A smaller update addressing a few quality of life issues raised over the past while as we enter the holiday season. There has been a lot of feature work going on behind the scenes that isn't quite ready for release yet, and I can share more details about all of this soon. One of these is the character customization system with a much more finalized looking male character along with a new female character. German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese translations are in the works and will be ready in the next week or so. I plan to send out a more detailed 2025 roadmap very soon with more concrete timelines of various features and content, so stay tuned! I know that the speed of feature/content addition has been very slow given the tiny size of the team and I apologize for that, but if you currently enjoy the game and the direction it's heading in, know that there is so much planned and that I will stop at nothing to get the game to the greatest it can be over the next few years. Happy Holidays! Additions:

• Added an often-requested transfer amount popup when moving item stacks or filling containers. You can hold shift when dragging then releasing an item stack to another slot (or press Y on an XBox controller) to open a transfer amount popup that lets you fine tune how much to transfer. This is also shown when filling a container with another, allowing you to select the exact amount of liquid to transfer
  
• Added a proper terrain levelling function to the shovel (default Ctrl + left click). An indicator will appear showing the height and range of the levelling process, and this indicator will snap to certain height steps to allow for more obvious terrain planning for your camp. Note that this feature won't work if the terrain difference is too steep, so add/remove dirt with the shovel first to be able to level things properly.
• Added a way to snap shelter building pieces to a grid by holding Left Alt (or DPad left on controllers) to better layout your posts and walls. Let me know how this grid feels and if you'd like any changes!

Fixes:

• Fixed queued crafting recipes with liquid outputs (ex. berry juice) continuing even if the destination container is full
• Fixed language change not setting the new language in all places within the game, requiring a game restart
• Fixed French translation issues and missing translations for French/Russian
• Fixed errors when dragging a floor
• Fixed PS5 select button glyph

Other changes:

• Reworked floor placement process to be much less strict about how flat the terrain needs to be to avoid unneeded flattening with shovel after placement. Coupled with the new levelling feature done in advance, you should almost never need to flatten the ground to complete the floor
• Terrain smoothing was moved from Ctrl+left click to Ctrl+right click to allow the new levelling feature to take priority. Smoothing has also been reworked to be much quicker and line up with the digging animation

[ 2024-12-19 02:13:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Finishing up controller support with a new on-screen keyboard for the various text input spots in the game like map markers and co-op game names and passwords. Also adding a few further fixes for a few things introduced in the controller input like mousewheel over-sensitivity. As always, thanks for playing the game and giving feedback! Additions:

• Added on-screen keyboard for text input for non-Steam Deck controllers (Steam Deck was already using its built in keyboard system)
• Added a new controller glyph dropdown setting to choose the glyphs you want to see if the game can't properly detect the controller you are using
• Added stat bar labels to show their name and values when using any in-game menus with a controller

Fixes:

• Fixed sensitivity of keyboard-based camera rotation
• Fixed being unable to right click on the player icon to create a map marker
• Fixed map zoom sensitivity via scrollwheel
• Lowered the inventory controls help bar on 130%+ UI scale so it doesn't overlap any important UI elements like buttons
• Fixed first combat hint showing "no input mapping" text when using a controller

Other changes:

• Increased rain visibility when cloudy and at night

[ 2024-11-26 23:56:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixing a few issues related to the controller update pushed out yesterday, thanks for the reports! Hope the controller support works well for everyone. Fixes:

• Fixed copper alembic extract button showing an empty list of destination container items
• Fixed inventory sort not sorting item names correctly due to singular/plural forms of the item names
• Attempt to fix PS4/5 controller detection for proper glyph display
• Fixed up placement rotation speed with mousewheel to be more granular, as well as making rotation with controllers more consistent regardless of framerate
• Fixed being unable to click player-made map markers to delete them
• Fixed some buttons being clickable when they shouldn't be (ex. in distillation)
• Fixed hand cart wheel rim break down recipe mistakenly giving 5 rims instead of 1
• Actually fixed hand cart wheel rim held position, the original fix applied to the wrong item
• Fixed error related to letting go of a dragged item in certain situations causing an uncaught exception and not behaving properly

[ 2024-11-23 06:24:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Took some time but finally was able to get controller support into the game! The game will support Xbox, PS5 controllers and Steam Deck, and potentially others as well but without the proper glyphs. Text input (for things like map markers, co-op game name/password) with an onscreen keyboard will be there for Steam Deck but not other controllers unfortunately, this will come in a further update. Lastly, only third person mode will be available when using controllers, supporting top-down mode may come later depending on player feedback. Features:

• Controller support - restricted to third person mode for now. It's still a bit experimental so please let me know if you run into any issues with UI navigation and whatnot. Also note that the input system within Unity was updated to better support controller input, so things like mousewheel scrolling may behave a bit differently to what it was before
• New radial menu to better support controller menu handling. This replaces the old "quick action menu" system that wasn't that great to use. All menus are accessible with options for equipping items and belt quick access. This radial menu is new and feedback is greatly appreciated around any additions or changes you'd like to see

Additions:

• Added iron shovel tip that can be combined with wooden shovels to created iron-tipped shovels that are much more durable
• Added wheelbarrow wheel and hand cart wheel break-down recipes. Nails are lost in this process due to no ability to track which nails were used to construct items. This will be remedied in future updates
• Added glyphs for keyboard and mouse inputs (along with controller glyphs) for better looking input hints ingame
• Reworked the inventory sorting buttons to now sort by size first (largest to smallest), then by item name (alphabetical, to group similar items together), then by item quantity (largest to smallest)

Balance:

• Increased wheelbarrow inventory size - you will need to dismantle and recreate your existing wheelbarrows to see the change

Fixes:

• Fixed lighting reflectiveness disappearing from non-sun light sources like fires when it is cloudy
• Fixed hand cart wheel rim hand placement when carried
• In co-op games, fixed dying while sleeping due to Blight infection breaking player character corpse collision, not allowing retrieval of previously held items
• In co-op games, fixed rare issue of dead players not being able to join again if the game was saved/reloaded while they were dead and before they respawned
• Fixed footprints appearing gigantic
• Fixed wheelbarrow map icon showing as a player icon

[ 2024-11-22 20:59:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Addressing some late game performance issues and a few other fixes in this update, as well as new co-op game respawn settings. Gamepad/SteamDeck support is still coming very soon! Additions:

• Added co-op game setting to allow respawn position update via sleeping. You can enable this when loading an existing co-op game save
• Added co-op game setting to change the items you respawn with: basic items (current setup) and no items (to reduce backpack spam)
• Added camera collision for cabin interiors in third person mode to allow for a much better experience inside

Fixes:

• Fixed extreme Blight cloud growth in very long games (day 50+) causing large framerate drops and delays in loading objects in the world. Note that loading these pre-0.9.9 saves will run a process to greatly trim down the amount of clouds in the world
• Fixed very long games getting save data files that were too big to load into memory and resulted in a "save corrupted" message
• Fixed another cause of "save corrupted" messages for cases where the game info file is corrupted somehow. In such cases a warning will show up explaining the issue and that any game settings (such as name, max players, difficulty, etc) will be reset to defaults to allow the save to be loaded
• Fixed recipes that use liquid input ingredients to properly take the specific liquid out of containers instead of using the whole mixture, avoiding exploitable scenarios
• Fixed the climb over mechanic so that it avoids collision checks with player held items like a clay jar, causing the character to shoot up to the sky when starting the climb over interaction
• Added creature pathing avoidance for fences to hopefully fix up creatures glitching over them when walking normally
• Fixed cave water not being visible in most cases
• Fixed not being able to interact with cave water
• Fixed up a lot of various uncaught errors that could be slowing down the game

[ 2024-11-06 20:37:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixing an oversight with the logs falling when damaged introduced in the last update, sorry about that! Fixes:

• Fix placed logs being knocked down when copped or sawed properly

[ 2024-10-29 22:58:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

A few more additions and fixes as controller/SteamDeck support gets very close to being ready! Additions:

• Added sort functionality to all storage structures
• Allowed clay watering jug to be placeable on the ground
• Placed logs will get knocked over when hit (sorry!)

Fixes:

• Fixed alembic disappearing when the stored candle fully depletes
• Fixed brand new games not loading recently visited areas correctly until the first save occurs
• Fixed short and long planks jumping out of the water
• Fixed co-op joining players dying suddenly from fall damage when piloting rafts
• Fixed rare case of co-op players failing to join a game in certain cases until the host restarts the game
• Fixed placed clay jars showing "Empty" label when there is no liquid contents but there are items stored inside
• Fixed small amounts of bronze hardening into an unmovable 0 gram stack of hardened bronze

[ 2024-10-29 21:27:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

There was an oversight in the save migration code for older pre-0.9.4 saves. Pushing a quick fix for it! Fixes

• Fixed "corrupted save" error when loading a pre-0.9.4 save. Nothing is actually corrupted, the game was just looking at the wrong place for the save data

[ 2024-10-24 02:31:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

More fixes, balances, QoL updates and a new wall type! Thanks so much for all the support, feedback and bug reports! Gamepad/Steam Deck support is coming along well behind the scenes and should be here in the next larger update. Hang tight! Additions:

• Added a plank fence wall type
• Added an invert mouse Y setting for third-person mode
• Added an ability to skip most tutorial tasks in case you get through them quicker than the game expects
• Candles now disappear when they burn through fully

Fixes:

• Fixed pre-0.9.4 worlds loaded in 0.9.4 having chunks regenerate and lose any modifications in specific save/load sequences, including an issue with the NPC camp disappearing within their cave. Saves where this has already been observed will not be repaired unfortunately, a new game will be required
• Fixed salt and other loose substances sometimes losing the properties required for cooking and other purposes
• Fixed co-op joining players falling through the cave entrance floor
• Properly fix soil tilling for co-op joining players now
• Fixed co-op joining players not able to finalize building floors
• Fixed a rare race condition when joining a co-op game near a cave with slow connections causing the cave to not load properly and cause an error loop, preventing the game from working properly
• Fixed save deletion not deleting the new save format folders associated with the slot
• Fixed "sleep" button not being localized in certain cases
• Fixed creatures above ground preventing fast-forwarding functionality if you are in a cave
• Fixed cases where interacting with an NPC in certain situations would freeze a co-op joining player and prevent you from moving or interacting
• Fixed start and immediate stop of the speaking dialog when interacting with an NPC due to bad distance checks

Balance:

• Lowered water requirements for disinfectant recipes
• Greatly reduced thirst cost of preserved food
• Reduced salt amount requirement for full efficiency preserving food in covered jars
• Increased inventory size of stick crate, raft with storage and wooden chests. You will need to take apart and rebuild these to see the change

Other changes:

• Adjusted collision for boars to allow easier hits when they are lying down to rest
• When loading a pre-0.9.4, there is now a step to migrate all pre-0.9.4 saves to 0.9.4+ save format to avoid issues going forward
• Reworked third person camera collision detection a bunch to now only collide with the terrain, caves, walls and roofs and nothing else to avoid rapid movement when running through forests and similar. The collision within shelters (roof/walls) should work a lot better now
• Added a "[E] Climb over" display when swimming and selecting the raft to make it clear you can climb on the raft to stop drowning
• Added more slots to the smoke rack inventory. You will need to take apart and rebuild smoke racks to see the change
• Increased stockpile size for pine leaves and twigs. Will need to create a new stockpile to see these changes
• The "Add from inventory" button will now disable when the stockpile is full and can't accept more items
• Shortened time of pickup messages in third-person mode

[ 2024-10-24 00:39:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Finally added a big new change a lot of people have been asking for: third person mode! This is an experimental new feature that you can find in the controls settings. A lot of things were tested like building, melee/ranged attacks and navigation within shelters, but there may be things that I missed. Please report issues as you find them! A few other fixes have been added as well, along with a completely rebuilt saving system. There were issues with games that went on many days with many separate saves causing huge delays when saving. This update separates out the folder structure a bit more to greatly cut back on this saving delay and should hopefully resolve things going forward. This change is backwards compatible with your existing saves, and any new saves in existing games will start using the new folder structure seamlessly. New features:

• Added experimental new third person mode, accessible via controls settings

Fixes:

• Fixed cave generation intersecting above the terrain in certain cases. This is only present in games started in 0.9.4. Existing saves have added collision logic to prevent getting stuck in an invisible cave above the terrain
• Fixed hand cart/wheelbarrow sliding around too much when not held
• No longer turn off collision for far away placed items like backpacks to prevent them losing their covered by roof status in rain
• Fixed thin trunk stack size
• Fixed fast-forward blue effect setting not saving properly when restarting the game
• Fixed tanning frame and wheelbarrow not being repairable when damaged
• Fixed missing copper sheet to molten copper smelting recipe
• Fixed covered glass bottle decay rate to avoid berry juice decaying before vinegar forms
• Fixed NPC cave generating in extreme mountains and becoming inaccessible
• Fixed NPC letter trying to generate near a fire pit in a cave but then being placed on the terrain directly above the cave
• Prevented drowning from lowering your character in the water and subsequently preventing collision with a raft and being able to climb back onto it
• Fixed not being able to climb out of a rain catcher
• Fixed various camera related settings not applying until a game restart

Balance:

• Thin trunk stack size was accidentally 2, switched back to 1
• Reduced steel requirements for hand cart rims
• Dryable items like chamomile flowers no longer dry when wet
• Predators only eat passive creatures now, preventing them from trying to head into your camp to eat other predator carcasses you may have dealt with
• Removed AI logic that would cause bears to head into camp even though there isn't any food for them to eat
• Increased projectile speed of thrown spears and stones

Other changes:

• Reworked saving system to separate save slots by directory, speeding up new saves considerably
• Reworked shelter support beam and roof placement to work with third person mode and allow a bit easier placement in the original top-down perspective as well
• Added leatherworking process for black and brown bear furs. In the future these furs will be used for clothing creation
• More compact interactions UI when hovering over an object
• Added a small item image for most pickup messages
• Added "Build with..." option for large stones

[ 2024-10-18 19:55:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

A small set of fixes this time to address some recent bug reports, a larger update with new camera controls will come out mid next week! Thanks for playing the game everyone! Fixes:

