Happy New Years!
I recorded a video reflecting on 2020 and looking forward to 2021. It's a bit long, so for those more interested in the cliff notes I will summarize below.
In short, 2020 was a rough year for me. In Q2 I tried to hire on some part-time help but ended up just wasting a lot of time and money that really put me a negative spot. In Q3 I decided to take on re-writing a major chunk of the main engine and got really burned out just coding day after day for months. Putting those two together had me really demotivated in Q4, and I was finding myself really lonely and having a hard time focusing.
As is most often the case, when you love something and you don't give up on it, the hard times are surmountable, and on December 1st I tried streaming development live and found it extremely motivating for me. I took a break for the end of the year, which is a big holiday here in Japan, but have started streaming again today, and have really enjoyed it even if at times no one is watching =] It's been very uplifting and my productivity has greatly increased since it's long, slow decline during 2020.
The video though is above all else heavily focused on my determination to get Solace Crafting out of early access in 2021. That doesn't mean that I will publish it, and never work on it again, there are a lot of features that I want to add post version 1.0 after leaving early access. But the core aspects of the game are largely in place, and I plan to focus, improve, and polish the game as is, with minimal new "features," meaning instead to focus on content, community tools, and overall engine polish. For example, mounts could be a great addition to the game, but they're not a necessity. There's no reason that can't be the focus of version 1.1, but getting a solid and robust version 1.0 to take us out of early access and reach a wider audience is much more important.
2021 starts my fourth year of full-time solo development of Solace Crafting. I am no less interested in taking Solace Crafting as far as it can go, but I can't stay in solo early access forever. Releasing an unfinished buggy product is in no way an acceptable move, but spending another 4 years slowly adding more and more features by myself is not a smart move either. A best case scenario would be releasing a polished game full of content and community tools that will generate enough money for me to expand the small bits of outsourcing I currently am able to afford into a couple of full-time staff to help speed up development of new features.
Until then, I'm back to work at full throttle, and was able to answer the majority of the new bug reports added to the bug tracker over the past week. I have some 80+ messages here on Steam that I will be going through tomorrow, and will continue to prioritize bugs over furthering development, but wanted to reiterate a bit of my current thought process:
1. Add a number of new areas to add a variety of new enemies with new drops.
2. Use those new drops to create a lot of new recipes to add to the respective skill trees and town buildings for unlocking and improving, including potions, masonry, and enchants.
As always, input is greatly appreciated!
A huge thanks to everyone that continues to post bug fixes along with screenshots and videos.
One note, I've had a player report a problem with building it sounds like specific to Linux. I have yet to look into this myself on Linux, which has many versions, but will do so and would appreciate any reports from any other Linux players that can either confirm a similar or dissimilar experience.
v 0.7.0.21 2021.01.05 (beta v 0.7.1.1)
- Mushrooms can now be grown above ground as well as underground
- Crate boxes in vertical dungeons can no only be picked up after clearing the dungeon
- Fixed journal descriptions being dark grey
- Fixed "Cleric Robe" to read "Cleric Jacket"
- Fixed all boats reverting to common T0 whenever they are picked up
- Fixed herbs looting as T0 regardless of location
- Fixed leyline teleport range upgrade confirmation box displaying incorrect material requirements
- Fixed planters not placing properly in single player at distances beyond 8km
- Fixed picking up crate boxes in vertical dungeons throwing errors
- Fixed pressing "Interact" (default: F) while renaming, closing the solace rename interface
- Fixed a number of problems with tombstones, bags, and trashbins
- Fixed getting seeds from a vegetable in a bag not updating immediately in single player, or at all on multiplayer
- Fixed swamp map drawing as full ocean in places
- Fixed animals/etc duplicating in semi-rare circumstances
You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.
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