It’s been a long time coming but its finally patch time. Like a procrastinating college student, I am slipping in literally right under my self-imposed deadline. Ah college, what a time, and what a terrible student I was.
I’ll try not to drag on here, but I wanted to mention a few things briefly. After this patch I plan to move to a monthly patching cycle. The patches will be smaller obviously, but the smaller cycle will keep me more focused on what is going into the game as well as give people something more tangible than me popping in once a month to say “yep, still alive, still working”.
Now to counteract that point, this new patch cycle may not start until the new year. I’m hoping I can get enough done to constitute a patch but December is usually pretty hard to manage with all the holidays. I’ll keep people apprised of that situation as it develops.
Aside from all that boring future stuff what have I been doing all this time? A lot, is the simple answer to that. However, I will say it may not look super impressive in list form. A lot of the work during this period was framework for future work. For instance, the compendium, a lot of the work was making sure it could account for new additions to the game in the future.
Also there is a full story (I’m internally calling them tales) that has been added for an NPC. A huge chunk of that was just writing a parsing system and making additions to the dialogue system to make it all work.
All this is to say that now those things are done so future additions to those systems should be far less work and far less time consuming. Which is good because that means more actual content going into the game rather than me creating things like a complex text parsing and export system *shudder*.
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, suffice to say a lot of groundwork was laid for the future here. After this we are on to combat for the next big system and plenty of smaller changes and additions to constitute the monthly patches along the way. Hope you all enjoy what’s been added!
Verdant Village 0.4.8 Full Changelog
Additions
- The Compendium (In brief this is an internal database that tracks most things in the game, as well as has tutorials)
- Added Achievements (in game these are challenges, some correspond to Steam achievements, however there is cap on how many you can have so not all of them unlock a steam achievement. Additionally those of you who are patching will likely get a few by default as some are given via non-repeatable events)
- Added 3 NPCs
- Added full tale for 1 NPC
- Added 4 zones
- Added 5 quests
- Added 1 new exchange shop (Small note, it doesn’t have all its items yet, so expect it to expand in the future)
- Added 1 archeology keystone dig
- Added Mail System (This hasn’t been discussed but its another framework system, its current purpose is that it gives the player 4 quests that act as small introductory tutorials at the start of the game. It will be used more later)
- As mentioned in the previous tick 4 quests were added via mail (These are tutorials but players who patch up will get all these letters at once so you can complete them as completing quests counts towards achievements)
- Added another biome to the mines for floors 75 through 100, before it was just lava land for 50 levels now the lava biome is only 25 levels like the others
- Additional mine biome comes with its own set of fish as usual
- Added cloud save functionality to Steam versions of the game
Quality Of Life
- Fish are now filleted in a separate tab in the cooking station which allows you to choose what to fillet
- Alt currencies will now only appear in the inventory screen when the requisite shop has been discovered
- Alt currency trade ratios will now appear when hovering an item in your inventory next to the gold sell price (This only happens when you have unlocked the shop)
- The dock below your home has a shadow now (why did it not before? I have no idea)
- Gutted the old tutorial system in favor of the compendium to keep things consistent
- Changed several UIs back to their older versions in a push to make UI more consistent in general
- Modified the popup notification code to place notifications on a separate layer so they don’t get caught behind other UI
- Made slight visual changes to items in stores
- Added simple item descriptions for furniture items as all other items have them
- Made slight updates to the map (more to come as it still isn’t fully accurate)
- Altered setup to allow demo saves to turn into normal game saves if you buy and play the demo first
Balance Changes
- Removed the requirement of owning a chicken for the first hunting quest to make hunting easier to start
- Increased all raw fruit stamina gains slightly to make them mildly viable as an uncooked snack
- Slightly modified keysprite effects to make them more visible
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the player’s mount shadow would disappear under the ravine bridge
- Fixed a bug where an exchange shop could stop displaying potential trades
- Fixed an issue that caused large gates to not patch properly
- Exchange shops now show the appropriate item shop frame based on if you have the currency to purchase the item or not
- Fixed a variety of monetary and visual bugs from exchange shops
- Fixed a bug on controller where you couldn’t scroll through your quest log
- Fixed a small bug with toggling between quest journal views
- Fixed a bug that would alter the sprite of fishery augments when scrolling them with a controller
- Fixed a bug where you couldn’t remove augments from a fishery on controller
- Fixed a bug where you could use the quick pull from chest button while holding a stack which would lock you
- Added some code as an extra layer to protect against inventory softlocks
- Fixed a bug where rugs you placed in your basement would just disappear
- Fixed a bug dealing with rug placement placing unwanted rugs when transferring rooms
- Fixed an issue with a weapon rack not Z ordering in Sven’s house (It didn’t have collisions on. I troubleshot for an hour and I just had to tick a box)
- Fixed a bug where the Neglected Palate quest gave the wrong rewards
- Fixed a bug where the map pop up to show the zone name could appear behind the player location icon
- Fixed a recipe bug with stone footstools
- Fixed a text bug with the quest “A Noble Dilemma”
- Fixed a small visual bug with Malcom’s sitting animation
- Fixed a bug where specifying the amount of an object you were going to buy wouldn’t charge you anything when you bought it
- Fixed a small visual glitch with characters sitting in chairs and z alignment
- Fixed a bug where placing a carpet while holding more than one of them would cause a small visual glitch
- Fixed an issue where dried deer jerky was using the boar hide sprite
- Fixed a few bugs regarding perk gain SFX
- Fixed a bug where you were supposed to unlock the refinement recipes for barrels and crates (decorative) from Simeon’s first quest (yay?)
- Made a few cosmetic fixes to controller support when dealing with menus
- Fixed a bug where passive functionality on certain items wasn’t always disabled when entering a menu
- Fixed a bug where dyes could be alchemically broken down into fibrous extract
- Fixed a bug where the automatic pickup SFX would play regardless of the item actually being picked up
- Fixed a bug where the portcullis UI wouldn’t reappear after a patch assuming you had it unlocked
- Fixed a very specific bug where holes dug with shovels that then reverted to a tilled tile naturally wouldn’t let the player interact with them
- Fixed the Beginner Carpentry quest summary from leaving the area the text inhabits
- Fixed sprite for the Muskellunge (that’s a fish btw)
- Fixed a bug where cooking instant recipes with a full inventory would use the ingredients but not give you the item
- Added a general distribution through Steam that will hopefully serve to handle extremely rare graphical glitches