Beta 2.6.3 Released

As noted with our last release, we were working on some issues relating to performance. Now, some weeks later, we think we have something available that will help the majority of people that had issues previously (especially on lower end machines). This required much more extensive testing than normal for these minor releases, which is why it took a bit more time, and also why you’ll find that this changelog may not seem very minor. This won’t be the fix for all performance issues, and probably won’t be the end of the beta 2.6.x series, as we still want to wrap up a few items before focusing on our next major release.

If you are still dealing with performance issues and don’t want to wait, there’s a number of options and possible solutions available for you. We recently released a guide on this, “Wayward Performance Guide” available here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1438746684

As you’ll see below, this release was hardly all about performance, and more about balancing, improving, and fixing bugs in the game. A common issue we have seen in multiplayer is new players struggling. This is due to the very fast paced nature of the game when not playing in turn-based mode. To combat this, we have introduced a brand-new mode which adds a simulated turn-based environment for more strategic and dynamic multiplayer gameplay, allowing turns to only pass if players are actively performing actions. We’ve also opened up adjacent containers/items to be used in disassembling/dismantling fully, further decreasing some tedium in inventory management. This is just a few of the highlights; take a peek down below for more goodies.

Have fun and keep suggesting your ideas and reporting issues!

New

  • Added a “Simulated Turns” multiplayer mode, which allows time/turn passing as long as players are performing actions, otherwise the game will be paused.
  • Added adjacent container dismantling.
  • Added a /save chat command.
  • Added an option to disable auto saving.
  • Added an option to toggle adjacent container crafting.

Improvements

  • Added support for using multiple movement binds at the same time.
  • Added support for adjacent containers for disassembling/dismantling requirements.
  • Decreased saving and loading time, especially for dedicated servers. The file size of saves has increased due to this change (although exported saves will still be compressed).
  • Added an extra check to see if you are already facing a crafting requirement before turning to face the first instance found.
  • Added display of skill use reputation impact within crafting tooltips.
  • Merchant NPCs will now spawn on game saves that do not have them (from previous versions).
  • All hard-coded bind hints will now show what your actual binds are (instead of using the defaults) within the Starter Quest.
  • Added more information to the stats help entry to explain how their maximum values work.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed dismantling ignoring the order of items if no turn was passed after sorting items. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
  • Fixed an issue where some players were experiencing the game freezing/crashing while saving.
  • Fixed occasional uncaught errors related to multiplayer connections (when hosting a dedicated server).
  • Fixed the attack damage label values not updating.
  • Fixed a bug where both the character selection and main menu would appear when joining a game from a player’s Steam profile with Wayward closed.
  • Fixed an issue with some integrated GPUs that caused incorrect colors and other rendering glitches/visual artifacts.
  • Fixed an issue where disassembled items could result in items with higher minimum durability than their maximum. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
  • Fixed a bug that would cause keyboard controls to become stuck after holding them down while pressing the chat focus bind. (Thanks AbstrXact_Data!)
  • Fixed the chat bind working when an interrupt is visible.
  • Fixed the “Menu Enter” bind not working on input interrupt menus.
  • Tumbleweeds may now drop their resources on adjacent tiles as dropping on the same tile did not allow it to grow. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed an issue where some books could contain items that resulted in you weighing more after opening them. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
  • Fixed a bug where weight did not update after learning from an old educational scroll.
  • Fixed the “equip hovered item” bind still toggling the equipment dialog when you’re hovering an item.
  • Fixed an extra space appearing in Starter Quest completion messages.
  • Fixed legendary strength items not effecting max weight when equipped. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed an issue that caused dialog filters to filter incorrect items in.
  • Fixed an instance where hitting locked chests or creatures barehanded with hand protection provided no benefits.
  • Fixed gathering with hands not damaging your equipment enough, leading to this method being better than gathering with an actual tool. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed swimming animations not resetting after travelling.
  • Fixed an issue where legendary skill items could potentially result in percents with more than 1 decimal point. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed a bug where legendary attack damage was not applying to melee weaponry. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed a bug where loading saves without previously loaded mods would still attempt to add modded items, skills, etc. through normal means.
  • Fixed move to tile not stopping movement while moving in front of an NPC. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed +load for dedicated servers not generating a new world if the save specified did not exist.
  • Fixed the dismantle filter getting reset after passing a turn. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed renamed containers not displaying their new name until they are closed and re-opened. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
  • Fixed the menu bar overlapping quickslots when there are enough menu bar buttons at certain resolutions.
  • Fixed some text being removed when switching languages.

