Hey Drifters!
We've got an update to test for you all; The Botanist.
We are trying out a different approach with this patch! The first version is barebones and just introduces the base concept: The Botanist specialist that unlocks parks, plants and flowers to build. These plants don't do anything yet, and are currently free to place to prettify the town.

Seeing what everyone creates with them will lead the design forward. We'll drop frequent updates to the branch. Testing out things like large trees that take up more decoration space, beauty score which ups morale, and more. We'll pivot the priorities depending on what everyone likes and wishes to see happen for decoration going forward.

It's in a very early stage so it will only be available on experimental until we get it to where we want it to be.

This patch is still in development and can be tested on the experimental branch to give feedback.

This is how you can enable the experimental branch of Flotsam. This will only work when you're not in a game:
1. Open Steam Library
2. Right click Flotsam
3. Select Properties
4. Go to tab 'Betas' at the top.
5. Select 'Experimental' in the drop-down.

• New constructions: Parks in various grid sizes.
  
• New decorations: Various new Plants: Sunflowers, Ficus, Flowerbushes, Moneyplants, Monstera, Plantbushes.
  
• You can now place decorations on decoration slots. The park holds decoration slots equal to it's grid size. Decorations have no gameplay impact yet.
  
• New constructions: Grassy Walkways. It has no gameplay impact yet.
  
• New Specialist: The Botanist. The Botanist currently only unlocks the new constructions and acts as a regular drifter.

• Fixed issue with energy producers not unloading correctly, keeping floaty drifters in the scenes even when loading a new game.
  
• Fixed issues with pathfinding targets that didn't have the correct type.
  
• Various fixes and changes to error logs to more properly debug log files in the future.
  
• Fixed issue with some of the pathfinding targets not referenced correctly.
  
• Fixed issue that would have drifters idle on landmarks for a while when loading a game.
  
• Cleanup of older scripts.

Hey drifters!

Quick hotfix solving a few issues!

• Morale need is now capped at 10, as endgame did not have enough options to meet the needs.
  
• Morale bonus when drifters are doing jobs related to their affinity now set back to appear when they are doing the job. Levelling the affinity increases the amount gained.

• Fixed issue with upgraded houses not providing more morale.
  
• Fixed bug when moving biomes would cause resources to get stuck in boats.
  
• Fixed bug where Fishing Chair production limits were not persisted correctly.
  
• Fixed issue where item filters on landmark actions would not work.
  
• Fixed mesh glitches with bottlefish fish patches.
  
• Fixed issue with Medicine not counting correctly in inventories.
  
• Fixed issue with portrait-manager casting shadows on water surface.
  
• Fixed issue with seagull portrait showing as previous rescued drifter instead.
  
• Changed order in which agents and boats are recalled when moving the town.
  
• Removed salt resource from item filters as it snuck in there during testing.

Hey Drifters!
The Doctor update is here!

With this patch we introduce the first specialist: The Doctor.
Specialists are unique drifters that unlock specific content. In this patch, The Doctor offers a way to cure drifters from their pollution diseases.

Additionally we took time to look at the current game features and improved them. Improved diseases. A new large handmade map that goes from West to East, which is a step into the direction of procedural generating an infinite map. A look at morale, with increasing drifter needs. A look at resource progression using tools and much more!

If you want some extra insight into this patch, the original intent and development process for it is explained in the previous post. As for the future, currently we're working towards the next couple of specialists. Soon you'll meet the Botanist. Who'll bring plants, parks and town beautification to increase drifter morale :)

Enjoy the new update!

• New Construction: Med Pod.
  
• New Construction: Apothecary.
  
• The Med Pod and Apothecary Constructions can only be unlocked in the research tree if you have a Doctor Specialist.
  
• New Specialist: Doctor.
  
• The Doctor can be found by using the Radio Construction.
  
• New Resource: Medicine.
  
• New Resource: Mushrooms.
  
• The Doctor can make Medicine from Mushrooms in the Apothecary.
  
• Removed disease: Microbe Plastics.
  
• New disease: Spongehead. Drifters with Spongehead will drink twice as much.
  
• New disease: Musselmouths. Drifters with Musselmouths will eat twice as much.
  
• New disease: Smogbreath. Drifters with Smogbreath affect other drifters with low morale.
  
• Drifters now get a random disease when fully polluted.
  
• Drifters will be diseased for longer periods.
  
• Drifters can now be cured of their disease by going to a Med Pod when there's Medicine and a Doctor available.
  
• New Construction: Radio. This construction will be used to scout in future patches. Currently scouts for the Doctor specialist.

• New Landmarks: Polluted Woods Mushrooms
  
• New Landmarks: Polluted Woods Dead Trees
  
• New Resource: Goods. Goods are a processed resource. It can not be crafted in the town.
  
