Roguefort Playtest · published
Another incredible day on the tools, fixing bugs left, right, and center. Thanks everyone for going above and beyond with the bug reports, suggestions, and patience in this early stage of the beta - detailed patch notes as follows.
I've tried to get the details as accurate as possible but please forgive me if I have:
Got something slightly wrong in the write-up
Missed something (I haven't got to all the bug reports and suggestions yet sorry - yours will be tomorrow)
Misattributed something (just let me know and I can fix it
I'll also update the credits shortly to include all the playtesters tomorrow. I forgot to do it today amidst all the activity - sorry!
Entering a dungeon in co-op bricked the client: they'd get a half-loaded dungeon and get stuck, while the host still saw them standing in the overworld. Dungeon entry, floor changes and exits were never synced between players. Zone transitions are now host-authoritative and move the whole party together, and dungeon tile changes are tracked separately from overworld ones so the two maps can't cross-write each other. Joining a friend already underground now works. (Geno)
Ship decks are temporarily blocked in co-op - same unsynced-zone problem, not yet fixed.
"Village population doubled": road patrols were piling up, spawning six identical guards in a knot. The spawn logic keyed off whichever player was acting that turn, which flips constantly in co-op, so patrols churned around both players. Patrols now key off the nearest player, cap at 2 groups (was 3), and never spawn inside a settlement or right on top of you. (Geno)
Guard quests flooded: the 3-per-faction cap was only checked when the quest was offered, so two players accepting from a row of lit badges raced past it. The cap is now re-checked on accept. (Geno)
Co-op clients could never see NPC micro-activity labels ("behind the counter") - the field was missing from the sync. Added.
The whole cast of every procedural settlement stood in their own doorways all day, while the status line insisted they were at their stations. Every building-bound NPC's work and social anchor was set to the building's door tile. Anchors now point at real interior stations, so "behind the counter" is literally a counter-side tile. Note: vendors now stand INSIDE their shops - you'll need to step in to trade. (AJ)
NPCs could claim a station they never actually reached. Locative status labels are now only claimed on arrival; a blocked NPC reads "is heading in to work" instead of lying about where they are.
A displaced worker (e.g. you camped their doorway) would never walk back - it silently gave up until the next schedule flip, meaning an innkeeper could be adrift all day. Blocked NPCs now recover and re-path.
NPCs can no longer settle on a doorway tile.
Croft doors said "Nobody is home" while the blacksmith was visibly at his anvil. The lock read the schedule only, and a croft's commute is about 2 tiles - so during his 'walking to work' slot he stood at his own anvil for ~58 turns behind a barred door. A resident physically standing inside now counts as home, in both directions. (Tim)
Conversely, at a schedule boundary the lock could evaporate while the resident was still commuting - you could nudge the clock forward and walk into a "barred" empty house. Now requires a body actually inside.
Five Hearthmere civilians (Edamere, Cremilde, Goudren, Lattrel, Berget) slept in the street while the status line claimed "asleep at home" - they had outdoor home anchors as a bookkeeping shortcut. They now have real interior homes (Berget sleeps in her pen). NPCs genuinely without a home building now honestly read "has bedded down for the night". (shu)
Market NPCs and Exchange brokers wandered off and fled from approaching players - they were being routed into passive wildlife AI. Fixed; they hold their posts.
Bumping a market NPC opened a dialogue bubble that couldn't be dismissed except by Escape or waiting out a 30-second timer - this was the "stall". Bumping now steps past with the line in the log; deliberate Talk (C or right-click) gets a proper, dismissable bubble.
Market NPCs were missing from the C-key, hover info ("Passive wildlife"), right-click menu, and the first-person crosshair - which offered "Attack". All now offer Talk / Traders' Exchange.
Bumping a barred door flung your character roughly 27,000 tiles off-screen and slowly drifted them back over ~27 seconds. Coordinates were being passed where a nudge distance was expected. (shu)
Chat input trapped focus: once you clicked in, WASD was dead until you clicked back on the world. Enter sent but kept you typing; Escape was swallowed. Sending now releases focus, Escape bails while keeping your draft, and failed sends keep focus so you can retry.
Chat is now reachable without a mouse: Enter (or A) opens it, with controller/Steam Deck on-screen keyboard support.
"Can't get this region explored, stays in fog" - four compounding faults. Region discovery had been removed entirely, leaving two dead features (city and town rumour dots, region road reveal) reading an always-empty list. Revealed areas also rendered as flat blank texture, and the fog edge blur was invisible at high DPI. Rebuilt: walked chunks clear fully, a new "Glimpsed" ring sits at half fog, regions become "known" once you've walked enough of them (which gates dots and roads but never punches fog), and fog now has soft feathered edges at every zoom. The legend names the Explored / Glimpsed / Unknown tiers. Old saves benefit automatically. (tee)
The demo's map fit-zoom was pointing at coordinates the demo no longer uses. Fixed.
Crossing and Worldforge worlds erupted with Skyrim-tier ridges and terraces straight through coastal cities - buried houses, z-fighting roofs, crater settlements, streets on cliff faces. These worlds pick their sea level relative to the map, but the 3D relief was measuring against fixed heights calibrated for the curated world, so on a high-sea world every scrap of land triggered mountain drama. Relief is now read relative to sea level, plus a calm mask around settlements. Worst-case settlement relief across 260 test seeds dropped from 67 tiles to 7. Wild mountains away from towns are untouched. (Hariel)
Procedural worlds drew the curated continent's distant monuments at coordinates that meant nothing there - phantom silhouettes on the horizon - and never showed their own. Fixed.