• Fixed oleander burn pile's clearing being reset after a few days. Now if the center of the cloud is cleared, the cloud will slowly start shrinking every day after
• Fixed glass bottle position when placed on the ground
• Fixed clay brick kiln items getting wet in the rain even if covered by a roof
• Fixed bones not being placeable in the fire pit's drying area
• Fixed error loop relating to digging and water updates that could cause performance degradation
• Fixed tilling soil not working for co-op joining players
• Fully fix decontamination percentage not showing up for co-op joining players
• Added recipe for copper ingot & tin ore pieces to make bronze

Balance:

• Greatly increased decontamination rate for all food
• Reduced requirements for oleander burn pile blueprint and slime oil oleander leaf crafting recipe

Other changes:

• Fungus placement in Blight clouds is now clustered in the center to give a better visual cue on where to target the clearing
• Blighted fungus is no longer selectable since the item isn't used in the game yet
• Increased small bone stack size to 4
• Allowed berries and pine nuts to be decontaminated
• Prevent auto-pickup from picking up placed items like rabbit snares or clay molds

[ 2024-10-13 16:23:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Time for another set of fixes and balance changes! Big thanks to everyone reporting issues you're seeing on the forums and in Discord. Appreciate your patience as the game experience is nailed down! Also good progress is being made on a third person camera mode. It's not ready quite yet but will be out soon, most likely in the next update. Fixes:

• Expanded wall piece collision boxes to hopefully prevent animals from hopping over them in certain cases
• Fixed co-op client players not being able to use rafts properly in certain network conditions
• Fixed co-op client players not seeing plant growth properties and stats
• Fixed co-op client players not seeing decontamination stats for decontaminated food items
• Fixed crushed silver ore not being able to be used as a cooking ingredient
• Fixed multiplayer game revert and then immediate start showing a "corrupted save" due to the game trying to load the just-deleted saves instead of the new top-level save
• Adjusted when and how caves are loaded in memory to prevent cases of cloaked figures falling through and re-appearing on the terrain directly above the spot in the cave. Also added some failsafe code to move any above-ground cloaked figures back down into the cave
• Fixed realgar crystal creation point to be in front of the resource instead of being off to the side and potentially clipping through the cave wall
• Fixed co-op clients not seeing details when hovering over a building in the process of being upgraded
• Fixed leatherworking task description to better reflect completion criteria, ie. cut the tanned leather into pieces
• Fixed distant cave lighting weirdness related to the shadow rendering changes in the previous update
• Adjusted main menu news popup to longer block main menu in case of weird resolution on first game launch with two monitors
• Fixed translations for the wait for contact tasks
• Allowed rain water along with potable water for fungicide crafting recipe
• Fixed covered clay jar interactions so that it can be filled/emptied with a clay bowl in either hand
• Fixed item movement blocked in placed backpacks if an inventory holding item like a small leather bag was in the top-left spot in the bag
• Fixed lid removal from covered clay jar losing all stored items in certain cases instead of having the items moved to your inventory
• Fixed raw wolf meat cooking into boar meat
• Allowed jerky to be decontaminated
• Fixed item/stockpile placement starting and stopping instantly due to bad distance checking
• Fixed fungicide recipe not being locked before the relevant letter explains it

Balance:

• Reduced Blight cloud growth
• Increased chance of multiple mushroom growth after a growing cycle
• Reduced dehydration rate of all plants
• Increased most plant and herb generation in the world
• Pine cones are now contaminated like plants (sorry!)

Other changes:

• In-game news section no longer shows non-Steam community news
• Raft piloting isn't automatically ended when hitting the shore to prevent unintentional character movements in some cases
• Added CJK fallback fonts for players wanting to use those characters in game names and other places
• Allow collision with player character when placing items or buildings
• Increased fuel requirements for tinder/kindling to get round numbers of the required materials again after the increased fuel amounts from the previous update

[ 2024-10-10 22:35:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

First update post Early Access release! Thank you so much everyone for checking out the game and sharing your feedback! The response to the game's release has been way bigger than I ever imagined. I know that a few things are still rough and there are a lot of balance and fixes needed, as well as a few new QoL features, rest assured that I will try to address everything as fast as I can. This first update focuses on a bunch of fixes and balances changes, but work continues on controller support behind the scenes and should hopefully be coming in the next week or two. I also have heard your feedback regarding the camera, I know it's not ideal for a lot of people and I will fix it finally with a new optional mode in the controls. Fixes:

• Fixed duplicate crystal gathering task appearing after dropping off crystals or silver. This was due to an oversight around opening/closing the relevant letter more than once
• Hopefully fixed the two monitor window issue by setting the game to use Fullscreen Window mode by default instead of Exclusive Fullscreen
• Fixed cases where silver wasn't present on the island by also generating it in caves. Any island caves you may have explored will be regenerated automatically after this update
• Fixed queued crafting recipes resetting the container that is chosen for the output, ex. crushing berries into one bowl won't switch to another after the first completes
• Fixed player rotation being tilted when getting up from bedroll causing loads of the autosave to have a weird camera setup on the character
• Fixed wheelbarrow and hand cart disappearing and/or becoming un-interactable when dragged into a cave
• Fixed extra construction materials being lost when using the "add from inventory" button to add remaining materials in certain cases
• Prevented auto-save on wakeup if your character dies due to poison or other cause
• Fixed distance check code to avoid construction interaction stopping instantly just as it starts
• Bears can no longer consume closed containers like clay pots or glass bottles
• Fixed wooden chest/workbench collision with floors

Balance:

• Greatly reduced requirements for various stick shelter pieces
• Increased tin ore rock generation chance
• Increased ginseng plant generation chance
• Increased fuel amount for almost all wooden items

Other changes:

• Confined cursor the game window in windowed mode
• Added "N" to red part of the compass needle to make it more clear that it's north
• Reduced shadow distance and reworked shadow rendering to reduce amount of flickering close up, due to the sun changing angle every frame
• Reduced default amount of chunk messages sent per frame to hopefully avoid initial issues with players joining in co-op on slow host connections or performance

[ 2024-10-07 01:41:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

After 5+ years of non-stop work, the time has finally come for the game to launch into Early Access! The game is priced at $16.99 USD with a 10% launch discount, converted into regional currencies through Steam's recommended pricing. It's been a wild ride building this game out over the years and I am eternally grateful to everyone that has participated in the journey with their testing, feedback and support at some point along the way. While the game has reached a solid milestone in terms of content, this is only the beginning. So much more is still coming to the game, and if you've been around at least some of the time in the past few years, you know that I stop at nothing to get new features, enhancements and fixes out as fast as possible. Thanks again for all the amazing feedback over the years, you have helped the game become what it is today. I have so many suggestions written down still, I will continue going through it all during the next few weeks and months. My immediate goals are to finish up the character customization feature and add full controller support, as well as adding new languages such as Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. For more of the roadmap, check out the roadmap forum post here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1564600/discussions/0/2961670721755834442/

[ 2024-10-03 16:58:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, pushing out probably the last update before the Early Access release. A few fixes, a new localization option: French, and one experimental new quality of life feature: auto pickup! New Features:

• Added new auto pickup feature (default key T) - holding this button will have your character automatically move towards nearby items in a small radius to pick them up, only if they can fit in your inventory. Note that the check for making sure they fit will ignore the normal pickup process of auto-unequipping held items to make space for large items like firewood. This works best for picking sticks/leaves from freshly felled trees
• French localization option!
• Remaining time display for fire pits and other similar structures is tinted red if it starts to get low for more obvious hint
• Any damaged buildings will now show orange labels if using "show nearby items" to help identify which need repair more easily

Fixes:

• Fixed issue where fire pit and other fuel burning structures would show extra phantom fuel time to add that doesn't reflect what items are in the fuel inventory area
• Fixed missing OpenGL shaders on Linux. If you have issues running the game normally (which uses Vulkan by default), you can add the launch option "-force-opengl" in Steam to start the game in OpenGL
• Better fix for your character starting and suddenly stopping the pickup process of certain items if you ran towards them
• Add missing deer meat cooking recipes
• Fixed chamomile flower collection task not counting dried chamomile flowers
• Fixed rare error that could happen during autosaves that would corrupt the list of discovered items/buildings in your journal catalogue
• Fixed a bunch of uncaught errors. Thanks to everyone who opted in to anonymous usage statistics! Has helped a lot to isolate a lot weird and rare issues

Balance:

• Reduced late game hostile creature amounts, removed weaker hostile creatures entirely in the late game to avoid cluttering. This will mostly apply to games started after this update
• Increased stack size of dogbane stems from 1 to 4

Other Changes:

• Reworked settings UI rows to have more consistent sizing regardless of the text label's length in different languages
• Increased saturation of the different item label categories to help make them stand out more: green for plants, brown for burnable objects like sticks, red for clay, and blue for ore rocks

[ 2024-09-10 00:40:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

A few fixes to reduce some errors and increase stability of the co-op playtest experience on slower connections Fixes:

• Fixed steel bear trap not being placeable
• Reduced errors related to the saving process if it takes too long
• Removed the delete game button after deleting a game in the host game window since there is no longer a game selected to delete
• Fixed one chunk not loading properly breaking all future chunk loads until a restart/rejoin
• Fixed game join not working consistently if connection isn't fast enough to receive chunk data within a certain amount of time

Other changes:

• Reduced amount of duplicate events sent for anonymous statistics collection

[ 2024-09-03 18:48:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small hotfix to fix up an issue with exiting the game Fixes:

• Fixed clicking "Quit" in the main menu not exiting and locking up the game in some cases

[ 2024-08-30 20:56:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Big update today with a bunch more fixes and quality of life changes! Also added an option to consent for anonymous usage statistics that will allow me to better understand how certain parts of the game are being used and any errors that are potentially encountered. This will help me fix up issues going forward a lot more easily. Appreciate your understanding! Fixes:

• Fixed some items/buildings still getting wet in caves when it rains outside
• Fixed right click to add to stockpile/add fuel to fire causing your character to walk infinitely if you are far enough away initially
• Fixed chunk generation/saving issues (ex. no disk space) preventing that chunk from ever loading later. Now these failed/corrupted chunks will be regenerated
• Fixed clicking to pickup something while running ending abruptly before the pickup completes due to flawed distance calculations
• Fixed issue that could block the game exiting relating to cleaning up stockpiles in the game shutdown process
• Added error catching in interaction processing to hopefully avoid cases of stuck animations

Other changes:

• Added consent dialog for anonymous usage statistics, with new privacy settings window for it
• Added new "sort horizontally" button to inventory along with the existing "sort vertically" button
• Added a new "drop item (hold)" key bind that allow you to hold it and click items to instantly drop them
• Added a "move", "move half" and "move one" cursors that show when hovering over an item with the relevant keys pressed to better indicate what will happen
• Added a "discard all" context menu option for things like dirt in your inventory to get rid of all of it quickly

Balance:

• Increased natural stick generation near trees
• Increased tin ore rock generation near rocky outcrops and cliff faces

[ 2024-08-30 18:35:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

A bigger update this time with a whole bunch of fixes and work to get co-op almost ready for testing again! Also hopefully squashing the crashing issue players have been seeing when digging clay, dirt and other terrain materials. Please reach out if you still see crashes! Fixes:

• Reworked terrain collision mesh generation process to avoid potential crash-causing concurrent access when digging up terrain materials like clay and dirt
• Fixed rare case of mushrooms dying off if they grow into their final phase while unloaded due to you being far away enough. The logic to check for protection from the sun was failing for these cases
• Removed stack size amount from the animal harvesting queue items to avoid any confusion
• Strengthened protections against objects/characters falling through cave floors and being put back on top of the terrain above the cave
• Fixed rare issue where unloading and loading a chunk too quickly would break the chunk until a reload
• Fixed being able to climb on top of certain colliders like bushes and the fire pit's fuel
• Fixed a cause of shelter structure state being lost resulting in the level of protection going away when you are inside, including for things like mushrooms that require a sunless environment. Also added a potential recovery mechanism in case you have a save where this is already the case
• Fixed medium post collision box being horizontal instead of vertical causing placement to be more difficult near the player
• Fixed mushrooms not drying out if not watered
• Fixed workbench items getting wet even when covered by a roof
• Fixed deer and boar remains labelled as "wolf remains"
• Fixed large flame particles for limestone burn pile

Other changes:

• Bedroll is flatter to make it easier to step over
• Reworked plant info UI properties to be a lot more consistent with the plant's actual growing state. Plants will no longer show growing status when the condition is falling due to sunlight issues
• Tweaked look of morning mist to be less intense
• Moved the "enemies are nearby" message to show up on top of the time speedup control box rather than on the player to make it clearer that the speedup was stopped

[ 2024-08-22 17:40:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another set of fixes and enhancements, including a quick stockpile placement feature with right mouse! Fixes:

• Fixed error popup when trying to start a new game when using certain languages/locales on your computer
• Fixed hearth furnace fire particle effect size
• Fixed scrap wood stockpile floating issue
• Fixed preserved food showing "drink" context menu option instead of "eat"
• Fixed tooltip for cooking results showing values of the fully contaminated item instead of its current contamination level
• Removed task for creating bronze anvil since it is no longer in the game, instead explaining to use a tree stump
• Fixed smoke rack contents getting wet in the rain when covered by a roof

Other changes:

• Added new right mouse button quick place interaction for stockpiles if you have any items of that stockpile in your inventory, to bypass having first open the UI to move the item in
• Reduced thirst cost of preserved items
• Added scrap wood recipe for tall items like shovels and paddles
• Sorting inventory is blocked when interacting with something, similar to all other inventory actions
• Changed sorting for crafting recipes hammer tool selection to prefer stones over flint pieces

[ 2024-08-19 01:05:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

More fixes and quality of life stuff! Fixes:

• Fixed planted mushrooms and plants disappearing after a few days even though they are well watered and taken care of. Note that this only applies to mushrooms and plants planted after this update
• Add checks against edge cases that could make the stockpiles unresponsive or display the wrong item count
• Increased candle wick item collision to prevent it from continuously falling through the terrain
• Fixed plank rotation when sawed from felled trees

Other changes:

• Crafting list now waits to update the list of recipes until all your queued recipes are done to reduce the chance of accidental clicking on a just reordered recipe
• Added a sound and changed the text to red when you don't have space to pick up something to make it more obvious
• The shelter building task is moved to after waking up on the second day to reduce the overload of information for new players
• Added a hint to explain fast forwarding during crafting

[ 2024-08-16 20:58:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another set of fixes and requested small features. Things are starting to get pretty solid! Features:

