- Maintenance Patch! - 30 October 2025
It was brought to my attention last week that there's a set of circumstances under which starting a new character would end up with you entering the level and immediately being kicked out to the results screen. I've done a minor patch, ahead of a forthcoming major patch with a huge amount of QoL fixes and improvements early next year, which fixes this.If you have any other issues at all, please don't hesitate to come and bend my ear on our Discord! ProjectorGames Discord
- As 2024 comes to a close, another patch, with a ton of fixes, polish and fixes! - 30 December 2024
V1.02a This patch has focused on Performance (as I've been playing it loads on my Steamdeck), Polish and Progression. Having played the game a bunch, I've decided to soup up a bunch of XP rewards; difficulty multipliers now apply to more XP sources, and the XP rewards for completing a level are now significantly higher! - Mana Gen bonus now shown on Character UI - Bonus Collected Dust now shown - Improved performance of skin select on SteamDeck - Poison cloud tweaked down - Improve shiny mob reflection probe performance - Collectables now disable rendering when offscreen for more performance - Massively optimised shadows of gnomes - Cleared up a ton of unused models in the game to improve performance - Reduced thickness of some smoke, so you can see where you're going a bit better! - Bonus Mana Gen now shown under stats - Pets now target your last-hit location, as opposed to firing stra…
- V1.01 Live! - 26 May 2024
Having gone back and played the game some more on my SteamDeck, I decided to put a couple of days hard work into some bits of polish and improvements. V1.01 -Fixed D-Pad navigation on menus -Increased the size of a number of pieces of UI to work better on the SteamDeck -Moved from FXAA to TAA for the menu -Improved a number of readouts to guide the player through the UI -Mana Regen is now listed in Per Second, not Per Minute! -Tidied up a number of impact particles to help the player see what's going on better -Fixed a bunch of gibberish flavour text entries. -Fixed a large number of textures that weren't correctly streaming or at 4k resolution. -Fixed an issue where dropped pieces of gnomes could leak -Fixed issue where freshly-raised gnomes would cause an issue with the display of the army eLC32G55TQWRXXU,nergy. -Fixed randomly fast-spinning clouds -Fixed incorrect SHOPDUST, SHOPHEALT…
- Final stretch - 15 June 2020
Fixed achievement for killing Voldarr Fixed issue where too many points in Gnome Speed made things go... odd. Fixed issue where dead players continued to stand. Fixed issue where multiple players in shared screen would have odd-facing damage and healing text Quitting the game will no longer show -2147483647 damage We're *hoping* to leave Early Access this week - next week at the latest!
- Another day, another patch - 3 June 2020
Fixed a number of issues where some players were dead and some were alive. All bosses now drop Loot Upgrade Tokens. Loot Upgrade Tokens apply equally to all players. Primary Stats for Characters now cost 10% less to upgrade Secondary Stats for Characters now cost 5% less to upgrade Fixed an issue where pressing A on the settings screen could upgrade a random stat. Fixed a bug where ONLY THE FIRST FOUR MUSIC TRACKS PLAYED WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME. Every regular level should now have a unique music track. A little rumbly surprise for pad owners
- Little spit, little polish. - 2 June 2020
Reworked Treasure Goblin collision so dropped items Removed slightly inoffensive debug message. Oops. Fixed bug with generation of Procedural Loot names where a low-id stat had a higher level the rest of it. This should mean much better names using more of the loot system. RandomActivePlayer will no longer return dead players Dead players can no longer speak. Which is fair. Only one player will now announce the level start in MP Loot Upgrade tokens are now applied to all active players. This should stop your little brother stealing all the phat lewt. Golems should no longer emit damage numbers from their feet A substantial change to the controls; now (Y) (Gnome Return) will cancel any Gnome Charge and Gnome Guard commands Gnome Charge will cancel Gnome Guard and Gnome Return Basically, LB always says 'go here', Y always same 'come here' and B always says 'Go off ahead'
- The end of Early Access is in sight! - 18 May 2020
So what's new? Final menu screen and front end. Pet selection is currently missing. All major in-game bugs are quashed. If you know of any I've missed, leave 'em in the forum! All skins implemented. Some aren't actually unlockable yet. All levels are now accessible on all difficulties. Loot is fully-implemented barring the procedural names. So what's missing still? Transcendence. I'm not worried if this slips - there's a HUGE amount of progression, content and gameplay before you'd consider New Game Plus+. 4 missing cutscenes No speech for 3 of the characters We still have lots of polish to add in all over, but the end is in sight!
- Progress continues! - 21 April 2020
We've been working hard to get the game out of Early Access. Today's patch should give you complete access to the entire game. Any feedback on any of the new maps is greatly appreciated! On top of that, we've now got the final threaded loading system implemented, final UI in most places, and the loot and loot upgrade systems are in plae. The only major things missing now are spit and polish, some player voices, pet unlocking and skin assignments. The end of Early Access is finally in sight!
- Progress continues! - 1 February 2020
As always, Early Access is a time to experiment, and see what works, and get feedback. The patches over the last week have started to move to a new method of doing tile transitions - this looks great, but means we need to do a pass over all of the existing levels. Whilst this does feel like we're treading water a bit, it does also mean that the game's looking better and better. I'll continue to make 2-5 patches and updates per week, but remember, this is the time to help us focus and change the game so it's something you love - so give some feedback, tell me what needs to be changed, and tell me what's brilliant and you want more of!
- New graphics and bug fixes - 15 December 2019
We've done a pass over a lot of the visual style of the game. This has lead to a bunch of levels having tile transitions that need reword, but look loads better! There's also been a fix to the Pet Rendering, so those of you that own FortressCraft should now see ARTHER as intended. More map updates soon!
