Monday Progress Report

I hope everyone had a relaxing holiday! Unfortunately I have some bad news. The new monsters will be finished by the next update in 3 days, however due to my own inconsistent internet connection this week, the Yuelia sex animations will not. Adobe's wonderful Creative Cloud doesn't allow me to use flash when I don't have an internet connection, and I can't use an older version of flash because it conflicts with CC. More than anything I want to tell you all that I can make all 14 animations in the next 3 days before the update drops, but realistically I won't be able to make it. Idles are easy but full sex animations with several variating loops usually takes me a whole day and a half in itself. Again, my apologies!! The day they're finished, I'll pester Hbomb to drop and update with them in it!

Monday Progress Report

The art team has made great time on finishing all the ferals and variants! It means I can animate all the idles this week and hopefully give Hbomb and Fleet enough time to implement them into the next update. There isn't much to show since it has mostly been cutting up and preparing the monsters for animating. Other than the feral elf faces, these variants were all that were left:

Monday Progress Report

Hi everyone, last week was mostly spent polishing unfinished ferals, finalizing the Christmas event, and cutting them up for animating!

A lot of time this week will be finishing the variants and making sure pieces don't break when rotating. Here's an example of what I've been working on for the past day to make sure it works:

Lots of pieces need fixing

Christmas event poses!

Whoah that's crazy what's all this beach stuff I have no idea

Progress Update

Hey guys, just an update on what's coming this month:

We're working on trying to get as many of the feral variations as possible implemented by the end of the month. There'll also be an update to the Yuelia Christmas event with some new scenes!

I'm also putting a lot of work into some UI and gameplay changes. Primarily with the breeding menu sorting system, which should hopefully make gameplay a deal more fluid/less frustrating. I really want to hear your guys' suggestions for UI changes; what you think will be most useful, what you find most frustrating to deal with currently, etc.

After that, my focus is going to be on designing the ranch assistant system. You won't likely be seeing it in-game until next month, but either later this month or early next month I plan to do a blog post to explain how the system will work and get feedback on it.

By the way, if you noticed the sudden drop in pledge amounts on the Patreon page don't freak out: Patreon has updated our pages to show the actual amount of money we receive each month after all of the fees and declined pledges have been removed, and they kicked out the deadbeat patrons who weren't actually paying. I wasn't lying when I said we didn't get nearly as much as it looked like we did (granted, it's still an incredibly respectable amount due to your guys' awesome generosity).

It seems that Patreon may have also changed what kind of payments they'll accept as well, and some people have been having problems with making their pledges. I'll look into it some more and see if I can't find any solutions.

Monday Progress Report

Spurple and I have been hard at work finishing ferals. At the pace we're going they should all be done by this month, which means animations will start coming every month afterwards.

Here is what's been done this past week

Finished Designs:

Feral Variants:

Art Team's To-Do List

Hi there, I've noticed a lot of people are confused about what the art team is doing. There were no weekly blog posts for November since we burned out after almost a whole year of nonstop work. S-purple and I were trying to finish most of the core art assets as quickly as possible. I'm also going to try and explain why sex animations have not taken priority over the designing of monsters.

The monsters before the final re-haul were messy, inconsistent, and with each new sex animation their faces and style changed. It was a necessary evil to stop and finalize the actual designs before continuing. 

Why though? Why not just fix it later???

Well...that was the problem, the monsters were changing every time we drew them. If we didn't finish what they actually looked like, they would look different each time you watched them having sex, changing proportions and faces.

What about the new monsters? You're just making more work for yourself!!

These monsters were planned to be in the game to begin with. I pushed for these monsters to be finished so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. You know, actually finishing the core part of the game so there would be no delays when pumping out animations.

This re-haul, these finalized designs, all of it is so when it comes time for animations, it will be smoother for the art department. We will have reference sheets to refer to when creating sex animation assets, when our next artist joins in they'll have solid designs to work with, and all we would need to focus on is the animations themselves. 

AS FOR THE TO-DO LIST:

This month is focusing on finishing all the Ferals.