• Added sort button to your main inventory. For now it will always sort largest items at the top to smaller items at the bottom. Will continue to improve later

Other Changes:

• Added a cap to tinder and kindling slots for fire pits and other fuel burning structures. Note: only fuel burning structures built after this update will have this feature
• Made wind ambient sound much quieter
• Made UI button sound quieter and added new sound for main menu buttons
• Removed requirement to be close when placing stockpiles or shelter posts as the placing process automatically moves you closer regardless
• Added chromatic aberration toggle in graphics settings

Fixes:

• Fixed animation getting stuck if crafting a queue of recipes with different animations associated (ex. ripping up dogbane followed by smashing a large stone)
• Reworked digging and terrain gathering (ex. dirt or clay) to avoid expensive pathfinding updates that could lead to a full game crash. Please let me know if you still see crashes!
• Fixed rain still affecting you and items in caves
• Fixed error when assigning subsequent tasks after skipping the main camp set up tutorial task by sleeping early
• Fixed missing localization for Quick slot 4 in controls settings

Balance:

• Increased tin ore rock generation
• Reduced materials required for stick walls and clay tile roof

[ 2024-08-15 00:50:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

A few bug fixes and enhancements out today in this update. Appreciate your patience as the experience gets more and more polished! Features:

• New "drop item" key bind that defaults to the G key (unless you've already set it something else). It will drop the off-hand item first if present before the main hand item

Fixes:

• Fixed extreme glow coming from objects like sand or bonemeal stockpiles
• Fixed the "Add from inventory" button not working properly for certain structures like very tall roofs
• Fixed stockpiles getting wet in the rain even when covered by a roof
• Fixed clove plant dig up interaction to be L.Ctrl+LMB instead of just LMB
• Fixed wolf disappearing when at a certain not too far distance
• Fixed invalid "last harvested date" value in the plant UI if you dug up and replanted a wild plant before gathering from it
• Fixed plants not growing properly if dug up without gathering first and then being replanted
• Fixed fermentation of berry juice taking longer than it takes to decay within a covered jar
• Fixed crafting recipes that require containers to mix liquids in not properly refreshing when selecting a different container

Other changes:

• Digging up plants will alter the terrain texture below them
• Added stockpile support for pine cones and empty pine cones
• Mud mortar takes a bit longer to craft

[ 2024-08-13 00:39:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small update to fix a few reported issues, really appreciate the reports! Fixes:

• Fixed missing quick slot 4 bind option in controls settings
• Fixed issue where crafting output items could end up in invalid spots overlapping other items or appear off the edge of the inventory itself
• Fixed tiled inventory placement via mouse being off on ultra widescreen displays
• Added missing wood stopper crafting recipe
• Fixed wrong stack size for bonemeal and hardened bronze items

[ 2024-08-09 18:12:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small update to fix a few issues around the crafting menu. Thanks for checking out the game! Fixes:

• Fixed the crafting menu becoming unresponsive or corrupted when it is opened with certain items in your inventory like berries

[ 2024-08-08 19:54:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Releasing a major update for the demo for the Tiny Teams Festival! A ton of new features and enhancements have been added to the game since the last demo. Check out the list of new things below: New Features:

• New grid inventory system that gives every item a width and height in your bag to allow for a greater variety of carrying capacity. Along with this, all items can be hand-held now for even more carrying capacity
• Basic farming - you can uproot most plants you encounter in the game in order to re-plant them at your camp. Plants take a while to grow and close monitoring for moisture, fertilization and sunlight is key
• Caves - generate all across the land and contain ores and other resources that will be useful in your survival
• Rafts - you can now construct rafts to be able to quickly navigate on rivers and across bodies of water
• Food preservation - food and liquids can be stored in sealed containers to help preserve them for longer periods of time
• Fermentation - ability to make vinegar from spoiled foods as a new ingredient and resource
• Decontamination - limited ability to decontaminate various foods from the Blight using vinegar and other resources. More advanced ingredients that tie into the story are coming for the early access release
• Fire starting - finally a more real-to-life system for starting fires with tinder and kindling instead of just clicking a button
• New creatures - deer and boars now appear in the wilderness for you to hunt
• New creature pathfinding system helps them avoid obstacles much better than before
• Graphical overhaul - a lot of effort was put into making the game shine a lot more. Adaptive exposure has been added to lighten or darken things depending on how bright or dark the overall scene is, for example entering and exiting dark caves
• World generation overhaul - new terrain generation features give the world more variety and makes things feel more real

Hope you enjoy!

[ 2024-08-08 18:36:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

The release date has been set! The game will finally be released into Early Access on October 3rd, 2024. There will be a solid amount of content in the game for the Early Access period along with substantial plans for the 1.0 release set of features including NPCs, trading, and village restoration. A more concrete outline will come soon. Thanks for your patience as the game developed and evolved over the last few years. I hope that it will be worth the wait!

[ 2024-08-08 17:12:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, It's been a while since the Co-op playtest update back in September last year and some of you have been wondering about the status of the game, so I wanted to provide a little update post to show what's been under development. Rest assured that the game is constantly being worked on and tons of new things are being added as it prepares for Early Access release!

Caves

Caves will be an important piece of the game's story with resources, creatures and other things to find. They are completely randomly generated using a voxel-type system, and so the resulting cave networks can truly be breathtaking. Just make sure you have enough fuel for your torch.

Swimming

With the water in caves and a general need for this feature for a long time, swimming has finally been added, allowing you to access more areas both aboveground and below.

Grid-based inventory

Something that has been on the list for a while, a grid-based inventory allows for more detailed inventory management with a greater ability to carry many small items with less large ones, rather than a one slot per item approach before.

More varied and interesting terrain features

Reworked the terrain generation to fully embrace large elevation changes to add more dramatic and realistic looking terrains.

Fire starting

Finally adding a proper fire starting system that needs the right amount kindling, tinder and fuel to make things more immersive.

Various animation improvements

More immersive item placement animations, small tree chopping animation, etc. make the game feel more alive.


These are just some of the new things added to the game. A lot of cool new features and content are planned for the Early Access release to make sure the game is as solid as can be for launch. Stay tuned for further updates and a final potential playtest round right before release! Get notified when the playtest is live again, sign up for the email list at the bottom of this page: https://thelastplague.com/

[ 2024-02-08 21:09:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

A few more fixes from recent feedback! The game is becoming very solid, really appreciate all the testing and feedback from everyone! Fixes:

• Fixed race condition that caused a save error when saving as chunks are being loaded and unloaded (due to another player moving around)
• Fixed placement of generated environment items like sticks not factoring in the slope of the ground causing them to collide with the ground after placement and jitter about
• Fixed slime oil crafting not functioning even though your container has just the exact amount of slime oil for the recipe (due to inconsistent rounding of displayed value vs. internally stored value)
• Fixed pressing escape while waiting for other players to sleep not properly ending your character's sleep wait state causing all sorts of UI/interaction issues when the other player does end up falling asleep
• Fixed the fog particle effect not appearing in swamps since the v0.7.0 update
• Fixed multiple nested inventories not properly updating their contents over time, for example food not decaying in a small leather bag within a backpack placed on the ground
• Cooking is prevented if the resulting container can't fit all of the output substance (ex. too much tallow to fit in a bowl)

Performance:

• Greatly reduced physics complexity for generated environment items like sticks so that there is less CPU load when newly generated chunks are activated

Visuals:

• Updated mud brick kiln look

Other changes:

• More prevention of blight clouds initially appearing in rivers when the world is generated
• Added a pause to the item/building placement highlight after clicking to provide a better experience for high latency clients
• New key request form for players to invite their friends to test with them

[ 2023-11-03 18:25:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

More fixes, quality of life additions and a new way to revert multiplayer game saves in the UI rather than dealing with it in the save files. Also the join game network messaging setup was reworked to vastly reduce the size of the initial message sent to joining players, hopefully this fixes issues with some players not able to join their friends games. Thanks for all the reports! Features:

• Revert save functionality for multiplayer games. There is a new tab in the host game UI that allows you to revert the game back to an auto-saved day save, deleting all the newer saves above it. This is for cases where the automated save is broken for whatever reason or things just need to be rolled back
• New menu button to save the active mutliplayer game without exiting

Balance:

• Blight clouds are no longer generated in the water anymore in new games started after this version

Fixes:

• Fixed Blight cloud effects not being removed as they are cleared via the oleander burn
• Fixed error when trying to double click to equip filled bowl while holding a two handed object like a log
• Made the inventory substance count and crafting input ingredient substance count use the same rounding methods to fix cases where it looks like you could make less that the ingredients you actually have
• Fixed rare error case where thrown projectiles cause a HUD UI error while they are in the air and "show nearby items" is toggled on
• Wetness values of crafting ingredients are preserved for the output ingredients
• Fixed ingame chat messages not being cleaned up properly once there are a lot
• Fixed other players sometimes disappearing temporarily on joining players' computers
• Fixed cooking/smelting losing some output items if they are normally too big to fit in the one stack output slot
• Fixed jugs not evaporating when placed on hand carts
• Removed unused output slot for copper alembic to prevent double-click from moving ingredients into the slot and preventing further distilling from happening

Visuals:

• Reduced intensity of morning mist fog when cloudy

Other changes:

• Reworked the join game message response from host to clients to be a quarter of the size to hopefully fix hosts unable to send all the data in one message through Steam and causing the client player to be unable to connect
• Password input is hidden in host game UI (when not typing) and for join game password popup
• Removed invite friend button for Mac version as the Steam overlay isn't supported in the game yet
• A "New!" label for recently updated news on the right-side news section of the main menu

[ 2023-10-17 18:48:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another batch of fixes and small little quality of life additions! Additions:

• Other players now show up on the map in less realistic mode

Balance:

• Wolves and black bears now afraid of daytime fires
• Increased accuracy of thrown weapons
• Increased amount of time it takes to fully aim thrown weapons to get max accuracy
• Added dogbane generation in forests to make forest starts more fair

Fixes:

• Fixed standing torch refuel not working and showing a NaN% message
• Fixed tool items stored in workbench not being recognized properly when trying to craft a recipe that requires them
• Fixed loose substance (ex. sand) stockpiles not appearing on clients when first placed
• Fixed very rare race condition error that caused game world state to break when chunks are loaded
• Fixed game state breaking or becoming unstable when entering unloaded chunks
• Fixed unlocked blueprints/recipes (ex. relating to oleander leaves) being lost after respawn or for players that were not online at the time the recipes were unlocked - works with existing saves too
• Fixed issue where gathering clay would never clear the terrain texture and result in near infinite clay
• Fixed being able to gather clay very quickly if clicking again within a certain time frame
• Fixed double click item movement not working with placed backpacks
• Fixed items disappearing on clients when moved within a placed backpack
• Fixed clients never receiving the "enter swamp" task due to invalid network serialization
• Fixed phantom items showing up in client inventories when moving and placing backpacks in a specific way
• Fixed rare error that prevents sleep window from appearing after waking up
• Fixed hand cart wheels and rims missing collision causing them to fall through the ground and pop back up infinitely
• Fixed run toggle key not toggling if standing still
• Fixed hints persisting when unloading a new game and loading another that should not have any on-screen hints at the moment

Other changes:

• More attempts to reduce the chance of chunks not loading on clients or taking way too long to load
• Reworded rabbit snare label to make it more clear that it is active and ready to catch rabbits
• Updated compass description to make it more clear which needle end is north
• Reduced shininess of the compass in the UI to avoid it being hard to read when the sun shines on it

[ 2023-10-12 02:44:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks for checking out the game and reporting all the issues you've been seeing! This update fixes up a bunch of big and small issue and introduces a format change to the chunk saving and network transmission to speed things up for slower connections to reduce artifacts and whatnot. See full notes below, and please continue to report any weirdness you see! Please make sure you and your friends all update to this version so you can keep playing together! Balance:

• Slightly reduced hostile creature count at night
• Increased hunger/thirst levels when respawning to make it a bit easier to get to camp and continue surviving
• Removed bedroll given on respawn

Fixes:

• Fixed error case in the game's world that causes joining clients to error out and then eventually time out
• Fixed item repair interaction breaking when complete in certain cases
• Fixed item repair not working at all on clients
• Fixed item repair on grinding wheel stand not working
• Fixed crafting animation breaking if last small stone breaks with more recipes queued
• Fixed "unexpected error" when the game autosaves after waking up if there is at least one other player in the game
• Fixed copper alembic not being placeable
• Fixed host autosaving before all players have been transitioned to awake state, causing any loads from that save to think the client players are asleep with regards to showing nearby item labels and other functions
• Fixed some various error cases with a tool when harvesting
• Fixed missing physics information for hand cart wheels and rims causing them to disappear when dropped and subsequently corrupting any subsequent save
• Fixed error when attempting to place buildings rapidly on clients before the host acknowledges a correct placement
• Fixed conversation dialogs not behaving properly in certain paths, for example not being able to give slime sample to Elric due to repeating initial message
• Fixed missing translation for news title on the main menu screen
• Fixed double processing of items in item inventories placed on the ground like the backpack, sometimes causing errors when items fully decay
• Fixed lying down sometimes starting and stopping immediately causing a lengthy animation if you are just at the edge of the range of the bedroll
• Fixed Blight clouds not being reflected in the water
• Fixed some text in buttons wrapping weirdly in other languages

Performance:

• Greatly reduced amount of update network messages sent to client players for container buildings like the rain catcher or soaking basin

Other changes:

• Reduced chunk texture mapping resolution by 0.5x to vastly reduce chunk size when being saved to disk and sent over the network. Chunks were around 1mb each before, now around 0.3mb. Old saves should still function fine, existing chunks will be resized to be smaller when re-saved. Should help with some texture artifacts appearing on the terrain with certain connection speeds
• Added version checking when querying games from friends so that you can only join games that are the same version. v0.7.1 clients will be blocked from joining v0.7.2 games but won't get an obvious message
• Added extra timeout duration for joining a game if there is a lot of data to load, should reduce the instances of timeout messages when trying to join a game
• Timeout settings for regular requests and join requests are now in the game's settings file
• Added button that links to a form to allow you to request playtest access for your friends

[ 2023-10-04 19:54:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick update to fix a few critical issues discovered recently, thanks for the reports! Fixes:

• Fixed game state breaking when clicking on the tool selector in a crafting list recipe if you have more than one valid tool for the recipe
• Fixed crafting animation getting stuck permanently after crafting mud mortar using dirt, clay and water, requiring a save reload

[ 2023-09-29 00:31:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

After a solid 5 months of work, the co-op multiplayer is now finally ready for testing with a wider audience! It was written from scratch with many of the game's logic needing to be reworked to factor in host and client game instance concepts. Gameplay wise nothing has really changed much since the last updates in April. Almost all work has gone into getting multiplayer working smoothly. One exception was the hostile creature AI, it's been reworked a bit to add an aggressiveness factor that slowly increases as the creatures get more infected day by day. A lot more work still needs to be done on the AI of course, it will come with time. Note: Single-player is disabled in the current playtest to emphasize co-op testing, please use the "Co-op multiplayer" button on the main menu to host or join a game. Don't worry though, single-player is still the main focus for the game and will come back for the release!

