Staxel Launch Day

IT’S LAUNCH DAY! It’s been a long road, but we’re here. We’re gleeful to announce that today is the official launch of Staxel! A lot has changed with Staxel over the course of early access, so we’d like to sum up the most important changes for you all (with some gifs, we’re not animals).

Staxel is available on Steam, Humble Bundle, our website, or GoG.

Like Magic!

The world of Staxel has been given a sprinkle of fairy dust! New Star Bits will fall during the night, a crucial item in the new Magic Crafting system. This Magic Crafting will prove very helpful in upgrading your tools and progressing certain quests, so make sure to gather up all the Star Bits you can, even if you can’t use them yet!

Friends all ‘round

Since release we’ve added some intriguing new villagers and other NPCs to the world of Staxel. Make sure to speak to Mayor Maximilian to find out if any new villagers are waiting to move in to the village.

Also, you can now befriend villagers through daily chat, giving them gifts and completing quests for them, they’ll even give you some neat items in return!

Once you’ve become best friends with one of the townsfolk, you can even choose to have them move in on the farm and become your roomie!

Mail

Want to share the stacks of petals you’ve received from your recent harvest with your friends? You can now send mail (and attach petals) to your friends in multiplayer! Maybe write them some poetry, send them some junk or just gift them some well earned petals! Either way, be sure to befriend Leif to set up the postal section of his store.

New Lands to Visit

The world of Staxel just got bigger! Throughout the game you’ll find new lands to visit, from the depths of crystal-laiden caverns to floating mushrooms in the sky. Keep an eye out for the new Portal Festival and get ready to don your explorers gear, new worlds await!

Arcade

If you befriend a certain game-loving villager you might end up taking part in some fun and challenging minigames in the Arcade. Enter a digital world and gather the 4 magic items of the Demon King’s maze as you try to escape. Let’s hope your jumping skills are up to scratch!

New Pupper

We’ve added a very good doggo to the pet roster, you’ll be able to get them at random as your starter pet, or at random by buying a dog house.

New Leaf Chomper

We’ve also added a whole new pet species! These little leaf chompers are found at the pet store, a village amenity you’ll unlock by befriending a villager who’s a friend to all animals.

Museum

Discover ancient relics of the past, seek out exquisite paintings and display your captured collections in the all new Museum. Unlocked via a questline with a mysterious blue villager, (no spoilers!), once you’ve built the Museum, you can fill it up with all sorts of intriguing new items.

All New Festivals

We’ve added new Festivals that are celebrated throughout the in-game year. From hunting down rogue prank-playing fairies, to exploring vast new caverns full of loot for the taking – these new festivals will add a little extra spice to the day to day life of a humble farmer.

Upgrades!

Default tools are now a little less powerful, but we’ve made up for it by adding a bunch of new tiered tools! You may need to venture out beyond your Island through the new Portals Festival to find some of the materials, but it’s worth it! You will need to unlock the new crafting method required to upgrade your tools. (No spoilers!)

All Day Long

Between farming, making new friends and exploring new lands, there’s barely enough hours in the day! So we thought, why not add more! Staxel days are now longer, and we’ve padded each calendar season to 30 days (up from 16) to give you more time to experience the best that each season has to offer. Make sure to check your calendar to review the current season’s events.

Hook, Line and Sinker

Picture it; a relaxing cabin in the woods, some cool sap in the cooler, just you, nature and a fishing rod. That’s why we’ve overhauled the Fishing mini-game to provide a more calming (but still challenging!) fishing experience. Spending some quality time reeling in big catches from the briny deep just got a little more relaxing!

VIP Merchants

Exotic new items, mysterious Lucky Boxes and flying merchants, yes that’s right, FLYING MERCHANTS! Once you’ve built a special landing pad for these travelling merchants, you’ll gain access to an inventory of exotic new items, and a mysterious new Lucky Box that will always provide you with something new.

Buff it up!

