Welcome Shopkeepers!
We hope you are having a nice and relaxing Summer. We have some exciting quality-of-life features for you this patch! A lot of these have been common requests from you, the community. Thank you so much for being a part of improving the game for everyone. We hope you enjoy the improvements in this update. We sure enjoyed making them and using them during testing so far.
Highlights
- Singleplayer Pausing
- Inventory Sorting
- New Employee Filter Controls
- Two New Melee Weapon Enchantments
- A New Shop Policy
- Improvements for Large Shops
- Prologue Improvements
- Eleven New Language Options
- Update on Dedicated Servers
Happy shopkeeping!
TinyTeams Festival on August 8th
Saleblazers will be a part of Tiny Teams 2024 hosted by Yogscast Games, so keep an eye out for that soon on August 8th!
Ten New Community Advice Tips
We added another batch of Community Advice tips from our Discord. Thank you to everyone who submitted tips! If you have tips you want to share with the player base and maybe get featured on the loading screen, make sure to swing by the loading-screen-tips channel over at https://discord.gg/saleblazers
Let's take a look at the nuggets of wisdom from the community this time around:
- "You are never safe. Always be ready to fight." -Anonymous
- "Repair hammers can repair your friend's HP in an emergency." -Thiridian
- "Pop Pop would be proud of you." -PrinceGK
- "Out of items to sell? Abandon your morals and farm your customers!" -ThrillClinton
- "It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be you!' -PrinceGK
- "You can respawn at the most recent totem whether or not you've unlocked it" -cap8
- "Spikes, spikes, and more spikes for those pesky intruders" -Aren
- "Problems that can't be solved with money can be solved with more money" -Anonymous
- "Yes, you can harvest trees with an AK47." -Reisama
- "Whenever in doubt, Mop them out." -Fox
Inventory Sorting
This is one of the most requested features on the Steam Forums and on Discord, so we're very happy to be able to add it in this update.
Playing with it has improved our own play experience when organizing our shop and when looting gear out in the world. On your player inventory and on other containers, you can now press this sort button and select Alphabetical, Category, or Rarity sorting. We hope this makes organizing your items much more enjoyable!
Item Category Filter
Improving the control you have over employees is another highly requested improvement. We are excited to bring you the next step towards that goal with the item category filter. You can now filter the items employees input into containers or displays by category instead of just by item. In the employee input menu, just enable the category filter, and then you can select any number of categories to which you want to limit the container.
The category filter functions alongside the existing item filter as an either-or, so you can have a container that will accept melee weapons as a category but also accept stones, charcoal, and plant fiber as individual items. This new filter should mean you can set up specific areas of your shop to sell certain items and do the same for storage that your gatherers and crafters use. We also adjusted the logic for the restocking employees so that they will try to prioritize putting large items in large displays and medium items in medium displays.
Singleplayer Pause Button
We've heard that a lot of people want a pause button for when they're playing in singleplayer and need to step away for a bit without being killed by cultists, but we haven't been able to find a way to incorporate it seamlessly with our ESC menu yet.
In the meantime, our summer intern Gawyn has added a manual pause that you can now toggle with (P) if you're playing in singleplayer!
Feel free to change this key binding in the options menu.
He's even turned this into a cool pseudo-photo mode, where you can even orbit your camera around to take a look at your surroundings while everything's frozen! If you are paused when someone else joins your game, it will unpause you.
Movement Changes
We've heard a lot of feedback on our surveys that the game can be clunky for some players. This first set of movement changes is our response to that in making the game feel more free-flowing and relaxing in general, especially for controllers!
- Moving now faces the player towards their input instead of always facing away from the camera
- Sprinting is now allowed in all directions instead of only away from the camera
Two New Melee Weapon Enchantments
As you probably know, there are a number of enchantments you can add to melee weapons by finding and paying the appropriate NPC in the world. This is a mechanic we know a lot of you enjoy, so we wanted to add two new enchantments to find. These new enchantments are associated with some existing quests and will serve as an improved reward for completing the quests. If you have already completed these quests, head back to the NPCs from the quest, and you will be able to access the enchantments. Details below are spoilered so you can find them yourself if you want to.
- Astrid can now add Radiation damage to your weapons after completing her quest
- The Bellstalker in the Lighthouse can now add a Frost enchantment to your weapons after completing the Beacons and Bellstalkers quest
Astrid Quest Updates
We heard from a few people that this quest was a bit unforgiving and didn't have the impact we wanted it to. As a first step to alleviate this, we have made the container for the quantum copper respawn its contents every 12 hours. This will allow you to recover more quantum copper if you lose it the first time.
Because this also means you can make runs to the camp in the crater and get more quantum copper, Astrid will now unlock a recipe to turn quantum copper into regular copper at a recycling machine to give it a practical use outside of the quest. We have also buffed the reward item for this quest to make it more viable.