How Co-op works:

Getting started:

• One player can "host" a game for their friends to join. Starting a game is similar to starting a new single-player game, but with a few more options. Currently single-player games and multiplayer games are separate - a single-player game can't be converted to multiplayer and vise versa. This may change in the future
• The host can choose between it being private or discoverable to Steam friends, along with an optional password. There is no ability to host a public game at this time
• Other friends can launch the game and then see the host's game show up in the "Join Game" menu if it's not set to private. If the game is private, the host needs to select "Invite Friend to Game" in the main menu when ingame. Needs the Steam overlay to be enabled.
• Current max players is 4, this may go up in the future as the performance is tuned

Gameplay:

• Sleep is still required to refill energy, so all players need to sleep at the same time to speed-up the 8 hours properly. Sleeping will always take 8 hours in co-op regardless of energy level
• Speeding up various interaction like crafting or chopping is unfortunately not possible in co-op, so it may be a bit tedious. The interaction times will be tweaked during the testing phase
• Creatures aren't scaled up to account for more players, but hunger and thirst requirements are implicitly scaled, so be aware. 4 players would require quite a bit of water and food if all at the same camp
• Each player will have randomly chosen colors for their player character's clothing for slightly easier differentiation. This is just a temporary measure, there will be customizable characters in the game's release
• The objective system has been changed a bit to handle multiple players. Some tasks like placing or building structures are shared amongst players, others like collecting certain items have to be done per player. The tasks will tweaked as testing continues
• There is no friendly fire
• There is only one main save for co-op games, you can't save to different slots like in single-player games. The host needs to click "Save and Exit Game" to save the game before shutting it down for others
• After dying you can respawn and this will place you at the world's starting area again but with low hunger/thirst and low condition hatchet. The respawning system will be enhanced in the future so that there is an option to force a reload of an older save if any player dies (probably exclusive to the more realistic gameplay setting)

Some things to note:

• This co-op implementation was written from scratch and is still very new so bugs are likely to be found, especially in networking setups with large packet loss chance or large latency due to physical distance
• Co-op is host/client exclusive right now. One player needs to host and play the game for others to be able to connect. Dedicated servers will come later
• The underlying networking is done via Steam Networking Sockets with Steam Datagram Relay. Basically this means that when a player joins a game, they connect to Steam first, Steam routes the traffic to the host via the Steam internal network. The host will receive data and respond via the same network. This means that one game won't see any direct connections or IP addresses of connecting players. Read more here: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1433-AD20-F11D-B71E (see section named "What about games that use Steam Networking APIs?")
• Performance on the host computer may be lower depending on your CPU. There is extra load on the host due to handling connections, relaying messages to all clients, and simulating more of the world at the same time compared to single-player, especially if there are 4 players all in different parts of the world
• Most of the internal testing was done with 2 player co-op setups, there may be undiscovered issues present when more than two players are present
• To reduce bandwidth and facilitate faster game joining, less of the world is loaded around each player. You may notice parts of the world pop in as you get close to the edges of what's currently loaded. This will be worked on in the future

Other changes:

• Updated Unity version to 2021.3.30f1
• Finally fixed the crashes in the Mac version of the game! There was a Unity setting in the Mac build that was causing instability, turned it off and haven't seen a single crash during testing
• Linux default Graphics API was set to Vulkan as performance seems better. Please report any issues you may see!

Head to the Discord server to discuss any issues you may see with co-op! https://discord.gg/P3nAV7UJWX

[ 2023-09-28 19:04:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another batch of bug fixes in this update thanks to all the great feedback! This will be the last update for the demo, focus will shift now onto the remaining work needed for early access release later this year. The demo on Steam will shut off Monday April 17th. Really appreciate everyone's time trying the game out and providing your feedback! The playtest/alpha build will stay up but won't be updated until close to release. Balance:

• Reduced time for distilling slime
• Changed cleared blight zone regrowth to be prevented if the area was cleared within the last two ingame days

Fixes:

• Fixed cooking/smelting progress being lost when loading a saved game
• Fixed clicking on an ingredient in building list not switching to the search tab properly in the crafting recipe list for proper filtering
• Fixed "Craft with..." while using a workbench preserving the workbench UI instead of closing it and opening normal crafting UI
• Fixed very rare error when taking apart support beams causing the taking apart animation to be stuck on the character
• Fixed error that happened in certain digging situations causing no dirt to be collected and the terrain not being modified
• Fixed ranged attack aim triggering when attempting to use buildings like a fire pit with a stone or spear held
• Fixed loose substance stockpiles like sand visually shrinking when more than 10kg is present
• Fixed bellows indicator not appearing when placing hearth furnace
• Fixed swamp mist effect showing up wrong in the distance and when behind transparent tree leaves
• Fixed terrain digging by hand causing handheld items to take damage

Other changes:

• Added speed-up ability to bergamot leaf application and also "Apply half" and "Apply all" context menu options
• Changed stockpile placement to move all items of that type in your inventory to the stockpile instead of just the one that was right-clicked
• Added grass flattening support to stockpiles
• Changed large sandstone chunk and resulting grinding wheel to be only handheld and not placeable in inventory
• Changed blighted zones to only show tall/wide cloud effects in village areas as originally intended, allowing more straightforward clearing of blighted zones in the wilderness even if they are very large
• Added combustibility to more wooden items like improvised spears and various tool handles
• Grass in forests and fields now also turn to dirt when run on over a long period of time
• Added "Build with..." context menu action to slime oil oleander leaf

[ 2023-04-04 20:20:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fixing a bunch of big and small issues in this update, some balance changes, and lastly enhancements in various areas to make the gameplay that much better. Thanks for playing and giving feedback! Hope you enjoy. Balance:

• Greatly increased amount of quicklime produced by limestone burn piles
• Increased generation chance of slime
• Increased amount of slime oil distilled from slime
• Reduced material requirements for leaf roof, stone floor and stone walls
• Reduced burn time of oleander burn pile and made its clearing effect faster

Fixes:

• Hopefully fixed cause of missing terrain chunks that some have reported. Please let me know if you still see it!
• Fixed oleander burn pile not being destroyed after being burned
• Fixed UI for oleander burn pile showing an empty "Produces" section
• Fixed cleared areas of Blight coming back every day. The center of each Blight area needs to be cleared for it to stop growing
• Fixed oleander burn pile clearing not working properly if the area is unloaded for the duration of the burn
• Fixed toxic smoke particle effect not factoring in the fog when rendered
• Updated water generation in newly generated chunks to reduce jagged shorelines
• Fixed cases of the progress bar in the interaction UI (ex. "chopping...") from disappearing randomly
• Fixed mid-air projectiles breaking when they are restored after a game load
• Fixed lake/river container-filling to preserve initial click location when it starts so that mouse movement doesn't interrupt filling when the target point becomes too far
• Fixed water not being tagged correctly internally which would prevent things like projectiles causing a splash when hitting it, code to check building placement in water not working correctly, and click-to-move mode not working correctly on water
• Fixed thrown spears flying away too much after hitting the ground
• Fixed Bloomery collider being too tall to fit under rafters/roof

Performance:

• Disabling various physics-based checks for far away objects to slightly reduce CPU load

Visuals:

• Reworked UI for active interactions like "chopping..." to look a bit better

Other changes:

• Reworked throw attacks to feel a bit better: projectiles are much faster, the max range is a bit further, projectiles get launched at lower angles, and the spear throw animation orients the spear correctly during the throw
• Reworked interactions in click-once interaction mode to greatly reduce the amount of accidental melee attacks happening when trying to interact with things while holding an axe
• Allowed posts to be placed in shallow water
• Added speed-up possibility to the level ground interaction

[ 2023-03-31 18:57:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick hotfix for an issue introduced in the update earlier today (V0.6.8) Fixes:

• Fixed compass not showing up on the HUD beside the belt slot bar when held (only relevant for the more realistic mode)

[ 2023-03-23 01:44:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Spent some time working on performance and graphical tweaks to allow for further view distances after the previous camera angle update. Fixed a bunch of inconsistencies with the distance fog, rendering transparent objects and effects. There is a new view distance slider in the graphics settings, defaulting to 50% which is what the game was previously. Keep in mind that at 75% and above the game will need to load more chunks in the distance to show the objects there, this will cause a much greater load on the CPU while loading/unloading chunks during exploration. Let me know how performance is for you, I'd love to hear how the game performs! Note: most of the game's shaders were replaced in this update to help accommodate the new fog rendering. There may be a few graphical issues from this migration, please let me know if you spot anything that looks weird. Features:

• New view distance slider in graphics settings, allowing you to see more in the distance if your hardware can handle it
• New "Speed-up camera blur effect" checkbox in gameplay settings to allow disabling of the blur effect when speeding up time

Performance:

• Faster water reflection rendering - changed rendering pipeline a bit to avoid doing various setup processes to save a bit of time every frame
• Greatly reduced game logic CPU cost every frame - world generated objects like sticks and stones no longer take up processing power to update themselves, wetness from the rain is now handled in a much more optimized way. Also greatly reduced the processing time every frame needed for physics based objects. These optimizations will only be present for items in chunks generated after updating to this version
• More upfront memory use to pre-allocate a bunch of items/resources to make their creation during the first bits of gameplay faster
• Misc optimizations across the codebase to make things a tiny bit speedier

Visuals:

• Reworked distance fog rendering a bunch to fix up how transparent objects and particle effects look in the distance to be fully consistent
• Reworked skybox rendering to look better across various cloud density and time of day combinations
• Adjusted a few level of detail settings to avoid pop-in of trees and other objects

Fixes:

• Fixed missing attack cursor when holding a melee weapon like an axe or knife (issue introduced a few updates ago)
• Fixed crafting queue not stopping if forging on an anvil that breaks
• Fixed refresh rate not being stored and loaded properly when the game is launched again - note that non-default refresh rates only work on the "Exclusive fullscreen" setting

Other changes:

• Reduced generation of bushes that make a sound and slow you down in forests

[ 2023-03-22 22:30:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tons of exciting new features and improvements are part of this large update! Wanted to prioritize a bunch of the bigger community requests over the past few weeks, needed to do a ton of rendering updates and optimizations to get it all in. Excited to get this out and see what everyone thinks! A few QoL features have been added that are new settings options in the gameplay settings screen. You can now change the camera angle to be lower to see more in the distance (has a small performance hit), you can enable speed-up functionality on almost all interactions like chopping or building, and you can enable "quick pickups" to make the picking up or gathering process instant.
Features:

• New camera angle gameplay setting - a slider that adjusts the camera angles ingame. The "higher" side is the old camera angles from before. Keep in mind, lower angles require more to be rendered in the distance and will result in poorer performance.
• Quick pickups - a new checkbox that allows instant pickup and gathering of items
• Speed-up all interactions - new dropdown setting with "off", "some" and "all" options. The default and previous level was "some" which includes crafting, harvesting, and repairing. The "all" option allows you to speed up things like chopping, building and taking apart buildings.
• Predator culling - killing predators enough will now prevent them from re-spawning in an area for a certain amount of time. This feature still needs a lot of testing and balance, please provide your feedback on how it's working!
• Added a "camera cursor movement" gameplay option to control how much the camera moves as you move the mouse. Setting it to 0% will prevent all movement
• Added a blood spray effect when attacking creatures
• Added a progress bar above the player showing the strength of held-down attacks (since not everyone was aware of this before)

Performance:

• Removed useless physics events for items near bushes (ex. in forests) that was eating up CPU for no reason
• Reworked cloud rendering to be a bit more performant
• Increased performance of rain particle system greatly, but with the loss of rain drop effects on the water - will be added back later
• Enabled multi-threaded CPU-time rendering on the Windows build to increase performance when many objects on screen
• May be a performance hit from the new SSAO effects and new fog rendering system

Visuals:

• Better SSAO effect, but may have more of a performance impact - medium vs. high quality will have more of a difference now
• New fog effects written from the ground up to account for lower camera angles - still requires tweaks and updates to look better in the future
• Tweaked water rendering to look better at the shore when looking at an angle
• Adjusted rain rendering to look more consistent regardless of time of day
• Increased ambient light at night

Balance:

• Drastically decreased bear health
• Increased axe damage
• Reduced amount of iron ore drops generated near outcrops
• Increased pickaxe effectiveness
• Reduced material requirements for stick wattle walls
• Increased mud requirements for wattle & daub upgrade

Fixes:

• Fixed placing dirt with shovel not showing dirt on the terrain
• Fixed more repair menu refreshing inconsistencies
• Fixed wattle & daub wall being shorter than the wattle wall it upgrades from
• Fixed building process not showing clay bricks when building the clay brick based buildings
• Fixed stack overflow crash when moving an item from within a held leather bag into the hand-slot the bag is in
• Prevented case of double-click of a two handed container like a crucible or clay pot from mistakenly placing it into the inventory and emptying it
• Fixed issue where using a workbench and selecting a tool causing that tool to stay selected when opening the crafting menu elsewhere, making the recipe break in certain cases
• Fixed stockpiles from being placeable at far distances from the player
• Fixed fence posts from placeable with less than 4 sticks in inventory
• Fixed bronze anvil popping out from the clay mold when it's done hardening
• Fixed the autosave timer so that it factors in main menu time and paused time properly

Other changes:

• The speed-up process now adds a radial blur effect to the screen to better signify when time is sped up
• Bronze axe blades, saw blades, and bronze knife now are 50% condition out of the mold, and can now be sharpened up to 70% with a sandstone chunk
• Added a ranged attack cursor when holding a thrown item like a stone or spear
• Adjusted a few animations and events so that chopping and attacks are triggered at the exact right time
• Increased strength of the "smooth ground" option with the shovel
• Added "Repair..." context menu option for items that have a repair possible
• Reduced the disease exposure screen effect when eating lightly contaminated foods like rabbits. It now scales properly based on the level of infection from the food eaten