• New Construction: Recycler. The recycler can scrap Goods for parts and create Drywood and Plastic Waste.
  
• New Landmarks: Rural Ruins Goods
  
• New Landmarks: City Goods
  
• Goods will now be available on landmarks with indication of former civilization.
  
• New resource: Tools
  
• New construction: Tool Maker
  
• Some landmarks now require Tools to salvage. Larger quantities of resources can be gained by using tools.
  
• New handmade map: First iteration of a corridor-type map.
  
• New Landmarks: Apothecary landmarks. This landmark contains Medicine.
  
• Apothecary landmarks can now be found in the Rural Ruins region.

• Knowledge is now gained by cumulative town-wide drifter experience rather than drifter level-ups. 1 knowledge point is obtained by getting 500 experience.
  
• Drifter level now decides their morale needs. Higher level = higher needs.
  
• Daily reports now contain the amount of knowledge gained that day.
  
• Daily reports now contain the amount of experience gained that day.
  
• Drifter overview panel now has notifications on the side. These allow the player to toggle different filters for the drifter overview.
  
• The Tech Tree is now in multiple rows. You can choose between multiple tech to research first.
  
• Updated housing morale effect to award more morale for higher tier housing.
  
• Added morale effect that awards morale based on the level of attributes a drifter has affinity for.
  
• Drifters can no longer share a House or Big House. Having a better house will make the drifter happier.

• Large rebalancing run to accompany new changes. Some outliers:
  
• Fishing Chair and Fish Sticks now behind research.
  
• Chop Shop is now available from the start.
  
• Rebalanced weight tiers, Townheart now needs less fuel for travel.
  
• Rebalanced eel-ectric storage amounts and eel-ectric consumer/producer amounts.
  
• Changed cost of various constructions.
  
• Nerfed athletics attribute.

• Only scout landmarks of neighboring regions are activated when scouting a region.
  
• New Animation: Electro-Crafter
  
• New Animation: Food Truck
  
• New Animation: Fishwasher
  
• New Animation: Chop Shop
  
• The Doctor has a quirk that prevents them from getting polluted/diseased.
  
• Updated and cleaned up various new City and Highway landmarks that had test assets.
  
• Added dead wood salvageables to the Polluted Woods region.
  
• Drifters that did not eat nor drink in the morning will now eat/drink when it becomes available during the day.
  
• Drifters gain more experience when salvaging landmarks with tools.
  
• Updated survival guide with new and changed information.
  
• Added pages for the diseases.
  
• Changed the fish patches to specific fish patches. Each fish patch will now contain a specific fish. The type of fish will be shown on the map. Fish type spawning now based on region.
  
• Changed color of bottlefish from orange to blue to more accurately show it's the "starter fish". Changed Oil Gobbler color to orange.
  
• Producers can now have 10 recipes queued.
  
• Added Doctor idle animation.

• Removed drifter level-up notification.
  
• Greatly reduced duration of marker and landmark completed notifications. Reduced duration time of various other notifications.
  
• Removed bottom bar art and tweaked spacing.
  
• Updated swimming icon
  
• Updated notification width and spacing.
  
• Improved the landmark actions UI.
  
• Improved the producer UI.

• Reduced memory allocations caused by drifter portraits and drifter tools.
  
• The Unbottler now correctly uses the Cooking priority.
  
• Fixed issue where a tooltip showed of a construction when hovering over UI.
  
• Fixed issue where tools would not be removed when rerolling in the crew select screen.
  
• Fixed bug where the experience bar of a drifter would reset upon saving and loading.
  
• Fixed a bug where the patient of a Med Pod would break the save if it did not have a disease.
  
• Fixed issue where you couldn't select the Manual-Powered Generator due to the energy overlay.
  
• Fixed issue where you could no longer see experience or morale gained of previous days when loading a game.
  
• Fixed issue with scouting landmarks giving a notification that they were "salvaged" instead of the region being scouted.
  
• Fixed drifter duties panel tooltips giving wrong information about some constructions the duties were used in.
  
• Fixed issue where Medicine and Farming would show as possible attributes in the crew select panel, breaking the reroll functionality when applied.
  
• Fixed issue with shadow quality not being set correctly.
  
• Fixed issue where drifter portraits were being wrongly scaled with UI scale.
  
• Fixed flotsam LODs sometimes triggering faster than required, not showing any floating flotsam in the water.

• Created a Voronoi map editor for map creation.
  
• Implemented a region based flotsam generator.
  
• Created a Query Tool to help with balancing.
  
• Added a region point-of-interest generator pass for the new voronoi maps. This allows us to more accurately balance what regions contain which resources.