Recycling Machine Recipes
We also introduced a couple more recipes in the recycling machine that will hopefully make crafting a little bit smoother. You can now turn Abominable Apex Gems and Bellsworn Apex Gems into two regular Apex Gems if you want to use them to craft a North Star component, for instance. We are also aware that Apex Fur should have more uses and will be working on more meaningful uses for it in the future, but for now, we added the ability to turn it into ten leather in the recycling machine.
Invincible Grabber Ghoul Improvements
We heard your feedback that these enemies were too powerful and unfun. For now, we've added more audio and visual feedback to communicate what's going on, nerfed their damage, and re-adjusted spawners.
You can now hear the Ghouls coming, see roughly where they are around corners or coming up behind you because they emit red light when moving, and know when it's safe to move around them because they emit green light when frozen while you're looking at them. They can still kill you pretty handily, but if you are at very high health, they will no longer kill you in one grab, giving you a chance to get away and recover.
The Invincible Grabber Ghouls have also all been moved inside of the Bellsworn Proving Grounds maze, so you'll only encounter them after the statue explains how they work.
Let us know how this feels!
Boar Rebalancing
Another enemy that we've received feedback about is the common Boar. We agree with what we've heard: These enemies can be annoying to deal with early on when you aren't prepared and later in the game when you can deal with them, but they cause a nuisance.
To address this, we have reduced their aggro radius so they won't attack you quite as often and can be avoided more easily. We've also reduced their speed so you can more comfortably run away from them at a full sprint, and we have changed their behavior to stop chasing you after around 30 meters. This way, you can avoid and escape them more often instead of having to fight every Boar you see.
New Shop Policy and Improvements for Large Shops
We'd like to introduce you to the "All-Inclusive Shopkeeping" shop policy! With it equipped, customers who spend more than 60 seconds shopping in your store will pay 20% extra!
Shopping time will only count when they enter their store until they decide on the final item to purchase. To keep them around that long without running out of patience means you'll have to cater to their needs while they shop. We're hoping this policy will serve as a nice reward for those of you building large shops as we realized since it can take customers significantly longer to traverse these shops, smaller shops are more optimal for making money right now. This 20% bonus should help bridge the gap and make larger stores more worthwhile.
Alongside this policy, we also updated customer patience to help alleviate some of the struggles that come with very large shops, especially with shopping baskets.
- Customers will now regain up to 80% of their patience every time they select an item to add to their shopping basket. This should help ensure you get your customers to the checkout even if they spend a long time selecting three items for their basket.
- Medium to low hunger and thirst values now drain less patience from customers. We noticed these two needs were putting a larger-than-expected bottleneck on shops, particularly larger ones. The drain rate for very low hunger and thirst remains the same, so you will still need to make sure this need is met, but if you are at least keeping it to medium levels, the patience drain should be more manageable.
Kitchen and Storage Shelves
Many of you have reported confusion around the Kitchen Shelf item as it was mistagged as a display despite being unable to sell items. We have corrected this, but we also felt like the research and iron investment to get the Kitchen Shelf wasn't worth it in its current form.
To address this, we migrated the existing item to a new node much earlier in the Research Board, changed the recipe to use scrap bars, and changed the name to Storage Shelf. The Kitchen Shelf node now unlocks a Kitchen Shelf Display item that is actually a 6-slot display! The Kitchen Shelf Display can only sell Food, Drinks, and Kitchen items, and gives a 20% sale bonus to Kitchen Items. We hope this brings the item more in line with the fantasy you all had for using it in your shop and preserves the existing shelf as a mid-tier storage item while balancing it by making it easier to craft.
Prologue Additions
To spice up the prologue, we've added 2 NPCs that should make things feel a little more lively. We've also added real soccer goal functionality to the prologue, along with a new Soccer Goal achievement!
Additional Languages
We've added the following languages options to Saleblazers:
- Arabic
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Finnish
- Greek
- Italian
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese
These languages fall into the more experimental translation status, but we got them to a point where we wanted to let you use them if you wanted to.
As always, if you have feedback for improving the translation for these or any of our other languages, please let us know via In-Game report, Steam forum post, or on our Discord (https://discord.gg/saleblazers).
Update on Dedicated Servers
We see that there's a lot of demand for dedicated servers, so we're investigating it. No promises yet, since we want to prioritize development on the game itself first. It's currently in a stage where we've successfully set up an internal Saleblazers Dedicated Server build and can have players connect through some minor modifications.