[ 2023-03-10 18:52:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another update with fixes and balance changes thanks to everyone's great feedback! Balance:

• Greatly increased stick and long stick generation around groups of sparse trees
• Increased generation of pine branch drops across all trees
• Reduced starting infection level of all predators

Fixes:

• Fixed backpacks placed on the floor not showing their inventory when used
• Another attempt to fix fast-looking clouds in the water's reflection on some hardware
• Fixed held items not being placeable on floors/bridge by clicking near the character
• Hide toggled "show nearby items" labels during sleep
• Finally fixed long-standing issue where felled trees infinitely fall underneath the ground in rare cases
• Fixed large stones having shadows turned off when not that far from the camera
• Fixed repairing not working for taken-apart buildings after the previous update's fixes to the damaged building repair process
• Fixed missing hint text on the soaking basin to explain small stone or hammer requirement to take it apart
• Fixed item repair window not refreshing button state of other repair options when the first repair is completed
• Fixed leaf roof on four tall posts not protecting items on the ground from the rain
• Fixed floor placement colliding with the posts it is snapped to
• Fixed UI scale at 150% hiding the time control popup when the crafting UI is open
• Fixed grinding wheel stand icon position issue in repair menu when the grind wheel stand is used
• Prevented interactions like building or taking apart from damaging the held item if it's not a required tool, causing cases of a held small stone breaking when constructing a building that doesn't need it

Other changes:

• Reduced max fuel for mud brick kiln and reduced max stack sizes for mud brick kiln slots
• Added "can't pour" hint message for clay molds when holding molten copper
• Changed up starting hint text around attack controls by further explaining how holding the key down affects the attack
• Added new "Fires cast shadows" graphics setting that can turn off shadow casting from the fire pit to increase performance a decent amount
• Removed "start stockpile..." option for non-player inventory slots to remove potential item duplication exploit
• Stockpiles are now shown in the "highlight nearby items" state
• More consistent water reflection rendering and potential performance increase when MSAA is used
• Switched UI scale options to be in increments of 10% with a max of 150% instead of 175%
• Added weights to a few of the heavier objects like iron ore, ingots, and large stone
• New requirement for buildings like the fire pit to be only placeable on the terrain
• Renamed "Post" to "Medium Post" to reduce confusion during the tutorial and added the tall post as an optional completion criteria for the first task
• Updated shelter building tutorial task description to make tall post usage benefits more clear

[ 2023-02-22 01:59:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another bunch of bug fixes and quality of life changes in this update, thanks for all the reports! The building process should be a lot less error prone now with less incorrect collisions and proper state setting, and clay gathering should be a lot less finicky and quicker. Fixes:

• Fixed rare issue where interacting with the UI a certain way causes all input to get locked and stops the character from being controlled and the main menu from being opened, forcing a hard exit of the game
• Fixed stick rafters incorrectly colliding with the support beams they should be connected to and preventing placement
• Fixed building system state tracking so that removing a diagonal support beam correctly refreshes the state and allows placing stick rafters in the new rectangular shape
• Fixed weird looking terrain ridges near lakes in the world generation. Will need to start a new game to get the fixed world generation
• Fixed repair UI not updating and resetting properly when a repair completes
• Fixed repair of fuel burning buildings like the fire pit from clearing out all fuel and extinguishing the fire
• Fixed fast moving clouds in the water's reflection on some hardware
• Fixed clay candle mold crafting recipe incorrectly outputting in the hardened version instead of soft version
• Fixed gates not moving if connected between posts or tall posts due to collision issues
• Fixed bedroll from being placeable on plank and stone floors
• Fixed missing recipes for melting hardened tallow back into liquid tallow, and smelting hardened copper and ingots back into molten copper
• Fixed accidental attack if weapon is equipped and you click on an NPC, potentially hitting them
• Fixed a bunch of missing and wrong map tiles for areas around lakes
• Fixed sounds like fire pit burning/cooking from being present on fire pits that aren't ignited or cooking when coming back to camp
• Fixed certain buildings like lean-to not allowing you to take them apart due to infinite walking from the character
• Fixed red/green outlines for post placement not showing up over the water
• Taking apart a roof piece will dump the materials below the roof to avoid them getting stuck up top
• Fixed broken run animation for Cloaked Figure
• Fixed missing repair functionality for walls and other non-hammer built buildings
• Fixed tutorial task text for hardening the clay bowl to be in the kiln instead of the fire

Other changes:

• Clay gathering is faster and less finicky, with more clay collected per gather
• Clay clumps drop if trying to gather clay from the ground and your inventory is full to avoid losing the clay
• Holding left shift + clicking the craft button now queues 5 recipes at a time to reduce the amount of clicks needed
• Changed player icon color and made larger to be more obvious on the map
• Reduced player-made map marker text size
• Allowed the escape key to close the crafting/building menu if the search field is focused but empty
• Gathering from the terrain doesn't stop if your character slides away due to a steep slope or item underneath
• Added stockpile support for pine branch
• Changed damage text color to be orange for player hits
• Adjusted a few shelter tutorial task descriptions to make things a bit clearer

[ 2023-02-16 05:27:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small update to address balance and some of the issues mentioned in the feedback so far. Thanks for all the great feedback so far! There are still some intricacies with the building system that need to be ironed out, some edge cases that will prevent placement of roof pieces in certain situations. This will continually be addressed in further updates. Appreciate your patience! Balance:

• Greatly increased generation chance of Dogbane plants

Fixes:

• Added missing recipe for Clay Candle Mold to allow you to create candles and use the alembic
• Fixed missing repair buttons in the repair menu in 4k resolutions and higher
• Fixed some roof pieces not being reachable by the character due to being too high up (ex. when placed on 4 tall posts)
• Fixed support beams being able to be placed in positions where they collide and overlap, which would cause some issues with roof placement later on
• Fixed a few objects like sticks and pine cones noticeably disappearing when a bit further from view
• Fixed issue that causes eating a stack of food items in the inventory to constantly change which inventory slot shows the progress bar
• Fixed rabbit skeleton being way too small
• Stability increase to hopefully remove chance of the game's input locking up when interacting/eating and clicking quickly
• Fixed item pickup interaction being interrupted if the character slides away slightly from the item due to steep terrain or nearby objects pushing the character
• Fixed edge case where moving large amount of items from a stockpile could cause item stacks with negative amounts
• Fixed pine branches flying around wildly when dropped from chopped young trees

Other changes:

• Adjusted translation of Dogbane plant

[ 2023-02-08 02:32:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Watch the developer play the game!

[ 2023-02-06 21:04:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, Things have been a bit quiet since the last few updates but rest assured the game continues to grow and gain exciting new features and content day by day. Major update v0.6 has been released just in time for Next Fest February 2023! One of the biggest new features is the building system that's been in the works for a while. A lot of thought was put into it to make sure it's interesting and flexible enough to allow for a ton of creativity and unique designs, not restricted by rigid piece sizes or grid based systems. The shelter layouts use posts driven into the ground as the basic building blocks, allowing you to connect them together in any position to later build roofs and walls between the posts. Hope you enjoy the demo! New features:

• Building system that allows you to build shelters out of sticks, leaves, mud, planks and stones
• Intricate terrain modification system that complements the building system. A shovel was added to allow for digging, raising terrain, and leveling terrain for floor piece placement. Collecting clay is now a process that directly modifies the terrain rather than gathering from objects
• New terrain types, new nicer looking visuals, overhauled terrain generation to look even more natural and interesting
• Extended story content around combating the Blight that sets up things for the eventual full story in the Early Access release later this year
• New attack swing holding mechanic to allow for greater timing precision and damage output when fighting enemies
• New distillation process to extract essential oils using a copper alembic, created from copper molded into copper sheets and using new candles as a heat source
• Standing torches, candles, and lantern as new lighting options for your camp at night. Candles can be extinguished by the wind so building wind-blocking shelter is key to protect them
• A few new resources, a new smaller tree used primarily as a tall post for building shelters

Other changes:

• Various CPU and rendering performance improvements
• Bunch of new craftable items and structures
• Tons of bug fixes

[ 2023-02-06 19:50:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest was updated a bit ago, posting here for completeness

New name

As you may have seen, the game was renamed recently to The Last Plague: Blight to make it more a bit more unique and recognizable.

v0.5.13

A small update to bring in the new name, upgrade to a stable Unity version, and a few small tweaks/fixes. Internally the game is still named "Blight" to keep the old settings and save files present when updating, but this internal name will change when the game releases. Features:

• Added a "recent unequipped item" recall feature. Now when you pick up a log and your axe is automatically swapped to the belt, the axe will auto-equip again when you place down the log for further chopping

Fixes:

• Fixed issue that made the world look wet from the rain if loading or starting a new game while in an active game where it is raining
• Fixed some rare cases of uncaught exceptions that could cause some inconsistencies
• Hopefully fixed the crashes seen on the Mac version of the game with the Unity upgrade. Please reach out if you still see any crashes when playing on Mac!

Other changes:

• Upgraded Unity from 2021.2.18f1 to 2021.3.6f1 LTS
• New logo and icon added for the renamed game name

[ 2022-08-31 18:31:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

The game has been renamed from Blight to The Last Plague: Blight! Wanted to refresh the name to be more unique, recognizable and stand out a bit better. Nothing has changed about the game itself or any planned content. Work continues on all the exciting new features that will be seen in the Early Access release hopefully later this year. Check out the roadmap post to see the types of things planned: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1564600/discussions/0/2961670721755834442/

[ 2022-07-31 19:51:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest was updated a bit ago, posting here for completeness Did a big rewrite of how all the world chunk data is stored to accomplish two things: further reduce the jitter as the world is explored/loaded, and vastly reduce the amount of disk space the world chunk files take up. All the while keeping things backwards compatible, although the biggest performance and disk space savings will be seen in entirely new worlds. I wanted to tackle these important rewrites now to make sure things are stable and the game is in a good position for release later this year. Performance:

• Reworked world saving/loading system even more to vastly reduce amount of disk space used in a large world with multiple save slots (every unique save has to duplicate all world chunk data to make sure the state is properly preserved)
• Related to the above change, another optimization was added to rework how the chunk data is actually stored and loaded to greatly reduce memory pressure in the game and reduce jitter even more, to almost non-existent amounts depending on your CPU/memory setup

Fixes:

• Fixed the labels that show up on top of the character for interactions and things like "LMB - Place down" from jittering a bit while you move
• Added more logic around the climbing-over mechanic to make sure the character isn't able phase through things like walls of a cabin (and getting stuck behind a chair on the other side for example)
• Fixed issue added in the previous update that would cause stockpiled items to lose their collision information allowing you to walk through them

Other changes:

• Added warning to smelting UI when trying to smelt too much bronze to fit into the crucible

[ 2022-06-17 04:56:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest was updated a bit ago, posting here for completeness

The Performance Update

Finally spent some time on performance which is something I've wanted to tackle for a while. Completely redid a lot of the internals of the game and really happy with the results, seeing solid framerate improvements (~34% improvement on my RTX 2080), as well as a fairly decent reduction of stuttering as the game loads and unloads chunks while running around the world. There is still some more improvement to be done here, but I'm happy with where it is for now. A few other fixes and tweaks are included in this update. Please continue to report any issues you see! Thanks Performance:

• Completely reworked internal saving/loading system for much less memory pressure. This greatly reduces some of the stuttering seen before when running around and loading/unloading the world. New games will see the most benefit vs. loading a pre-v0.5.11 save
• Tons of optimizations to rendering, culling, logic, etc. Should increase framerate by 5-30% on almost all configurations

Fixes:

• Fixed water reflections quality no longer actually using High when Medium is selected. The difference between Medium and High is whether the reflections will render shadows or not, a fairly significant performance impact
• Fixed rabbit snares losing their correct state sometimes when multiple are present in the world - some with and without trapped rabbits - when loading a game
• Clamped contamination of harvested creature items to 100%
• Fixed main menu background scene showing weird gray highlights if leaving an active game with heavy cloud cover
• Fixed rare issue where the construction materials shown in the character's hands during the building process would actually have collision enabled and would end up pushing the player around during the animation
• Fixed another cause of "ghost items" where trying to drag something like mud into the construction materials UI slot (instead of mud mortar) would cause a ghost item to get stuck in the slot

Other changes:

• Soaking slots will always show on the Soaking Basin UI regardless of how much water is present, and the UI was reworked to be more helpful in figuring out what is needed to properly treat the hides
• Times shown on things like remaining time for treating a hide are capped to 100 hours now to prevent overly large values from appearing in very inefficient treating setups
• Add stockpile ability for soft clay
• Slightly different looking bushes as textures/materials are consolidated as part of the general performance optimization above
• More interesting looking player/bush graphical interaction effect while walking through them
• Better transition between player character running and walking so it no longer appears instant
• Long sticks are packed closer together in stockpiles, allowing for more to be placed per stockpile
• Reduced how much impact each step has on changing grass to dirt over time

[ 2022-06-17 00:23:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest build updated! Huge update for May! A lot of fixes, some new QoL additions, new map icons, more stockpiles, slight graphical/lighting changes, all that good stuff. A ton of these items are from the great feedback that's been coming in, so thank you for helping make this game the best it can be! Features:

• New map icons on less realistic mode. In addition to the fire pits, now you will see any cairns, rabbit snares and hand carts you've created
• Added "eat/drink half" option to consumable stacks and containers
• Added wind force to all smoke from the fire pit, charcoal pile, limestone burn pile and smelting buildings

Balance:

• Considerably reduced rotten blueberry fuel time
• Increased amount of dogbane plants generated
• Greatly reduced stamina cost of blocking attacks to make the shields more worthwhile
• Reduced character knockback force from wolf and bear attacks
• Increased tanning time for coyote and wolf hides to differentiate them from rabbit hides
• Increased weather state duration (ex. cloud cover, wind, rain), but now rain will be prevented from happening again for quite some time after it finishes raining
• Reduced amount of Blight clouded areas in newly generated worlds to allow for a bit easier start and long-term gameplay

Fixes:

