Weekly devlog #2 - 1.1.1 update

Hello, Kirthos here.

We just released our first update. The game has been on itch for 2 weeks and we got many bug reports and feedbacks. I tried to fix most of them in this update. For players interested in the list of bugs fixed. The changelog is available at the end of this devlog.

Crafting rework

One of the bug reports we got was about crafting. The bug is related to crafting tables and occur when multiple different recipes are planned on the same table. For instance, let's take the stone or electric oven: You have 1 oven on which you ask to craft 1 bread and 1 apple pie. You don't have bread (needed to make the apple pie) but you have apple and wheat. Apple for the apple pie and wheat for bread. The right behavior would be: the pawns make the bread using the wheat with the oven then the pawns do the apple pie with the crafted bread and apple. But the issue was that the oven was trying to first craft the apple pie, asking for apple and bread. Apples were hauled to the furnace and placed inside and then the oven waits for bread. Since you only have one oven in my example you cannot craft the bread with the wheat you have since the oven is already used to make the apple pie. That also means, that in the worst-case scenario, you needed at least as many furnaces as the requested number of apple pie + 1 in order to never get stuck, which was ... impractical.

I rewrote how the crafting system works. Before, the game would set the craft order inside a table directly when you asked it, search if materials are available and wait if there is not enough material. Now the game verifies you have the material available to make the craft. Then it reserves all materials and finally sets the craft in the table. If there is a problem (for example, an item is no longer available because you build a wall between the table and the item) everything is canceled correctly and the table can be used to craft something else instead.

One problem was left, when you loaded a game from the previous version, the new crafting system broke everything. Tables were reserved by craft jobs but were not supposed to, since the materials were not available. I have written a small code to migrate saves. This allows us to run code when loading a game from version A to version B. Now I just needed to cancel all crafting jobs when you load a save made in version 1.1.0 with version 1.1.1 and re-assign all tables using the new crafting logic.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

Thank you for reading. The changelog is available below.

CG Out!

Indev 1.1.1 Changelog:

• Fixed a (rare) big issue that would happen on the very first launch and break the Settings menu and sometimes the game.
• Rework how crafting jobs work, now the table is only reserved to make a craft when the materials are available.
• Fixed a small blue line that was appearing on dirt ground next to grass tiles or storage zones.
• Fixed a small red line that was appearing when using doors.
• Cutting a storage zone in two now keeps the filters in the two zones.
• The game prevents to make a map with 0 width/height or layers when using custom size.
• Make roofs correctly appear in all rooms when loading a map.
• Make roofs correctly disappear inside rooms when breaking walls.
• Prevent roofs from appearing when a room is 'walled' by water.
• Fixed an issue where the building ghost was appearing on the wrong layers after loading a map.
• Make walls correctly connect to doors.
• Fixed an issue were sometimes the pathfinding was not using the fastest path.
• Fixed item track UI not placed at the top of the screen.
• Removed the activate/deactivate button on wires that were not supposed to be there.
• Fixed an issue were multiple pawns were able to work on the same research table.
• 'Run in background' setting was not loaded correctly.
• Prevent the cursor to go outside of the game screen window.
• Stop/Disable edge scrolling when the window is not focused.
• Fixed wrong research prototype for the auto-turret research.
• Fixed some text issues.
• Fixed an issue where items were not hauled back to storage zones when pawns drop the item after the job being canceled.
• Placing or destroying a door next to an item was changing the item sprite.
• Fixed loading issue that can happen with the repair job.
• Fixed loading issues that can happen with some events.
• Fixed loading issue that happens when there is no path for a building job.
• Turret ghost was consuming power after a reload.
• Prevent the game to change the speed in the storage UI when setting number for the "maintain in stock" setting.
• Multiple other small fixes.