Hey Drifters!
We've got an update to test for you all; The Doctor.
With this patch we introduce the first specialist: The Doctor. Specialists are unique drifters that unlock specific content. In this case, The Doctor offers a way to cure drifters from their pollution diseases.
Additionally we took time to look at the current game features and improved them. Improved diseases. A new large handmade map that goes from West to East, which is a step into the direction of procedural generating an infinite map. A look at morale, with increasing drifter needs. A look at resource progression using tools and much more!

The original intent for this patch was to introduce a "Hub" on the map, where objectives originated and could return to. However during testing, it felt "off" with back-tracking not providing a good play experience. We took a pivot towards specialists, people with specific knowledge and training that you'll need to rescue in order to build more technologically advanced constructions. This fit the narrative and game design we envisioned for future patches. Most large future updates will introduce new specialist with their own new content. So expect more to come! :)

It's still in an early stage so it will only be available on experimental until we iron out all the kinks and get it to where we want it to be.

This patch is still in development and can be tested on the experimental branch to give feedback.

This is how you can enable the experimental branch of Flotsam. This will only work when you're not in a game:
1. Open Steam Library
2. Right click Flotsam
3. Select Properties
4. Go to tab 'Betas' at the top.
5. Select 'Experimental' in the drop-down.

0.7.0 introduces the first specialist: The Doctor. With specialists larger future patches will arrive in chunks, one for each new specialist that introduces their own new content. This patch also comes with a large, straight map (West -> East) which is another step into the direction of an infinite, procedural map. We've also taken our time to look at the current game features and improved them, like diseases, resource progression and morale.

• New Construction: Med Pod.
  
• New Construction: Apothecary.
  
• The Med Pod and Apothecary Constructions can only be unlocked in the research tree if you have a
  
• Doctor Specialist.
  
• New Specialist: Doctor.
  
• The Doctor can be found by using the Radio Construction.
  
• New Resource: Medicine.
  
• New Resource: Mushrooms.
  
• The Doctor can make Medicine from Mushrooms in the Apothecary.
  
• Removed disease: Microbe Plastics.
  
• New disease: Spongehead. Drifters with Spongehead will drink twice as much.
  
• New disease: Musselmouths. Drifters with Musselmouths will eat twice as much.
  
• New disease: Smogbreath. Drifters with Smogbreath affect nearby drifters with low morale.
  
• Drifters now get a random disease when fully polluted.
  
• Drifters will be diseased for longer periods.
  
• Drifters can now be cured of their disease by going to a Med Pod when there's Medicine and a Doctor available.
  
• New Construction: Radio. This construction will be used to scout in future patches. Currently scouts for the Doctor specialist.

• New Landmarks: Polluted Woods Mushrooms
  
• New Landmarks: Polluted Woods Dead Trees
  
• New Resource: Goods. Goods are a processed resource used for morale buildings. It can not be crafted in the town.
  
• New Construction: Recycler. The recycler can scrap Goods for parts and create Drywood and Plastic Waste.
  
• New Landmarks: Rural Ruins Goods
  
• New Landmarks: City Goods
  
• Goods will now be available on landmarks with indication of former civilization.
  
• New resource: Tools
  
• New construction: Tool Maker
  
• Some landmarks now require Tools to salvage. Larger quantities of resources can be gained by using tools.
  
• New handmade map: First iteration of a corridor-type map.

• Knowledge is now gained by cumulative town-wide drifter experience rather than drifter level-ups. 1 knowledge point is obtained by getting 500 experience.
  
• Drifter level now decides their morale needs. Higher level = higher needs.
  
• Daily reports now contain the amount of knowledge gained that day.
  
• Daily reports now contain the amount of experience gained that day.
  
• Drifter overview panel now has notifications on the side. These allow the player to toggle different filters for the drifter overview.
  
• The Tech Tree is now in multiple rows. You can choose between multiple tech to research first.
  
• Updated housing morale effect to award more morale for higher tier housing.
  
• Added morale effect that awards morale based on the level of attributes a drifter has affinity for.

• Fishing Chair and Fish Sticks now behind research.
  
• Chop Shop is now available from the start.
  
• Rebalanced weight tiers, Townheart now needs less fuel for travel.
  
• Rebalanced eel-ectric storage amounts and eel-ectric consumer/producer amounts.
  
• Changed cost of various constructions.
  
• Nerfed athletics attribute.

• Only scout landmarks of neighboring regions are activated when scouting a region.
  
• New Animation: Electro-Crafter
  
• New Animation: Food Truck
  
• New Animation: Fishwasher
  
• New Animation: Chop Shop

• Reduced memory allocations caused by drifter portraits and drifter tools.
  
• The Unbottler now correctly uses the Cooking priority.

• Created a Voronoi map editor for map creation.
  
