Changelog for Update 1.4 - Pets (14 September 2020):

Hey everyone!

We have an exciting update for you all with some fun changes and new features! The main theme of this update: PETS!

NEW PET TRAINING MINI-GAME
As the many tutorial videos and guides have made clear, the original Pet Training game was tricky to explain and didn't quite achieve its purpose in the game, so we've completely overhauled it! This mini-game makeover follows the same principles of gaining the animal's Trust, but with a shiny new look and feel that's easier to learn and fun to play.

NEW PETS & BADGES
How is it even legal to have shipped this game without DOGS?! That's right, Dwarrows now has dogs and puppies, several breeds to choose from! We didn't want the dogs getting bored, so we thought we'd give them something to chase: Squirrels of course! These new pets carry with them the secret to keeping the interest of animals and gaining their trust.

PETS ACCESSORIES
Lastly in the realm of pets we have added pet accessories. Gone are the tragic days of not-being-able-to-put-a-monocle-on-a-bird. That sad era is over. Hats, glasses, moustaches! Lots of silly aesthetic items to give your pets personality and throw your crowns at. Find these items at your General Merchant in town.

IMPROVED CONTROLLER SUPPORT
This may not be for everyone, but it's an important part of the fun for those who prefer to use gamepads. We have done a reworking of our controller support and I think controller users will be pleased! A majority of our UI has been changed to treat gamepads as a first-class control scheme wherever possible, meaning it will no longer be treated like a mouse on menus that could support this change.

ENJOY!

We have also made a ton of little quality of life and bug fixes which, there is a lot of, so I'll leave you to the patch notes below if you want to read about it! Thank you as always for being our amazing supporters and players. We hope you like the new update and features.

Cheers, The Lithic Team

Release Notes

NEW
- NEW PET: Dogs and Puppies! Several varieties of dogs and puppies can now be found throughout the land :D
- NEW PET: Squirrels! Find and befriend a variety of these adorable little rodents to help you in your travels!
- New Badges: Intriguing and Trustworthy. These badges increase your starting interest and trust when charming new pets.
- New: Pet Accessories! Hats, glasses, and facial hair for your animals! Fashion Accessories for pets are now sold at the Merchant in the Dusken Keep. Merchant inventory is refreshed daily (as in: real-life time).
- New: Pet Charming mini-game. We've reworked the whole mini-game to be a lot more intuitive and, hopefully, fun! (*more details below).
- New: PROPER GAMEPAD SUPPORT in menus! Gamepad navigation no longer behaves as a mouse and instead snaps to buttons and important UI elements.

NEW PET TAMING MINI-GAME
- Overhauled the Pet Taming mini-game. The game has been reworked to be simpler to learn and balanced to be faster paced.
- Changed Timed Hits during pet taming minigame into a separate stage of the minigame. You'll now be able to take your time and time your 'hits' more accurately.
- Pet taming Timed Hits are now affected by the game speed option.
- Fixed 'Give Item' during pet taming to properly work with timed hits.
- Added a new celebration/information screen when a pet has been charmed.

CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS
- Smashable pots will now respawn when loading a game. Breaking things is fun, why not keep them around? (Bonus: Saves memory and slightly improves save/load speeds).
- Improved smashable pots to better handle explosions - and by better handle I mean they break more reliably and satisfyingly.
- Added hotkeys for Structure design table slots. Designing should require less back-and-forth mouse movement.
- Reduced the number of recycled auto-save games from 20 to 10 (this will not delete existing auto-save games).
- New look to the Compass - easier to read with cleaner font

PERFORMANCE
- Fixed a bug that would cause severe slowdowns when the exit confirmation prompt was visible.
- Reduced amount of data being saved, reducing how long it takes to save and how much harddrive space is needed.
- Significantly improved performance for some older hardware. In testing, a computer with an average of 15fps now averages 32fps. Note: This is not likely to be a noticeable improvement for modern hardware.

FIXES
- Fixed an issue where clicking 'yes' on a confirmation prompt could complete the action more than once (eg. Agreeing to Discard an item, could accidentally discard 3 of that same item).
- Fixed memory leak caused by orphaned pet badges when equipping pets.
- Disabled Gravity on smashable pots. This fixes an issue where Smashable urns in dungeons would sometimes be thrown around when entering the level.
- Fixed the mini-boss music sometimes not going away after leaving the scarecrow's hilltop near Breezy River Farm

SMALL THINGS
- Fixed all bird pets from unlocking the Bluebird only achievement.
- Fixed typo in wood axe upgrade ('tress' instead of 'trees').
- Renamed some actions in Pet Taming.
- Fixed several gamepad issues that would cause the game and UI to suddenly revert to the mouse and keyboard mode.
- Fixed the "Back" button on the map to be above the border.
- Added outline to some fonts to make them easier to read.
- Fixed several badge icons looking far too bright.


Standalone installers updated 15 September 2020:
- Windows: Win64_v1.3 ⇒ Win64_v1.4;
- Linux: L64_v1.3 ⇒ L64_v1.4_GoG;
- Mac: macOS64_v1.3 ⇒ Mac64_v1.4.

the Update (end March 2021)

This update primarily contains bug and performance fixes, but one larger change is one we've had been planning for a while: Improved Camera Movements!
There have been more than a few complaints about the camera's movement and position being a jarring experience over the year, and I've toyed around with our options to come up with something that's more comfortable to play.

The main goal was to reduce unnecessary camera movements, like when walking a small ledge, or when jumping up slightly. Let us know what you think!

Release Notes

CAMERA CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS
Reduced harsh snap-jumps during sudden character movements by decoupling the camera from the character movement
Pulled the camera further away from the character to reduce how much movement is needed to keep the character on screen
Significantly reduced the performance cost of camera collision tests

FIXES
Fixed UI Scale support on screens that would fail to scale properly
Fixed Quick Load to no longer corrupt save games by resetting the level
Fixed key remap support for the Drafting Table camera (instead of being fixed to W, A, S, D)
Fixed Photon Projectors fluctuating on and off, especially with low frame-rates
Fixed broken gamepad cursor in Demolish modes during town building
Fixed a bug during the tutorial that could cause the game to get stuck facing the drafting table permanently
Fixed a bug that would cause the game to get stuck after leaving a conversation with certain characters
Fixed a rare crash after returning to the main menu from a game and starting a new game
Fixed villager counts on HUD not updating
Fixed artifact sound playing even once it has been picked up
Fixed townsfolk failing to start their tasks once arriving to work

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS (especially for slower CPUs)
Reduced the game 'hitching' frequently while running around Duskenvale and Dusken Woodlands
Reduced a drop in performance when picking up resources
Slightly reduced memory usage
Improved game load times
Many small frame-rate optimizations