Hello, friends!

It might be a bit early in the year for spring cleaning, but we got rid of a lot of pesky bugs and also added some quality of life features.

Did you ever accidentally pick up the wrong person? We now added an option to highlight objects or people if they are in range to be grabbed. This allows for much more precision, especially if there are a lot of potential targets close together.
We added an option to rotate and zoom with either the left or right stick/touchpad. You can decide if you want to use this feature and on which hand. The other hand will still be available for all menu related uses.
When using the build menu, you always had the option to grab the buildings directly with your hand or with the pointer ray. This pointer had some issues that made it a much less reliable tool. Buildings in the build menu rotated faster when you point anywhere on the panel. Now they only rotate faster when you directly point at them to indicate you can now grab them. We also fixed issues that prevented you from picking up construction sites directly after being placed on the ground. This should make readjusting the position and rotation much easier.
When new buildings are unlocked during tutorials, they are now not just highlighted with a glow effect in the build menu, the build menu now also actively scrolls to the new item. This should help new players who might not have found out yet that there are more than the initial 3 buildings per category to choose from.

• General performance improvements.
  
• Improved UI performance and scroll view behavior.
  
• Optimized interactions between clouds and lightning targets.
  
• Reduced jittering during player movement.

• Fixed achievement Feathered Thief not being achievable at all.
  
• Fixed issues with achievement Diversity unlock mechanic.
  
• Fixed issues with achievement Master Builder.
  
• Fixed issues with achievement Multitasking.
  
• Fixed issues with achievement Chicken Shaker unlocking too early.

• Fixed ship navigation issues, optimized ship routes and improved ship landing behavior.
  
• Fixed issue with ship passengers not disembarking.
  
• Fixed navigation issue with townies on ships.
  
• Fixed lost trade goods on returning trading ship after loading.

• Added cooldown for townies' angry reactions to achieve a better fulfillment of needs.
  
• Improved movement of ranged units.
  
• Improved accessibility of harbors for townies.
  
• Improved check if townies or animals are under water.
  
• Made thieves return to enemy base after stealing in Sandbox mode.
  
• Fixed issue that prevented enemy units to spawn on towers.
  
• Fixed issue with seagulls not being able to steal food from tavern storage.
  
• Fixed issue with eagle that occasionally stopped hunting.
  
• Fixed fish and chicken navigation issues.

• Improved navigation on Capital Island to make mine accessible in Sandbox mode.
  
• Improved navigation on Fort Haven.
  
• Adjusted limit of gold mines on Fort Haven in Sandbox mode.
  
• Added highlight to fishing spot on Solitary Island.
  
• Adjusted well limit on New Port in Sandbox mode.
  
• Balanced timing of lava streams.

• Fixed a potential bug that could cause construction sites to never be completed.
  
• Fixed highlights on player-interactable objects and made the interactions more robust.
  
• Made rally flag sink in water and then quickly respawn.
  
• Fixed issue with game progression being one level too high after loading.
  
• Fixed issue with pallets remaining at harbor after emptying.
  
• Improved check of player's boundaries.
  
• Fixed cauldron stew level not rising properly.
  
• Fixed issue where marketplaces could hold more resources than allowed.
  
• Disabled culling of buildings and townies.
  
• Fixed clouds drifting away from play area.

It's that time of year! The Steam Awards are just around the corner, and it's up to you, the players, to nominate your favorite games of 2022. From all your excellent feedback, we know that you enjoyed Townsmen VR, and we're confident that it is one of the more unique VR experiences out there. So if you would consider nominating Townsmen VR for a Steam Award, we'd be very humbled.

Thank you so much for your continued support from everyone at HandyGames.

Hello, friends!

Townsmen VR is getting a new Patch on Steam. It includes a bunch of fixes all over the place and a couple new features. We hope you enjoy it and thank you so much for playing!



• Added improved building placement feedback: color coded outlines now show the required even space around the construction site.

• Made talking NPCs actually look at the player.

• Added Steam Community Items (Trading cards, badges, emoticons, backgrounds).


• You are now able to drop townies on your hand without them falling over.

• Implemented new underwater shaders for all levels to prevent flickering.

• Fixed an issue with townies interrupting each other's work in certain situations.

• Implemented saving for quest timers (also used for sandbox attacks and more), previously when you saved while they were running, they would always restart after loading.

• Fixed save & load issue on resource chests after some contents have been depleted.

• Fixed underwater splash effects at the player's hands appearing way below the ocean's surface.


• Updated save system to ensure that the ship starts the route where it was saved instead of going back to the first waypoint.

• Fixed issue with lost trade player ship on save & load while returning from horizon.