We’ve added a range of status effects that will affect gameplay in different ways. Some sleep (and caffeine) related effects will have you keeping an eye out while burning the midnight oil, while others such as jumpy and swift will have you bouncing around the island like a pogo stick!

However, there are two sides to every coin. If you’re unfortunate enough to receive a debuff, don’t fret! All buffs and debuffs can be removed by either sleeping, or drinking milk. It all depends on the nature of the debuff.

Check You Out!

Staxel doesn’t have smart phones, but somehow, we do have selfies. Press X to flip your camera into Selfie mode to check out your look on the go, or catch some picture worthy moments with your friends!

Key Rebinding & Display Sliders

Accessibility and custom controls are an important part of player experience. That’s why we’ve added new options to customise your controls. There are some presets in there to get you started too. We’ve also added a sliders section to adjust the display settings of the game; brightness, contrast, gamma and saturation.

Overhauled Recipe Book

The Recipe Book has been given a long overdue face lift! You can now sort by category and search through your collection of recipes much more easily.

Water For Days

The watering can has been nerfed a bit, it now requires refills (which can be done at a range of water-based sources), but it has received some upgrade tiers along with the other tools, and we’ve also added some hi-tech swanky sprinklers! These can be placed in your fields to automatically water your crops, freeing up some of your time to pursue other hobbies.

Other Changes

Along with the above we’ve added a bunch of smaller changes to the game, along with buckets of bug fixes, optimisations and quality of life improvements, some of which are:

  • Tools are faster overall
  • Steam networking improvements
  • StaxelNet option for improved multiplayer connectivity.
  • Optimisations to FPS, loading, terrain generation and faster lighting.
  • Ported to 64bit
  • More options such as borderless window mode
  • Extensive modding expansion to allow modders more access to features.

 

We hope you enjoy your time in Staxel, we’ve worked hard over the years to realize our vision of a peaceful world full of farming, building, friendship and fun for anyone and everyone to enjoy.

 

Magic update – feature preview

Hey everyone, as promised in the New Year edition of the Staxel Reporter, today we’ll be giving you guys a little glimpse at one of the new features you can expect to see in the next content update. We’ve been getting back into the swing of things this week after the holidays, so without further ado let’s jump right in and take a look! (screenshots included)

Magic Update

As mentioned before, we’ve recently been hard at work developing the next update for Staxel but we haven’t actually spoken that much about it. We did briefly mention some of the planned features for this update in the last issue of the Reporter, so if you haven’t read it be sure to check that out here.

That said, this time round we’re going to touch on one of the new features specifically…

Islands!

Well… besides the main island at least. 😛

Players will be able to travel from the main island to some smaller islands, each with their own particular uses and designs and which will provide the player with specific rewards such as materials for crafting.

We’re a good way through the first island, so let’s take a little peek at what it looks like below.

Mining Island showcase

The ‘mining island’ is the first island we’ve been putting together. The island itself will be accessible by portal, and after a bit of exploration you’ll find even more portals which will transport you to the different levels of the mine. Let’s have a look at some screenies so you can see what we have so far. (Keep in mind this is still a work in progress and changes are likely to be made!)

Only one part of the island will be accessible to start with. This will lead you to the first level of the mines where you’ll begin to explore the branching caverns and underground lakes. There’s a lot to discover down here, so keep your eyes open, you never know what might find!

One very important aspect of the mines is gathering. Down here you’ll find ore which isn’t available on the main island. You’ll be able to use these ores to upgrade your tools!

Upgrading your tools can have a big impact on your workflow, making you much more efficient during your day to day chores, leaving you more time to relax… or to expand your farming empire.

The key to the mining island is to keep exploring, but do try not to get lost. It’s easy to get carried away when you see shiny things in the distance so keep your wits about you and you’ll be just fine.

With that said, I’m not going to share any more secrets for now, you’re going to have to go in and discover the rest for yourself!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this little sneak peak of the mines. We’ll be revealing more details about the different islands you’ll be able to visit (as well as some other new features we’re working on) in upcoming issues of the Staxel Reporter.