If it goes smoothly, we'd really like to add some special features (anti-griefing, player trading) and maybe even game modes (roleplay, survival) for dedicated servers. We'll see what happens!
v0.14.7.3 Patch Notes
➡️ Changes
- Added a singleplayer pause function with a default (P) keybinding
- Added Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese language options
- You can now turn Abominable and Bellsworn Apex Gems into two normal Apex Gems using a Recycling Machine
- Buffed the price of Abominable and Bellsworn Apex Gems to better reflect the relationship between them and normal Apex Gems with the new crafting recipes
- You can now turn Quantum Copper into normal Copper using a Recycling Machine after completing Astrid's quest
- Added 10 new community advice tips to the loading screen
- Added Radioactive and Frosty enchantments to purchase from NPCs
- Added All Inclusive shop policy that gives a bonus 20% sale price for customers who were shopping for more than 60 seconds
- Added better feedback to the Invincible Grabber Ghouls in the Proving Grounds
- Removed any Invincible Grabber Ghouls from outside of the Proving Grounds
- Reduced the damage of the Invincible Grabber Ghoul attack
- Employees will try to find the largest possible item to restock into a large display instead of the first available
- Increased the amount of Shop EXP needed to level up the Shop
- Barry's Bazaar randomized shops will no longer spawn more than one of the same shop at once
- Added a chest to New Bedstone Winery
- Wizards in the Wizard camp now use the Water Bubble spell by default instead of the Fireball
- You can now interact with all powered electrical lights to turn them on or off. This should also fix an issue where lights were being turned off, and there wasn't a way to turn them on individually
- Ronin Martial Artist enemies in Kazai Castle now correctly have a small chance of dropping the Martial Fist Weapon
- Ronin Martial Artist enemies now also drop sushi
- Slightly reduced the stun duration when the Ronin Martial Artist enemies hit you
- Gold Axe and Pickaxe are now medium items instead of small
- Customers will gain patience up to 80 patience when picking up an item and adding it to their Shopping Basket
- Slightly reduced the impact that medium to low hunger and thirst levels have on overall patience - very low levels still contribute the same amount
- Buffed the frosty effect on the Curse of the Desert and Heirloom Staff weapons
- Buffed the special effect on the reward item for the Astrid quest
- Changed when autosaves and exit saves happen internally to reduce the chance of wiping a save, which we think could be related to losing power or shutting down the computer while a save is occurring
- Adjusted the sleep position and blocked bounding box on the bedroll to make it look better and be easier to use against walls or items
- Added Soccer Goal mechanics to the prologue
- Added Soccer Goal achievement
- You can now pick up the Soccer Ball properly
- Converted the Kitchen Shelf into a Storage Shelf and made it easier to craft and research
- Added a new Kitchen Shelf Display to the research board that can sell Food, Drinks, and Kitchen items
- Added 45-degree corner roof pieces for the Castle Building Set
- Added a stonework quarter wall to the Castle Building Set
- Athletes will no longer carry Soccer Ball
- Athletes can now carry Apples and are more likely to carry Baseball Bats
- Changed the low energy icon for employees to be a clock with Zzzs because the bed icon was confusing and made it seem like they needed a bed to sleep in
- (Experimental Dedicated Server Progress Do Not Use) Added console commands to start and load games
- Raised default FOV from 65 -> 75 to alleviate nausea feedback
- To make movement easier, the player can now sprint in any direction instead of being forced to sprint forwards and jogging will rotate the player towards input direction instead of being forced to face forwards, except when holding guns
- Added dialogue for Adrian when you are in the cafeteria shop to help the player out with shopkeeping mechanics if they're stuck
- Boars now sprint slower than the player
- Boars de-aggro after a certain amount of chase distance and have lowered aggro ranges
- Radiation damage now plays a sound when inflicted on enemies
- All lobbies are now shown in the Join Game lobby screen, even if there is a version mismatch
- Friends-only lobbies are also now shown in the Join Game lobby screen (previously you'd need to invite friends manually via Steam for them to join)
- Lobbies now display ping values
- Added icons to display if a lobby is password protected, friends only, or public
- If friendly fire is off, you can no longer apply attributes like fire or poison from enchanted weapons to other players in the lobby
🛠️ General Fixes
- Fixed an edge case where a player leaving during a boss fight could cause an exception
- Fixed an edge case where a player that is saved at being at an impossibly far location would never load into the game
- Properly hid the savegame command because it isn't meant to be used
- Possibly fixed an issue where haggling UI would disappear, and the player couldn't move if a customer had errors halfway through
- Fixed clipping pillar in New Bedstone Winery
- Fixed Totems sometimes showing 0 cost and not allowing you to unlock them if another Totem was unloaded during the conversation
- Fixed clipping pillar and added a chest near the New Bedstone Winery
- Removed floating broken glider from Apex Forest
- Fixed a cave in the Snowville Outskirts not spawning gold, iron, and stone as intended
- Adjusted name of Employee Table node in the Research Board to match the item name it unlocks
- Fixed the Anvil UI overlapping with the right side of the player inventory UI
- Fixed the "Craft at:" tag in the Research Board, missing a space after the colon in languages other than English
- Updated the "Craft at:" tag in the Research Board to call the Crafting Benches benches instead of tables.