• Fixed the hook at the harbor being too low at the start and then jumping up the first time it is used for trading.

• Fixed an error on ships that aren't setup for trading.

• Fixed random attacks always coming from same route.

• Fixed errors connected to interrupted trades.


• Made harbor indestructible on Solitary Island and Sunken Island.

• Made the 10 minute timer for Smuggler's Cove quests to build town buildings optional, now if you already have built those buildings, the timer will be skipped.

• Fixed softlock in New Port where a pirate ship wouldn't come back if you had a lot of troops already when it disappeared on the horizon.


• Fixed issue that building info can't be reopened.

• Fixed the UI pointer ray disappearing when placing a construction site and then opening another menu (like the main menu) before the placement timer has finished.

• Fixed the UI pointer ray being blocked while placing building addons. Now it should be possible to build several addons in quick succession.

• Increased scale of build menu and island info.

• Research for buildings of the highest levels is now locked until the previous level has been researched (affecting church and barracks for sowrdsmen and crossbowmen).

• Fixed issues with info UI.

• Updated building info UI of gold mine to use the same layout as all the others.

• Adjusted info UI layout on harbor and ship.

• Fixed harbor info UI to properly show resource display of used storage after loading.

Hi,

we pushed a small update to help with a specific issue some players reported.

The game usually pauses when you take off the headset, displaying a "headset not mounted" message. But if for some reason that detection doesn't work correctly, the game can appear as always paused, preventing you from playing the game.

If you are experiencing this issue, you can now start the game with the launch option "-nopause" to deactivate the headset detection.

To add this launch option, right-click Townsmen VR in your library and click on "Properties...".
Under GENERAL add "-nopause" (without quotation marks) in the field labelled LAUNCH OPTIONS.

Hope that helps and thank you for playing! :)

Thank you all so much for playing Townsmen VR, for your feedback, and for your patience. It's been a long time coming. Version 1.0 is finally here and with it, the most requested feature: Sandbox Mode

Patchnotes below.

We're certain that you'll enjoy it and we truly feel like TMVR is everything we had hoped it would one day become and more.

Hop on, start building and enjoy!
___________________________________________________________________

New features:

• Added sandbox mode (most islands can now be played with custom start conditions and goals).
  
• Added additional building placement feedback: now buildings and units in the way are highlighted red.
  
• Added language selection screen (will reload the current scene if changes are applied).
  
• Need icons on top of townies are now color-coded from blue to red to show how urgent the need is.
  
• Added game over the message to all islands.

General fixes:

• All save files are not compatible anymore. If you load an old save file, the level you try to load will restart.
  
• Fixed production resources getting lost when upgrading a building.
  
• Fixed an issue with unintended behavior when townies would drop resources after loading a save file.
  
• Fixed fish not being able to properly swim in rivers.
  
• Fixed dead fish respawning in Ocean instead of the lake after save/load.
  
• Made all ships turn a bit faster.
  
• Fixed rally flag movement issue on load due to conflict with spawn animation behavior.
  
• The game now doesn't pause in splash or loading scenes anymore when the headset isn't mounted.
  
• Alarm sound is now also played when someone from your town is attacked by a wolf or bear.
  
• Changed mechanic that decides where talking characters spawn, so there are no huge gaps between them if they appear and disappear more frequently.
  
• Fixed talking characters sometimes moving to a location from their last or initial position when appearing.
  
• Fixed issue with wrong status text on research.
  
• Fixed behavior that would sometimes mess up monks/nuns reading books.
  
• Birds shouldn't be stuck in the air anymore after you save/load a scene directly when a bird has stolen something and is on the run.
  
• Fixed a lot of trading and ship-related issues, especially concerning save/load.

Graphics improvements:

• Fixed marketplace tablecloths disappearing if further away.
  
• Reduced work time on cauldron and bread oven to match the animations.
  
• Updated position, type, and count of torches on all islands.
  
• Updated the unconscious effect of townies.
  
• Fixed a small graphics glitch on the top of clergy heads.
  
• Modified start scene crow animation.
  
• Changed animations for townies trading on ships.
  
• Books should now retain their color while being read (before they all turned into a brown book, could be noticed if you watch slightly from below).

UI specific fixes:

• Fixed loading menu not being updated when a new save slot has been used.
  
• Improved building info UI layouts.
  
• Prevent closing info menu with thumbstick up/down.
  
• Moved button to go back to the main menu to quit game dialog, removed option to restart the game.
  
• Made info icons on iron/gold mines and their construction sites check if they are hidden by rocks and moved them up if they are.
  
• Added new menu icons for restart, level select, sandbox mode, and language options.
  
• Fixed missing trading ship UI after loading a save file.
  