• Fixed quality-boosting exploit for liquids when mixing a low quality soup/tea with potable water. A proper fix for all quality combinations requires a big change to the internals of the game, this will come later
• Fixed another cause of "ghost items" in inventories by forcing item dragging to cancel if the game loses focus in any way (ex. alt-tab). Ghost items is when an inventory slot appears empty but would suddenly show an item when clicking and dragging the item out of the slot. Hopefully there are no more such causes
• Fix freeze when placing a building foundation down that attempts to add the above "ghost items" to the building
• Fixed very rare issue where Elric's camp doesn't generate fully and you'd only see a fire pit and potentially one or more bedrolls
• Fixed issue introduced in the last few updates that prevented the dialog options from being clicked (forcing you to use the 1, 2, 3 keys to select the options)
• Fixed blueberry bush sometimes getting into a state where it grows back very quickly after being picked
• Added missing localization for "mixture" text for liquids that are a mix of different things
• Fixed bug where rain in rain catcher would evaporate away very quickly after rain stops
• Fixed missing localization for the "empty X into Y" interaction text (ex. empty jug into soaking basin)
• Fixed wrong hint text in cooking UI, where it would show "missing cooking surface" instead of "try emptying cooking surface first" when the recipe is possible with the given ingredients minus whatever liquid is in the cooking surface
• Fixed issue where climbing over things would briefly re-show any roofs your character is under, such as the shade canopy
• Fixed missing collision checks for rabbit snare and bear traps
• Fixed bug where the bear trap can be "triggered" by momentarily moving a red/green highlight of another object you are trying to place over the bear trap
• Fixed huge sizes of the black and brown bear furs when dropped in the world
• Fixed weapons to properly take condition/quality/rust into consideration for damage inflicted to creatures. Before attacks would always deal the same full damage regardless of item condition
• Fixed issue where right-clicked inventory slot would stay open after pressing tab to close the overall inventory window
• Add range check to creature harvesting so that it's cancelled if the character drifts down the river during the interaction
• Added missing crafting recipes for mild steel bar to mild steel chunks and vise-versa
• Fixed issue where CTRL-clicking firewood from a stockpile wouldn't stack them properly into your hands and would drop them instead
• Fix missing parenthesis in "autosave" text on load game screen

Other changes:

• Removed Windows 7 warning now that it has been confirmed saving/loading works properly (yay)
• Reduced distance between X marker and label on the map
• Ability to stockpile sticks, long sticks, plant rope, copper/tin/iron ores, and iron blooms
• Cancel drinking/eating if you become full in thirst/hunger respectively. This check has been around forever but wasn't working because the math was slightly wrong
• Village labels on the map will become transparent when hovered over to allow seeing map features under them
• Map max zoom level made a bit larger to better accommodate the new icons
• Changed internals of tracking elapsed time for cooking/smelting when entering old areas. This should hopefully have no effect ingame but is a more consistent system internally
• Stockpiles now fill in width-wise first rather than length-wise for smaller items
• Added text on highlighted stockpile label to show which item it stores
• Added checks to make sure climbing over can't happen if the space above won't have enough vertical clearance for your character
• Increased amount of global lighting when there is overcast weather to better represent light scattering in the sun-less environment
• Larger item rust percentages now tints the item image brown in the inventory UI
• Hitting ESC while eating/drinking something will cancel the consumption first instead of closing the UI first and keeping the consumption active
• Moved the fastforward UI up a bit to make it appear more prominent when crafting or harvesting, and added small key labels to show the keyboard keys used for each button
• Liquids in a clay pot in the fire pit will now evaporate if the fire pit is not ignited
• Added crafting recipe to break large sandstone chunk down into small ones
• Reworded difficulty options to hopefully make things a tiny bit more clear

[ 2022-05-11 02:58:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest build updated! Big new change: difficulty selection! Some people are still looking for a slightly easier experience and so a difficulty setting has finally been added.
There are now two options when starting a new game, difficulty and play style. The play style setting is the same as it was before, switching between whether the map shows your location or not. The new difficulty setting has "Easier" and "Standard" options. Standard is what the game was before, but the easier mode scales down a few things like hunger/thirst, amount of enemies and how fast the Blight spreads. Currently the difficulty can only be set at the start of the game. Remains to be seen if this is something that will be able to be changed ingame or not. Features:

• Difficulty selection at the start of a new game with new "Easier" mode

Fixes:

• Fixed missing localization for dead creature UI harvesting options
• Fixed hardened mold UI layout issues when title is a lot longer in Russian
• Fixed rotten wolf meat burn time to be consistent with other meats
• Fixed flickering X button in controls settings when trying to clear out a key bind
• Fixed bridge piece placement being off in certain situations

Other changes:

• Changed Russian translation of Charcoal Pile to make more sense
• Changed "hammer" to "hammer or small stone" in crafting list UI and interaction hints for buildings to make it even more clear that small stones can be hammers
• All dropdown lists in the UI look a bit nicer now
• The first 10 small stones tutorial task is now skipped if a fire pit is placed before 10 small stones are collected
• The "click once" interaction style is now the default for new players
• Crafting list is starting to get a bit slow as more and more recipes are added to the game, reworked it so that only one recipe shows up per frame to distribute the processing power and speed up the initial display of the window
• Roads crossing rivers now have a chance to become bridges or fords
• Bridges no longer alter the terrain to create fords, they simply cross the river as is

[ 2022-04-16 04:17:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest build updated! Did a Unity upgrade to try to fix the Windows 7 save/load issue, but there may be a few unforeseen issues introduced. Please report any weirdness that you may find! Fixes:

• Fixed (hopefully) saving and loading on Windows 7
• Fixed item labels under the mouse cursor sticking around after picking up the item
• Fixed missing localization for speedup UI label at the bottom of the screen

Other changes:

• Upgrade Unity version from 2021.2.3f1 to 2021.2.18f1

[ 2022-04-06 23:18:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest updated! A few more fixes and balance updates Balance:

• Greatly reduced evaporation rates of clay pot & jug, but also reduced their rain collection rates as well
• Slightly reduced amount of infection of all creatures, with a greater drop for rabbits so they still remain a viable meat source a few days into the game

Fixes:

• Fixed issue around not being able to use the "z" key for input mapping
• Prevented ability to swap an item in your inventory into a clay mold slot after the bronze is done hardening
• Fixed empty condition bar and wrong storage bar color when dragging items
• Smelting down worn bronze blades no longer preserves the condition in the resulting molten bronze, allowing you to properly re-smelt a new blade up to 70% condition
• Fixed rabbit snare from being able to "trap" dead rabbits, this resolves the "trapped creature" label for snares with seemingly no trapped creatures inside and no way to remove the status

Other changes:

• Lying down on the ground is prevented if you are standing over water
• Player actions menu now moved to the center of the screen

[ 2022-04-02 22:55:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some fixes and a new ability to lie down on the ground to sleep, but with less energy replenishment! Features:

• New player actions menu (default key: P) with just one option so far: Lie down. You can use this to sleep and regain up to 70% energy if you get lost and don't have a bedroll

Fixes:

• Fix lying down breaking and not showing sleep UI if there is a limestone burn pile active and ignited somewhere
• Fix silent exception when a backpack is on a hand cart and it starts raining
• Fix ability to repeatedly trigger ranged attack animation with no remaining ammo if clicking quickly after throwing last item
• Fix exception when swapping an item with a required tool that is currently selected in the crafting list
• Fix rare missing stockpile item issue when returning to camp
• Fix random large inventory slot UI issue
• Fix next sunrise time calculation not always being correct (will now properly show large amounts like 23 hours until next sunrise)

Other changes:

• Stick fence and stone wall can now be placed in shallow water
• Hostile creatures now attempt to avoid the player in deep water
• Lying down now doubles stamina regeneration
• Added clarifying info to charcoal pile tutorial task around using the build menu to place it

[ 2022-03-31 04:28:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest build updated! Continuing to slowly add people that requested access on the store page. A few changes to make the starting experience a bit more clear, along with a few fixes and whatnot. Thanks for all the great feedback! Balance:

• Slightly increased generation of clay resources, as well as the amount of clay gathered from each resource
• Rotten meat fire fuel amounts now more consistent across all types of meat
• Slightly increased fuel amounts of many burnable items such as sticks and planks

Fixes:

• Fix Utility Table missing collision when placed down with partial materials present
• Fix rotten meat strips not burnable in the fire
• Fix collision of clay ingot mold and clay pot so they can be properly placed on the utility table
• Fix terrain detail generation (ex. grass, uninteractable bushes) to not be randomly changed every time you load a game
• Fix so that evaporation happens before rain is added so that there is no more flicker of interaction when hovering over a container
• Fix "infinite rain water" bug when emptying a container into another
• Fix so that bears only eat the soup in a container and not the whole container itself. The container will be dropped on the ground now for more of a cue that a bear was present
• Fix so that creatures consuming carcasses properly converts the carcass to bones if all items are eaten
• Fix missing localization for "or" text shown in hints for inputs that have multiple keys

Other changes:

• Add different colors to container storage bars with yellow-green representing blighted water, orange representing molten metal, and the default blue for drinkable water
• Add new task, reworded the stone bowl task, and added a new hint to make it even more clear that a small stone can be used as a hammer

[ 2022-03-23 14:43:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some more QoL improvements and fixes! Balance:

• Reduced evaporation of placed jugs and pots

Fixes:

• Fix items like steel blades to no longer require heating for non-forging recipes like putting together the blade and handle for an axe
• Fix so that double clicking a filled container while holding a large two handed item doesn't move it to inventory (and lose contents), instead will drop the large item and move the container into your hands
• Fix so that dragging and dropping two filled containers between hands and cooking surface will properly swap them now instead of moving one of them to inventory and losing contents
• Rework pickup process to ensure that all handheld items will be unequipped automatically if picking up a placed pot with water from the ground
• Fix "[LMB] Place down" not working for held large items in "Hold key to enable Attack Mode" control style

Other changes:

• Prioritize equipped tools as the first selected tool in the crafting list, rather than items in the main inventory
• No longer sort recipes to the top that have all ingredients but not the required workbench active
• Properly sort the filled-container based recipes higher if ingredients are present
• Animal remains tweaked and now properly align with the ground

[ 2022-03-20 05:37:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest build updated! More features, balance changes and bug fixes! Keep that feedback coming Balance:

• Jerky improved more: lower amount of blight, higher resulting condition when smoked, and slower decay. But Jerky now has negative thirst replenishment to help balance out the above, similar to cured sausages
• Slightly increase effectiveness of hatchet, bronze and steel axes against trees
• Molten bronze that hardens now only loses 5% of its mass instead of 20%

Fixes:

• Fix steel blades getting flawed quality steel instead of a limit to condition when forged
• Fix issue where holding the alternate interaction input (default: left alt) while clicking in a building's UI such as the crucible furnace will cause the character to start taking the furnace apart while the UI is still open
• Fix so that attempting to run while carrying a large and heavy object like a log no longer drains stamina faster since there is no speed increase

Features:

• Steel blades and tool heads can now be forged back into steel chunks after being heated
• Added new crafting recipe: pine branch gives a stick and 3 pine leaves

Other changes:

• Rework crafting list output amounts to be more clear how many items will be created at a glance
• Change sand footsteps look
• Add better looking dirt footsteps texture
• Change up mosquito sound behavior and amount of blight from bites

[ 2022-03-18 18:09:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest build updated! A few more balance and bug fixes to tighten up the gameplay experience! Balance:

• Jerky hunger replenishment lowered and given slight negative thirst replenishment
• Increased effectiveness of small stone and flint as a hammer
• Increased generation of long sticks in forests
• Reduced evaporation rates of jug and pot
• Reduced starting blight infection amounts of all creatures
• Various building build times changed to provide a more consistent experience based on how big they are physically

Fixes:

• Meat strips now properly require the smoke rack to be smoked, no longer gets smoked in the ingredients section of the fire pit (or other heated inventories)
• Fix contamination not being preserved when grinding meat or cutting it into slices, as well as when slices of meat are fully smoked into jerky
• Fix weird issue where crafting list buttons disappear in certain UI scale modes and 4K+ resolutions
• Fix up the cut-off main menu in ultra-widescreen setups by changing the UI resolution based scaling to be height based instead of width based
• Fix right-click -> "drink all" not working with the equipped bowl/container at the bottom of the screen beside the stat bars
• Fix issue where fire pit and fuel wouldn't be affected by the rain if close enough to a lean-to

Features:

• Backpacks can be placed on the ground now to act as a storage area like the crate and chests
• Held containers like the jug can now be poured directly into the soaking basin using the alternate interaction (default: left alt) without having to go through the UI

Other changes:

• Flip yes/no buttons on all dialogs to be more consistent with common UX patterns. Buttons made more clear at a glance by changing yes/no to "action" and cancel.

[ 2022-03-16 19:57:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Playtest updated! Fixing a few issues introduced in the previous update, and some much needed balance changes. Thanks for all your reports! Balance:

• Slightly increased the generation chance of ginseng and all the various mushrooms
• Reduced the amount of poison from spotted red mushroom soup
• Slightly reduced the amount of Blight from contaminated coyote and wolf meat
• Slightly increased the amount of hunger replenishment from fresh coyote meat
• Fixed cooked sausages having almost no Blight

Fixes:

• Fix issue where certain saves would suddenly not be loadable with a "Could not load game" message
• Fix so that the "[LMB] Place down" when holding logs will actually work now under click-to-move control mode, if the cursor is close to your character
• Fix various font outlines when using the Russian language setting so that things are much easier to read against the the terrain
• Tweak first task description in the "More realistic" mode to make it more clear that the home village is inaccessible
• Fix the home village and region names not showing up in the task descriptions after loading a save
• Fix chamomile flowers not properly switching to dry version when reaching 100% dryness while on the ground, and not in your inventory
• Fix collision issue with lean-to when lying down on the bedroll, now the character properly animates onto the bedroll under the lean-to
• Fix crafting list so that the selected required tool is properly preserved if you move it around in your inventory
• Fix creature harvesting to be the proper times, they were made a lot slower by accident in the last update
• Fix game breakage when crafting an equippable item (like a jug) while both hands are taken up by two separate items
• Fix a few Russian translation mistakes

Other changes:

• Allow bear meat to be cut up into a bunch of meat strips

[ 2022-03-14 04:01:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

After many months of work, the time has finally come for the release of the next huge content update for Blight. Currently only live on the Playtest build of the game. Hit "Request Access" on the Steam page or join the Discord server to get more priority access!