Balance

  • Removed the ability to get hurt (or bleed) from gathering most plants with no tool/hand protection.
  • Carving corpses will now provide positive reputation in cases where the creature was hostile. (Thanks Aaron!)
  • Treasure guardians will now be more difficult at lower reputation levels.
  • Attacking creatures or hitting locked chests barehanded (without hand protection) can now cause bleeding.
  • Doubled spyglass durability.
  • Only tamed chickens will now lay eggs. Clucks-be-gone!
  • Added a larger lower range for exceptional/legendary item durability that are found or transmogrified (does not effect crafted items, which have a much larger cap).
  • Using your hands will now use more stamina than using tools for gathering, harvesting, digging, and attacking.
  • Decreased base aberrant spawning chances, and further decreased the chance as your reputation is raised.

Technical

  • Upgraded to Electron 3.0.0 which should improve compatibility and performance, especially on lower-end machines.

Beta 2.6.2 Released

A new batch of fixes is ready for you all!

We are currently looking into some performance issues related to some integrated GPUs. If you are having performance issues and have a discrete graphics card, make sure the game is actually using it (there has been some reports of some cards/drivers defaulting to integrated). As for the performance issues – we will continue to look into them, which now appear to be caused upstream (which we are waiting on an update for).

Two fixes we are shipping with this release are “possible” fixes. One is regarding the issue where containers dialogs would not show when opened and the other was keyboard movement getting “stuck” until a mouse click was made on the game screen. Please let us know if you are still getting these after beta 2.6.2.

We appreciate your patience while we address the remaining issues with the beta 2.6 release.

Bug Fixes

  • Possibly fixed a bug where sometimes keyboard movement and controls would become “stuck” until a mouse click was made on the screen.
  • Possibly fixed containers showing behind the game screen rarely (making it so it appeared as nothing happened when you tried to open containers).
  • Fixed an oversight where you could only rest on the ground with a bedroll placed under you. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)
  • Fixed sleeping on a bedroll you are facing not checking for fire adjacent to facing tile (but rather the tile you started on). (Thanks Theodis!)
  • Fixed an issue where multiple tooltips would appear if the information updated while your mouse was still hovered over it. (Thanks sechsauge!)
  • Fixed the possibility of players timing out while the server is saving. (Thanks Valdig!)
  • Fixed a multiplayer desync caused by healing tamed creatures. (Thanks MrAmazing!)
  • Fixed a rare chance that players were unable to join a multiplayer game that they previously disconnected from.
  • Fixed a bug that made you bleed inappropriately when starving to death, drowning, taking poison damage, and many other things.
  • Fixed the filter not working in container dialogs. (Thanks Banaman!)
  • Fixed items getting held in cursor after dying while dragging an item.
  • Fixed crafting tooltips reporting incorrect item amounts based adjacent containers/items. (Thanks Arnkh!)
  • Fixed resting/sleeping screens closing when players join in multiplayer.
  • Fixed treasure maps not having the tops of trees in the “drawing”.
  • Fixed sugar canes not producing resources to gather when budding and fixed some wording on their description. (Thanks Fangthane!)
  • Fixed death in multiplayer games not triggering ghost vision or closing certain dialogs when in hardcore difficulty.
  • Fixed the middle mouse button failing to move to tile in many situations.
  • Fixed message sources (filter editing) not being translated for the Starter Quest.
  • Fixed some notes missing spaces by italicized words.
  • Fixed some wording issues within the Starter Quest completion messages. (Thanks CMDR Kargen Dracos [INR]!)

Improvements

  • Move to tile will now stop when taking damage from stamina/encumbrance.

Balance

  • Slightly increased the weight of coconuts (as sometimes dismantling them would produce items with unrealistic weights).

Modding

  • Added PreSaveGame and PostSaveGame hooks
  • Added a ShouldStopWalkToTileMovement hook.

Mods

TARS

  • Fixed an issue where TARS would attempt to place items continuously within the same container.
  • Fixed message sources (filter editing) not being translated.
  • Fixed TARS randomly attempting to go into the water and end up killing itself tragically.
  • Fixed an issue where TARS would keep trying to rest while at -1 stats, leading to eventual death.

Technical

  • Added a backgroundThrottling option for reducing resources when Wayward is minimized/not in focus. This is only intended for use in single player games.

Beta 2.6.1 Released

Hey all, we are just delivering a small patch tonight to address some of the beta 2.6 launch issues as well as a few improvements thrown in. We fixed up some major performance issues as well as corrected some pretty big multiplayer bugs.

Thank you all for testing and delivering feedback while we correct the problems. There’s still some work to do, so stay tuned for some more minor patches!