Remember to keep an eye on our social media pages, or better yet, join our Discord community to participate in some active discussion about the upcoming content!

Take care everyone, until next time!

New Years

Happy New Year!

It’s that time of year again, and with the January now underway we’ll be picking up development again this week.

We just want to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you wonderful community members a Happy New Year! Thank you all for making the past year such an exciting and rewarding experience for us and we promise that there’s plenty more to come!

Seeing as we’re all reminiscing about what we’ve achieved in the last year, and thinking about our plans for the year ahead, I thought it’d be a good time to have a look at these things for Staxel.

Firstly, a little look back at what we’ve got done.

Back in January last year, we launched Staxel on Steam as an Early Access title, woohoo! This was our biggest moment to date, and we’re so pleased and grateful to be able to say that it was absolutely brilliant.  Even at such an early stage of content development Staxel was received well and it was great to see so many people showing their support and leaving kind comments on what they thought about the game. It really gave us the motivation to continue developing Staxel over the past year, which brings us to our next point.

Since release we’ve added quite a bit to the game, the village has undergone some major changes in particular.

  • New NPCs
  • Much more NPC dialogue
  • New friendship levels (including the roomie aspect)
  • More festivals
  • New decorational items and building materials
  • New tools, including novelty items and sprinklers
  • More clothing and customisation options for player characters
  • World generation changes
  • Steam networking integration
  • Journal feature
  • More translations

And much more that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

The last few months however have been focused on the upcoming “Magic Update” which we’ll talk about a little below.

Looking to the future

It’s been a little while since the “Friendship Update” went out, and since then we did take a couple of months to focus primarily on fixing some of the most widely-reported bugs people were coming across. There’s still a little ways to go on that front but recently we’ve been working on what we’re calling the “Magic Update”.

This update has quite a few surprises in store, although no prizes for guessing it’s going to introduce an element of “magic” to Staxel (more on that in a future issue of the Reporter).

Other things we’re working on specifically are

  • Changes to the crafting system
  • More of a progression-based experience
  • Villager quests and storyline (for the ones who are currently missing them)
  • Places to visit

To name just a few.

We’ll be covering the last point in a bit more detail with another (short) issue of the Staxel Reporter in just a couple of days! There’ll be some screenshots too, so make sure you don’t miss it.

That about wraps it up for this issue of the Reporter. Thank you all once again for all your amazing support, we wouldn’t have come this far without you!
Best wishes for the next year to you all, from your Staxel dev team! 🙂

Staxel Changelog for 1.3.52

Sapling 1.3.52 (181129b)

New:

  • Level Of Detail changes now smoothly fade in.

Changes:

  • Changed model of an old duplicate Tracter Double Bed and hidden it from catalogues.
  • Added a button to rename worlds without loading them.
  • Better and more efficient distance fog. Distance fog is now disabled if Bloom is disabled.
  • Minor adjustments to the steam launcher usability.
  • Halloween changes have been removed. (Brick sells his original stock etc)
  • Added some particles at the start of pulling up flowers animation
  • Improvements to the steam launcher error if the game fails to start.

Fixes:

  • LOD holes have been fixed.
  • Fix caret position in the World name box being reset to the end all the time.
  • Hardening towards certain Dialogue crashes.
  • Some hardening towards save corruption.
  • More retrying and hardening when loading files.
  • Don’t have the server crash if world facade goes null.
  • Suppressed some old world exceptions to do with bugs. Fixed on the spot now.
  • Fixed multiple inventory full sounds happening at once.
  • Fix some crashes with StaxelNet.
  • Fixed a crash when the renamer was used yet wasn’t the active item.
  • Fix gaps appearing in terrain at long distances.
  • Fix some surrounding logic that may have caused NPC’s to read without a book.
  • Don’t disable sound if the audio system goes out of memory. Some other minor audio changes.
  • Keep trying to delete/move files for up to 15 seconds. Should help with sporadic issues with Anti-viruses and similar programs.
  • Can no longer get Halloween mail by having an older world.
  • Fix Character model showing when net issues window appears.
  • Fix some cases of visual sliders (e.g. Gamma) going out of bounds and causing black screens.

