Been a while since I’ve done this. I’ve been holed up working on things prior to Verdant Village’s early access release. Before any notes, let’s get that out of the way. This will likely be the last patch (unless I have to hotfix) before the early access release on Steam. After a long, what’s it been now like 5 months or so, open alpha on Itch I believe the game is finally ready for early access. If it were up to me, I think I would just keep it under wraps until it was done, but the financial nature of things is that I have to put this out and see where I stand.

Anyway, on August 4th Verdant Village will be released onto Steam at $15.00. The price will be the same on Itch as well. To any who are already playing the game I wanted to say thank you. Everyone who has given feedback, or encouragement, or even just told me that fishing is too hard, I appreciate all of it. Because of all of you the game is far more stable than I ever would have been able to manage on my own, and it makes me extremely happy to see people playing something I’ve made and having fun.

Mushy stuff aside, I think I’m long overdue for a patch. While I wish I was about to drop tons of new features, characters, and zones, sadly I am not. One thing I’ve wanted to get done, and have procrastinated on for far too long, is controller support. As of this version of the game, controller support has been fully implemented. You should be able to just pickup a controller and use it. The buttons can also be rebound as usual. If you use a controller you will have to forgive some of the UI art, I need to have some things commissioned. For now, you are stuck with my godly ms paint skills. Some other things might be a bit rough around the edges so there will likely be polish added to this system over time, but it should (fingers crossed) function.

Aside from that keyboard only mode has been added to the game as well. I know there were a few requests for it a long time ago. With controller support going in I figured now would be as good a time as any. Keyboard only mode has to be enabled manually in the settings. While I’d love for it to automatically figure out that you are just using a keyboard there are too many complications for it to be possible.

This is why in general you don’t add support like this so late into a game’s development. To any devs reading this, heed my somewhat wise, sometimes irrational words, if your game is going to have controller support, add it as you go, not after like 2 and a half years of development.

All that aside, there were some bug fixes for various things. I’m hoping that this patch will do away with the bug related to Simeon disappearing for several days post patch. Other than that, I did manage to squeeze one thing in today. The cooking station will now look at the inventories of every chest inside your house when you are cooking. So, you no longer need to carry all your ingredients to the station to cook. This works for adding fuel as well. I may look to add similar systems to other things as well in future.

Aside from that one other QoL thing was done. I altered the stack sizes of a lot of objects. Most things in the game now stack to 50, or more in the case of building materials. The only thing really left unchanged is food stack sizes. The reason being, I don’t really want to have high stacking food. Doing something like that basically makes stamina irrelevant because people can then just carry 50 full course meals in their pocket. It still could be subject to change, but for now at least I’m sticking to my guns on that.

As for the future, I think I can finally get back to content now. I’ve spent the last, I don’t even know how long anymore, altering existing systems for efficiency, fixing bugs, adding things like controller support, and whatever else. I think things are mostly stable now, so while I may still do some of that I think I’ll focus on new features. Next on the docket is probably hunting, I’ll probably also put Brock in so people can open up that cave. People seem to really want to do that. Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thanks for listening to me ramble. Hopefully the next patch come quicker, and if I can shamelessly plug one more time, don’t forget August 4th for the games release. Thanks and stay safe out there.

Verdant Village Version 0.3 Full Patch Notes -Fixed a bug where you could click arrow buttons in a shop from beneath the animal naming interface.

-Fixed a few bugs relating to swapping the flooring in rooms of your house.

-Fixed a variety of spelling errors in item descriptions (credit to rstonewall for tracking them).

-Fixed a bug with the blacksmith where upgrading tools wouldn’t accurately update your inventory visually.

-Added tint to moving buildings to make it more apparent when you are selecting one.

-Controller support has been added, bindings can be fully customized in settings, some art assets for this system are not final, forgive my poor paint skills. In case you skipped the long form patch notes, there are likely bugs with this system as it is a massive, complex, thing, if you find any let me know and I’ll try to address them quickly.

-Fixed a bug where archaeology artifacts would show their name on the description display prior to having been completed.

-Fixed an issue where items created via alchemy breakdown would not properly dim the sprite upon creation.

-Fixed a visual issue where the scrolling buttons in the catalog menu would not properly activate or deactivate based on where you were in the listings.

-Fixed a bug related to patching and shops not being open for a day. When saving was changed to happen whenever a player slept there were likely some overlooked issues. This one specifically has to do with shops not activating the first day after a patch assuming that the game was last saved when the shop was already open. This fix, will not apply on this patch due to how it is implemented, but in future patches it will no longer occur.

-Fixed a bug with binding the Map key, which would promptly open the map as soon as you remapped the binding.

-Setup keyboard only mode, key bindings are customizable, this mode must be enabled in settings in order for it to work. Similar to controller support there may be bugs, if you find any let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

-Hopefully set up a failsafe to prevent Simeon from disappearing post patch, as he is prone to do sometimes.

-Fixed a bug regarding patching and deleted buildings reappearing under specific circumstances.

-Added a system to cooking, the cooking station can now utilize items from the player’s inventory as well as anywhere inside the player’s house, I.E. in chests. This system also works with adding fuel for heat.

-Altered max stack sizes to be more consistent and more accommodating, items that were affected are listed below, in short, most items will now stack to 50. A short-generalized list is below.

-Crops

-Fish

-Fruit

-Gems

-Farm Products (eggs, milk, honeycomb, sap, etc)

-Minerals

-Seeds and Saplings

-Foraged Plants

-Food Ingredients

-Alchemy Ingredients