I hope you are all OK and in good health! It's been a while, but you'd better believe me when I tell you the wait will definitely be worth it!
This patch is codenamed Bridge Patch because it contains all necessary infrastructure changes to accommodate the upcoming HUGE expansion! But more on that later. For now, let's take a look at some noteworthy features this update offers:
True Pixel Art Rendering, Scaling Options
The rendering system has been reworked, and now the game is rendered in a small area and everything is scaled up, instead of some elements being separately drawn scaled up in the system's resolution, breaking the illusion of a pixel art game. For instance, Winter snowflakes used to be drawn at a different resolution than the rest of the world. Now you can expect all pixels in the game to have the same size! The only thing that reserves the right to be drawn at a different resolution is the GUI. This is to ensure that it is always displayed in its entirety and it's not distorted by various aspect ratios. On typical cases (16:9 displays, 1080p), both game and GUI use the same resolution, so there is no discernible difference. Lastly, various different Scaling Options have been added when you are in Fullscreen mode, to ensure that the game scales without any distortions across all resolutions, in the way you prefer it!
Divorcing (and getting divorced by) spouses
You now have the ability to divorce a person you're married to. The reasons are your own. The paperwork can be purchased from the General Store. However, beware! If you don't communicate with your spouse much, they may get there first... but at least they will give you a warning talk when things are starting to get too cold. Would you do the same?
Fair Fishing
As of now, there are some "holes" in some places when you fish. That is, during certain seasons and hours, on certain places, you can only fish trash. This always annoyed me. The remedy was to rework the fish "schedules" and add 3 new fish types to increase variety. Fish that appeared during a certain season can be expected to continue doing so, but maybe they also appear in other times and places too.
Lots of bug fixes
For the grimy details, please refer to the next section, which is no other than...
Patch Notes
Here is the full list of things added/tweaked and bugs squashed:
Patch 1.0.17
Changelog:
ADDITIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS
- Reworked the rendering system, now the game is true 1:1 pixel art style, no fake scaling. This also resolves the issue of lines appearing on the ground on some systems.
- Added Scaling Options in order to display the game perfectly in Fullscreen across all resolutions.
- You can now divorce your spouse. The relevant paperwork can be found at Jun's store when you are married. If you do divorce your spouse, don't expect to be able to romance them again...for now.
- Spouses can also leave you if your relationship is bad (you don't talk, don't give them gifts etc) for a long time.
- Added a few new fish types and reworked fish appearance timelines in order to ensure more variety and eliminate "dead" hours where only trash could be caught.
- Added the ability to adjust the message beep volume in the Options Panel.
- Changed default gamepad button usage to A = Interact and B = Run.
- Farm grid now shows where you can plant a seed, this will come in handy in the expansion because trees need a 3x3 tilled area.
- Reduced number of hearts by 1, now romance status should be displayed more accurately.
- Fixed forageable item duplication issues. This fix comes with a tiny cost: When you load a saved game to play, just once, there won't be any forageable items on the map. The next days will all be OK.
- Slightly altered a few item's values.
- Diamonds can now be found one mine floor earlier than usual.
- Craft menu recipes are now sorted by name.
- Slightly nerfed Stone Set stats & set bonus.
- Reworked tool stamina consumption per tool level.
- When you got out of a building and you spawned on top of the horse, it teleported back to the farm. Such scenarios are now handled more gracefully. Barring any extraneous occurrences, the horse now should be waiting nearby instead of teleporting back home.
- Changed Pier town upgrade completion time to 4 days.
- Many menus (crafting recipes, perks) are now in alphabetic order.
- Various minor audio/graphical tweaks/additions.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed cold weather affecting the player even indoors.
- Fixed Garry's schedule when married.
- Fixed a bug creating a player character duplicate in the house after a festival.
- Fixed fences hit with the hammer reappearing after reentering area.
- Fixed game crashing when pressing right on the last utensil in Utensil Selection panel and having less than 4 utensils.
- Fixed help menu crashing when pressing up on a certain occasion.
- Fixed a rare crash when generating a mine room.
- Fixed Ken sometimes overlapping Lazarus when inside their house.
- Fixed marriage not triggering when resting after Saturday midnight.
- Fixed waterfall sound sometimes being heard during cutscenes outside player home.
- Made relationship drop a bit faster if you don't talk to someone for some days (effect much stronger for spouses).
- Spouses now give birthday presents only if relationship is high.
- Fixed a scene involving Alice triggering when it shouldn't.
- Fixed being possible to put lit dynamite back into your backpack.
- Fixed marriage triggering on Saturday if staying up too late the previous day.
- Fixed using Health metrics to draw Stamina text in the Inventory's player info panel.
- Tweaked animal mood-related code, now mood cannot get as low as before so animals should be able to recover faster.
- Various other small fixes.
KNOWN ISSUES
On some NVIDIA GPUs, some sprites may be rendered a bit glitchy (edge pixels cut off from one side, drawn double from the other). Hopefully the engine will be updated at some point to handle decimal positions more gracefully, like it (probably) did some time ago.
Season 2 is coming...
"Bah!" I hear you say, "This is all you've been up to all this time vdweller? Adding a few microupdates to a nanopatch to address some picoissues? Bah, I say! I thought you could do better!"
Yeah, hold your horses a bit there, dear residents. Because this is not all I've been cooking this entire time.
Season 2 is the upcoming major expansion for Gleaner Heights, developed furiously over the past 20 months. It contains tons of new stuff, flowers, trees, pigs, new townspeople with their own secrets and agendas, powerful tool upgrades and equipment, spouse-exclusive quests, new romance options, lots of new recipes and much more!
But the crown jewel of Season 2 is its main plot. You have never, ever played such a thing in another farming game before. Ever.
Prepare yourselves, dear residents, for you will travel across space and time, to uncover ancient secrets and obtain powerful artifacts.
Prepare yourselves, dear residents, for you will face foes more powerful than you ever have.
Prepare yourselves, dear residents, for the Nightmare brews, and the very existence of your town is at stake.
A full-featured announcement for Season 2 will follow soon. Until then, let me know about any issues with the update. The game's code has seen the most significant changes since release, so it's possible that new bugs have been introduced (and they escaped testing). As always, if you find a bug/glitch, let me know in the appropriate section in the Discussion forum, along with any error messages and steps on how it can be reproduced.
See you soon...really soon!
UPDATE: Season 2 Store Page is Live! Planned release date is March 24 ♥
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1899580/Gleaner_Heights_Season_2