Modding

  • Items from mods that have been removed should be replaced with a “Missing Item” item. These should turn back into the original item, if added back in.
  • Content Builder checks sounds exist on Plants and Tiles.
  • Content Builder error messages should now provide all of the details upfront.
  • Links in Content Builder error messages should now be clickable.
  • Improved error message for empty Language files
  • Fix Content Build Exceptions not showing the filename.
  • Updated Plants and added sponges to the Asset Manager.
  • Removed chain crafting behaviour as it wasn’t used in Staxel. If you want previous behaviour, use “DeprecatedChainCraft” : true in your reaction.

Staxel Changelog for 1.3.49

Sapling 1.3.49 (181122b)

 

Changes:

  • Better and more efficient distance fog. Distance fog is now disabled if Bloom is disabled.
  • Minor adjustments to the steam launcher usability.
  • Halloween changes have been removed. (Brick sells his original stock etc)
  • Added some particles at the start of pulling up flowers animation
  • Improvements to the steam launcher error if the game fails to start.

Fixes:

  • Fix gaps appearing in terrain at long distances.
  • Fix some surrounding logic that may have caused NPC’s to read without a book.
  • Don’t disable sound if the audio system goes out of memory. Some other minor audio changes.
  • Keep trying to delete/move files for up to 15 seconds. Should help with sporadic issues with Anti-viruses and similar programs.
  • Can no longer get Halloween mail by having an older world.
  • Fix Character model showing when net issues window appears.
  • Fix some cases of visual sliders (e.g. Gamma) going out of bounds and causing black screens.

Modding:

  • Fix Content Build Exceptions not showing the filename.
  • Updated Plants and added sponges to the Asset Manager.
  • Removed chain crafting behaviour as it wasn’t used in Staxel. If you want previous behaviour, use “DeprecatedChainCraft” : true in your reaction.

Staxel Changelog for 1.3.48

Staxel 1.3.47

New:

  • Control schemes.
  • Added options to flip mouse/joystick horizontal directions.
  • New way to connect to other friends. “Use Staxel Net” option added to “Play With Friends”.
  • Added controller support to building tool settings windows.

Changes:

  • Transition to/from Map mode has been changed a bit.
  • Increased the amount players push NPC’s.
  • Minor optimisations of Animated tiles doors and lighting.
  • Internal changes to file creation/loading.
  • Auto-picking up items should occur for more actions.

Fixes:

  • Looking down near a wall should no longer make you go first person.
  • Fixed Golden Watermelon, Golden Cabbage, Golden Pumpkin, and Golden Strawberry seeds missing from seed maker
  • Minor crash fixes.
  • Fix a crash when loading a world with a missing mail count.
  • Don’t keep a server running when failing to start a world.
  • Make sure only a single forest bunny spawns.
  • Stop players from giving more items to Farm Fan, after they already got the coupon.
  • Fixed some blob corruption issues.
  • Don’t leave a broken file behind if loading fails.
  • Swapped numerous cases of saved time not being in UTC.
  • CompleteQuest and UpdateReputationCommand now check for the right number of arguments.
  • When failing to load an Entity for rendering, fall back to a new renderer to avoid failing every frame.
  • Don’t crash if a DockTile with animation that is missing is spawned.
  • Don’t crash during animation if a Dispenser is missing a component.

Modding:

  • Retrying a failed content build should now work properly.
  • Old sprinkler mod is now blocked from being loaded.
  • New format for Errors in Content Builder. Should be less scary now.
  • Most content builder exceptions will now point to a specific installed mod, if possible. (e.g. “Modded Content Build Error. Caused by: X at workshop url: “)
  • Error messages should be clearer when failing to upload using Mod Manager.

Halloween Update & GOG

Halloween Update

Get your spook on with these creepy Halloween masks! Be the talk of the town, or the local boogie monster if that’s more your style.

