Hey Vikings,
Thank you so much for an incredible 2024 for ASKA.
We’re starting to wind up for the holidays, so today we are dropping you a lovely big hotfix with lots of improvements and fixes, as well as some festive decor so you can celebrate in style with your villagers.
Build and decorate your Yule Tree!
With this update we're adding in a whole new host of Yule decorations that will go absolutely spot on in your new buildable Yule Tree!
- The Yule Tree can be found in the Build Menu under Decorations and will be buildable like any other garden or decorative tree.
- What's special about this tree is that it comes with 50 storage slots for decorations, 3 slots for tinsel and 1 slot for a tree top!
- Deposited decorations will show up on the tree so you can customize the tree exactly how you want it!
- Take the moment to celebrate all the Smolkrs, Wulfar and Villagers in your village life with a wide array of cheerful and fully paintable decorations!
- Decorations can be crafted at the Workshop and painted at the Dyer!
- You can craft a variety of tree tops inspired by the game's bosses, like the Stone Jotun, Skeletroll or Haugr!
- Tree decorations commemorate the various animals, magic artifacts, villagers or other symbols of Norse inspiration.
- Tinsel is the third decoration type and will fit in the 3 special slots. It's best to color them beforehand!
We can't wait to see what your favorite decorations will be, what colors you'll be painting them in, and how your Yule trees will turn out!
Update Highlights
Beyond the festive cheer, this build also comes with a host of fixes and QoL changes, below are some of the more important ones
Custom Autosave Interval
With this update you can now customize how often the game autosaves.
Dedicated Server Changes
We've made a change to dedicated servers which now allows you to run an ASKA dedicated server on a machine that isn't logged into a Steam client as long as you have a Steam token.
Customize Highlight Color
You can now pick custom colors for a variety of in-game highlights.
Performance Improvements and optimizations
We've had some breakthroughs in terms of optimization, so some users might observe improved framerates in certain cases, mainly due to vegetation rendering and terrain streaming improvements.
Changelog
Make sure you check out the full changelog below!
FESTIVE CHEER
- Added Yule Tree decoration;
- Added Yule Tree ornaments with crafting and painting blueprints for them
CHESTNUTS ROASTING ON AN OPEN SERVER
- Servers now work completely without the steam client but require an authentication token, the details of how to get the token are found in the server properties file.
- Added options to customize server ports.
- Fixed errors on a server that launched an invasion in a world without players or core
- Fixed an issue where AI would sometime slide instead of walk on servers
- Fixed an issue where the region server session parameter would not be properly translated from the file
- Fixed a bug where clients would not level up cooking proficiency
DECK THE UI (& MENUS & CONTROLS) FALALALALA
- Added button to expand all villager panels at once
- Fixed quickbar numbers being hidden on the gamepad when that slot is selected
- Various UI fixes and gamepad navigation improvements
- Added missing gamepad button prompts across different menus
- Fixed boat builder task page not showing unless you have a boat build site
- Added button to remove a villager from his home inside his menu.
- Added split item stack functionality for gamepad users
- Fixed a bug causing the task priority change using a gamepad or the arrow buttons to not work correctly in reorderable tasks lists
- Fixed window not scrolling when using the gamepad and adjusting the priority of the tasks
- Fixed video settings not resetting correctly to the default values
- Removed unnecessary hold text from forge refuel
- Added new options to customize various in game highlight colors
I'M DREAMING OF AI IMPROVEMENTS
- Warriors now follow their patrol route in the correct order at the start of their shifts
- AI targeting optimizations
- Fixed Winter Invasion enemies not spawning at the portal due to a race condition
- Builders will no longer randomly wander to boats while idle
- Bloomery workers should be even more eager to finish the task before going to sleep;
- Fixed Warehouse workers sometimes not fetching items from Carpenter
- Fixed crafting station workers not fetching parts with the correct priority;
- Improved tools management at crafting stations
- Fixed a rare issue where small enclosed areas ,like small pens made out of fences, would not be traversable by NPCs
- Fixed potential cause for dogs becoming pups again after loading a save or villagers getting instant exhaustion
SANTA'S LITTLE FIXES (I RAN OUT OF NAMES)
- Players cannot place buildings inside the Large Spire and Shipwreck geometry
- Added a way to customize the way the game autosaves
- Added the ability to dismiss Wisdom Wisp forever with an ingame interaction
- Optimizations for vegetation rendering;
- Optimizations for terrain streaming;
- Rain and blizzard fx are now excluded from structure interiors
- Minimap and compass performance optimizations
- Fixed a bug causing Vsync to remain enabled despite the setting indicating that it's off
- Ambient sounds from weather now fade out inside cave
- Moon glow is no longer visible from inside the cave
- Fixed weapon trail sometimes not visible during 1H sword heavy attack
- Fixed iron battle hammer trail
- Tweaked 1H heavy attack timings
- Fixed item color not visible in dyeing menu
What 2025 holds
Once again, thank you for making 2024 a truly spectacular year for ASKA, we can’t tell you enough how much we appreciate all of your feedback, and we cannot wait to take ASKA into 2025.
We can confidently say that our work is far from over and 2025 will probably bring the biggest ASKA updates yet. An updated roadmap will be made available, and you can rest assured that we are going strong! Our commitment to making ASKA is adamant. We'll just be going to our cottages and longhouses for a little while, as we scheme and ink out new features and content!
Happy holidays, no matter what you celebrate.