When those are finished, animations will start pumping out as the wiki chart follows, which can also be viewed here and will be updated as the animations come out: 

1. Fbreeder and Mbreeder x Monster pairings
2. Catgirl x _______ pairings
3. Futa Catgirl x _______ pairings
4. so on and so forth as the chart dictates http://wiki.breedingseason.com/Animation_Tracker

Holiday Monster events will also be animated for the month they're included in. Everything last year that was either male or female breeder only will have the opposite included this year if time allows for it.

I will make another blog post about the update on how the ferals are coming out on Monday. Take care!

Alpha Build 7.0 for Patrons

Hey; incredibly sorry for not keeping up with updating the blog and patreon with information this month, I really dropped the ball on that and am going to look into possibly bringing on someone to help with it in the future. It's easy to forget sometimes that only a fraction of our fans and patrons watch the streams, and those were inconsistent this month due to intermittent vacation/traveling time from members of our team. I want to make sure we're keeping you all in the loop as much as possible. That said, our streaming schedules will be much more consistent next month, and I'll make sure we're making at least weekly blog updates.

This patch will be a smaller one; the largest focus was on lag optimization and bug fixes, and thankfully we managed to take a big chunk out of the lag. Note: your old save files will not transfer for this version. This should hopefully be the last time for a good few versions that this will be the case (no promises, though).

There's also a few balance changes that will take some playtesting/feedback. Let me know how you feel about the various changes.

On the subject of new breeding animations: You guys have been waiting patiently, and they'll be here soon! Right now the art team is finishing up filling out the Feral variations of the monsters, and then our focus will be heavily towards new breeding animations and filling in the holes.

7.0 Patch Notes

Old save files will not transfer (hopefully the last time for a while)

Additions
- Happiness events: there are now a handful of happiness events you can get if your monsters are happy enough (still being balanced, will need feedback on them)
- You can now harvest from the Breeding Menu
- Breeding Menu Sorting: started adding sorting options to the breeding menu, right now the menu will move last partners to the top of the list, and allows you to hide monsters that don't have any remaining hearts or can't be fed, but this will be expanded on considerably in the future (UI placeholder)
- Newborn monsters now have a few days of "summoning sickness" in which they cannot breed or generate hearts (this balance change is potentially temporary, pending feedback)
- A number of the genderbent and neoteny variants have been given unique pen silhouettes
- You can now have more than 6 requests at the same time, and if you do then you'll be able to scroll through them in the requests menu
- You can now scroll in the contacts menu, if you have enough contacts
- Breeding Menu hotkeys have been added/changed: Q will swap the folders, W will harvest, E will open the feeding menu, and R will breed the two selected monsters

Bug Fixes / Balance
- The lag should be massively diminshed; there's some things that will still need optimizing, but you should find it generally far more playable
- The Filly no longer does the creepy blinking thing
- The difficulty of bronze requests now scales slower, and new requests are more frequent
- Kittengirls have mouths!
- Futa genderbent monsters should appear properly in their pens

Known Issues
- There will be issues loading saves from older versions
- Skin and hair colors may be incorrect on some new monsters/variants
- Pen silhouettes for some neoteny monsters are currently incorrect and show up as base monsters instead
- Some animations have been disabled or are glitchy due to the new overhauls and colors
- Due to the overhaul of the color system, colors are incorrect in a number of pens and animations

Happy (Belated) Halloween! Alpha Build 6.6.6

Woo, that was a doozy of a stream. I'm happy to announce that we've managed to include ALL of the currently planned neoteny variants in this update, and it's a pretty massive number of new variants! There's 16 new variants in all, which is far and away the most we've ever packed into an update.

Warning: there was a lot jammed into this update, between new monster variants and reworks/additions to the event system as part of setting up the Kaliba event, so there's a high likelihood of bugs. Report them and I'll try to get them dealt with via hotfix ASAP. There's also a chance that saves from older versions will not transfer correctly to this version. Next version I'm going to be doing some reworking of the save system, and I'm sorry to say saves will definitely not transfer. That, however, should be the last time we have that problem for a long time.

