Progress has been a little slow this week. While some things were added to the game it feels like less than usual. There is one very large reason for that, which is ultimately a good thing. Before we jump to it however, let’s briefly talk about what happened this week. If you’d rather skip my nonsensical jabber there’s a change log at the end as usual.

A quick note before we get into this week, I just wanted to mention that I’ve heard requests for custom keybinds. I plan to put it in as soon as I can, but the stuff I’ll explain below took precedence. Once that’s out of the way I’ll get on it though.

In terms of additions, nothing spectacular was added this week. Two new zones were put into the game, follow the path west of the lake and the areas should now be open to you. Fair warning, there isn’t much in terms of new and exciting things to do in these places yet. You may ask why I’ve bothered to add them and I’ll explain that in a bit.

Aside from zones, I’ve added another NPC to the game, he lives over near Remi (west of the plains) if you’d like to find him. I wanted to put something of substance into this version so I added a quest for him as well. Doing it will unlock something else you can do on your farm. There’s also been some small bug fixes thrown in, but I’ll list those below.

So, all of this comes back to what happened this week. The reason we are a little light on content is because I took some time to reconsider a few late game things and solidify some systems. The second, and far more important, reason is that I took another look at patching. If you’ve been following this game for a few weeks you’ll know that I forwent a patching system recently. The old system was causing issues, and being more of a hindrance than a help in general. I believe I describe the issue more thoroughly here if you didn’t hear about it. https://exodussoftware.itch.io/verdant-village/devlog/130057/verdant-village-version-013

In any case, as many of you are aware at the moment each time a new version comes out you lose your save. For the lack of a better term, that sucks. Originally, I had planned to wait much longer before looking into a patching system again. Without going into detail, the general idea was that once the map was set in stone it would be far easier to deal with a patching system. This is why two new zones got added this week even though there isn’t much point to them yet. At first my plan was to simply put the entire map in place so that patching could be looked at again as quickly as possible.

While that was the plan, I tend to continue thinking about large issues to make sure I didn’t miss anything. In this case I believe I missed something that isn’t simpler per say, but should be far more effective. The previous patching system, at its core, essentially loaded your save and then would toss in any new assets that got patched in, as well as modifying anything that already existed. This becomes very tedious because of how saves work in Construct 3. I can’t fully blame C3 because if I had planned ahead better, I would have developed a custom save system to bypass this, so it isn’t really on them.

Basically, the new plan is the opposite of the old one. Instead of adding new things in we basically pick out the data from the game that the player has altered during their play time and stitch that onto a fresh version of the game. In other words, from the systems perspective you are basically starting a new game but then the things the player has done are corrected for. Hopefully that makes some sort of sense as it’s a bit hard to verbalize. In short this allows for the game to be flexibly altered because believe it or not the player actually affects very little in the overall game when considering all the stuff there is.

What you as a player are probably interested in is that, assuming all goes well, this system should allow you to keep your progress with each update. Also, because of the way it works, unlike the old patching system it won’t require meticulous work on my end that really just slowed down development.

So, if you made it through all that, there is the reason why content is a bit light this week. The new patching idea came to me about midway through Wednesday. Since then I’ve been cobbling it all together. I don’t like to put deadlines on things too much, but I’m hoping this patching system will be ready by the end of next week. I’ll be putting it out as soon as it’s ready so if I’m done before Friday you will see it before then.

One last note regarding patching, I am sorry to say, but this version will still not let you carry over your save. When the version with the new patching system comes out you’ll have to restart one last time, but that should be it. I would also add that like I said before this patch is a bit content light, it may be in your best interest to hold onto the old version of the game and just continue playing your old save if you don’t want to lose progress. Of course, you can have both versions on your computer at the same time if you want to try the new things, just make sure you keep the folders separate, and have two different save files. One other thing I feel I should mention. In case you were unaware I made a discord for this game a while back. It seems to be garnering some folks, who I can attest are all very friendly. If you’re looking for people to talk to about the game or whatever the link is below. I also show up and answer questions with some amount of frequency.

I’m also inclined to mention the wiki that was made a while back. It’s still a work in progress, but if you’d like to contribute feel free. At some point I will do what I can to make it more fleshed out as well.

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/TJ7FtQ3

Wiki (WIP): https://verdant-village.fandom.com/wiki/Verdant_Village_Wiki

VERSION 0.13.5 FULL CHANGE LOG

-Patched an issue that was causing all dialogue in the game to break (this was actually part of a hotfix, but I thought I’d add it here in case you missed it)

-Added two zones west of the lake

-Fixed a bug with the description box, which should now be more consistently sized

-Added Ben, along with one of his quests

-Added Apiaries

-Added proper “Accept” and “Decline” buttons on quest dialogue

-Decreased fish fillet sell price from 40 to 10 (sorry no more easy money)

-Added a confirmation prompt to the mines, if you are in the mines and try to leave you will be asked to confirm that you want to go back to floor 0

-Fixed a minor animation glitch with the female character when swinging the axe

-Altered an ore spawn that was overlapping objects in the swamp awkwardly

-Fixed a bug that would make tree seeds that you planted act as solid objects prior to them growing

-Replaced forage bushes to make them look more like actual wild bushes instead of just crops

-Fixed a bug where right clicking items in the oven section of the cooking UI would delete the item from your inventory

-Fixed a bug where left clicking objects in the “sell” tab of the shipping chest would, under specific circumstances, make the object to the left of it increase its stack size, basically providing infinite items

-Fixed a small visual bug where stack size text would show up under the item icon in some cases

-Fixed a small bug where walking out of a chicken coop or barn that you built would misplace the player icon on the map

-Fixed a bug that may have kept your locked out of barns or chicken coops

-Made the F11 key a shortcut for toggling fullscreen