I'm looking to push this patch and all the recent changes to the live public build tomorrow if all seems well after simmering on beta for a day.

First off in today's patch are enchanted torches:



These special, currently wall only, torches have a settings interface that will let you specify their color, range, and intensity. I wanted some of these components for use in procedural content like the goblin dungeons, and so just extended things a bit and built an interface with some customizable "preset" color slots, and so forth.

I've also added breathing potions and "light range" potions to the alchemy tree. Breathing potions are pretty self-explanatory, and the light range potion applies a buff with a new stat called "light range". This increases the range of the player's light aura, brightening up a larger area either at night, underwater, or in caves, for example.

I've also fixed a few small problems that had been bothering me like procedural areas turning on and off repeatedly when you cross back and forth over a distance threshold. This happens very often at the starting platform because it is spawned right in the corner of 4 areas. Areas to be marked for despawn will now have 1 extra unit of allowed distance (128m) than areas being marked to spawn to prevent that. Grass not joining together properly at the seams causing long straight bald lines to appear every 128m has also been repaired.

I've already started working on the character controller and animations, something I've been putting off for a long time that is very a common issue with players that leave a negative review here on Steam. It's almost midnight here, but even after just a couple hours of working on it it's already looking a lot better. I've only updated the out-of-combat movement animations though and it was too late to export the changes into this patch. All-in-all I think I've no other choice but to buy some better animations for the combat stance as the running caveman animations I'm using right now just don't do anyone any good.

Updating the controller and animations is the first of several "presentation" upgrades I want to make over the next few patches, as I've really only focused on "features" for a long time, and the poor presentation of them is turning away players and press that otherwise might find a quite enjoyable game. I'll be looking to finally implement some lore and am in the processes of consulting with some peers on UI improvements for which I've already garnered some great advice.

Thanks as always to everyone joining in for early access, and a special thanks to all of my Patreon supporters!

v 0.7.1.9 2021.02.19
- Added a "Light Range" potion that increases the range of the players light aura
- Added a breathing potion that allows breathing under water
- Added console commands for resource spawn rates, though they should not be used unless necessary
- Added enchanted torches with color, intensity, and range controls
- Glowing mushrooms in caves are now harvestable
- Increased the "area" despawn distance by 1 to prevent repeated spawn/despawn when walking back and forth over threshholds
- Brightened underwater fog (WIP)
- Fixed turning all the cave resource spawn settings to max causing iron and copper to become unable to spawn
- Fixed grass "areas" not overlapping properly, leaving obvious gaps

You may need to restart Steam for the update to begin.

To opt into Beta you only need to go to your Steam Library, right-click on Solace Crafting, select Properties, click on the Beta tab, and opt-in to the beta.

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