This patch has been focused a lot on fixing a lot of bugs and errors in the Uspya region, as it has been a long time since I've put any work into these maps. Almost all the NPCs have now been upgraded to the new dialog system with portraits and facial expressions and improved writing. At least I like to think so. There's also a bunch of improvements to gamepad usage, which I hope players will enjoy.

One of the biggest changes for this patch is the removal of the house builder. It turned out to be too much work to handle both that and the ship builder systems. Lots of bugs, annoying to code and bad performance in general while editing. You are still able to put furniture inside the premade houses that you can buy from the Real Estate Agent in various cities throughout the game. For those that liked that feature, I'm sorry that it had to be removed. 

A bunch of other bugs and small kinks have also been worked out, so that's nice. Anyway, without further ado, let's get into the juicy bit; the patch notes!

Added

Systems

• Ship Customizer
  • Change your hull, sail and cannons in Clearwater.
• Woodcutting. Every tree can be cut down, but only once.
• Plank crafting, available at certain locations to cut logs into usable planks for ship building.
• New map screen where undiscovered locations are hidden.
  • So far this only applies to the regions currently being worked on (Uspya, Cafror, Ceth and Sedresh)
• Started work on Hardcore mode. 
  • In this mode you must eat, sleep and drink to survive. Completely optional. Some other effects apply as well.
  • Hunger, thirst and sleep is shown as three bars on the main HUD.

Ships

• By pressing the Inventory button (default TAB) you can go down to the deck of your ship.
  • It has a Crew room,  Captain Quarters (yours) and a cargo hold you can walk around in.
  • Like your owned homes, you can place furniture in it. 
• Ship crew management screen, where you can see all your crew and their stats. You can also fire them or assign them a new job.
  • Access it by pressing C.
• Ship speed is now dependent on the wind direction. If you travel with the wind, you go faster. Against the wind is slower. 

World

• Sawmills to every region. Some only have one, others have more.
• NPC equipment is now added to their loot table when you kill them, meaning they'll always drop their weapon, some ammo and armor if wearing/using any.
• Some NPCs will comment on it if you chop down a lot of trees.
• Cities within a your home region is now added to your Faction list when completing the character creator. EG a player from Uspya will have Greenvale, Midforest, Darkward and Stonehaven added to their factions list by default.
• More contextual dialog choices if the player has visited certain locations or not.
• New dialog trees to a bunch of NPCs that were missing.
• Interiors to all houses in Blackrock and Fiks.
• Lottery in Blackrock where you can gamble your money away for a chance to win money prices.
• Started work on improving particle effects like smoke and fire using premade animations instead of engine particle system.
  • Might take some time while I'm getting the hang of the program.
• Purchaseable house in Fiks.
• "Guild of Skilled People" in place of the removed House Builder. In this house you can buy unique equipment if you are skilled enough.

Magic

• (Nature) Shockwave that blasts away enemies within a 96 pixel range.

Interfaces

• Region selectors to Factions screen, letting you see every faction within that region.
• Bounty button to Faction screen, allowing you to see your current bounty within a region.
• Button in Map interface to go directly to your current location.
• Time until next autosave is displayed on the Save Game button in the pause menu.
• Controls interface, showing you an overview of your input setup. Also includes a gamepad sprite with overlay text of what each button does. Controls can't be changed while in the game, sadly. This might be coming in the future!
• Hardcore mode toggle on the Character Creator. THIS MODE IS STILL EXPERIMENTAL!
• Party member names and statistics now show up under your Health and Mana bars.
  • Hover the name with the cursor to highlight them in the environment.
• Click and drag with mouse on the world map implemented.
  • Change sensitivity in the Input section of Options.
• Achievement screen that shows progress and unlocked achievements.
• List of locations that a NPC owned ship can sail to, with prices and the time it takes to travel there. Talk with the dockmasters to show all possible destinations.
  • Also fixed some on the ship travel interface, showing how long is left of the journey and where you're traveling to.
• Press X or Square on your gamepad to drop an item from your inventory.

Misc

• A bunch of new sound effects.
• Books can be placed in bookshelves in your home.
• New drinks, cocktails and food to consume.
• You get faster (or slower) drunk based on your Endurance statistic.
  • Every 2 levels reduces the alcohol strength by 10%.
• Some new messages to the Notice Boards.
• Tutorial messages when entering a purchased home for the first time.
• Press Y or Triangle on your gamepad to open the Help menu, if the button is available.
• New names to the name generator in Character Creator.
• Debug parameter to SETTINGS.INI. Set it to 1 to enable more detailed debug information.
• Skin tone can now be altered in character creator.