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed some performance issues on lower end machines as well as many macOS machines (you wouldn’t believe what the cause was).
  • Fixed walk to tile not moving correctly in cases of high latency in multiplayer games. (Thanks Amax!)
  • Fixed auto harvest still working when both hands are disabled. (Thanks Adrien S. Enzo!)
  • Fixed an issue where multiplayer games could increase too large in size due to saved messages, causing players to no longer to be able to connect afterwards.
  • Fixed dedicated servers not starting properly when single quotes were present in the name. (Thanks Theodis!)
  • Fixed the player count command counting the server in dedicated servers. (Thanks Theodis!)
  • Fixed an error that happened when trying to feed/tame previously tamed creatures (from an upgraded save). (Thanks Cort Gdard!)
  • Fixed absent players on upgraded server saves receiving 0 in all stats. (Thanks Theodis!)

New

  • Added viewing/sending message support to the dedicated server menu.

Improvements

  • Merchants will now face you when trading with them.
  • Increased the volume of creature movement/taming sound effects.

Balance

  • Increased the chance for sharks to despawn when out of view and range from them.
  • Feathers are now considered tinder and can be used to stoke fires.
  • Decreased the odds of chickens and harpies dropping feathers.

Mods

TARS

  • TARS will now use move to tile path previews for movement display (instead of particle effects).

Wayward Beta 2.6 “Mercantile” Released

Beta 2.6 Banner

Beta 2.6 “Mercantile” was built with late-game in mind. The addition of trading with wandering merchants (NPCs), new legendary items and old educational scrolls opens the door for a lot of possibilities and added progression. Metal items have also been reworked to be much more worth it and rewarding over early tiers of crafts. Especially in the case of copper, where it is now work hardened/cold worked, giving it a unique use case over iron which still needs to be forged with fire.

As always though, it’s important to grow and help the new players out there getting into Wayward. Which is why we also spent a lot of time focusing on early balancing and making the game a bit easier to get into. Things like completely redoing the help and hint system (now notes), extending the Starter Quest to include more early game problem solving, disabling auto gather by default (no more bloody hands!), and nerfing some early game baddies should help address many of the complaints from new players.

Those newer players also having issues with low item durability (possibly before they figure out the item quality system) should also have a better time increasing durability with the addition of animal glue, making reinforcing much more accessible. And those weight/inventory comments? With the inclusion of being able to craft from adjacent chests, this should help reduce some of the tedium of item management and help new players unlock even more recipes early on.

What about multiplayer? Well, with the new “move to tile” feature, movement should be a lot smoother and more consistent, especially for players that are far apart geologically. We have also fixed up all those lost chat messages by adding in message filtering, allowing players to view just chat messages instead of game and chat messages mixed together. This can also be customized to filter all types of messages in the game.

We aren’t done with the early or late game. As always, we constantly need to be tweaking and improving these things as new content and systems get added. Of course, this is just a small tease of some of the new things in the game. For more information, take a gander at the video and wall of text below!

Read more…

Wayward Newsletter #5

Wayward Newsletter #5

Wayward Birthday

Today marks the 2nd year of Wayward being available on Steam. We’ve been calling April 22nd the “Wayward Birthday” for this reason, and because of this fact, we are doing a 20% discount on Wayward today on Steam along with an extension to our “Content Contest“. More details down below!

As always, thanks for coming along for the ride with us as we continue our wayward journey.

Beta 2.6 Plans

We have heard you loud and clear! After multiplayer, the biggest wish for most players has historically been “NPCs”. With beta 2.6, we are making that wish a reality, starting with NPCs (non-player characters) that you can barter and trade with. If you are particularly malevolent, you can also choose to battle and fight them for their goods. As always, we’ll expand on this system going forward to add new gameplay options for them in the future.

To go along with the trading, we also expanded our legendary system, opening up the ability for any item to be legendary with unique new properties, including reduced item weight, bonus stats, extra damage/defense, increased worth, and more!

Another long-requested feature is the ability to use adjacent containers (chests) for crafting. This is something we are working on for beta 2.6 as well!

Of course, I can’t spoil and talk about everything we’ve added and changed so far, but we’re already well over 100 improvements, bug fixes, additions, and balance changes for beta 2.6. Stay tuned for more reveals.

Read more…

Content Contest Showcase & Winners

The following is a listing for all the submissions and winners for the Content Contest. Thanks to all who entered!


Vossk shows us how to not battle the kraken in comic form:

Vossk's Wayward Comic

This submission won first place!


Warrior of Ruin presents a common Wayward story:

Warrior of Ruin's Comic

This submission won second place!