• Changed color of "i" icons on top of buildings.

Achievement fixes:

• Bucks now also count towards the acupuncture achievement (before it was only does).
  
• Fixed multitasking achievement not counting in some cases.
  
• Fixed airborne achievement and chickens teleporting to the ground while flying.

Level specific fixes:

• Open Sea: Changed hint behavior during the mission to pick up wood from the ocean.
  
• Open Sea: Updated ship particles.
  
• Open Sea: Reduced how affected by the wind the sail looks before you blow at it.
  
• Treasure Island: Fixed underwater effect under waterfall being way too big.
  
• Treasure Island: Fixed the pirate ship overshooting the landing point by a lot.
  
• Treasure Island: Prevented the stonecutter success dialog to be cut off way before Scarlett arrives.
  
• Chain Island: Reworked quest system to make the king see the pirate ship earlier
  
• Chain Island: fixed the navigation route to prevent a flying pirate ship.
  
• Twin Island: Fixed Ally's ship not properly landing after returning.
  
• Twin Island: Removed a non-interactive sign near the river.
  
• Solitary Island: Reworked iron forge quest to also progress if you don't put all the other resources in the construction site.
  
• Moon Island: You need to recruit a knight first before the merchant will appear with the message to end the level.
  
• Moon Island: Made ruins in swamp removable.
  
• Moon Island: Fixed flickering triangles on the ocean surface.
  
• New Port: Fixed missions not progressing and added mission to defeat the pirates.
  
• New Port: Made dried-out well-block buildings.
  
• Volcano Island: Fixed trees not being properly saved/loaded.
  
• Volcano Island: Fixed visual holes in entrances of mines.
  
• Volcano Island: Fixed stones around the second quarry.
  
• Fort Haven: Changed the last dialog to make use of the updated character placing mechanic.
  
• The End: The prisoner cannot be hit by falling people anymore.

So, it's been quite a long time in the making but TMVR is ready for its full release

And will arrive on Thursday, March 24th.

Next to bug fixes and general improvements, the update will include the most

Demanded gameplay feature.

But I won't tell you just yet. The answer is in front of your nose.

Odd formatting. Hmh.

Xoxo


Livestream on Friday, March 19th[www.twitch.tv]
____________________________________________________________________

With Christmas around the corner, we have a fresh update for you, with new translations and lots of bugfixes and improvements.

Happy holidays!

General Changes:

• Added more text translations. The game now supports: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese
  
• The language can now be chosen in the Steam properties for the game.
  
• The game now pauses when you don't wear the VR headset.
  
• Completely reworked the save/load menu layout to closer resemble the level selection.
  
• Player position is now saved.
  
• Townies, monks, and nuns now complain if you poke them with a burning torch.
  
• Removed previous missions from mission popup.
  
• Reduced work target priority to eat/drink from cauldron, so it should be the same as other food sources.
  
• Removed some tradable resources (swords, cake, armor) from Moon Island, so you have to produce them instead of just buy them.
  
• Updated combat behavior to change target if the current target is occluded (and the new one is almost same on priority).
  
• Townies don't complain constantly anymore if at low health.
  
• All buildings and construction sites have been updated to reduce situations where buildings fully block paths or their own workplaces/storages.
  
• Thieves can now spawn on Fort Haven.
  
• The level end popup now stays open 10 seconds longer.
  
• Achievements you earned before the achievement system was introduced will now be granted at the start of the game.

Visual Changes:

• Reworked almost all particle effects (some are even island specific to fit the color setting).
  
• Implemented beards for soldiers.
  
• Added shadow quality level 4.
  
• Added an animated crow to the start scene.
  
• The highlight effect when you tear down a building is now green instead of red.
  
• Updated the layout for the stars describing the level of a building and fixed them not being shown in the research menu.
  
• Fixed the tavern campfire texture looking like the fire was extinguished after the building has been highlighted once.
  
• Enemy buildings don't bounce anymore if being attacked.
  
• Smooth spectator camera isn't smooth underwater anymore to fix missing underwater visual effect.
  
• Polished material for ghost hands.
  
• Fixed floating ropes on ship construction.
  
• Fixed a broken merchant animation on Solitary Island.
  
• Eagle now has an animation for takeoff.
  
• All ship sails should now react to player blowing into the microphone (just visually, no gameplay effect).

Audio Changes:

• Added an alarm sound when one of your units or buildings gets attacked.
  
• Added lowpass filter on all sound effects while underwater.
  
• Added sounds for assigning units to rally flags, unit spawn, unit death, slaughterhouse, catapult (loading, shooting, impact).
  
• Fixed flickering ambience sounds on Volcano Island and Solitary Island.

