The Steam Summer Sale event is live!
Steam does not post "minor updates" to the store page for users that do not own the game, so I wanted to post an update on the progress of the current beta branch 0.6.4. I was hoping to get it stable and ready to push live prior to the Summer Sale, but as it turns out, rewriting tens of thousands of lines of code from scratch is a pretty time consuming endeavour! Though the benefits of the time spent are already there and obvious, I just need a bit more time to polish out the bugs.
In short, 0.6.4 is a major overhaul of the world generation code as well as the save file structure. The new world generation code is able to load an area, for example after teleporting 10 kilometers, in just a couple of seconds, whereas the old system (still on the default "live" branch) could take upwards of 45 seconds. Save file count has also been reduced down to under 1%, meaning a fully explored terrain used to generate up to 129 files, but now those are all contained within a single file. Steam cloud saves seem to have a terrible time when there are a lot of smaller files, so I'm hoping this will improve the problems people have been having when using cloud saves prior to 0.6.4.
The new system also uses a new algorithm for file compression/decompression that is much more stable than the one I was using. Data loss is completely unacceptable with any software, and unfortunately the software I was using was, albeit very infrequently, caused data corruption at times for seemingly no rhyme or reason.
Overall there is a lot more code in 0.6.4 that was hand-written by yours truly meaning there is actually going to be a lot more control over game and world settings. For example how far to render trees, buildings, grass, terrains, and distant terrains will all be able to be managed individually, letting players further tune their graphics depending on their computer specs.
Currently I'm fixing bugs related to multiplayer caves which were added into multiplayer for the first time just last week. There are still however a few things left to upgrade before 0.6.4 can be sent to the "live" default branch:
- Terraforming
- Farming
- Procedural Towers
- Floating Islands
- Non-chunk based biomes
Note: I have not marked the game as "multiplayer" nor with "supported languages" on the Steam store page, because they are works in progress, and I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression. Multiplayer is quite functional, and getting better every week, but still needs work. The UI also supports 30 "major" languages, which make the game at least playable if you can't read English, though they are incomplete, and fallback to Google translations unless a community member has been kind enough to correct them via crowdin.com/project/solace-crafting.
I know it isn't a lot of "fun" not having new things like fishing, cooking, new recipes, and more town functions not being added while this upgrade is going on, but I hope everyone will agree that it was a smart decision once the patch goes live and everything is running clean and fast. It's actually quite draining for me as a solo developer because I too have a lot more fun adding in new things, but again, I really feel this has increased the base quality of the game flow a lot and am glad that I decided to make the effort to improve the foundations that everything else runs on top of.
Meanwhile, Pixel Noise, our audio guys, are starting work on new sound effects for all of the animals and monsters. If the Summer Sale goes well, hopefully I can funnel more funds their way to improve the overall audio experience of the game. At some point a major upgrade to player animations will also be necessary, just to remind everyone that the current animations are not intended as a final solution.
All in all, 3D, open world, multiplayer programming is tough business for a solo developer, but progress is steady, and I'm very much looking forward to the various planned feature from here on!
Please join us on Discord at: discord.gg/SolaceCrafting
for discussions on suggested features, and for posting bug reports.
If you'd like to help test 0.6.4 you need only to opt into the beta branch by right-clicking Solace Crafting in your Steam Library and clicking on Properties.
Stay safe, and happy gaming!