I plan on uploading the next public release tomorrow.

6.6.6 Patch Notes

Additions
- Queen Kaliba's Halloween Quest! Start by visiting town a few times in October. It's a fairly involved questline that includes a puzzle and a new sex scene! (let me know if there's any trouble starting or progressing through the quest)
- New/reworked neoteny monster variants: Kittengirl, Kittenboy, Dickpup, Titpup, Chickadee, Budgie, Heiftaurus, Vealtaurus, Boy Elfling, Girl Elfling, Imp, Lilim, Foal, and Filly
- New genderbent futas: Futa Demoness, Futa Mare, and Futa Titwolf
- Revamped futas: Futa Harpy and Futa Elf
- You can now go inside Cordelia's Lab
- Added Swine color variations

Bug Fixes / Balance
- The game now starts in August (makes it a bit closer to the existing holiday events)
- The Alchemy building should no longer be able to be upgraded, breaking the game (may still occur with saves from 6.6 or 6.6.1: just try to fight the urge to upgrade the alchemy building, nothing good can come of it)
- Taurus skins have been fixed
- Preferences should now be visible on the breeding and new monster screens
- Genderbent has been tuned back to occur much less frequently in the shop
- Preference gain has been tweaked slightly

Known Issues
- There may be issues loading saves from older versions
- Kittengirls have no mouths and I haven't figured out why yet. I would ask them, but...
- Skin and hair colors may be incorrect on some new monsters/variants, Vealtaurus in particular
- Pen silhouettes for the neoteny monsters and some genderbent monsters are currently incorrect and show up as base monsters instead
- Some animations have been disabled or are glitchy due to the new overhauls and colors
- Due to the overhaul of the color system, colors are incorrect in a number of pens and animations
- There's been an increase in lag (particularly when restocking the store), and we're in the process of fixing it/optimizing the game in general

Progress

Hello everyone! Ferals are still getting hammered out, here are some finalized ones-

Progress with the Demoness

Also an updated Yuelia!

Kaliba x Fbreeder is also completed, just finishing up the Mbreeder x Kaliba

Hotfix 6.6.1 and The Official Breeding Season Wiki!

Hey; I'm putting up hotfix 6.6.1 under the Creations section in Patreon in just a minute here: this is a hotfix in the true meaning of the word just meant to rectify the issues with loading old saves. Unfortunately the NPC schedule system does not play nice with saves before 6.6 and requires a little hack to make work, done via debug code (important details below).

There will be an update coming somewhere in the next couple of months which will not allow old saves to transfer due to a few more large structural changes to the game, which I apologize for in advance. I plan to get that save editing guide out before that; sorry it's taking so long, the save files keep changing as we keep developing the fundamental game systems :P.

Other big news: development of the new Breeding Season website is taking a considerable amount of time due to the effort we're putting into the new forums and community features. We really want to make a community that rewards long-time patrons and fans who have gone the extra mile for us, and we have some surprises in store for you all that I hope you'll really enjoy!

That said, we thought we would go ahead and launch the wiki early, as it's a sorely needed supplement to the game and something you guys have been clamoring for, and there's no reason for us to make you all wait any longer.

Official Breeding Season Wiki

The  new wiki can be found at wiki.breedingseason.com. We plan to fill it thoroughly with helpful gameplay info and future development plans, as well as a sorely needed FAQ that will hopefully clear up a lot of common questions about the game and its development.

Also; I want to thank community member QuestionableContent for his massive help in getting the wiki set up! He really went the extra mile in helping getting the wiki content established!

Alright, finally, the hotfix:

Hotfix 6.6.1

Bug Fixes
- Fixed issue where saves from older versions would load a blank screen
- NPC schedules are not retroactively added to old saves, they can be added using the debug code "npcscheduleshack" (this is only really important for Lily so you can do the volunteering quest)
IMPORTANT: do NOT use this code while in the middle of the alchemy quests or it WILL break it, however it is safe to use BEFORE telling Kay you'll help her with Ellenor or AFTER agreeing to Levi's request. I heavily recommend making sure you have either never spoken to Kay about Ellenor, or have gotten past the point of accepting Levi's request in an older version before trying to transfer to 6.6.1.