Changed

• The Faction system now also includes towns/villages, not only guilds. Doing favors for a town has the same benefits as for a guild. with better trading deals and people being more friendly towards you.
• Slightly altered the desktop icon.
• Changed item icons for region maps.
• New loading screen map. Again.
• Setting autosave interval is now changed by clicking arrow buttons instead of the text.
• The main font throughout has been changed to Kingthings Petrock due to the old being corrupted during development and generally not rendering properly. This new font should also fix some cases I'm certain happens where text will overflow, as it's much thinner than the old font.
• Moved Dialog Box higher up on the screen to make buttons more easily visible if playing in non-fullscreen mode at 1920x1080 resolution.
• The city of Fiks has gotten a visual overhaul to better fit the rest of the region. The layout is still the same.
• Moved and resized the standard Message Box to the center of the screen with choices showing in a list, instead of across the bottom of the screen.
• Blackrock Keep is locked from entry until finished.
• Most of the houses throughout the game have gotten a fresh coat of wallpaper inside, instead of the exterior wall texture.
• Hardcore mode was previously changeable during playtime, this is no longer the case. The button is still there, but only displays if you're using this mode or not.
• Removed house builder.
• Removed Character Import/Export buttons from Character Creator.
• Items are now dropped further away from you when dropped from the inventory menu.

Fixed

Quests

• Quest with the traveler near Greenvale Lake is now completable.
• Completing a quest only displayed it's name. Now the message reads "questName Completed!"
• The ring can be retrieved for Chonk at the Crossroad Inn.
  • His companions name is no longer "Drinker 1"

Interfaces

• Panels not hiding properly when using a map from the inventory screen.
• Several inconsistencies between interfaces.
• Time is now properly stopped when bringing up the pause menu.
• Bunch of issues related to using Xbox gamepad for playing, mostly related to interfaces.
  • Using D pad buttons now works for navigating interfaces, instead of opening another tab.
  • Using Triggers and Left Joystick now works properly in character creator.
• Factions screen now works mostly as intended.
• Clock hand in resting interface is rotated properly when interacting with a bed.
• Lots of small performance fixes in the crafting interfaces.
• Map zooming no longer over/under zooms.
• Quick items window now works as intended and is scaled down.
  • You can also press 1-6 on your keyboard to select assigned items during gameplay now. Previously this would cause errors.
  • Holding down the Modifier 1 button (Default Left Alt) and pressing 1-6 will remove the item from the list.
• Some lists that would have invisible buttons until selected/hovered.
• Not all buttons in Character Creator played a sound when selected.
  • Some would also play at full volume despite being changed in options.
• Pressing the hotkeys for Map, Character Screen, Inventory and Journal now only work if you're already in a pause menu or if there's no other interface showing.
• Opening the item interface should no longer clear the list, and will remember your last viewed item category.
• Shop should now update properly when changing between Buy and Sell states.

World

• Shadows were missing and/or misaligned on several tiles and sprites throughout. Some may still remain. See Known Issues below.
• Crash when talking to Pierre in Forests Edge map.
• Error occurring when exiting Darkward on the south side.
• Some interior maps did not have unlocked camera movement. This might still happen.
• Wrong positioning when exiting the house near Shrine of Stars, causing you to become stuck.
• Tweaked some enemy HP and damage outputs.
• Darkward player home could not be entered.
• Estate Agents were broken, now work properly.
  • House prices are now dependent on your Cunning statistic.

Other

• Error occurring when an NPC is killed while the player is on another map.
• Dialog box portrait for Jarhead.
• Bed quality now factors in to how much healing is applied when sleeping.
• 99% of NPCs are now using the new dialog system.
• Some NPCs missing the speech bubble when trying to talk to them.
  • Same goes for some interactive elements in the world.
• Some maps stopped music from playing and went silent upon entry. This might still happen.
• Interval autosaving now works as intended.
  • You can set it to any value you want in the SETTINGS.INI and changing the AutosaveInterval variable. Uses milliseconds. It's initially set to 5 minutes (300000ms). If you set it too low it'll lag the game like crazy.
• Some performance improvements from updating engine.
• Fixed interaction range when trying to enter your own ship while docked in Querden.
• Moving while drunk should no longer make you lose ability to move without pressing a moving button/pushing the joystick again.
  • Also tweaked screen shake to shake even when standing still. Intensity is based on how drunk you are.
• Improved detection if the player is using a gamepad. Moving the Right Joystick will now also activate it while using interfaces.
• Zoom level should now be consistent no matter the selected screen resolution.
• Saving and loading should now work properly.
  • Save slot information is now properly stored.
  • Window title showed the wrong info (Save game when trying to Load and vice versa).
  • Save slots can be deleted.

Known issues

• Some NPCs and sprites may have wonky graphics/strange colors when facing certain directions.
• New Shockwave spell can mess up pathfinding for NPCs that are patrolling a route.
• Errors may be displayed when traveling using NPC ships, preventing day/night lighting from being updated.

To keep up with the latest new features and have an impact on the continued development, stop by the Tales of Astya Discord server! You can also leave bug reports in the comment section of this post, or talk about them on the server.