General fixes:

• Fixed game not loading when system language is Turkish.
  
• Fixed most save/load issues with ships and trading.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could build more than one ship per harbor.
  
• Fixed farmers trying to milk/shear cows/sheep when they were on the way to a slaughterhouse.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented birds from looking for an action to do (land, steal...).
  
• Fixed townies not resetting properly the work target system references when managing needs.
  
• Updated ragdoll logic to make them stand up if too long in that state.
  
• Fixed stack of books being one more than needed if save/load while monk/nun dropped an old book into the library.
  
• Fixed an issue with hitting some buildings with lightning.
  
• Fixed an interaction that would prevent a townie carrying a resource from changing the job when dragged onto a workplace.
  
• Updated henhouse to prioritize chicken production on manual townie assignment.
  
• Fixed tear down behavior of harbor construction site.
  
• Fixed townies getting put on top of ranged barracks if assigned to work there.
  
• Fixed subtitles always disappearing after 5 seconds (noticeable on longer sentences).
  
• Fixed some strange behavior when slapping a character on their last sentence.
  
• Fixed the bridge on Smuggler's Cove not being properly connected to the land, blocking pathfinding.
  
• Updated Newport quest system to avoid unintended disappearing of pirates on save/load.

Known major issues:

• Goods stored in harbors are not loaded correctly from save files and might even disappear completely if you save/load a second time.
  
• Goods that are currently on a crane while saving are not saved at all.
  
• If you save and load after finishing the mission to "feed the people and grow the town." on Smuggler's Cove, you won't be able to complete the level anymore without restarting the level.
  
• Some UI layouts are a bit off and have to be fixed (should still be readable in the current state though).
  
• If you load an old save file from the previous version where a merchant ship is at your harbor, the ship won't go away anymore.
  
• Characters in the last dialog on Fort Haven try to position themselves behind you instead of in front of you.
  
• Sometimes ship paths break and they sail through islands.

Hi everyone!

We introduced achievement functionality, so you can now start to collect them while you are out there exploring the islands of TownsmenVR. Currently they do not work retroactively so if you passed some achievements already, they will not trigger yet.

With the introduction of our new patch that we are currently working on, you should get those too.

Thank you for your patience and have fun playing TownsmenVR!

New features:

• Added option to talk to your townsmen (they react to greetings like "Hi!" or "Hello!" and get offended if you insult them.
  
• Added option to deactivate voice input in general.
  
• People can now stand on soldier buildings with a flat roof (archer barracks, crossbowmen barracks and knight castle).

General fixes:

• Removed broken translations for Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese.
  
• Fixed controller bindings for Mixed Reality and Oculus controllers to detect index finger movement.
  
• Enabled finger movement in loading scenes.
  
• Fixed problem grabbing resources from the "trading" storages from harbors.
  
• Fixed spawn animations playing when they shouldn't.
  
• Fixed more jobs and resources being shown in the island info than actually available on this island.
  
• Deactivated global illumination in loading and splash scenes.
  
• Fixed unlock effects (buildings, research etc.) being shown after loading if they already have been shown before.
  
• Fixed showing overlapping construction steps after loading.
  
• Deleted a stone on the ground of enemy gate destruction steps that would float in some maps.
  
• Fixed missing reference of trading point from both TradingController and TradingSlot on load.
  
• Fixed an issue where a ship could be sent back to the spawn position after save/load.
  
• Brew resource collider is now a cube, so it doesn't roll when dropped.
  
• Fixed chests hidden on islands already showing their info button before they have been found.
  
• Blocked some places where buildings could be constructed although there was not enough space vertically (overhanging cliffs).

Level specific fixes:

• Made some decoration removable on Fog Island, Treasure Island, Capital Island, Solitary Island, New Port.
  
• Fixed Fog Island quest system: unlock of residence moved to later point in quest line to prevent skipping ahead when playing very fast.
  
• Deactivated normal fish spawning in Capital Island ocean.
  
• Fixed fish on Twin Island swimming through a small island in the lake.
  
• Adjusted Twin Island ship route to avoid possible collisions with other routes.
  
• Fixed Solitary Island cut off voice line of Enswick.
  
• Fixed Prison Island game over message not triggering when catapult is destroyed.
  
• Fixed New Port mine being counted as under water.
  
• Fixed quest on New Port finishing before the required trade ship is built.
  
• Fixed some enemy towers on Volcano Island not allowing people to stand on top of them.
  
• Removed back-face culling of volcano shader (should now also be visible from within the island).

Known major issues:

• Trading and ships still can have some issues not being loaded correctly after saving. We are still working on a fix.
  
• The game won't load if your system language is Turkish. This will be fixed in the next update.