The Story Update

The main goal for the update was to start expanding on the limited story of the game and give the game some directionality. Making it so that there is more of a purpose and a path that should be clear and interesting enough to take. While a bit of this has been added in the update, it's becoming clear how much more the game still needs in order to become truly special. A ton of other cool and interesting features have also been added to the game to make the journey along the new path exciting. A lot of existing mechanics have changed, and a lot of new ones have been added, making the experience a bit different than it was before. I hope people are excited with all the new features and the way the game is evolving.

Main Features

• Completely reworked world generation - incorporating new road and village generation for a more varied and interesting world
• New locations to discover - resource rich areas and swampland
• Completely reworked map to show the above new features and locations, along with a much better look & feel
• New dialog system for interacting with NPCs
• Ability to put your own labels on the map
• Initial ranged weapons - throwable stones and spears
• Shields for use in combat
• A whole bunch of new resources to find in various places in the world
• Repairing items
• New buildable hand cart for hauling many heavy items longer distances
• Localization system and an initial translation of the game to Russian
• New water reflection graphics setting
• Bunch of new items, recipes, and buildings to create
• New clay items and pottery kiln for hardening them
• Compass for navigation in the "more realistic" mode - requires a lot of patience and attention but very rewarding
• Grass slowly turning to dirt as you run around in camp
• And a ton of other small features and improvements

There have been a lot of various performance improvements to the game since the last update, but also things are are a bit resource intensive in other places. The new water reflections being one of the main features in that regard.

Known Issues

• Saving and loading in Windows 7 is still not fully supported yet sadly, but this will be fixed soon enough
• The Mac version still seems to have higher instances of complete crashes of the game. Appears to be more of a core Unity issue unfortunately, will hopefully resolve this at some point
• The Russian translations are a first draft and will have a bunch of mistakes, this will be an ongoing process to tighten them up. The village, region and sea names on the map aren't localized yet but this will be fixed soon

[ 2022-03-12 04:50:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy New Year! Been a while since the last update but I wanted to push out a small update to address some issues raised in the feedback recently and finally add a commonly requested feature: click to move mode!
The existing "control style" setting has been renamed to "character orientation", and now there is a new movement setting that is set to the old keyboard-based by default, with an option to select "click to move towards cursor". Please check out this new mode and let me know how it feels to use and if you notice any issues with it! All Changes:

• New movement mode in controls settings: click to move
• Attempt to fix very rare freeze just as autosave begins. Let me know if you still see this happening
• Make sure mouse cursor is visible after dying
• Add some text in the running and show nearby items starter hints about the toggle-ability of these actions
• Boost rabbit meat and sausage hunger replenishment after feedback

[ 2022-01-02 02:55:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Squashing a few issues that resulted from the big Unity upgrade a few days ago. Unfortunately it seems like the game won't work properly anymore on Windows 7 thanks to the recent Unity update. The game can no longer list files in a directory on the file system, so getting a list of saved games to be able to load isn't possible anymore. An alert popup mentioning this fact was added at the start of the game if you run the game in Windows 7. While the game never officially supported Windows 7, it's unfortunate that it's broken now after working fine for so long, will look into fixing this at some point. Apologies for the inconvenience. All Changes:

• Fix missing specular highlights (shiny reflection of the sun) on the surface of the water
• Fix so that SSAO works again after being broken in the previous update
• Fix a few uncaught exceptions
• Added alert popup when the game is launched in Windows 7, as being able to load games won't be possible anymore for the time being

[ 2021-11-28 05:56:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Pushing out a fairly large internal upgrade update as work continues on The Story Update behind the scenes. Wanted to isolate any issues with the upgrade now before the huge story update comes out, and hopefully can squash some very rare instances of crashes at the same time (and not introduce more) GIven the far reaching nature of the changes, there may be some unforseen bugs or crashes with this update! Please don't hesitate to report any issues you see. Thanks! All Changes:

• Upgrade Unity version from 2021.1.4f1 to 2021.2.3f1
• Update serialization framework to hopefully fix some very rare save/load breakages
• Remove "Craft With..." context menu action from non-player inventory slots (ex. fire pit or wooden chest) to prevent getting into an inconsistent state where the crafting list wouldn't see your personal inventory or tools

[ 2021-11-24 05:21:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick update to fix an issue around crafting introduced in the previous update. Thanks for the reports! All Changes:

• Fix issue where reloading a save while ingame would cause crafting to not work properly afterwards, until the whole game is restarted
• Fix harvesting queue not continuing properly if an item decays as it is being harvested
• Add two new key binds for normal and fast forwarded time that work when the speedup UI is shown

[ 2021-11-02 02:18:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

New features! Finally addressing some feedback around having to wait for progress bars a bit too much. A new time control popup will appear at the bottom of the screen when harvesting or crafting, allowing you to speed up time as the interaction happens. While this makes the action go by quicker, the world also is sped up, so you have to take this into consideration. Time will automatically go back to normal if a hostile creature gets close. A frequently requested ability to queue up harvesting actions for dead creatures has also been added to the game, complementing the above mentioned speedup mechanic nicely. Happy Halloween!
All Changes:

• New time speedup popup UI when crafting or harvesting from a creature. The last speed used is saved for future interactions
• Queuing ability for all of the harvesting options for dead creatures
• New optional rotate camera left/right key bind options, for those that want to use keys to rotate the camera instead of holding a button and moving the mouse
• Passive creatures no longer ignore you (and get too close) if you are interacting with something
• Boost nutritional value of sausages
• Raw animal fat and intestines now also are slightly diseased with Blight

[ 2021-10-30 21:06:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small update with a few bugfixes All Changes:

• Fix issue where your character would freeze up if you click hostile creatures immediately after killing them
• Fix race condition around double-clicking and dragging an item at the same time, causing the item to move to a different inventory but with its properties wiped out and becoming "NaN" (not a number).
• If highlighted object labels are toggled, hide them when UI is shown so text is easier to read
• Fix issue where a corrupted save prevents the whole game from starting up. Still need to harden the saving process so corrupted saves on crashes/power loss are prevented
• Fix minor terrain height calculation issue introduced recently that would make objects not snap to terrain that well when being placed

[ 2021-10-23 19:13:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small hotfix update All changes:

• Fixed issue where crafting using the "Craft with..." option wouldn't use up all input materials for 2+ input item crafting recipes in certain cases
• Fix so that dying while dragging an item in your inventory would properly clear out the item dragging UI state
• Removed confirmation window when exiting to main menu after dying

[ 2021-10-20 22:43:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some small changes/bugfixes from feedback collected from Steam Next Fest! All Changes:

• Soaking basin UI now shows a bit more about its state and salt content, as well as much more helpful tooltips for the hides, properly showing if there is too much salt in the basin for that hide
• Salt can be removed from the soaking basin after all the water evaporates (a new button will appear)
• Add camera rotation sensitivity slider in controls settings
• Fixed double-click actions not working in inventory when crafting window was open
• Right-clicking an item and selecting "Craft with..." will now ensure that specific slot is always used first in the crafting process. Helpful for forging with multiple heated items in your inventory
• Forging now properly selects the correct heat level items in inventory, instead of using the first one regardless of how heated it is
• Add delay after creatures are killed before the harvesting UI can be triggered, helps in situations where there are a bunch of creatures attacking while you try to click a bunch to fend them off
• Fix issue where a decaying item like raw meat or animal fat inside a backpack on the ground would either forever delete the backpack itself, or turn the backpack item into a rotten meat item. Now the decaying item is properly handled inside the backpack
• Fix issue where taken apart buildings would spit out their inventory contents (ex. tools in workbench, items in fire pit) without preserving any stats like item condition, so tools would be fully repaired
• Fix related issue where taking apart a crucible furnace with hardened bronze would break the process so that the furnace's bricks would spawn but the furnace itself would stick around, causing potentially infinite bricks
• Less strict spawn area requirement for Mysterious Stranger
• Double click is now triggered even if the mouse was moved a small distance for the second click
• When cooking more than one meat item, each subsequent item now has a much smaller increase to total cooking time
• Fix state of trapped rabbits when killed so they are no longer considered trapped, allowing their label to appear again and be selectable

[ 2021-10-19 02:53:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Release Timeline

The recent Next Fest has been absolutely wild. Thank you everyone who has tried the game out and given your feedback. A lot of you are excited for what's to come and given some amazing feedback and feature requests, and I realize more and more that I want much more to be in the game before it can be release ready. The bar is incredibly high for an Early Access release of a game like this, and I want to make sure Blight doesn't disappoint. Getting everything in by the end of this year will be a bit too aggressive of a goal, so I want to push the Early Access release back to the first half of 2022. Thanks for your understanding!

World Generation Updates

Procedural generation is a major aspect of Blight. The goal is to have some of the most realistic and beautiful worlds generated in a game like this ever. Been working diligently on a bunch of world generation updates and wanted to post some progress shots about what's coming soon in the next big update.

Region Map

The current playable alpha release/demo has a basically infinitely generated world, but the game initially populates a specific large area with procedurally generated special features like lakes, rivers and a sea. A "region map" is then generated for the area that you can access:

Roads & village locations

The world feels a bit empty though, so been working a lot on populating it with realistic village generation and roads connecting all of them:
A very customized A* approach is used for the rivers and roads, to make sure they avoid harsh elevation changes as much as possible, have the roads avoid crossing the rivers too much, and keep river paths randomized enough to look fairly natural.

How things actually look ingame

The region map shows all the pre-generated locations as basically one big tile-map. Each of these tiles corresponds to a chunk ingame, and so when you venture to areas with roads, rivers, and villages, the game uses this tile map as a sort of metadata lookup to figure out how to generate the terrain, which objects to place, etc,

Here you can see a road intersecting with a river and generating a simple ford crossing (with generated bridges to come later)
Here is a village location. There is a central chunk designated as the village root, and a random expansion to chunks in various directions up to a certain limit. Excited to get a playable version of all these features out soon! Thanks for reading!

[ 2021-10-08 21:18:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Going to be streaming the game and answering any questions on October 5th!

[ 2021-10-03 18:38:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small update with a few fixes and quality of life improvements thanks to all your great feedback! All Changes:

• Empty jug no longer slows you down when carried
• Show all anvil-related crafting recipes when anvil is used even if not in inventory
• Make item/building rotation fixed to 5 degree increments across all platforms for more control over rotations
• Crafting output now heavily prefers to merge with other stacks rather than the slot that was right-clicked to select "Craft with..."
• Auto-equip any tools crafted if handheld slot is unoccupied (to ease the experience of broken tools put back together)
• Show inventory when crafting menu or building menu are opened, now making so hitting tab (or whichever key is mapped) will now close the crafting/building menu too
• Reduce amount of fog a tiny bit
• Widen scrollbar handles in various UI windows and remove W and S keys from affecting the scrollbar
• Rework hostile creature spawning to avoid player camp much more, introduce respawn cooldown, and avoid clumping together
• Stones also dropped when breaking off pieces of iron rich rock
• Fix any equipped container items (bowls, jug, etc) set to a default position in the hand as they are getting filled
• Remove delete buttons in save/load windows ingame to prevent issue with deleting the active save breaking the entire world completely
• Add more helpful text to the various crude handle tooltips to explain better how the chisel fits in

[ 2021-10-01 14:20:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

New update with a bunch of bug fixes, slightly lower camera angle when zoomed in, and a new way to bypass all tutorial tasks for new games.
All Changes:

• Added checkbox on new game window to allow all tutorial tasks to be skipped. For those that are trying out new worlds as the game evolves and don't want the tasks to constantly bug you. Story based tasks will still appear at the right moment
• New slightly lower angle when zoomed in. Given the new perspective, there will be a slightly higher chance of seeing unloaded parts of the world in the distance. The game will continue to be optimized so more of the world can be loaded at the same time to prevent this in the future
• Different and slightly larger map player icon
• Fix divide-by-zero issue with regards to various objects that collect rain. In certain cases the hunger value of water exposed to the rain would become "NaN" and break your hunger meter when consumed
• Fix crucible furnace not forcing crucible to be present before smelting, resulting in lost output
• Fix weird issue when clicking "Fill" on a container item from an external inventory suddenly breaking the state of your character's inventory. A side effect would be seeing metal objects suddenly start to heat up in the character's inventory
• Fill item action now also works from player inventory to items in an external inventory such as the fire pit
• Added "Empty Half" option for items like the bowl
• Properly reset game state if player dies during sleep, for example from blight infection. Prevents weird player animation and breaking the UI so that you can't load or quit
• Allow lake water and rain water mixture to still be boiled
• Fix case where queued up forging would still work when the item cools down too much
• Add "Toggle HUD" key to allow for better screenshots
• Update some item tooltip text to make things a bit more clear in certain circumstances
• More mass for log based items so they aren't kicked around as easily
• Linux: updated linux toolchain to potentially fix issues with launching the game in certain environments

[ 2021-09-25 19:05:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

There's been a ton of feedback around how it continues to be too easy to get lost in the game, even after the added rivers, cairns, and item label visibility radius changes. Finally put some time into hopefully solving this issue once and for all: difficulty selection at the start of a new game and a region map
When you choose the "More forgiving" option, you gain access to a large region map (default key: M) that shows your position and direction, as well as the approximate locations of any fire pits you've placed in the world.
Those that like to explore more without worrying too much about keeping track of surrounding terrain features and cairns, you'll feel at home with the new map. Those that prefer the old way can select the "More realistic" option for the same experience as before. All existing saves will be categorized as in the more realistic mode as well. Currently there's no way to switch modes in an existing game, but that may come soon. All Changes:

• New difficulty selection at the start of a new game. "More forgiving" and "More realistic". More realistic is exactly the same as the game was before this update
• Region map (default key: M) added only in the "More forgiving" mode to help with navigation. Shows your location and locations of fire pits you've placed
• Dim "Attack Mode" key binding if the attack style isn't set to use this key
• Increase wild garlic generation chance by a decent amount
• Firewood fuel efficiency increased by 50%. Now cutting logs into firewood is much more worthwhile

[ 2021-09-20 15:15:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

A few fairly sizable changes in this update today, multiple save slots per game, and a new attack mode control style in control settings.
All Changes:

