Believe it or not, I've been working on this game for 10 years now! What started as a dream from someone with no prior experience coding or working with Unity, certainly not in the gaming industry, has grown considerably with this latest patch.
In all honesty, parts of Solace Crafting prior to this patch were still running on spaghetti I had written back in 2017. This isn't a complete overhaul fixing every last shortcoming of what I started so long ago, but it's a huge step forward, and I'm so thankful to everyone that has helped me make it this far. I hope to continue to make improvements to Solace Crafting until the end of my days, regardless of whether I am able to release other games or embark on other adventures.
Huge shoutout to the beta testers in Discord that have kept me busy the past week ironing out all the little bugs in a game with so many different systems and locations.
Major changes
NEW TERRAIN ENGINE — The world now runs on a custom mesh-based terrain system (replacing Unity's built-in terrain). Faster streaming, seamless LOD, and the groundwork for a much larger visible world, better post-processing, and improved performance.
GPU-DRIVEN VEGETATION — Trees, plants, rocks, and grass are now placed and rendered on the GPU. Far more vegetation on screen with far fewer hitches.
REWRITTEN WORLD MAP — The map is now drawn in a single GPU pass instead of hundreds of CPU tiles. Smoother panning, no more black tiles, correct coordinate labels.
STEAM NETWORKING OVERHAUL — Player-hosted multiplayer now uses Steam's Datagram Relay for better connectivity, and Steam Workshop support is undergoing a revamp.
World generation & terrain
IMPROVEMENTS
- Mesh-based terrain engine integrated and live, with quadtree LOD and runtime streaming
- Reworking height composition for more varied terrain
- New ocean shaders
Vegetation
IMPROVEMENTS
- Trees and all static flora (rocks, herbs, decorations) now placed and rendered through the GPU pipeline
- GPU-instanced grass
- Vegetation now streams past the collider radius using far-LOD billboards, so distant hillsides are no longer bare (further improvements WIP)
- Big rocks now part of a new 'landmark' system with further content incoming
Resources & procedural spawning
IMPROVEMENTS
- Rewritten procedural area spawning system for smoother, throttled object streaming
- Moved silver to caves, moved copper to the swamps
Multiplayer
IMPROVEMENTS
- Player-hosted games now use FizzySteamworks (Steam Datagram Relay) for quick and easy connecting
BUG FIXES
- Lots of legacy problems with Host mode (client playing as a server)
- A variety of problems where non-server clients wouldn't receive encounter or shrine rewards fixed
Combat, skills & entities
IMPROVEMENTS
- Familiars now despawn when their owner dies or when the server stops
- Familiar leashing and target validation improved
BUG FIXES
- Equipped weapons and tools now display correctly through character rebuilds and during networked attack swings
- Monster debuffs are now identified reliably, fixing cases where the wrong debuff was tracked
- Entity debuffs now clear correctly when leaving an area-of-effect
- Skill-effect comparisons now guarded against errors
Farming
BUG FIXES
- Fixed watering, crop maturing, and harvesting bugs in both tilled ground and planters
Inventory
BUG FIXES
- Fixed an item duplication exploit
Localization
IMPROVEMENTS
- Filled thousands of missing translations across all 30+ supported languages
- Repaired structural errors and text placeholder mismatches throughout the language files
User Interface
IMPROVEMENTS
- World map fully rewritten — single GPU texture render
- Map coordinate ruler labels re-enabled and fixed
- Settings: added Field of View and Render Scale options
- Settings: camera and grass options now driven by in-game settings
- Settings: quality presets reworked, with automatic detection on a fresh install
- Settings: more to come
- Character creation warm-up is now asynchronous for a smoother startup
Known Issues
- Grass shader problems on some hardware (please let me know if you have any problems!)
- Biome, heightmap, and flora spawn math is still being tuned
Join us in Discord!
What You Can Do To Help
- Keep up the kind words on our Steam posts and the Likes
- You can get and support the builder here: itch,io
- Drop by our IndieDB page to help make it visible: indiedb.com
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin, or you can verify file integrity to trigger it.