Vaughn "Drathy" Royko

Wayward beta 2.2 “Tamed” is now available!

Wayward is currently on sale from November 18th to November 25th, 2016.

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/379210
Humble Bundle Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/wayward
Website: http://www.waywardgame.com/

With Beta 2.2, a large focus was placed on balance this time around and smoothing out the early and late game states in Wayward. Making it easier for new players and new games, but more smoothly ramping up to a more challenging experience for end-game scenarios.

As there was many balancing changes and additions that will alter playstyles, we look forward to everybody’s thoughts and opinions on the flow of things. This is something that will constantly be refined as we go forward. With taming being included as a whole new playstyle, I imagine there is still work to be done here.

Besides the balance reworks, there’s also a huge haul of new content, options, and UI/user experience improvements. The change list is pretty massive once again. Sorry/not sorry! We hope that you spot one or two of your suggestions in the changelog, but if not, there’s always next time!

Beta 2.2 also marks the longest time spent on a major update since launching on Steam. We’ve heard comments that players would rather have smaller major updates that take less time to come out. From a marketing and promotional standpoint, this would be tricky to do, but if enough people want it, we may consider changing this aspect. As always, we plan to do a couple smaller patches after this major.

Read more…

Beta 2.1

Beta 2.1 started out a bit rough, but through a series of patches, we ironed out most of the issues with the latest installment, beta 2.1.3. Thanks to all those who contributed issues and feedback. We definitely don’t mean to have a public quality assurance period; however, it’s just the nature of building games with lots of depth with a small development team. We really look towards the community for feedback and we are pretty proud of our track record of implementing things the community wants. You’ll see a large focus on that in the upcoming beta 2.2.

Depth is not something we want to sacrifice with Wayward going forward. The game will definitely get more and more content and become more complex as time goes on throughout this heavy development phase while in Early Access.

Upcoming Beta 2.2

If you follow the development of Wayward, you will know we are currently hard at work on 2.2. We have two words for you: CREATURE TAMING!

A highly requested feature, taming will be implemented in beta 2.2 along with a giant list of improvements, bug fixes and more content! We won’t spoil too much, but if you are interested in all the great stuff we have put in so far, check out the “2.2 Done” column in Trello:

https://trello.com/b/PWX1Hpjn/wayward-todo

Read more…

Today we have a quite substantial patch ready for ya’ll. We wanted to do one sooner, but we thought we would release something a bit more significant potentially as the last patch in the 2.1.x series. Time to work on some bigger things once again!

There’s a few bugs and improvements that have been sitting on our todo for quite some time, many of which we hope will help ease some new players into the game.

Thanks to all that made your voice heard and helped us out on balancing and finding/reporting any remaining bugs.

Bugs

• Fixed an issue where items that decayed/changed into other items (fruit to seeds, or raw meat to rotten meat) did not shift in weight.
• Fixed items that once had decay no longer are sorted with that decay still set (with sort by decay).
• Fixed an “undefined” message when getting a status effect from a doodad.
• Fixed an error that occurred when trying to repair wooden doors.
• Fixed a bug that made aberrant monsters scared. Aberrant monsters should never be scared unless they are low health.
• Fixed the build version not outputting in console for Mac OS X.
• Fixed an issue where desert templates could spawn in to too close to sea water.
• Fixed a bug that would stop a highlight (from Starter Quest/hints) prematurely if more than one called.
• Fixed an issue where the daily challenge hint was not showing up when going to Daily Challenge.
• Fixed an issue where scrollbars could shift item positions on certain sizes of inventory/containers/equipment/crafting windows.
• Fixed an issue where skill in parrying would actually increase burn damage instead of reduce it.
• Fixed a bug where you could open a context menu while the game was loading.
• Fixed a bug where you would not earn the gatherer milestone unless you were using an ineffective tool for gathering.

Balance

• Monsters have a slightly higher chance to lose interest.
• Reduced weight of limestone, talc, sharp rocks and knifes slightly.
• Abandoned house templates now have a higher chance to have missing walls/floors/etc.
• Reduced max damage and increased max health of claw worms.
• Doubled raft durability.
• Re-balanced stoke fire values to make more sense with dismantling (all items equal up to their base items).
• Slight malignity skill tweaks. Decreased malignity slightly for anatomy, parrying, tinkering and woodworking. Increased malignity on tactics, and very slightly on mining and lumberjacking.