These masks are part of the upcoming Halloween update that we’re currently working on! The masks will be craftable at the pumpkin carving table, and will also be a permanent addition to the in-game catalogue during the Halloween update so you can still pick them up after the holiday is over! I don’t know about you, but I’ll be sporting the zombie chicken head. I just hope my chickens don’t mind too much…

A new scary furniture set is also in the works to celebrate this Halloween in style! Each and every room in your house will be decorated to celebrate the creepiest of holidays. Dine surrounded with cobwebs, and sleep in a coffin… what could be more festive than that?

Like the masks, this furniture set will be a permanent addition to the game so don’t worry about missing out!

That’s all I can share for now, but it shouldn’t be a long wait for these new goodies to go live. We hope you’re as excited as we are!


Staxel on GOG.com

Over the past year we’ve had a lot of people requesting a DRM-free option for playing Staxel.
We’re pleased to let you know that if DRM-free is your jam, you can now pick up Staxel from the GOG store!

The GOG version of Staxel is exactly the same as the versions you’ll find on Steam, HumbleBundle and our own website so you’re not missing out on any features by going DRM-free.

You’ll still be able to play multiplayer with your friends on Steam too! The only difference being that you’ll need to set up a dedicated server using the Server Wizard to play with your friends who are on Steam.
Servers are pretty simple to set up, but if you have any questions or are struggling to figure it out, you can always send us an email or head on over to the Discord and someone will be around to help 🙂


Next Major Staxel Update

Just to let you all know, Staxel’s next major update is in currently in the works.
We won’t be giving out too many details on this for the time being, but rest assured we’re all working hard to bring more interesting content to the game for you all to enjoy.

Keep an eye out for future issues of the Staxel Reporter where we’ll be posting updates and sneak peeks of what we’re working on.


That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab Staxel at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Or you can wishlist us on steam at http://store.steampowered.com/app/405710/Staxel/

Thanks for reading!

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EGadd

Staxel Changelog for 1.3.44

Major Changes:

  • Lighting fixes. Less black void.
  • Show a warning prompt instead of kicking players with high amounts of lag.
  • Signs… THAT YOU CAN WRITE ON.

Full List:

Additions:

  • Allow journal bind to close the journal while it’s open
  • Allow the “accept” button (Default: A on controller) to advance dialogue
  • Prevent a case of accidentally closing the character creator on the first world load.
  • Add a couple of lines to Farm Fan to stop her from referring to herself in third person.
  • A prompt is displayed before stealing.

Changes:

  • Made the scarf on the shaved pink sheep match un-shaved version.
  • Made powerful refrigerator be recognised as a fridge
  • Show a warning prompt instead of kicking players with high amounts of lag.
  • Your view won’t be snapped back to your conversation partner all the time.
  • Set the active inventory slot when moving items within hotbar. Instead of just between hotbar and inventory.
  • Added a slight delay before getting the next hint in the night transition overlay.
  • Changed arrows on dropdowns to a higher resolution version.
  • Reduced delay in showing the dialogue progress hint.
  • Use the randomized cobble tile when creating the town hall.
  • Changed the mouse icon that showed up in dialogue.
  • Changed some internal logic for key binding.
  • Ensure that Steam Launcher brings Staxel to the front of all open windows.
  • Hide the “allow friends joins” option on GOG version. Play with Friends button is also disabled.
  • Moved the “Inventory Direct” keybind higher in the list. So it is next to other menu keybinds.
  • Added Hay as a requirement to craft chicken coops.
  • Allow multiple gog owners to play on a server using the same credentials.
  • Unmappable key bindings are now more clear in the UI.
  • Allow escape menu to be shown while in dialogue.
  • Fancy chairs can be sat on now.
  • Added a button that you can click on night transition to continue.

