Lots of QoL and smaller things this week I think. I’m trying to handle more requested things first as well as get the bugs in line before I really move onto content. The idea being that building more content on top of a bugged system often results in way more problems down the road. That said I did manage to get a few things put into the game, most are just small things but things I wanted to add regardless. A full patch list is at the end if you’d rather skip to that. Most bug fixes aren’t worth nothing in this section but one I did want to mention was the changing of the price on tier 3 barns and coops. If you finished the quest to unlock them and saw the price you may have been a bit confused. Turns out the game was reading array data wrong, hence the low price. This has been corrected.

Another change that will likely throw people off at first was something mentioned by a user that I agreed with. They pointed out that some functionality when dealing with items in inventories isn’t consistent. Sometimes left clicking would modify the stack by one when other times the entire stack would be modified by a left click. This prompted me to go through and rework actions to be more consistent. General rule of thumb at this point is left click will alter by 1. Right click will manipulate the entire stack. This might be a bit strange for some of you to get used to but I think it will be worth it in the long term. Next on the list, when you open a chest there are several buttons on the left side of the menu. These buttons used to have somewhat befuddling functions. While the bottom most button still lets you pick up the chest the first two buttons will now let you fill a chest with your inventory (to the best of it’s ability) and the other will pull everything out of the chest (or as much as is possible). These buttons now also show a tooltip when you hover them.

The next thing is a bit hard to explain. Basically, there are a lot of things you can use in Verdant Village. When using an item there are 3 potential ways the game allows usage. Many things are single use such as a shovel or eating food. Some items you can hold down right click to charge them but they still only perform the action once. And last some items like the axe or pickaxe you can hold down the mouse button for continuous use.

Prior to this patch there were also seeds that you could plant. Most likely you’ve realized that you need to click each time you want to place one which is sort of annoying. I’ve modified the code so that you can now use these items continuously while moving around. So you should have an easier time planting seeds. I’d like to apply this to furniture placement as well in the future but that’s a bit more involved so it’s on hold for now.

Next is a bit of behind the scenes work. Some of you noticed that objects in the world would appear above or below the player/NPCs when they weren’t supposed to. This sort of task is handled by something called the “Z Ordering System”. As of this patch it has been redone completely. Early testing shows that it is working better and more efficiently than the old one. If you noticed anything looking out of place I’d ask that you report it so that I can further modify the system.

One side effect of this to be aware of is that it may affect your furniture. If you find that objects you have placed on your farm aren’t ordering properly try picking them up and placing them again as this should refresh things. This logic would apply to placeable walls but placeable paths should not have an issue. Something that’s actually visual is that now there are dragonflies flying around in the swamp. The sprite needs some altercation but the code is in place and should be working.

Another person suggested that they’d like to see the lighting for the game actually change based on the seasons. Basically more daylight in summer and less in winter. The lighting engine was pretty old anyway so I redid it. It should be a bit more efficient now and sunrise and sunset will now vary slightly based on the season you are in.

Last but certainly not least is something I got done with today actually. Lots of inventory management stuff this patch I feel like. In any case I reworked a lot of code to make it possible to specify certain amounts of objects in stacks. What this means is if you shift (by default) left click an object, you’ll get a prompt to tell the game how many of that object you would like to grab. In inventories this will move the object into your hand. In stores you can specify how many of something you want to buy or sell. The only exception is that you can’t buy multiple animals at once.

On a side note for anyone who is new here, first off, welcome. But second it should be said that if you start a new game on this patch the introduction cutscene will not play which could leave you a little lost. There is a bug on the current version of Construct 3 (the engine the game is made in). This bug makes the game freeze during the use of timelines and therefore makes the cutscene unplayable. The bug has reportedly been fixed in the next release of the engine so this should only be a temporary issue. That’s the major stuff. At the moment I’m thinking that I’ll try to add some content next week. I was considering getting the tailoring stuff in place so that might be next on my list. In any case the full changelog is below. Oh and since I forget to post it below are links to Twitter and the Discord if you’re interested.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExodusSoftware

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

Full Changelog V0.2

-Fixed a non z ordering fence by the mill

-Made a small modification to the Narbell Farm in order to prevent awkward collisions near the fences.

-Fixed a bug where every patch players would receive the discovery text upon going to the Narbell Farm. This will happen one more time before stopping.

-Should have fixed an issue where performing an action prior to the game finishing a transition between rooms would lock the player’s actions not allowing them to use tools. Most common case of this seemed to be immediately mining something in the mines after coming to a new floor. This should also remedy digging a hole while transitioning.

-Fixed an issue where if you mounted/dismounted your horse while transitioning between rooms you could temporarily bend the rules of reality.