• Ability to have multiple save slots per unique game. Autosaves are always saved in one specific slot, but you can create any number of your own saves as well. No ability to name the saves yet, but that may come later
• Fixed a recently discovered bug where save playtime was incorrectly calculated. Many autosaves over the course of a session would cause the playtime to shoot up dramatically for the save file. You may have previously noticed a save displaying quite a few hours of playtime more than Steam shows for the whole game
• New attack control style in control settings. If you select the new attack mode option, you need to hold down a separate key (default spacebar) to be able to attack with the left mouse button. When the key is held, you no longer can mistakenly interact with objects instead of swinging your axe
• Fix shade canopy interaction position so it can be built much easier with the hammer
• Update hide treatment task to make it clear how to obtain salt
• Make directional stone larger on the cairn

[ 2021-09-17 18:29:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

More feedback addressed in this small update! Colored item labels and better task auto-completion logic are the highlights All Changes:

• A ton of new colors added for the highlighted item labels. Most gatherable plants/resources are green, combustible items are tinted brown, mineable rocks are tinted blue, and some other additional colors. More/reworked colors will be added in the future
• Building placement and item placement tasks auto-complete now if you've created the relevant building/item before the task is assigned
• Fix issue with tasks not recognizing completion state if the amount completed was higher than the task's required amount
• Fix issue where dragging a stack into unbuilt building slot would transfer the whole stack (and lose some items as a result) instead of just moving over the amount needed for the building blueprint
• Increase chance that rabbits will wander into nearby snares. Multiple snares far apart will give the best results!
• Fix issue where a stack of cairns would all be placed in one spot when using the place action. Now only one item will be placed out of the stack
• Related to the above fix, now rabbit snares can be stacked in groups of 2 for easier transportation
• Reduce salt percentage needed for coyote and wolf hides to somewhere inbetween the old value and the rabbit hides
• Slightly increased tin rock generation chance
• Slightly reduced time required for molten bronze smelt
• Fix issue with Bloomery losing output iron blooms if there were too many iron ores smelted to fit in a stack

[ 2021-09-12 20:50:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small update to address some recent feedback! Making the rabbit snares a bit nicer to use, clearing up fire pit recipe confusion, and improving game start world generation balance All Changes:

• Improve resource distribution near starting area to make game start more balanced across all uniquely generated worlds
• Rabbit snares can now catch rabbits passively, with a small chance of nearby rabbits walking directly them over time. Will continue to tweak behavior going forward, as well as adding bait ability in the future
• Add new fire pit recipe messaging - a warning when no cooking surface is present, and a hint to empty the bowl of water before trying to cook meat
• Opening UI like inventory while character is walking towards an object in click once interaction mode will no longer cause the character to keep moving indefinitely
• Slow decay rate of all meat items
• Fix dandelion roots item collider so it doesn't roll around all the time when dropped

[ 2021-09-08 04:14:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small update with a new way of defining toggled actions, may need to update your controls!
All Changes:

• Switch how toggle works for running and highlighting nearby items: new checkboxes in controls settings to turn on toggling behavior for these two actions, rather than a separate key
  • If you were using keys to turn on toggling, you'll find those keys aren't used anymore and will need to check the new checkboxes
• Further reduce amount of coyotes early on for slightly more manageable start
• New alert popup during autosave so that the experience is a bit better, rather than an abrupt stutter during the game
• Hardening the autosave process to hopefully eliminate a very rare crash as autosave begins
• Change how tracking works for messages shown on top of the character, removing the jittery look of the text as the character moves with high framerate

[ 2021-09-04 19:45:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

A small update with a few fixes as work continues on the story update and Steam next fest demo All Changes:

• Fix super rare chunk generation issue, where 1-2 chunks will break while being generated and as a result show as giant holes in the terrain
• Increase base size of UI
• Add extra stone to cairn for an easier way to show a direction
• Slightly increase cairn label visibility range
• Add new hint at start of game to call out controls setting page
• In click once interaction style, allow movement keys to cancel more interactions like creature harvesting
• Add very simple rich presence feature for Steam (shown to your friends in their friends list) showing which day you've made it to

New rich presence text when playing the game:

[ 2021-09-03 01:55:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

A few more quality of life changes based on some recent feedback! Now you can choose to click once to interact with objects rather than clicking and holding All Changes:

• New interaction style option in control settings: click once to interact. For players that simply want to click once instead of clicking and holding to pick up something or chop down a tree
• Now possible to click/hold on water to auto-move towards it to interact like other objects
• Completely new river generation algorithm that uses A* to prefer paths that have the lowest terrain elevation, should result in less "cliff" like riverbanks. Only present in new games
• A sea is now generated in a random direction in new games. Preparing for the story update, which will include road and village generation, and a region map depicting all these new features
• Compression disabled for game files - game now takes up around 3.2GB (vs. 1.8GB before), but future updates will hopefully be much smaller and no longer need a redownload of the majority of the data
• Add error-checking around the game load process so that issues are caught and a warning box appears explaining the game can't be loaded, rather than an indefinite black screen
• Fix issue in internal object position tracking where floating point precision issues would cause objects to be bucketed incorrectly in very rare cases
• Increased hunger replenishment from meat, increased thirst replenishment from river/lake water and boiled water
• Remove stacking from various forged tool blade and head items to prevent unintentional averaging down of stats

[ 2021-08-30 15:02:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Coyote numbers toned down a lot, and they now avoid lit fires!
All Changes:

• Coyote numbers greatly reduced during first week
• Reduce chance of hostile creatures approaching the player in camp
• Coyotes avoid ignited fire pit during the day
• Coyote aggression range and growling ranges made a bit more generous, increase growl volume
• Fix player forged steel hammer not being able to take apart buildings
• Reduce energy loss from chamomile tea
• Fix capped stamina stat bar indicator missing when energy is low
• Item consistency changes

[ 2021-08-22 01:51:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

One last small update with a few fixes before work mainly switches over to the next large update: The Story Update. All Changes:

• Can place things on cabin floors properly now, including items and buildings. Soon you will be able to build your own wooden floors at camp
• Fix so that large objects like the bedroll and buildings can't be placed on utility table
• No kneeling animation when filling/emptying jug placed on utility table
• Slightly boost amount of iron rocks generated
• Slightly reduce amount of copper rocks generated

[ 2021-08-19 20:33:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

A much requested autosave feature is now in the game, and a new utility table to help organize your clay molds and other objects better!
All changes:

• Autosave that happens every few minutes of real time, configurable in gameplay settings, defaults to 5 minutes
• New utility table with ability to place objects on top of it. This functionality isn't in for cabin floors yet but will come soon
• Fix character rotation bug when moving to highlighted object above or below the character
• Better pickup interaction handling for objects not on the ground (ex. on cabin tables or utility table), with new standing pickup animation
• More animal fat and intestines spawned for dead creatures
• Max stack sizes increased for a whole bunch of items, especially plant-based ones
• Way more sticks generated from felled trees
• Ability to pour to/from clay jug placed on the ground and handheld container like a bowl or waterskin
• Fix shade canopy not protecting the fire pit from getting wet from the rain
• Further reduce hostile creatures in days 4+ to be less crazy

[ 2021-08-18 20:53:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Going to be streaming the game and answering any questions on October 2nd!

[ 2021-08-18 19:17:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

All changes:

• New default control style where player character faces towards movement direction rather than the mouse cursor. Can be changed back to the old way in the settings
• Completely reworked new game experience that starts earlier in the day, reworks a bunch of the starting tasks, and introduces more things before the first night for a more varied gameplay introduction
• Slightly more water left after boiling
• A few minor bugfixes here and there

[ 2021-08-16 00:19:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small balance update All changes:

• Balance wolf strength, move their first appearance to be later in the game
• Fix bug where creatures were accidentally spawned outside loaded chunks
• Fill & Equip item actions now work properly from other inventories like the fire pit
• Properly despawn creatures during day/night transition when player is asleep, preventing last-minute rabbit chases that wake you up
• Proper energy decrease rate to make sure you are tired enough for the 2nd night
• Warning color indicator in bedroll UI when sunrise will be more than an hour after waking up

[ 2021-08-14 03:41:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

All changes:

• Crafting menu now sorts so that things that can be created are always at the top, followed by things with ingredients missing below
• Fix bug where dragging heavily stacked fuel items out of the fire pit and dropping them would end up losing some amount of items
• Shift and Control keys to split items when dragging now respected by double click movement as well
• Add new alpha feedback survey link
• Change energy depletion rate so that you should be tired enough to sleep the full 8 hours when the next night comes
• Coyotes now run away more
• Hostile creatures spawn further away so they don't all surround you at all times later in the game
• Hostile creature spawn rates changed a bit, balancing out difficulty later on

[ 2021-08-12 19:55:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

A huge new update is out! Check out the major features in the video: [previewyoutube=kPTcEWMG8Ss;full][/previewyoutube] Features: - complete world generation revamp - procedurally generated rivers, useful for navigation and specific resources - new dense forest and tall grass field terrain types - plants and herbs, with new long-term status effect system with brewed tea and other ingredients - new belt quick slots that show up on your character and makes swapping out weapons and tools that much easier - completely redone AI, new enemy creatures with new behaviors, and an ability to form packs for more hunting effectiveness - a ton of new craftable items and tools including knives, chisels, swords, bear traps, and more - a sneak peak of the beginnings of the game's story - tons of small bug fixes, optimizations, ease of use features, etc

[ 2021-08-09 22:26:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

New feature: trees of death
All changes:

• falling trees now heavily damage/kill things they fall on top of, including you
• trees now always tip over in the direction they are chopped from, ie. to the right relative to the player character
• red tint for hostile creature labels
• tree leaves cutout circle now only appears when the leaves are between the camera and the player character
• lower camera angle for slightly better look
• camera height/angle are now stored when saving and loading
• fix controls settings UI breaking when in-game and pressing a button that causes some other window to appear
• reduce energy depletion rate

[ 2021-06-10 23:12:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sawing trees into long planks is now finally possible! Only works for the straight pine trees for now.
There was a decently large change with how resource data (like for trees) is stored, save games from v0.3.0 and v0.3.1 may behave strangely, but should generally still be compatible. All changes:

• fix crafting queue capping at only two things
• fix rabbits collision after death, fix dead rabbit rotation being reset incorrectly on game load
• nicer looking dead creature harvest UI with creature thumbnail image
• prevent newly generated objects from rolling down slopes at the start of the game
• added rotten berries and rotten ground meat - more rotten items to come (everything that decays like hides, intestines, etc)
• ability to saw felled trees, rework how resources are defined internally
• fix soft clay jug not showing up in hands when equipped
• fix items changing state (ex. hardening) while being dragged making the item disappear - now the dragging is cancelled when this happens
• rework sawing animation and sawing sound

[ 2021-06-08 03:28:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alpha update v0.3.1 is out! Mostly some small bug fixes, and a new queuing system for the crafting menu to make things a bit less tedious. All changes:

• allow placing things (right click -> place) from a different inventory such as fire pit or stick crate
• task to harden clay items now is complete as soon as hardening is complete instead of after moving the item to your inventory
• small changes to how chunks are kept loaded internally
• fix animation for certain crafting recipes
• now able to forge new steel hammer to replace starting hammer
• fix rabbit carcasses flying in the air
• new ability to queue a crafting recipe multiple times to make things like many plant ropes or clay bricks much easier
• rework crafting menu under the hood so it tracks what's currently being crafted more consistently, refreshing properly for new possible recipes, etc

[ 2021-06-07 00:05:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alpha update v0.3.0 has been released! Given the large changes with save file format, old 0.2.x save games are not compatible with this update. The Playtest channel of the game is now live! It will be rolling out a few people at a time, for those who have requested access to the playtest on the main store page. Be on the lookout for an email from Steam about getting access. Once you do, you'll be able to download and launch "Blight Playtest" in Steam. If you haven't signed up yet, hit the Request Access button on the store page!
A lot of focus was put on making the experience as smooth as possible for new players. A new hinting system was added to go through the most important controls at the start, as well as a multitude of new UX improvements all over. Be sure to join the Discord server and playtest-specific Steam forums to discuss the update! All changes:

• new better-looking font in all UI
• added simple loading screen pre-menu and when generating/loading worlds
• much more performant object label displaying system
• cleaner and more intuitive fire pit UI - dragging items anywhere on the window will auto place in the right slot, etc
• new sound for cooking/boiling things on fire pit
• fix bug relating to loading a game with a cooking fire pit, causing input ingredients to not be properly consumed in some cases
• show interactable currently equipped item on HUD next to stat bars
• re-adjust volumes of things
• ability to drag items from UI into world objects if the item is accepted (for ex. drag log out of inventory UI, press ESC to close inventory, and then stop dragging on top of fire pit)
• when dragging items, dim any slots in any open windows that the item can't go in
• new cursor images for a few interactions
• fix 'load last save' causing the loaded game to be paused and appear frozen with a green background
• completely new and much nicer looking right-click item menu UI
• new camera rotation ability, panning bounds changes based on zoom level
• new hinting system to help new players with all the controls at the start
• adjust time scale at the start of the game during tutorial and certain tasks to make it easier to get a handle on things before the day ends too quickly
• fix strange player rotation in certain cases when chopping felled trees
• entirely rework world saving system to be much faster and create much smaller save files
• rework quick action menu to look a bit nicer, with more options relating to inventory items
• new rabbit model
• new controls settings screen
• new gameplay settings screen
• new shadow quality graphics setting option
• torch now shows remaining fuel in tooltip, new ability to extinguish torch manually
• add steamworks sdk - currently only one stat tracked: player death - will be more stats and achievements later on
• add intestines harvestable item, sausage casings, raw sausage and cooked sausage
• new catchup time system for chunks that haven't been visited in a while so the world is much more consistent
• new generatable cabin variation, updates to spawnable items in cabins
• trees shake briefly when chopped, have a chance of dropping sticks and twigs on each chop
• big rework of creature UI, rabbits now avoid multiple treats at the same time while running away, as well as the lake much better than before
• hostile creatures have a chance of attempting to flee when low on health
• low tool condition now affects their effectiveness
• add new rust system for iron/steel tools that happens as they dry after the rain
• fire burning out now wakes up the player automatically in certain conditions
• many new sounds
• a few new animations for various interactions
• various other small bugfixes

[ 2021-06-03 19:48:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Will be starting some closed alpha testing in the next few weeks. Join the Blight Discord server to get notified about when it starts and how to participate! https://discord.gg/uN33Jz2YvR

[ 2021-05-24 23:37:37 CET ] [ Original post ]