What's this? Didn't we just complete ISO art for all locations...

Hello, and welcome to DevBlog #89!

As many of you might remember from last Summer in Finland we have the annual summer vacations. We've now locked in those plans, and will be covering the details of when (and how) we'll be on our vacations and how it affects update schedule.

We also have a bunch of progress in the reworked bank that I'll be showing and we got some content teasers. Let's dive in!

Reworked bank

Early look into the new bank while it's on "list view"! These screenshots have been taken on PC, so it looks a bit weird. Also a lot of things will change, it's still very WIP!

Please keep in mind that a lot of the things, especially UI, might still change quite a bit. A lot of things you see here are still work-in-progress.

One of the things I wanted to improve before fully committing to the quest system development was reworking the bank. I've tried to combine as many of the ideas, suggestions and feedback we've received on the old bank.

Key goals were:

• No more reliance on search. You can find the items you're looking for intuitively.
• Give you the control of setting it up the way you want. But for starting players and casuals, providing a default layout they'll be fully happy with.
• Improve the performance a lot to avoid ANRs on bank.
• Make it look better. Add a bunch of nice QoL to top it off.

You can also view the bank in "grid view", which makes organizing it much easier on a smaller screen

After designing this for a while, the system I ended up going for practically divides the bank into two layers: tabs and categories. Getting this UI to fit on a mobile screen was quite a struggle, as there's very limited space.

On the left side of screen you have your tabs. Currently these are Materials, Gear, Tools, Consumables and Misc.

Under each tab, the items are further separated into categories. For instance in Gear they're categorized by the different slots, in tools by the different skills, and in materials to logs, planks, bars, etc.

You're also able to move things around as much as you like, create your own tabs or categories, and you can even share your layout to other players just like with Gear Sets. You're not locked into the "default layout" that the game comes with - you can remove these tabs and categories and do whatever kind of layout you want.

A .gif demonstrating how you can organize stuff in the new bank

In addition to these, there are several QoL additions, such as:

• Filters. You can for instance filter so that items with certain attributes only show up.
• Sorting. In addition to the order you've put the items in, you can switch to alphabetical, quantity, value (in coins), most recent, and so on.
• The bank remembers the order you've organized the items to. Even if you withdraw all of the items, the bank creates placeholders so that when you put items back the order stays the same inside categories.
• You can switch to special tabs for Favorites and Most recent.
• You can switch between the grid and list modes. List mode is handy if you want to quickly withdraw a bunch of stuff, whereas Grid is good for organizing and finding items.
• The bank remembers all of your settings, which tabs you had open, etc. throughout your sessions.
• Automatic filters in categories for new items. For instance if you gain a new fish and have a category that has automatic filter for raw fish, it'll automatically go there instead of going to uncategorized category.

Many of these are still not done, but WIP. Some might not make it in time, but I'll be trying my best to get as many of them ready for the release of this new reworked bank.

With these improvements I think the bank will be something people will find much more usable especially towards the late game.

We're aiming to release the reworked bank before heading off to Summer vacations!

Creating new categories. This UI is still very early prototype and will change a lot :D

Summer vacations

Alright, then to the very happy topic of Summer vacations!

Unlike last year, now with our added workforce we won't have any disruptions to the support email. So customer support will be available even during the vacations.

I'll be on vacation from 3th of August until 21st of August. Myzozoz is having some overlap with me during this with vacations, but starts his a bit early. Crushy is having his vacation later during this year.

During the period while I'm on vacation, there won't be updates to the game (unless there's something very critical). DevBlogs will also be paused, so the one going live on 23th of July will be the last before there's going to be a break. In other words: there won't be a DevBlog on 6th of August and 20th of August.

But before we take a break and recharge our mental batteries, we'll be doing an update that's going to add the reworked bank and new content to the game.

But the good thing here is, that the work doesn't stop. Although development will slow down while some of us are on vacations, most of the time there will be some progress!

Other news

Also I'd like to share some smaller news!

YLE article: The journalist called me twice this week. The article is still coming, but as it's going to be a big article it has taken much more time than I thought. Hopefully it gets released next week! I'll be sharing a link to it while it goes live on Discord and on a DevBlog for anyone who was interested reading it.

The first ever trade was completed! Please keep in mind that this is a very, very early look into the trading and all of the UI elements here are placeholders.

Trading: The actual trading mechanic worked for the first time this week, and the first trade ever happened on 8th of July 14:24 Helsinki time.

While the mechanic itself is now getting closer to being ready, there's still one big thing left: we need to add a lot of things for data collection on the trades and in-game stuff. These will be used for the trading and to balance in-game economy more effectively. We expect that this part of the work is going to quite some time, but it's hard to estimate how long exactly. The good side is that while that one is in development, we'll already begin testing the trading in our development server with our testers and means that the trading mecanic will be tested while data development is on-going.

Portal threads & comments: This has been removed from Portal as we stated in a previous DevBlog.

Until next time

And another one!

Alright, that's all for today! I hope you all have an amazing Thursday, and see you once more in the DevBlog #90 before we head to our Summer vacations on 23rd!