- Polish and Speed and Balance - oh my - 27 November 2019
Added data-driven player colours Added XP-bonus drops from Bosses. First player to grab 'em gets the boost! Further work on per-mob healthbars and text placement. Tweaked fog and atmospherics in most places in the game. Added indicators when Healers are ready to heal Added indicators when Mages are ready to Rejuv Mages will now Rejuv other players if their owner is full on mana. Hooked up a new shader system for animated glass smoke Hooked up the start of the Speech system. Implemented some Voldarr lines, by special guest, Ricky Berwick.
- Spit and polish - 25 November 2019
Food weighs a lot less, so players shouldn't get trapped by it If you own FortressCraft, you'll get a free pet. Not balanced, working or optional. Feedback wanted! Implemented a collision force pre-map to allow much much faster Gnome and Pet simulation. Fixed an issue where progression of multiple slots was added together Pets should no longer Leak Pets should die if you die. Added saving spinner. It's like an actual console game! Fixed an issue with best time readouts Tweaked the size of Combat Text Added a cloud pass for daylight levels Reworked the atmospherics and fog for dungeons Fixed waggling Gnomes. Again. https://i.gyazo.com/a88bbce4cc1bc9890251ede0e0155e85.mp4
- New levels, performance boosts and map polish. - 23 November 2019
After much discussion, I've decided to focus on Pets before Loot. Pets will be stat-boosting and upgradable. How they unlock, how they work has still to be decided, but a hard evening's work and it's already looking kinda neat. On top of that, we're mostly happy with the initial raft of maps available, so I've extended it to cover 2 bosses and 3 dungeons across 12 levels. I spent about 6 hours playing the maps and making tweaks based on that today, so I'm happy to push this patch out now. Auto detail should now smartly modulate Ambient Occlusion based on resolution. Low Detail will now force you to 1280x720p, if you're in a regular 16:9 base resolution. Another raft of polish across all current levels. Unlocked access to level 12, allowing players access to 2 dungeons and 3 bosses. Fixed an issue where choosing a new difficulty didn't update the accessible ring on the map. Added differe…
- Polish takes such a long time. - 21 November 2019
Added the ability for Health Bars to be offset by mob type. Any health bars that aren't in the right place - let me know! Changed upload timing of stats. Changed the Limited performance option to better approach 30fps. This should only affect people on high-refresh rate monitors, where the divisor became really quite random. Again; this option is only designed for people who are trying to do Steam Remote Play or who are trying to save power/cool a laptop. Tweaked rules on how and when Gnomes can teleport.
- Week 2, Patch 1 - 20 November 2019
Fixed some errors when Gnomes shoot at debris Added Health Bars. Disable Damage Numbers under settings if they displease you. Added achievements to track how far through the game's completion they are.
- Week 1! - 18 November 2019
After a week in Early Access, things are going well. We've been watching live streams and Let's Plays and inviting people to play, and focusing our initial development time on addressing those. Whilst (as you'll see below) we've addressed and improved loads of things, the to-do list is just getting bigger - https://trello.com/b/gg63yuKC/gnomancer So, if you're not following the daily updates, then here's a weekly digest for you! Fixed some issues with stat tracking and achievements. This may mean your achievements reset, but re-running the game should force them to unlock again. Updated some FAQ entries after watching a couple of streams. Keep 'em coming! Wrote a threaded asyncronous texture loading system Many textures are now dynamically loaded on-demand via a thread. This should greatly improve initial loading times. I've no idea why Unity doesn't support this out of the box, but it…
- Another day another patch! - 16 November 2019
I'll be summing up each week's patch notes in a larger post, so if you aren't interested in the daily updates, just wait for the big one! Fixed an issue with depth of field on Medium difficulty Fixed alignment and tidy up in a lot of menus Levels that are unlocked but not completed are now marked clearly on the map. Tanks will no longer attempt to block insta-kill damage Rogues will no longer attempt to dodge insta-kill damage Gnomes you get bonus XP for no longer count towards Gnome deaths
- Another day - 15 November 2019
I plan to keep at a twice-daily patch schedule until the feedback calms down and things are mostly stable. At that point I'm likely to move to 2-3 times per week, as I start to implement the larger missing systems. XP per level is now displayed correctly again for people who aren't running at 300 fps. My clever system to keep the framerate up took too long to complete else! Rune Rocks have got a V2 placeholder that should be a lot clearer when you've destroyed them. Fixed Gnomes Raised readout, that broke when people raised over 100,000 Gnomes. You guys... RuneStones no longer look at you when on higher difficulties. Changed WSAD to WASD after someone nearly had an aneurism over it. Added markers to show if a level is accessible, and where you need to stand Added map-to-map markers to show where the next level is, when unlocked.
- Polish - 13 November 2019
Streaming the game? Let me know! A ton more polish and detail on the first level Blanked out the game camera when watching cutscenes in resolutions other than 16:9 Added army size achievements. Tweaked the lookahead based on Army Offset for Shared camera games, affecting 2-4 player games. Tweaked the point at which bosses trigger cutscenes.
- Achievements - 13 November 2019
Locked away the skin menu. It's not done! Stop looking at it! Added achievement for meeting (and rescuing) the King Added achievement for defeating the Fire Golem, the first proper boss. Cat-in-a-box doesn't count. Hooked up achievement correctly for freeing the Village Made sure Gnomes can't ever get in your way. Added 2/3/4 player achievements. Removed the ability to hax in extra players with keyboard shortcuts. I'm not expecting anyone to hit 1 million Player levels or Gnomes raised - that's just during Early Access so I can manage how far players actually get, without giving people Achievements I need to take away again.
