Beta (April 19, 2019) update is now available for download. We've added more hints around the starting area related to leveling up, but more substantial changes are coming in the next update, including (WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS!) a playable introductory dream. All melee weapons that you can pick up should show up in the inventory now, too, but some ranged weapons do not, and some weapons don't have a weapon trail or sound effects.
Changes
- Improved eating effecs for the Great Heart. (The effect will be added for the other hearts too)
- 3 new bonfires at Barry's Field.
- 2 new bonfires around Town of Fortuna.
- 2 new bonfires in the Wilderness.
- The north side of the Barry's field starting area changed.
- Info boards next to certain roads.
- "HEARTS WANTED" posters near imps.
- Allow save games that are in an unplayable state to proceed without crashing.
- Melee weapon grid has two new entries; it's a tidier 9x5 grid.
- Fixed a bug where entities in the interiors would get messed up when saving, because an unloaded entity factory synced entities with a live entity database when it should just use its own entities directly. They have already been synced during unloading.
- Fixed a bug where entities in the spawn queue could be deleted, but not removed from the spawn queue, causing all kinds of potential trouble, including items picked up by the player not correctly removed from a world after save game migration in all cases.
- Improved the collision shape at Town of Fortuna's tavern stairs.
- Optimization: HideComponent was missing from dozens of objects, and as a result they would get drawn from the other side of the map.
- Optimized several particle and point light effects.
- Attached villager labels to head bones so the labels move nicely with the character head movement. (WARNING: SPOILERS!)Also for Northern Guard, Sleepless Knight, Solicitors, Boris the Butcher, Colonel Lutz and General Lupus. [WARNING: SPOILERS!]
- Snow Peak band members spawn and despawn properly according to the siege status.
- Town of Fortuna tavern has a new scene setup before the Snow Peak band moves there.
- Enchanted Hammer wasn't handed to Smithy after the quest was completed.
- Fixed a bug where the Raving Lunatic could fall through his pedestal.
- New description for the Drowned Heart.
- More clues for the Ghouls.
- Little Mitten polish.
- Mayor Marquardt table scene is more robust.
- Priest Holloway sleeping scene is more robust.
- Queen Ingrid quest experience bug fixed.
- Dream Desert gear particle glitch fixed.
- King puppet cannot be destroyed by accidentally striking it.
- Significant items are categorized correctly with the Cobolds. Made the categorization more robust: it is now directly written in the significant item's template.
- Fixed a bug where the Death Dealer removed free-standing items from the game, but didn't put them in his inventory.
- Fixed a bug where the Death Dealer took items from altars and cauldrons. Now it is only allowed to take them from corpses.
How to play the new beta
- Go to your Steam Library.
- Right click on Hardland, and go to Properties, then Betas.
- Enter the beta access code WhereTheFoxIs, hit check code, and select full_beta from the drop-down list.
That's it! Steam will download the beta for you.
The reason this beta is behind a branch and password is that the likelihood of uncovering new critical issues is still fairly high, and I'd like those issues to bubble up to the forums instead of people being left alone with them. That's more likely if you are jumping into the beta through this announcement. So, if you encounter things that prevent you from progressing in the game, be sure to let me know on the forums.
Your thoughts
I'm really interested to hear reactions about the game itself. If you are feeling really adventurous, a very rough timeline of your playthrough (when you discovered what) would be super cool. If you get stuck and simply have no idea of what to do or where to go, I'd like to hear about that, too. Something that's off? Let me know. Something you particularly like? Yep. Just create your own individual topics on the forums so I won't miss your feedback.
I want to point out a couple of much-requested features which aren't yet part of the beta:
- Controller hints i.e. letting you know which keys do what in various situations.
- In-game controller remapping.
- Proper gamepad support for the inventory and the menus.
- Understandability of the inventory i.e. "Where did my new items go?" and "Did I just use an item?"
These and about 150 other bug fixes and improvements are all things we'll be working on next. In the meanwhile, here is a lo-fi version of the controller hints for keyboard + mouse to get you started:
Game: WASD to move, E to interact, Shift to run, Ctrl to sneak, Alt+WASD to dodge, Space to jump, M for the map, I for the inventory.
Inventory: Left button drag to move items around, right button drag to move all items of a type around, right click to eat/drink.
Enjoy the update.
Kimmo