Patch day is here once again, this one can probably be considered a bigger one. Before we get too far into it, I have one thing I want to address. It’s come to my attention that there is a bug where when you launch the game, you’ll (rarely) get a window, which will simply be a black screen. The game will never load, and if you try closing the window and relaunching the same thing will happen.

This is something I’ve personally witnessed once. Relaunching the game on my PC caused it to launch normally. It always struck me as some sort of jank with the Construct 3 engine which the game is made in, which further research suggests it may be. My concern is with how frequent it is. While I’d prefer for it to never happen, the core of the issue is related to the game creation program and not my code. Meaning I am somewhat at the mercy of the developers who make Construct 3 and NWjs.

I’ve been looking into this in my spare time this past week, checking forums, making posts, etc, and may have stumbled upon a solution. This patch is basically a test. I’d ask that if you are playing Verdant Village, and you experience this black screen launch issue to let me know. From what I understand, it’s a pretty rare occurrence, but if it is still happening with the changes that have been made it will let me move on to trying other solutions.

So, boring tech stuff aside, this patch has both a lot and a little honestly. The main attraction is hunting. A system I was supposed to have in the game by V0.3, oops. Better late than never I suppose. So, in order to hunt you’ll have to speak with Caleb who is a new NPC also added this patch. He’ll set you on a quest to unlock hunting. Speaking of, a quick note on Caleb. Due to how patching works he will likely idle in place for a day before he starts moving normally. If you just patched and don’t see him moving don’t fret, he should kick into gear the following day. In the future I’ll try to look into a way to fix this, but I didn’t have time this week.

I won’t go into the particulars for hunting, but what was added this patch is still only part of the system. You can now physically hunt animals, however there isn’t much to do with what you get from hunting them. You can sell the raw meat for some money, but in the future, there is a more extensive system surrounding all this that I’ll implement. In short, by the time things are done you will be able to hunt and then refine the meat via smoking, marinating, and stuff of that nature. I have most of the art for this I just didn’t have time to work it all into this patch. Sometime in the future I’ll get back to it though.

While hunting is the main part of this patch there are a couple of other smaller things. First, a new zone was added, you have to have some place to hunt after all. It is west of the Beryl Woods. Aside from hunting in that zone there are also some artifacts to find, and new foraging plants.

You’ll find that your fowl now drop feathers. At the moment, chicken feathers are the only ones with a purpose, to make arrows. But in the future duck and geese feathers will also play a role.

Aside from all that there were a couple bug fixes that I’ll list below. Also, Mel now sells some farm products along with animals. The prices are a bit high, but if you’re short an egg or some milk you can buy it from her now.

Last thing, this is just a bug fix but it has implications that may confuse people. There was a bug pointed out in the last patch where extra irrigation pipes would appear on your farm after the patch. This was due to a small oversight in how they were created. I have fixed this issue in the code. The thing is, I can’t do anything about the pipes you may have already laid down. In short, any pipes that you placed and later pulled up are going to reappear when you patch. Once you pick them up this time they should stay gone for good. Basically, you are going to get some extra pipes this patch assuming you placed down, and then removed any in the past.

Other than that, the changelog is below. As for what’s coming next it will likely be some smaller systems. I’m also going to slowly begin work on combat. That will be the next major addition, but there will be plenty to tide things over until then.

Verdant Village Patch 0.3.2 Changelog

-Fixed an odd bug that would occur occasionally when scrolling the mouse wheel when charging a tool

-Fixed a bug that could occasionally give specific items the wrong sprite in your inventory

-Added hunting

-Added Blackthistle Forest (southwest of the Beryl Woods, or south of Shimmerdew Lake)

-Added feathers from fowl, chickens, ducks, and geese have a chance to drop feathers each day, ducks and geese do not have a 100% drop chance

-Added two more artifact keystones to the world

-Added Caleb to the game, currently he only has one schedule but more will be added next week

-Added a quest for Caleb

-Sven’s quest (that has been in the game since the first alpha for some reason) can now be completed due to hunting being in the game

-Increased stamina gain on milk and goat milk to 35 and 50 respectively

-Added the following items to Mel’s store for purchase -Chicken Egg -Cow Milk -Goat Milk -Chicken Feather -Duck Feather -Goose Feather

-Fixed a bug regarding having tilled ground near an irrigation pipe, which if you dug with the shovel to make a hole, then filled said hole in, the tile would not be watered

-Made clay a consistent drop when digging in the mines for now, also slightly increased drop rate. A new system will replace this one altogether in the near future

-Fixed a bug where irrigation pipes would not properly assign a variable causing ones that had been placed and removed to reappear when the game was patched. NOTE, this will happen once more during this patch, once they are removed this time, they should stay gone. Sorry for the inconvenience, enjoy the free pipes

-Changed the “It’s locked” dialogue to “It’s locked, looks like no one is home” to hopefully avoid confusion as to where an NPC is

-Made an alteration to exports to hopefully prevent random low probability on launch crashing.