Syntria tries her hand at capturing the majestic afro hairstyle:

Syntria's Fan Art

Then later, capturing Wayward in it’s true provocative-anime form:

Syntria's Anime Sketch

This submission won third place!


Adrien S. Enzo tries his hand at spriting some creatures, items, and other things:

Tree CrawlerAncient Ancients Real Lava LampBanshee HeadManta Ray Adrien S. Enzo's Iron Garden Scythe Adrien S. Enzo's Orb of Influence Adrien S. Enzo's Iron Lamp Adrien S. Enzo's Turkey Dinner

Then later shared with us a splendid Wayward meme:

Adrien S. Enzo's Meme

This submission won fourth place!

*\(o_O)/* showcases a quite meticulously constructed garden and storage warehouse:

*\(o_O)/*'s Base
*\(o_O)/*'s Base

This submission won fifth place!


Valdig shows off a hefty multiplayer base:

Valdig's Multiplayer Base


Giovanni goes old-school and becomes a true cartographer and stitches his world map together:

Giovanni's World Map


Firelion spams us with a batch of fresh Wayward memes:

Firelion's Rohan Meme

Firelion's Sasuke Meme

Firelion's Meme


Zazyman shows us the importance of a healthy diet of… just pineapples.

Zazyman's Pineapple Farm


Dead Man Drifting shows off an epic abode:

Dead Man Drifting's Base


Tomasz shows us his favorite item:

Tomasz's Favorite Item

Content Contest

Content Contest

THIS CONTEST IS NOW OVER.

Submissions and winners are showcases here: http://www.unlok.ca/wayward/content-contest-submissions/


Hey all!

It’s time to get creative and/or share your Wayward experience! Submit either a screenshot (from in-game) or piece of artwork inspired by Wayward. There’s no restrictions and it could even be a video if you feel so inclined.

Some ideas: a screenshot of your in-game village or base, a concept sketch for a new creature, a spritesheet with your own new item ideas, a rendering of your in-game character, or a meme comic pointing out a “just wayward things” moment. It’s really up to you!

Winners will receive:

First place: $40 Steam Gift Card + Wayward Steam Key
Second place: $20 Steam Gift Card + Wayward Steam Key
Third/fourth/fifth place: Wayward Steam Key

Update: We’ll also be giving away a couple bonus Wayward keys randomized among all those who entered for an extra incentive.

Simply direct message me on Discord (Drathy#0001) with your submissions or submit via email at contact@unlok.ca. Feel free to also share it on social media or on our Discord.

We’ll set up a showcase of all the submissions in about a week and choose winners sometime after. This is our first legit “contest”, so if it’s successful, we’ll plan on adding bigger and better prizes for future giveaways.

Have fun!

Beta 2.5.7 Released

It’s the major update that just keeps on giving! We are releasing yet another minor patch for 2.5.x to address some issues and tweak a few areas of the game. This release will fix up the container opening issue that multiple players have reported and hopefully correct some hardware compatibility issues.

We are still on the hunt for an options menu freeze as reported here and here. Please report your findings! We are still also tracking some issues with hardware compatibility. Even with an update to Electron, there seems to be still some with the dreaded “Lost GL Context” issue. We again will have to wait for updates upstream to correct this issue. There’s still hope as mentioned previous through the browser solution if you are okay with that. More information on that available here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/0/27623709432022338

Improvements

  • Length of rest/sleep is now negatively impacted when resting/sleeping on snow, shallow water, cooling lava, and swamp tiles.
  • Disabled some creatures from being able to “stumble” where it would not make sense. (Thanks Amax!)
  • You can no longer attempt to rest/sleep on lava or cave entrances.
  • Unknown items (items that were added from mods that are no longer loaded) will now have proper grammar usage of the “an” article.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an oversight that did not allow water levels to change when gathering from sea water tiles.
  • Removed auto container closing due to a item performance issue that results in lag, preventing container opening. (Thanks cff29546!)
  • Fixed an issue where no body of water was too big/deep to stop reduction of water levels when gathering water (should have been set at >= 50 connected tiles with bonuses for depth).
  • Fixed an issue where two hints happening one after another would pause the game indefinitely within real-time mode (until restart).
  • Fixed an oversight that resulted in binds being stuck when closing the Steam overlay while in-game. (Thanks STRIKER AWAKENING!)
  • Fixed a bug where the “Join Our Community” heading was grayed out within the about/news menu.
  • Fixed some sentence case/grammar issues.