In first person you could sink under a steep slope mid-glide and peek through the mountain. Clamped.
Willows never spawned anywhere in the game - they only existed in the wetland pool, and the wetland tree branch was unreachable dead code behind the rock check. Willow groves are now an obvious marsh feature (0% to 56% of wetland trees) and also appear on waterside ground.
Fort mode rendered every tree species as an oak while still tinting the canopy by species. Fixed.
Snow peak, arctic and tundra had no real species of their own and fell back to the oak/maple pool. Given proper species. Tundra live trees were also partially shadowed by the dead-tree check.
Beds rendered as a mortar and pestle everywhere. An accepted sprite submission drew a mortar into the bed's slot. Removed. (found in review)
The boar stopped blinking - an accepted boar redraw left its blink frame pointing at the previous, differently-shaped boar, so the game dropped the frame and the boar went static. Redrawn against the current art.
Flora that rendered as long grass but identified as a flower: the terrain pass records the species, then later passes repaint the ground over it - levelling, village greens, roads, walls - and none cleared the record underneath. So the Lower Green of Thistlewatch drew as long grass, called itself Meadow Blossom on Look, and yielded wildflowers when gathered. A census found 883 of 884 flora tiles near three villages affected this way; most were silent, buried under walls and roads. Now swept at generation. Existing saves heal themselves. (SamV)
Gutting a fish had no context menu entry and no key - it existed only as an inline mouse button, so the popup menu (the only surface a controller can reach), the keyboard, and Fort mode all silently lacked it. Every item verb (eat/cook/gut/drink/refill/purify/use/read/deed/lead/paint/place) is now built from one shared table, so the four input surfaces can't drift apart again. Gut is bound to 'g'. Gutting, cooking, refilling and purifying now work on Steam Deck via gamepad. (SamV)
Gutting a fish from the inventory gave no visible result - you had to close the panel and read the log to find out what you got. The announcement was firing correctly, but underneath the panel you were standing in. The inventory now shows the result in-panel. An empty roll says "Nothing useful" rather than the fish silently vanishing. (SamV)
Keyboard eat-fish was food-gated while the mouse allowed it. Fixed. Raw fish deliberately refuses to eat on Enter - there's a poison chance.
Fort mode inventory had dead keyboard and gamepad support, and leftover [gut]/[read] buttons that did nothing. Fixed.
A full audit of every world/tile/NPC menu across bump, right-click, C-key and first-person, which turned up two live bugs nobody had reported: workbench and forge showed "Use ..." twice, and storage showed both "Open Wardrobe" and "Open wardrobe" as separate rows.
Stove right-click hid "Purify Water" entirely where bumping it showed it greyed out with a reason. Now consistent.
Campfire and hearth Cook/Purify existed as three drifted copies: bumping now always shows Cook, and Purify greys out instead of vanishing.
Bed and chair menus were two drifted copies - bumping played the sleep sound, the WAIT-key version didn't. Unified.
The C key couldn't target chests or signs (Label/Rename and Write were mouse-only). Now it can. Barrels deliberately excluded for now.
Duplicate menu rows that differed only in capitalisation slipped past the automatic check and shipped - a player had to spot the pair by eye. The check is now case-insensitive. (SamV)
Pressing Enter to dismiss the "New: Bookshelves" tutorial placed a second bookshelf. The Enter handler checked against a hand-maintained list of open windows that had gone stale - the tutorial popup and ~19 others were missing from it, so the keypress fell through to build placement. (SamV)
Log band: you can now mousewheel over it to scroll back through recent history, with a "N newer" marker. Full history still lives in the scrollback panel.
"Hunger isn't restored by gaining blood after killing" - four separate wiring bugs. Melee blood restore cancelled itself out: the hit showed "+2 blood" and then applied a matching drain for a net zero. The bite is now genuinely the feed against blood-bearing prey; bloodless targets (bone, slime, construct) just cost you the exertion. (tee)
Fresh blood dropped from kills but had no verb - you couldn't drink it. Vampires now get a drink action (+10 blood); mortals still see a plain ritual material.
The cure was completely unreachable: the moonwell checked a backpack that doesn't exist, so Purify Blood and the Cleansing Ritual could never appear at all.
Sunlight blood drain never fired - it was hardcoded off.
Infinite expertise: spamming spells in the Old Mouth market and refilling at the plaza fountain (which never depletes, by design) farmed unlimited spell mastery - and tiers mint Affinage Insights and grow your Manna cap, so free casts were free permanent progression. Casts now only advance mastery when they hit a real foe, or are fired with a living foe within 12 tiles - so wards, walls and summons at the start of a real fight still count. Ineligible casts still cost Manna, cooldown and a turn, and you get a one-time note explaining why it didn't count.
The same fountain loop stacked an unbounded pre-fight rinded shield. Now capped at 40.
Continue and Load Game vanished from the title screen after backing out of the seed screen - and stayed gone across restarts and reinstalls. Starting a New Game or The Crossing claimed a world slot the moment you clicked, so backing out left a pointer aimed at a slot with no save in it. The slot is now only claimed when the run actually starts. Installs already stuck this way repair themselves on boot. (andygeorge)
A fresh co-op host had no world slot of its own, so its saves silently overwrote whatever world was last active. Fixed.
Hearthmere is now stamped at the same origin in both the demo and the full game (they differed by 16,9 tiles). Imported demo saves were already misaligned in the full game - this aligns them exactly, with NPC memories intact.