• Implemented a region based flotsam generator.
  
• Created a Query Tool to help with balancing.

• Fixed issue where food items would be counted twice.
  
• Fixed issue where default resolution setting is on very low.

Hey Drifters!

Just another quick update: we fixed some small bugs and localization errors.

We're still continuing work on the next major update that will introduce objectives (other than survival) and more. Stay tuned.

• Storage filter panel is now closed by default.
  
• Added error tooltips for the disabled Salvage Boat Buoy and Fishing Buoy buttons.

• Fixed issue where some terms would come up as *MISSING LOCALIZATION TERM* in non-english languages.
  
• Fixed issue where the energy overlay would get stuck if you closed the energy grid panel.
  
• Drifters can now return from landmarks if a bug caused them to get stuck on landmarks without a project.
  
• Turning a building on/off will now check if there's any items that aren't referenced by any recipe and move those to the export inventory.

Hey Drifters!

Just a quick and small update: we added some Survival Guide tutorial pages. These explain basic controls and give a quick overview on starting mechanics. In addition, this update brings some small changes to the UI for better readability.

We're still continuing work on the next major update that will introduce objectives (other than survival) and more. Stay tuned.

• Added 5 tutorial pages in the Survival Guide to guide players. Basic Controls, Salvaging Flotsam, Moving the Town, Managing Drifters and Interacting with Landmarks.
  
• Created Survival Guide subsection for the Tutorial pages.

• The Research Tree is now locked until a Research Station is built.
  
• The Producer Management is now locked until a workshop is built.
  
• The Eel-ectricity Overlay is now locked until any Eel-ectricity construction is built.
  
• Added an outline to the Eel-ectricity Overlay to more properly show the overlay is active.
  
• Added Grid Size and Energy Requirement to construction tooltips.
  
• Added Knowledge counter to Research Tree.
  
• Added upgrade icon to upgrade unlocks in Research Tree.
  
• Clicking a notification or Drifter Portrait no longer makes the camera jump to that drifter.
  
• Double-clicking Right Mouse will now close all open panels.

• Fixed issue where research progress would get lost upon saving and loading.

Hey Drifters!
We've got another small update for you all; The Research Tree
It brings dependencies and nodes with multiple unlocks, giving research a clear structure and progression path. It's a small adjustment to a more familiar research system.

The Research Tree allows us to move forward with what we're building towards; objectives and end-game content. Next update will introduce a first step in that direction with the Hub.

• Research is now contained in a tree of connected research nodes.
  
• Research now has branching dependencies. (E.g a construction that needs Metal Plates requires the Scrapsmith to be unlocked.)
  
• Research nodes can contain multiple unlocks. (E.g the Salvaging Boat and Mooring Point unlock in one node.)

• Added icons for each attribute.
  
• Changed drifter duties icons to more accurately reflect the corresponding attributes.

• The Desalinator no longer requires Metal Plates.
  
• The Unbottler no longer requires Eel-ectricity.

• Updated Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

• Fixed some tooltips displaying the wrong text.
  
• Fixed some tooltips not displaying properly.
  
• Fixed issue where you could not use the duties icons to increase all drifter priorities for that duty.
  
• Fixed missing terms on landmarks.
  
• Fixed some UI elements that had localized text not displaying their localized text.

Hey Drifters!
We've got a small update to test for you all; The Research Tree.
It's another step towards better research. It brings dependencies and nodes with multiple unlocks, allowing us to structure a more clear research progression path. As well as being fully expandable later on to include more than just constructions being unlocked.

It's still in an early stage so it will only be available on experimental until we iron out all the kinks and get it to where we want it to be.

With the latest patches, we're nearing the point where we've setup all foundations for adding goals to the game. We've got something cooking but it'll take consecutive patches to fully set up. Next patch will either add more scouting options or will be a first iteration of said goals.

This patch is still in development and can be tested on the experimental branch to give feedback.

This is how you can enable the experimental branch of Flotsam. This will only work when you're not in a game:
1. Open Steam Library
2. Right click Flotsam
3. Select Properties
4. Go to tab 'Betas' at the top.
5. Select 'Experimental' in the drop-down.

• Research is now contained in a tree of connected research nodes.
  
• Research now has branching dependencies. (E.g a construction that needs Metal Plates requires the Scrapsmith to be unlocked.)
  
• Research nodes can contain multiple unlocks. (E.g the Salvaging Boat and Mooring Point unlock in one node.)

• Added icons for each attribute.
  
• Changed drifter duties icons to more accurately reflect the corresponding attributes.

• The Desalinator no longer requires Metal Plates.
  
• The Unbottler no longer requires Eel-ectricity.

• Fixed some tooltips displaying the wrong text.
  
• Fixed some tooltips not displaying properly.