Hello dear shopkeepers!
It has been a few months since the last update for Faire Trade. We have been diligently chipping away at adding controller support throughout the game which took most of this time. In addition, we have had a summer holiday and other matters of life requiring their faire share of care and attention.
The big ticket item for this update is controller support. Faire Trade should now be entirely playable from start to exit with the vast majority of popular gamepad controllers. Below you can see a small controller showcase you show you how this works.
Several features had to be refactored to support both mouse and controller ranging from movement, camera and interactions to furnishing, building, and menus. Everything required revisions to support controller and button prompts so that you know what you can press.
Scroll grids used in the display, crafting, and character customization menus now use a pooled scroll grid. While adding controller support for these menus, it became clear that the product grid was frustratingly slow to work with.
Previously, each grid item in the scroll grid created an interface element. Now, only the visible items in the grid populate an interface element and elements that scroll out of view are reused which is much more performant.
Below you can see a demonstration of how that works behind the scenes. On the left you see the new scroll grid in-game. On the right you see that a grid item is selected and gets repositioned and reused as the grid scrolls.
It made sense to upgrade to this pooled grid system as part of the controller support update because grid navigation and game feel was much more noticeable when playing with a controller than using a mouse. It was also much easier to implement now than retroactively.
Below you can see 10 displays from left to right (including a wall mounted display in the back). This update adds 9 more colors in addition to the 3 already existing ones seen from top to bottom.
In addition, there are 7 new floor colors being added in addition to the 3 already existing ones that you can see underneath the displays.
As with every update, the first week or so will be focused on deploying hotfixes to issues that emerge to provide the most table gameplay experience. There is only so much testing we can do internally and releasing an update into the public always finds the most exotic issues that we could never have dreamed of.
Once the hotfixes subside and the game stabilizes, we would like to do a pass on improving several existing systems and features. Over the last several months it has become apparent that the game would play much better if we could just take the time to revamp some of them. But alas, we had to stay focused on delivering controller support first before indulging on productive procrastination.
TECH
Copy mode should now copy closest structure or furniture instead of favoring furniture.
Traders will now always spawn in with a backpack, and when you buy all their items their backpack will disappear.
Improved NPC pathfinding, this should remove stuttering and performance spikes when customers would spawn and leave.
Picking up any furniture would also go through updating the storage data, even when it didn't have any storage related to it.
Fixed an issue where standing still for a few hours with the first tutorial mission active would slowly complete it.
Furniture and structure build modes should now be supported for controller.
Added 1280x800 resolution and set this to the default when playing on steam deck.
Set steam deck now defaults to 60FPS.
Fixed an issue where older save files would sometimes not have the farm unlocked due to the addition of a new tutorial objective.
UI
Copied furniture should now have placement prompts.
Disabled product slot rendering which was intended as a debug visual.
Dpad up on controller now hides walls.
Tooltips should be easier to read by blurring out the background.
The settings menu grass per meter setting would reset grass but not respect the active season.
Improved fadeout of the custom game window.
Added controller support for the end of day screen.
Added a button to randomize the shop name.
Added a Randomize button to the shop name menu.
Added new English and Dutch shop placeholder names now totaling 100.
Updated game mode images.
Shop name wasn't randomly selected when starting up a new game.
Added "Last Modified" text in the Load Game menu.
Adjusted Load Game menu date formatting to match in-game date in HUD.
Load game menu now correctly shows the day of season.
Load game menu now also shows the day of the week.
Added a pop when the storage/level/appeal level is updated.
The crafting menu recipe grid menu now also has a close button in the corner of the window.
Object clone and grid snap prompts should now be visible and responsive in the HUD when usable.
Made the cancel button for the tutorial prompt slightly wider.
Updated the character customization menu to support controller.
Added input prompts to some of the tutorial tasks.
Improved planter and tree planter colliders required for controller support but which also benefits mouse users.
Whenever a singular product, furniture or structure is shown in the detail panel of a menu, an icon is now shown instead. Tags and Types remain as text to more easily differentiate between the 2 types.
Display and crafting menus should now be usable with controller.
Implemented pooled scroll grids for display and crafting menus for performance and controller support.
Modified the new game menu to always show the game settings before starting a new game.
Added a dot to each custom game row, indicating if a value has been changed from the default.
Display menu item tooltip sell price would not update when selecting quality.
Updated font asset used for the milestone notification.
Graphic setting 'Grass per meter' can now be translated.
Fixed several translation issues in the Controls settings menu.
The first option for frame rate in the settings menu can now be translated.
The first option for anti aliasing in the settings menu can now be translated.
The season in the load game detail panel should now be translated.
The 'Milestones' tab was not translated.
The milestone tier text in the Milestone menu will now wrap around.
The tags in the Market Information menu should now be translated.
The sleep confirmation window text can now be translated.
Light modes can now be translated.
The header text of the 'Unlock' menu should now be translated.
The 'Details' group header in the details panel of the Furniture menu should now be translated.
The 'Report Bug' entry and button in the pause menu can now be translated.
Some crafting stations will now translate to a more appropriate verb when picking what to produce.
The area restock text can now be translated.
The area restock cancel prompt should now be translated.
New Game is now focused when Continue button is disabled when using a controller
Rewards header no longer shows in the objective menu when there's no rewards attached to an objectives.
Confirmation buttons weren't aligned properly.
Confirmation Alternate button wasn't called correctly when using a controller.
Updated styling for the new game menu.
Fixed the description in the new game menu.
Fixed the footer buttons in the custom game window and hooked them up to controller buttons.
Fixed issue where the selector would block clicks to elements underneath it, most notable in the inventory when clicking the heart while having a product selected.
It should no longer be possible to remap input to the ESC key.
Input remapped to mouse button 4 or higher should now be more elegantly handled on object prompts.
Tweaked menu text size slightly.
Furniture placement prompts should now also show when buying furniture.
Display menu product quality selection prompt for controller was not giving the right visual feedback for both directions.
Display menu product quality selection prompt for controller has been moved down to not overlap with product quantity.
Display menu product quality selection would disable the button when pressed using mouse.
AUDIO
Changed the sound effect of hiding walls.
Fixed audio sound effect latency.
ART
Employees should now also dress in orange on kings day.
Traders should now always show up with a backpack.
Added 9 new colors for displays Ellecom, Ellemeet, Ellerhuizen, Ellertshaar, Ellewout, Elp, Elsen, Elshof, Elshout, and Elsloo.
Added 7 new colors for floor Haarle.
Returning to Main Menu from an interior scene would prevent the terrain from updating.
Fixed a light leak in the entrance shadow mesh.
OTHER
Fixed the NPC spawn position near the clinic.
Fixed NPC positions inside the Guild.
Added additional task for the "Place Counter/Trader Point" tutorial objective.
Rather than handling the Creative mode settings in code, they are now handled through the custom game settings.
Added a custom collider to the exit teleporters so that you can't place a shop sign on it anymore.
Added a new tutorial objective for farming.
BALANCE
Changed the crafting recipe of a bowl to be just clay, to be in line with other crafting trees.
Due to a typo, pottery recipes were missing their 2nd and 3rd item requirements for most recipes. This should increase the overall complexity and profitability to be in-line with the other crafting stations.
TECH
Fixed critical error when unlocking the last furniture of a category.
Attempting to pick up Bep in the village using a controller would crash the game.
TECH
Expanding shop using mouse in expand mode did not work when pressing the mouse button.
TECH
Removing your saves while not removing the continue.json file doesn't stop the game from loading anymore.
UI
Load Game menu allowed you to press load/delete when no save was present.
Load Game menu didn't blur/focus the main menu when opening/closing.