-Fixed a bug where if you patched the game while you had a coop or barn under construction the building would not create its own doorway barring your entrance to the building.

-Fixed a bug with Baldric not having dialogue while being in the castle grounds during winter, this was likely more relevant than just that specific scenario however.

-Added dialogue for Baldric when it rains and snows, as he apparently didn’t have any.

-Fixed a bug with the player forge where the description box could get stuck behind other objects in the UI.

-Fixed a bug where it was possible to take your horse into the mines. If you did take your horse into the mines it should show up back at your stable post patch, I guess it learned to climb ladders.

-Fixed an incorrect description with sugarcane where it claimed it only took 5 days to grow, it actually takes 15.

-Hopefully fixed an issue where spam clicking any of the add heat buttons would freeze the game. -Fixed a bug where a little bit of rain could be seen at the top of the screen as you exited a building while it was raining.

-Fixed a glitch where gold cost was reading wrong for upgraded versions of coops and barns, in the spacious version of each the gold cost was extremely low as a result.

-Altered right and left click functionality in both the shops and shipping chest to match with the rest of the game. Left clicking an object will transfer or sell 1 of an object. Right clicking will move or sell the entire stack. Apologies if this causes some people to have to undo their muscle memory.

-Added text to the hunting quest that Sven has to make it easier to ignore.

-Changed the sign in the plains by the dry cave to not even offer the quest anymore. If you already have it the quest will still be in your log unless you drop it.

-Made some optimizations to the z ordering system when transferring between areas, objects were essentially being ordered twice, which to make a long story short, is really bad.

-Added the rest of Ethan’s schedules.

-Fireflies should now pause when the game is paused.

-Fixed a bug where you could move while in a pause menu if you were on your horse.

-Altered chest buttons to actually perform reasonable tasks, I know, crazy. One will attempt to pull everything from the chest into your inventory. The other will attempt to put everything in your inventory into the chest. And the third still attempts to pick up the chest.

-Added UI to show what each chest button does when you hover it.

-Moved various interactions (mainly planting seeds) to the mouse down state rather than click. In essence this means things like planting seeds can now be done for multiple tiles without having to click for every individual seed.

-Altered the way that NPCs determine which zone they are in while moving throughout the day. This should result in a more accurate and quicker way to monitor this system.

-Fixed quite a few wrong variables surrounding NPC location setting when leaving a building in the town. Very possible that most NPCs never registered as in town and therefore ignored some dialogue lines they had.

-Redid the Z Ordering system (hopefully for the last time) so you shouldn’t see any odd issues like your character or NPCs appearing incorrectly below or above objects in the world. A small note, if you find that furniture you placed in the world is not acting properly attempt to pick it up and place it again.

-Added dragonflies to swamp areas of the game, the sprites need a redo but they are there.

-Altered the effects for sunrise and sunset, less purple, more yellow.

-Lighting engine has now been updated to have sunrise and sunset at different times based on the season. Spring and Fall should have an average sunrise and sunset. In Summer the sun rises earlier and sets later. In Winter the sun rises later and sets earlier

-Altered the prices of fruit and saplings in most cases, overall, this should make fruit trees more profitable as their numbers were lacking a bit.

-Apple Sell Price: 30 -> 45
-Apricot Sell Price: 30 -> 40
-Cherry Sell Price: 30 -> 95 (Cherries were really terrible)
-Grapefruit Sell Price: 60 -> 100
-Lemon Sell Price: 60 -> 75
-Peach Sell Price: 50 -> 65
-Pear Sell Price: 60 -> 75

-Plum Sapling Price: 7000 -> 5000
-Apricot Sapling Price: 6500 -> 7000
-Grapefruit Sapling Price: 6000 -> 7000
-Lemon Sapling Price: 7000 -> 6500

-Fixed a bug where positional sounds in the world (fires, waterfalls, etc.) would not play sound if you muted SFX and brought it back up within the same zone.

-Rescaled the chapel building, it was sitting at around 60% scale for some reason.

-Fixed a tiling glitch in the deep woods treetops during winter.

-Fixed a bug (that probably only ever happened to me due to speeding up time with cheats) where the lightning effect during rain could get stuck on your screen when the day ended and rain stopped.

-Got rid of the x5 purchase system in favor of the ability to specify the amount of something you want to buy. This system defaults to “shift” you should be able to left click any object, in your inventory, store, chest whatever, while holding shift. If you do you will be given a small prompt asking you to enter the number of items you want to pull from that stack or in the case of stores buy/sell.

-Initial cutscene temporarily disabled due to a bug with timelines in construct 3, should be re-enabled in the next patch.

-NPC patching is still off as a precaution as Ethan is still new so if someone were to patch up from a few patches ago this would break things for them.