Hey there shopkeepers!
On Covid-19
It's been a troubled few months for everyone in the world. With much of the world switching to remote working, we have not stayed behind. We are fortunate to have already had the infrastructure in place to continue working from home, which should hopefully minimize the impact the current situation has on the progress on the game. We hope you all stay safe and healthy.
Update Highlights
For the longest time we've been working on overhauling the customer behavior for Winkeltje and this has been hinted at for about as long as we have been working it. Due to other more pressing matters popping up this has been pushed and pushed to a later date but with this update we can finally share the new customer behavior. Customers will now be browsing your store more and when they can't find anything they will queue before your counter where you can ask the first person in line what they're looking for. You will then be able to sell them the item they're looking for or send them away.
With this update the maximum amount of shop levels has been raised to 40, of course we didn't stop just there, we rebalanced how fast levels are gained and the unlocks for each level. What this means is that what was previously level 30 is now level 35 and 35 to 40 will be new territory, your levels will automatically be updated to reflect this change. Of course any unlocks you may have had before the rebalance will remain unlocked, so you will not be losing access to these because of this change.
Let us know what you think of this update in the comments or join the Discord (https://discord.gg/winkeltje) where you can get in touch with us and the rest of the community. On the Discord you can also sneak a peek at the change logs as the game is being made so you know what to look forward to or what you can expect on the unstable beta branch where all the changes will be immediately playable.
Update Notes:
New
- AI - Customers now queue up at the counter when they want something that isn't on the shelves. This also fixes the issue where customers would sometimes wait around even when an item was placed on a display.
- AI - Customers now show up in a more limited pool, allowing the player to more easily increase the happiness of customers.
- AI - Customers actually use their budget now, and will as a result buy more items if they're of a lower price. This should make farming more viable as you can sell more items to a single customer.
Balance
- Levels - Shop Levels have been increased to 40.
- Unlocks - Level unlocks are spread out over the new levels to lessen the amount unlocked at once.
- Unlocks - Item unlocks through the shop level are now in order of how much money each item makes and are unlocked close to items that require it for crafting.
- Events - Summer; Wood, Turf and Coal are all less sought after in Summer.
- Events - Autumn; Tools are now affected by Autumn and are slightly more expensive.
- Events - Winter; Meals are now affected by Autumn and are slightly more expensive. Wood, Turf and Coal are all more sought after in Winter.
- Events - Blacksmith Convention; The price adjustment for Tools have been reduced (2.5x -> 2x).
- Events - Tailor Convention; The price adjustment for Clothing have been reduced (2.5x -> 2x).
- Events - Chef's Cook-off; The price adjustment for Meals have been reduced (2.5x -> 2x). More customers now show up on this day.
- Events - Harvest Day (Spring); The price adjustment for Bread has been reduced (4x -> 2x).
- Events - Harvest Day (Autumn); The price adjustment for Bread has been reduced (4x -> 2x).
- Events - King's Day; The price adjustment for Clothing has been changed to be percentage based.
- Events - Tournament; The price adjustment for Tools have been reduced (2.5x -> 1.2x). Tools are slightly less sought after than before (7x -> 6x).
- Objectives - Seasonal objectives now reward 100 silver each time they are completed successfully in addition to any unlocks when they're completed the first time. ("Prepare for ..." objectives do not get this extra reward)
Changes
- Art - Updated the look of the Terracotta floor tiles.
- Art - When picking up the commission board items, the trader will now spawn without a backpack and get one after picking up the items.
- AI - Base budget is now calculated based on the average of all the items a player owns.
- AI - Set the minimum budget of customers to 30.
- Customers - Defined more customers which should result in audible sighs to fit the customer's name and model.
- UI - You should now be able to press escape to exit out of the commission menu.
- UI - The game will now be paused while the commission menu is open.
- UI - Customer patience now counts down instead of up
- Objectives - "Sell 30 Tunics" objective will no longer start in new shops as it no longer fits the progression.
- Objectives - Disabled the starting of Avoid type objectives ("Rotten Apples", "Thank Me Trader", "Craft Lottery") as we evaluate how to make them more fun.
Fixes
- Art - Made the walls look better when masked.
- Art - The bushes in the main menu were not changing with the displayed season.
- Gameplay - Access points would sometimes not be marked as invalid.
- Gameplay - Customers would sometimes request seeds
- Gameplay - Player rotation would not be loaded correctly
- Objectives - The Max Appeal Upgrade Tutorial now autocompletes if the shop already has been upgraded once before.
- Objectives - Cheese was not unlocked when Quiche was unlocked through crafting.
- UI - Fixed an error that could occur by rapidly clicking the accept button when the last commission in the commission menu was selected.
- UI - Fixed an issue that could let you buy/order items twice within a single frame if clicked fast enough.
- UI - The detail panel in the commission menu had the wrong background.
- UI - The outline colour of the trader icon would sometimes not reset its colour correctly when using a pooled prefab.
- UI - Wall masking hotkey 'H' is now disabled when a menu is open.
- UI - Renaming the "Shop" tab to "Shop Upgrades" broke the description in the unlock menu.
- Main menu - Main menu animated backgrounds should now have wall masking disabled.
- Audio - Music in main menu was not looping anymore.
Hotfix 4911
- Customers - Customers would default to an opinion of 0 instead of 50.
- Customers - Old save files with the customer identity set to "random" would always load in as the Male Villager instead of correctly picking a random model.
- Customers - Customer opinion was clamped between -5 - 15, instead of 0 - 1000.
- Customers - Customers now get 1 opinion when being sold something via the counter.
- Objectives - Paying off your debt with a loan would sometimes throw an error
- UI - Customers show a happy face again when buying something.
- System - Delivery monoAgent wasn't being cleared correctly.
- System - Ordering supplies from the counter twice while the shop was open should no longer softlock the game.