Alpha 53 - Gardening mechanic, Plank build Materials & Modules, Dew Catcher, Trunk Holder news

Hi everyone,

for this build we were mainly focusing on adding the Gardening mechanic and new Plank build Materials & Modules. There is a new Potato Plant & Fruit, a new Cooking Pot and Sealed Jars. The Dew Catcher and the Trunk Holder offer big help too. Buildings maximal height was increased and there are new, more realistic Stars as well.

The long awaited Gardening mechanic is finally here. The first ones in the long list of the gardening mechanic are Plant Boxes. They offer a couple of combinations: There are small and big ones, made from sticks or from planks and they are either movable, stationary or can be attached to raft. The ones crafted from different ingredients are drying up at different speed. Planting directly into the ground will be introduced in the next game updates.

The first crop for planting is the Potato. For now it can be found in collectible chests. It can be planted or eaten after cooking on stones or used as a recipe ingredient. It is possible to make Potato Chips which can be grilled on stones as well. The growing/maturing time for the Potato was set to 12 ingame days. The basic functionalities of the Gardening mechanic will be widely expanded in the next game updates (growing based on season, difficulty and dayforward values). More plant/crop types are planned too.

The next building material we introduce is the Plank. It can be acquired by destroying bigger plank boxes that are often found along shore sides. The Plank Build modules offer the highest possible protection against Sun, Wind, Rain - and most importantly - Storm.

There are a couple of new collectibles too: The Cooking Pot allows to make much tastier and more nutritious meals but it asks for more ingredients to be added. Sealed Jars are used as containers for liquids. Which leads us to a new game changing and more realistic feature: Liquids contained in open waterholder objects (eg Coconut put, …) cannot be stored in pockets, backpackes or crates anymore.

The new Dew Catcher will be a big help when in some scenarios there is much need to acquire water to have it ready each morning.

Trunk Holders make it possible to organize and hold all sort of Trunks, Thick Branches and Long Sticks in place. They can be attached to Raft modules but then its holding capacity is lower.

The maximal building height was increased from ~8 meters to as high as ~40 meters. It means additional ~13 floors depending on ground elevation. The night sky now features more realistic Stars and it is now easier to find known Constellations. Last but not least there is a new menu item on the Main menu to give credit to those who are responsible for game development and/or support the game in a special and appreciated way: The new Credits screen.

Changelog: (* needs new game)

New features:

1. Gardening mechanic
2. Stick Plant Boxes
3. Plank Plant Boxes
4. Potato Plant
5. Potato Tuber
6. Potato Chips
7. New Potato cooking recipes
8. Plank Material
9. Plank Build modules
10. Collectible Plank Box*
11. Collectible Cooking Pot*
12. Collectible Sealed Jar*
13. Dew Catcher
14. Trunk Holder

General:

1. Added: Not able to store open waterholders when they are not empty
2. Changed: Building maximal height has been set to 40 meters
3. Changed: More correct water filling rate set for Bucket
4. Added: More realistic night sky Stars

Fixes:

1. Fixed: Raft sometimes starts to bank/tilt after Bed was attached
2. Fixed: Inventory item weight/count going to negative values when moving the item in batches (Shift + LMB)
3. Fixed: Inventory item disappears after Inventory reopen after moving the item in batches (Shift + LMB)
4. Fixed: Sometimes not working Player controls after Map was lowered/stashed
5. Fixed: Crafted Banana Leaves Pack accepting only Coconut Palm Fronds
6. Fixed: Banana Leaves Pack not accepting all types of Banana leaves
7. Fixed: Pack adding animation sometimes not turning off, some player actions not working afterwards
8. Fixed: Pack getting animation sometimes not turning off, some player actions not working afterwards
9. Fixed: Unpacking Banana Leaves Pack gives Coconut Palm Frond
10. Fixed: Objects attached to raft disappearing when exiting the Island Cluster
11. Fixed: Not able to Move Lanterns to Bag
12. Fixed: Move Burning objects to Bag
13. Fixed: Brown Coconut fallen from Tree not floating
14. Fixed: Brown Coconut taken from Tree and dropped later not floating
15. Fixed: Brown Coconut moved to bag from Tree and dropped later not floating
16. Fixed: Brown Coconut fallen from Tree disappearing after save/load
17. Fixed: Brown Coconut taken from Tree and dropped later sometimes disappearing after save/load
18. Fixed: Brown Coconut moved to bag from Tree and dropped later sometimes disappearing after save/load
19. Fixed: Building on Raft position after save/load sometimes shifted (fixes only Buildings placed on rafts after this fix)
20. Fixed: Disappearing Items attached to Raft modules that were earlier detached and re-attached from/to Rafts, followed by saving/loading. Raft sometimes also tilted
21. Fixed: Unable to complete the First Craft Axe Tutorial with the Old Hammer (Collectible)
22. Fixed: Unable to complete the Eating from brown Coconut Tutorial with the Old Axe (Collectible)
23. Fixed: Unable to complete the Eating from brown Coconut Tutorial with the Old Knife (Collectible)
24. Fixed: Disappearing meat on Dryer after Dryer was attached to a Raft
25. Fixed: Accumulating of held but already dropped objects in hands after a Dryr was attached to a Raft
26. Fixed: Showing Quality% faulty and further causing internal issues when Hammer was equipped and aimed at a non-repairable object and action button was clicked/pressed

For the next update we plan to work on expanding the Gardening mechanic with some new crops and features. The additional plans include also the Old Telescope, Spear, Smoker, Dolphins, Simple Quests, Building modules aging … We will work also on solving the new issues and we will recheck some older issues too. Other new features will be added as implementing the planned features and fixing issues will allow us to.

Thank you for your patience and for your constructive feedbacks helping us to get rid of the issues as fast as is possible.

Do you like our game and want to help even more during development? We look forward to every positive review posted on our Steam page and thank everyone who decides to support us along the way!

Please be aware that during early access phase game code could change as much as affecting gameplay when loading/saving savegames from earlier versions. To always be on the safe side make sure to start a new game with each update. Thank you!

G4GTeam.