Improvement

• Wooden poles can now be used to stoke fire.
• Corrected how single walls would show up as a single vertical columns instead of horizontal walls.
• Starter Quests now have a back button for going back a quest and skip button if you have already done the quest (saved across all saves).
• Increased the opacity of non-craftable items. They are now slightly grayed out as well.
• The corpse carving hint will no longer show for blood.
• When the Steam overlay is off, mods/link navigation is now done using your default browser instead of the internal one.
• Improved default dialog positions and sizes.
• Collecting doodads will now log what you have received in your inventory if returning more than one item.
• Tweaked the sandstone pond template to make more geological sense. Fresh water is now contained inside.
• The monument and raft templates now no longer have a chance to be degraded (missing tiles).
• Improved color accuracy on many particles.
• Renamed “Collect Object” to “Collect Object With Hands” for less confusion.
• Tweaked some inspection text to mention the new world tool-tips in hints.
• Fixed some tiepoz and tweaked a few lines in Starter Quest.
• You will now always spawn with a wooden pole (to unlock necessary starter crafts and information).
• Tweaked wording on wooden poles to mention coming from branches/logs.

New

• All doodads have unique particle colors and will show on gather/trample.

Here’s another quicker, smaller patch tweaking a few things including weights which has been a new struggle for some players since beta 2.1.

We’ve also identified the issue with the game not wanting to run on some Windows 7 machines. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to single out which Windows 7 configurations are affected, so we have applied the fix to all Windows 7 installs which will disable the Steam overlay (the thing that was crashing the game). If you were on Windows 7 and were not effected by the issue and want the overlay back, you can overwrite this change by opening/editing the file “launch_options.json” in your Steam’s Wayward folder and changing the following line:

"inProcessGpu": false,

to:

"inProcessGpu": true,

If you are still crashing, please make sure your inProcessGpu is set to false as mentioned above. We’ll look into the future possibility of bringing this back/fixing it, although, upon some research, the Steam overlay is not even technically supported by Valve on our technology platform. So, ya, there’s that…

On with the changelog:

Bugs

• Disabled the Steam overlay on all Windows 7 machines which crashed the game for many users, read the statement above for more information.
• Fixed blank world tool-tips appearing on occasion when moving.

Improvements

• The highlight effect that shows up from the Starter Quest and the help/hint dialog now disables itself after 10 seconds.
• Wooden poles are no longer mentioned as craftable in the Starter Quest.
• Saltpeter is now in the “powder” grouping.

Balance

• Many weights have been reduced including: all powders, all fired clay items, clay flakes, sharp glass, stone knifes, pemmican, and sharpened rocks. This will only be applied to new items.
• Containers now reduce 50% of item weight instead of 25%.
• Increased health and base defense for krakens.
• Decreased maximum attack value for drakes.
• Decreased base defense for acid spitter demons.
• Reduced player weight bonus very slightly (still above what it was in 2.0.x) to help balance rest of weight changes.
• You can now only add so much fuel to torches (previously unlimited) and is based on the torch type.

Technical

• The build version is now logged in the console/logs (useful for those playing on the developer branch).

Mods

• [Argus] You can now see the argus item equipped to your hands.

We’ve been following along with all the issues players have been reporting so far with 2.1. We wanted to address them as soon as possible to let new and old players alike get the best possible experience with Wayward.

Please let us know if you find any other problems and we’ll be sure to get them fixed up ASAP as always.

We’ve also been working on an uncommon bug where the game won’t run all the time from Steam on certain Windows 7 configurations. Help us track this down if you are experiencing it!

There’s been some reports that running it from the folder directly has helped, or creating a shortcut to run the game as an administrator and running that through Steam has worked as well.

Balance

• Removed malignity increase on digging.
• Increased creature malignity spawning values (tougher creatures come in a bit later, depending on how you interact with the world).
• Reduced tree bark weight (and thus the stripped bark that can be made from it).
• Reduced weight for plant roots, sinew, mortar and pestles, and sundials.
• Reduced weight in each step of turning a bone/bones into a bone pole, sharpened bone, then to a bone needle.
• Reduced woven fabric string requirement by 1 string.
• Decreased overall healing failure chance and disabled the ability fail when above 25% in skill.