- Fixed localization error leaving a "/n" character in the English entry for the Shop at Capacity UI notification.
- Added logic to reach a completion state in the Inn Heist quest if you destroy the Gem
- Fixed some spacing issues in Astrid's dialogue
- Fixed some floating books in a house near Kazai Village
- Fixed an encounter in the Desert near the Canyon that was spawning inside a rock
- Max stamina attribute will no longer continue stacking when wearing and removing clothing that increases stamina
- Fixed stamina not dropping while actively wearing and removing clothing that increases stamina
- Employee work schedule override priority toggle now saves correctly
- Adjusted some Chinese translations to improve accuracy for item descriptions
- Fixed some rare issues when using employees in non-English languages
- Fixed various UI sorting issues
- Fixed shooting minigame not ending properly when leaving the game area
- Fixed an issue causing wallpapers to load with large colliders
- Prevented customers from getting stuck if mopped right in front of a self-checkout register
- Teleport employees to the last saved position when finishing employee simulation to prevent them from getting stuck on top of shelves or magazine stands
- Fixed Boar name not showing up in the chat properly when they kill you
- Removed some doubled-up props in the swamp
- Corrected deprecated frying pan prefabs in the swamp
- Removed deprecated drinking fountain from the desert
- Fixed some cases where Nyx Bloodthorn would spawn underneath the platform in Kazai Village in the water
- Fixed a rare case where an extremely large impulse downwards (can be caused by getting hit with melee attacks) would cause the player to be unable to jump until the force decays
- Fixed customers getting stuck while navigating various shop setups. Thank you to everyone who sent us save files about this!
- Fixed another case of prologue customers not disappearing when the shop closes
- Corrected the description for the Risk Management shop policy to accurately display that it increases the base price of items by $1 instead of $2
- Corrected the name of the Potable Water totem in the prologue
- Updated the name for the totem at the back of Kazai Castle
- Fixed the Airstrafer Gunner shirt not placing correctly
- Fixed the dialogue display order for one randomized dialogue entry in Kazai Village
- Corrected the samurai shoes recipe name
- Fixed preplaced weapons in death boxes not being saved and loaded correctly. This fixes a case where you can lose Sylvester's Gold Watch in the Death Box Treasures quest
- Employees will no longer stock displays or containers that are inside of another item
- Customers can no longer sit on couches that are inside of a display
- Cat slippers are now correctly tagged as footwear
- Corrected some UI and added clarity to some explanations in the Employee Table
- Increased the opacity of the employee context menu for displays to improve readability
- Removed a Wood Fishing Rod from Apex Forest
- Fixed customers being able to be stuck forever if you mopped them and then talked to them immediately
- Fixed some collider and culling issues with New Bedstone Lighthouse
- Customers that are on the way to the register will have the proper dialogue instead of saying they're leaving the shop plot
- Fixed some cases where enemies could spawn under the ground in the Swamp caves
- Converted a Cauldron in the Wizard Camp into a real item
- Fixed some collider issues in Wellspring house
- Updated Electric Open Close sign icon
- Fixed some cases where AI wouldn't animate
- Fixed some water collision issues in Prologue
- Filled in some missing water in the world map
- Fixed revive text being visible on players even though they aren't in a dying state
- Fixed gliding animation sometimes not blending properly into swimming animations
- Fixed some localization issues with AI names
- Fixed various dialogue issues in non-English languages
- Removed deprecated prefab from the Proving Grounds
- Removed extra ' character from the tool required UI message
- Removed deprecated birch wood from the Desert
- Fixed non-interactable weapons in the Kazai Village weapon shop
- Removed deprecated item drop from swamp chest loot table
- Adjusted LOD values to reduce artifacts on Small Basket Displays
- Fixed a case where customers and other NPCs would slide instead of animating for the client
- Fixed dumbbells and barbells not spawning correctly in the prologue
- Fixed a case where employees could sometimes simulate and end up on top of furniture
- Fixed the Catch a Friend quest not starting properly
- Soccer balls will no longer damage you when kicked
- Fixed a case where melee mastery would require many more times EXP than other masteries
- Using shift + click to quick move items will no longer activate sprinting
- Fixed a case that would cause freezing during loading an area of the open world with missing navigation mesh
- Adjusted spacing issues in the weapon broke! UI message
- Gave the cable machine a description
- Fixed a case of infinite loading when near invalid tiles
- Fixed a case where employees would navigate on top of items
- Fixed swimming animation not syncing properly for late join clients sometimes
- Fixed various disconnects