Fixed weapon recipe description text

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Had a small bug with a big impact last night. Unfortunately it was not a problem in the Unity editor, only after exporting the executable, so I completely missed it trying to get yesterdays announcement out in like 20 different languages! It was a quick fix though as soon as I woke up and saw people yelling at me =D Which is always much appreciated, no joke. Player reported bugs are my most precious commodity.

v 1.0.4.2 2023.07.02
- Fixed a post-export only bug causing skills to not load

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

Now supporting 30(31) languages!

(Please note that for non-English news posts, this has been translated with Google Translate and may contain grammatical errors)

Steam itself does not actually support 31 languages, so I cannot mark the game as available for all of the languages that have been added, but the complete list of supported languages is as follows:

Afrikaans
Arabic
Bulgarian (under repair)
Catalan
Czech
Danish
German
Greek
English
Spanish
Finnish
French
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Dutch
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazil)
Portuguese (Portugal)
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese

As the initial translations are made using machine translation there may be some words or phrases that can be improved in any particular language. Because of this, the language files are stored separately from the base game files in a folder called LanguageFiles, and can be editted directly. Soon I will setup a public git repository, allowing players to submit corrections to help improve the localizations for others. We also ran into a problem with the Bulgarian files, but will have them up shortly. We've also added a new function that will automatically switch to the language that a new players OS is using when they are opening the game for the first time, but that didn't quite make it into this patch and likewise will be added in soon.

If there is anything missing from the translations please let me know and I will make sure they get added into the system.

Happy Gaming!

Condensed patch notes:

v 1.0.3.1 -> 1.0.4.1 2023.07.01
- Vastly improved and expanded multi-lingual support
- Made player fired arrow graphical components a bit slower and a bit larger
- Improved the targeting reticle shader
- Added over 30 new monster abilities including visual and audio effects
- Upgraded target projector
- Monster abilities can now show an indicating projector
- Added or improved the audio and graphical effects of around 60 spells and abilities
- Fixed a multi-player storehouse bug where special resources wouldn't show up
- Fixed camera collision on cave entrances
- Fixed an issue with buildings and facilities in dungeons
- Fixed a problem where tombstones and buildings might not save properly in dungeons upon death or leaving
- Fixed lighting not updating correctly when entering a world encounter as an mp host
- Fixed lighting and sky breaking when leaving world encounter as an mp host
- Fixed an item dupe glitch
- Fixed a projector layering issue
- Fixed a couple multi-player invisible equipment bugs
- Fixed an issue with armor sometimes being invisible to others in mp
- Fixed the harvesting tools of others being invisible in mp
- Fixed resources not despawning after being harvested
- Fixed a new resource respawn check method happening too often causing performance problems and crashes
- Fixed scroll bars and text input problem in the start menus, character, and world creation
- Fixed monster tier trying to calculate itself prior to level causing loot to drop as tier 0
- Fixed a bug with monster damage over time abilities
- Fixed a bug that could lock player movement
- Fixed a bug for persisting effects
- Fixed a harmless multiplayer specific error
- Fixed resources respawning inside of buildings
- Fixed an error with shrines
- Fixed an error with ward skills
- Fixed loot disappearing with the clearing and removal of small encounters

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

Join us in Discord!

Interested in supporting development of Solace Crafting?
Please consider becoming a patron via Patreon!

Check out the bug / suggestion tracker

There are just a few last minute things we're still tweaking with this build but the sale is upon us! So I'm going to push things as they are to beta, probably for less than 24 hours, and will push this branch to the live default build tomorrow to make room on beta for the full controller support branch that is also nearing completion.

I've never added the languages supported by Solace Crafting to the Steam page, because they only really supported each language 50-60%. We're now more like 95% and finishing up the last little bits, so tomorrow I will make a post in each language and turn on the tags in Steam. Not overly exciting if you're primarily an English speaker, but there are a LOT of gamers around the world that don't speak English. Once everything is in and working well, I will setup a public git repository specifically for the purpose of allowing community members the ability to improve translations in languages they are familiar with.

Real quick regarding myself and the lack of updates recently, I've had a lot of issues in and around my family that more or less prompted me to take some time off, and I made my annual visit to see my friends and family in the USA earlier than usual this year. Now, families members are all on the mend, the scary stuff is behind us, and I am back in the driver seat trying to properly piece together the work that Caj and Newbery have continued working on throughout my absence.

More soon!

v 1.0.4.0 2023.06.30
- Vastly improved and expanded multi-lingual support
- Fixed a multi-player storehouse bug where special resources wouldn't show up
- Fixed camera collision on cave entrances
- Fixed an issue with buldings and facilities in dungeons.
- Fixed a problem where tombstones and buildings might not save properly in dungeons upon death or leaving
- Fixed lighting not updating correctly when entering a world encounter as an mp host
- Fixed lighting and sky breaking when leaving world encounter as an mp host
- Fixed an item dupe glitch
- Fixed a projector layering issue
- Fixed a couple multi-player invisible equipment bugs
- Fixed an issue with armor sometimes being invisible to others in mp
- Fixed the harvesting tools of others being invisible in mp

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.

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