Fixes:

  • Fixed some bad layers in Male Swimsuits, Bermuda Shorts
  • Added some methods to quickly update lighting before full information is received from server.
  • Added extra protection for weird ui scale values.
  • The Tool area region no longer sticks around after switching from the creative shovel
  • Fixed replaced tiles leaving behind compound fillers. This fixes some cases of invisible blocks.
  • Fixed the screen growing past the monitor size, when switching from borderless to windowed mode.
  • When a field gets assigned a null in json, ignore the field when parsing the blob. Fixes some weird issues.
  • Don’t crash on CancelCharacterCreator if current design was not set yet.
  • Track file access conflict issues on BinBlobDb with more detailed error messages. To find some unusual crashes.
  • Fixed a crash for Docks when a dock is provided an item with no code or tile code.
  • Fix some threading issues.
  • Fixed a float precision issue causing animations to not play at 60fps after 2 hours of gameplay.
  • Don’t crash when saving, while feeder has just been spawned.
  • Don’t throw an exception when muting a player for a second time.
  • Don’t trigger selfie camera mode when using ALT+F4 to close the game.
  • Don’t leak sound effect instances when skipping sounds.
  • Avoid cleaning up GameContext multiple times, and solved some race conditions concerning cleaning up GameContext.
  • Fix an issue with reloading pets.
  • Several hardenings of code surround chunks.
  • Hardening against null item stack exceptions.
  • A fix was applied to some failures to directly connect to a player.
  • Removed the server list from the client and server wizard.
  • Fixed Cecile’s Model showing a different skin tone on the shoulder.

Modding:

  • Certain DLL’s are now blocked from loading. This is to stop issues with certain old mods crashing the game.
  • By default, Mod Manager only asks to update mods if you own the mod.
  • By default, Mod Manager does not ask to run content builder on new versions of the game.
  • Both options above can be turned off by finding the file in the /mods/ folder.
  • Mod manager’s command line parameters have been clean up. The only input changed is steamLauncherCheck (e.g. -steamLauncherCheck 10.0.0 instead of -steamLauncherCheck -version 10.0.0)
  • Fixed villager definitions being outdated in Asset Manager.
  • Fix Modmanager not detecting that some mods needed to be uninstalled before being reinstalled. Should fix cases of files being left behind.
  • Added Mail definitions and Quest Definitions to the Asset Manager.
  • Check if files are missing from the bundle after Mod Manager does its checks.

Staxel Changelog for 1.3.42

New:

  • New pants have been added.
  • Players lagging badly for more than 60 seconds will get kicked from the server.

Fixes:

  • Fixed all villagers being considered a quest villager.
  • Allow controllers to get to the cog button in the single player world select.
  • Various sound fixes. Out of Memories should be less common.
  • Added some more grace time to effects. Some sounds should play more reliably
  • Updated Festivals in Asset Manager. This fixes previous issues.
  • The old mailbox is no longer searchable in catalogues.
  • Better error message when trying to connect to a multiplayer server, and the port is invalid.
  • Fixed a case where pet houses could spawn Farm Animals and crash the game.
  • Allow animations to play during night transition, so the player’s animation tate is correct on wakeup.
  • Fixed Oscar final quest being broken.
  • Harden FillPotWater against Dispenser Component being null.
  • Improve the reported server lockfile error, by finding the process currently holding the lock to the lockfile.
  • Made some changes to make certain errors easier to catch.
  • Some very small technical changes.

Staxel Changelog for 1.3.40

New:

  • Added the ability for any tilestate to dispense (water from fountains & wells)
  • Added particles and sounds for catching bug entities
  • Added –disableFullscreen and –disableSliders commandline options, which are used by the steam compat start option to make the game more likely to work or work around
  • stuff the user broke in menus.

Changes:

  • Made control hints more visible, and redesigned the mouse fully.
  • Made larger lighting batches.
  • Assert qb layer is of inbounds size.

Fixes:

  • Fixed Farm Fan being removed after festivals where she was the host.
  • Fixed inventory getting stuck and dropping items.
  • Fixed a bug with particles.
  • Fixed low drive space detection.
  • Fixed stir entity action & boiling station particles looping forever
  • Fixed a bug with the order shipping manager that causes the game to crash.