New Interface
The old black sidebar interface is gone and a completely new one is now in its place. It has a redesigned appearance as well as some changes to functionality. Some of its most notable changes are as follows:
- Equipped items now have their own window and can be viewed at the same time as the normal inventory. This new window also shows some player stat values.
- The entire inventory is navigable using a controller.
- There is a new hotkey bar which will allow you to quickly see what items are bound to hotkeys. This can be set to “Always Show” in the main menu options.
- Inventory tabs now work as filters rather than distinct groups.
- When crafting, you are now able to see all of the potential crafting results for a given set of components rather than having to cycle through them as before.
- Items can be inspected by left clicking them. This will open up a window with the full description as well as an option to destroy the item.
- Merchant sellables/buyback tabs have been combined into one.
- Added in-world health bars for damaged units.
- Added in-world damage numbers.
- Health, hunger, and stamina bars are now grouped together.
- Books can now support images. This is currently only used for the controls help book.
Controller Support
You are now able to play the game fully with a controller. This means everything from using items in your inventory to driving boats is now supported. This has currently only been tested on PC with an XBox 360 controller, but XBox One controllers should work as well as they have the same button mapping.
To bind an item to a controller hotkey, select the item and press one or both of the bumpers and then A/B/X/Y or any of the DPad directions. You will then be able to hit the same button combination to activate the hotkey while playing.
Upgraded Engine to Unity 5
We upgraded the version of the engine that Salt runs on from Unity 4 to Unity 5. This upgrade lays the foundation for performance and graphical improvements in the future. It also provides some fixes for graphical issues that some systems were experiencing.
Under-The-Hood Change To Item Saving
When you update to version 1.5 and load a game that was created in a previous version of Salt, you will be prompted to upgrade the save file. Once the save file is upgraded, it will no longer work with previous versions of the game. The way that items in your inventory save has been changed underneath in order to more easily facilitate more complicated item state saving in the future.
Other Changes
- There is now a normal mode check box as well as a hardcore mode checkbox when starting a new game to make it a little less confusing.
- The name field when starting a new game will now have a random name in it by default.
- Fixed quest text for treasure hunters. Many unintentionally had the same text.
- Tab on the keyboard now works as a “back” button as well as opening the inventory.
- Escape on the keyboard now works as a "back" button as well as opening the pause menu.
- Split the help book into two books. One for general game information and another for controls. Both books can be accessed from the pause menu.
- Added x and y sensitivity options.
- Fixed some misspellings.
What Got Pushed Back
Due to time constraints, we had to push back some items that were originally candidates for this update. Updated humanoid models, recipe learning, and mouse-over tooltips will come later.