Bugs

• Fixed a bug that could result in refined sand as being 0 or negative weight.
• Fixed an issue that could result in some items giving double weight based on their components (bone needle).
• Fixed an error when eating spider eggs.
• Fixed a grammar issue with the “Set Down” item use.
• No more Golden Wwords.
• Possibly fixed some issues where music would skip back to the start of the song, and randomly change to a new track. Let us know if you are still getting this issue.

Technical

• Upgraded to Electron 1.3.1. Unfortunately this didn’t help the Windows 7 issue as far as we can tell.

Obligatory Pokémon Go Reference

• Minor text fixes.

We are super happy to finally unleash our first major patch to the beta 2.x series on Steam. We’ve spent the last few months fixing, patching, adding, and changing tons of stuff.

This release, much like the previous have been shaped by the community. We unfortunately could not fit everything people have requested so far in to 2.1, but we are making leaps and strides; marching onward towards the ever-elusive, non-beta release. That being said, we still have a 2.2 planned, and likely a 2.1.1 if things turn out to be really broken. We still have tons of ideas to implement.

If you are not wanting to update yet (simply due to mod compatibility, or other issues), you can always manage what version you are at. Simply disable automatic updates for Wayward in Steam, or change your beta/branch. Get help with this, with the following guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=721479594

But enough about the future, what can you expect right now? We released a short video showcasing some of the new things you can find in the game.

There’s tons of stuff not mentioned in the video. If text is more of your thing, have fun with the following giant changelog. Wall of text mode activated!

Read more…

Hey all,

Welcome to the first Wayward newsletter. A monthly or bi-monthly (the every two months variant) showcase of all things Wayward. News, discussions, mods, videos, and more!

The last couple weeks have been a blur. Lots of patching, lots of fixing, lots of people playing Wayward again. If you somehow missed all the excitement, you can peruse all the patches that have been released so far since the Steam launch:

Beta NaN (2.0.5) Released

Beta 2.0.4 Released

Beta 2.0.3 Released

Beta 2.0.2 Released

Beta 2.0.1 Released

We’ve focused on user complaints, issues, bugs, and new quality of life improvements for the game. Making it stable and more “complete” to prepare for the wait and development of the upcoming major 2.1 patch. We’re already well on our way for beta 2.1, by the way. If you want to follow along with us, you can keep an eye on our Trello: https://trello.com/b/PWX1Hpjn/wayward-todo

The major patches is where we will show off new content, new gameplay, and bigger community-submitted ideas that couldn’t fit into the minor patches. We hope to have plenty of exciting things for new and older players alike in beta 2.1.

We won’t over-hype anything yet, but you can technically read through everything we are planning in the Trello, including many spoilers. We will also be doing a full video showcase of the new stuff when the time comes.

On with the showcases:

Discussion Showcase

Doom Discussion

A proposal on a brand new difficulty and scaling system within Wayward.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/0/357286119107934543/

Mod Showcase

Reincarnate

Reincarnate respawns you somewhere random in your world on death and refills your stats (health, stamina, etc.) but empties out your inventory to the spot where you died. Travel back to the spot of your demise to grab your items and resume your pursuits. Be careful next time, won’t you?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=677681194

Video Showcase

You & I Play

Two players working their way through Wayward makes for a quite enjoyable series. Showing that two heads are better than one; when trying to survive at least.

Discord

We do that Discord thing. Come hang out and chat!

https://discord.gg/wayward

Developer Showcase

I know I get most of the limelight, but I just wanted to mention the rest of the wonderful Wayward team:

• Gary ‘Spacetech’ Wilber (Programming)
• Frank ‘Sassafrass’ Sasto (Programming)
• Dusty ‘Goaticide’ Melling (Art/Design)
• Austin Dhillon (Music)

Thank you all for your support! It’s a dream come true to have a game on Steam. But the way I celebrate is to keep working on making Wayward better!

Stay tuned and have fun!

Vaughn “Drathy” Royko

Happy Wayward Wednesday! That’s not a real thing, yet… but it does have a nice ring to it.