Balance

  • Increased the default tick time/rate when playing multiplayer so creatures are a bit slower to attack/move. This can be changed at any time in the multiplayer menu.
  • Apple trees will now spawn with a variety of growth stages instead of only ripening on world generation.
  • Increased de-spawning rate slightly.
  • Harvesting or gathering from plants that cause status effects will now trigger those effects (poison ivy).
  • Increased chance of slime splitting slightly.

Modding

  • Added a GetAmbientColor hook.
  • Added a GetPlayerFieldOfViewRadius hook.
  • Added a GetTileLightLevel hook.

Technical

  • Updated Wayward to TypeScript 2.7.
  • Updated Wayward to Electron 1.8.2, improving performance and compatibility.

Mods

Troposphere

  • Improved naming/grammar of all items/doodads/tiles/actions.
  • Fixed an issue where rainbows or snowflakes did not spawn or drop and could not be used properly.

Debug Tools

  • Added a toggle lighting button.

Argus

  • Improved naming/grammar of items and actions.

Beta 2.5.6 Released

Well, it looks like we needed another 2.5.x release after all! In beta 2.5.6, we’ve addressed many issues and improved some player interaction like reducing item pick-up delay and increasing movement speed slightly among other things.

There’s still a few issues to solve (and some we are still waiting on to be fixed upstream as mentioned in the last update post), but it’s likely we’ll push those to 2.6.0 now.

We’ll keep updating the development branch nightly if you want to keep up to date with the more substantial changes that are likely to follow. We are going forward with the most requested feature, NPCs! But as always, the next major update will bring hundreds of other additions, changes, and improvements.

Note: Due to one bug fix, your custom binds for mods will need to be reset.

Improvements

New

Bug Fixes

Balance

Modding

Mods

Debug Tools

Beta 2.5.5 Released

This may be the end of the line for minor patches for beta 2.5, depending on if there are any game breaking issues discovered.

We are still waiting on a patch upstream to fix some of the hardware conflicts we are having in the game (corrupted rendering and/or losing GL context). Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it is progressing very quickly, so we’ll have to move on. That being said, we’ll update the development branch (which will be beta 2.5.6 or 2.6) as soon as it becomes available.

Apologies on this situation. Feel free to refund or use our browser solution if your hardware is not supported at this time and do not wish to wait.

A special thank you to all that reported bugs and issues this time around for beta 2.5. Many bugs would have been undiscovered without your help!

New

  • Added a “Move (All) to Facing Container” selection to the item menu to match the previous drop to container functionality.
  • Added multiplayer compatibility to the Starter Quest.

Improvements

  • Gathering will no longer result in a chance of 0 durability items placed on top of trees.
  • Added 11 new hotkeys and removed “Backspace” as the 13th hotkey, and instead added shift modifiers for hotkeys 13-24.
  • Improved the audio falloff so very distant sounds are no longer heard, making it easier to locate players in most instances.
  • The skeletal mage wand will now only attempt to teleport into open tiles (randomized). Previously it would fail if attempting to teleport into a blocked tile.
  • “Pick-up All” is now mentioned within the “Fast Pick-up” hint.
  • Renamed the “Milk” option to “Gather Milk”.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where the game would endlessly attempt to sync when joining a multiplayer game through the Steam overlay. (Thanks Bruskedragon!)
  • Fixed an issue where players would stay connected to server indefinitely if they lost connection while playing (or their computer crashed). (Thanks blay.paul!)
  • Fixed save game mods importing themselves every time the title screen is shown.
  • Fixed a visual glitch that resulted in lit torches not showing the “ember” graphic when being placed down with under 200 decay. (Thanks the rift!)
  • Fixed a PVP-related multiplayer desync. (Thanks Kyun!)
  • Fixed tile events not having the proper sentence case in tooltips.
  • Fixed the “Pulchritudinous” milestone not triggering again when transmogrifying equipped items. (Thanks Maugrift!)
  • Fixed a bug where sliders (audio) could be interacted with while in-game when options were closed. (Thanks Snart!)
  • Corrected a couple grammar issues.

Balance

  • Reputation is no longer decreased when releasing tamed creatures. (Thanks Tribarrel!)
  • Decreased the chance of creatures breaking doodads/walls slightly.
  • Creatures will have a lower chance to wake players up from 2 tiles away.
  • Decreased the chance of waking up from wall/doodad breakage from further away.
  • Added a chance to remove a full water tile (even non-shallow water tiles) when drinking/gathering water (based on amount of connected water tiles).

Modding

  • Fixed some links that did not work within the modding guide.

Technical

  • Replaced game.getPlayerAtTile/Position with game.getPlayersAtTile/Position.