We have a smaller patch ready for you all today with a real treat for Linux users. Linux now has full Steam Workshop support! There’s also the variety of balance and improvement tweaks as per usual. We hope this is the last one in the 2.0.x series so we can get on to 2.1, but we’ll continue to fix stuff up if it’s important enough.

Oh and yes, the NaN bugs have been squished. This patch was also brought to you by Batman: NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN, Wayward, Wayward! Erm… anyways…

Bugs

• Fixed NaN values appearing for crafted items.
• Fixed a case of an infinite loading screen in the event that Steamworks failed in some way.
• Fixed GetAmbientColorDay, GetAmbientColorNight, and GetAmbientColorCave hooks not working correctly.

New

• Linux Steam Workshop support has been added.

Balance

• Improved durability calculations when crafting using altered durability items (repaired, disassembled, reinforced, and quality statuses all matter more now).
• Further refinements/accuracy have been added to disassembly durability/quality reductions and item returns.
• Repairing will now reduce the item’s durability by 1/2 instead of 1/3 (using max – min).
• Torches now need fuel items again if not lighting a flammable tile. Each torch use will now reduce it’s decay in half.
• Reduced the chances to craft a Remarkable/Exceptional/Legendary item with recipes that required many items – it was weighting them too heavily compared to other items with less consumables.

Improvements

• Many help/hints improvements (in terms of accuracy/ease of reading/layout).
• The Sleeping/resting ZZZ’s are now properly sized like they were in beta 2.0.3.

Mods

• Renamed onAddItemToInventory to onAddOrUpdateInventoryItem.

We’re coming at you again this weekend, hitting you with another fairly large patch. We’re nearly at “Zero Bugs™” now, and we hope to keep it that way. “Early Access®” doesn’t have to mean “Buggy Access©”, now does it?

We showed some love to Mac OS X this patch as well as added some additional modding support. We cleaned up a lot of inconsistencies as well. Like most of these patches, nearly everything came suggested/reported from the forums and community. Thanks again all!

Bugs

• Fixed error when preserving items that can decay but have no uses (Ectoplasm).
• Fixed weight calculations when storing items in containers in containers in containers in…
• Increased item sprite capacity to 16384 (from 512). You should now theoretically never have hidden items/objects on screen again.
• Fixed an issue where most Mac OS X hardware displayed Wayward darker than intended.
• Drinking snow from the ground is now consistent with drinking unpurified water.
• Fixed scroll wheel zoom sensitivity on Mac OS X.
• Fixed the raft counting weight while using it.
• Fixed the raft not passing a turn when you stopped using it.
• Fixed a bug where gathering treasure on top of a cave entrance would show a snare graphic. Wat?
• Fixed the alternate font not being anti-aliased on Mac OS X.

Balance

Further refinements to skill to talent increments (many skills lowered).

Improvements

• You can now collect chests, traps, walls, doors, and most player-made objects without hurting yourself (if you don’t use a tool).
• Stoking Fire has been added to the Starter Quest. Other misc improvements/wording fixes in Starter Quest.
• Normalized/balanced stoke fire values (and increased in most cases).
• Starting fires no longer requires a fuel item. As such, the starting state of a fire is much weaker.
• Lighting campfires, kilns, furnaces, etc. now produce only enough fire as what was provided by the tinder/kindling. You will need to stoke the fire further.
• Torches and built torches (doodads) now function the same in terms of decay/length and burning into ash.
• Adding “Fuel” to torches now gives decay based on their Stoke Fire value instead of a randomized amount.
• Improved overall readability of text, quality of icons on hover, and other misc UI tweaks.
• Replaced fonts for those with better multilingual support and readability.
• Min/max durability now effected by disassembled item’s min/max durability. Max durability of crafted items now effected by consumed item’s min/max durability as well.

Modding/Mods

• Added additional rendering hooks (GetAmbientColorCave, GetAmbientColorDay, GetAmbientColorNight, GetAmbientLightLevel, PostRenderWorld, PostRenderPostProces, PreRenderPostProcess).
• Added BaseMod.getIndex and BaseMod.getPath for ease of mods to load custom assets.
• [Developer Tools] Added a day-night slider. Dialog now automatically resizes as needed.
• [Reincarnate] Fixed weight not resetting on death.
• [Balancing Tools] Now locks monsters in place.