Breeding Season Informative Post

-The main team members are-

H-bomb -creator of the game, programmer, writer , calmness issues 

S-Purple - artist, main designer , assistant animation designer , concept artist, anger issues

Fleet- programmer , code maintenance , bug fixing, master of the ocean

Vanilly- artist, main animator, co-designer, concept artist , owl entrepreneur 

-Our contract workers are-

Vaha- web developer, site maintenance

Taiikodon- still image/pin up artist

-Regarding project itself-

Breeding Season began on LoK forums on January 8th 2013. The development was slow due to H-bombs personal life and studies getting in the way as well as being a one man team. He was receiving donations at the time to help him maintain his focus, eventually his paypal was frozen and project was put on halt for 4 months.

A year later on February 23rd 2014, Spurple officially joined the team as designer and art lead. After a small negotiation, H-bomb decided to launch the first Patreon page which would go live in March 19th 2014!

Two months into the patreon campaign we’ve amassed around 8000$ per month on our patreon, and have contracted a variety of animators. On August 20th 2014 Fleet officially joins the team as assistant programmer!(hooray!)

Fleet is then responsible for creating many essential parts of code that would speed up and automate the implementation of various parts for animations and ingame mechanics, as well as fixing countless bugs, he is also the father of the fishing system.

Skipping further ahead Vanilly joins the team on December 26th 2014, her first mention on the blog! She will then be responsible for creating and concepting countless animations that are seen in the game today. 

Her initiative to shorten the gap between us and the fanbase as volunteer PR manager is what brought you (our beloved fans) the daily streams that the team hosts  these past few months! (As well as intensify every other team members workflow)

And so that brings us into year 2015, when we’ve been overhauling my old assets, and with the help of Vanilly and Fleet, the art team has been developing and finalizing the newly designed variants for all the monsters , allowing you ( the player) to choose whatever you want to have on your ranch without gender based hindrance!

What is in store for 2016 now that 2015 is coming to a close? Well that’s for you all to wait and find out!

Now then to some common questions-

“You’ve said the designs were done, why aren’t they in the game?”

A lot of time and work goes into taking a still image , cutting it up, adding variants, putting it together, animating it, adding color and skin variations - its a lengthy process that takes quite a while, saying that design is done is about 40% of the overall work done.

These are numbers for a single complete variant’s idle:

• Concept Art 
• Finalized Art 
• 6 Face Variations
• 6 Hair Variations 
• 4 Skin Colors
• 12 Color Palettes
• 3 Various monster icons for UI
• 5/10 Pen Silhouettes
• 1 Consumable interface icon
• Cut Up
• 1 part assembly
•  Fixing parts to ensure they don't break after testing the assembly
• 2 animation loops

“Why aren’t you putting out animations faster?”

At the moment we’re focusing on closing the gaps in the designs for all the monsters before we tackle their animations, as for the process, the average speed at which our art department can produce a quality animation is 2 per 8 days. An idle animation takes less of course but fixing it adds another two or three days depending on complexity of error. Not to mention if something breaks when implemented in the game.

“Why aren’t you hiring more people?”

Despite the numbers shown on Patreon, we are not exactly swimming in money. Its true that our income is still quite respectable , after tax reduction, fraudulent payments, declined credit cards and what have you, we’re left with way less than what the ridiculous numbers people calculate .

With that said, we are already planning on our team’s expansion in january , we’re trying to pick the best possible options for our team’s additions in order to maintain the quality of animations without having to have every new addition re-adjust to our process of work.

!ALSO!

Thank  you for reporting the bugs! We're getting a patch out as soon as possible!

If anyone has any questions or would like to inquire more about other inner machinations of the project they’re free to comment below~!

Alpha Build 6.6 for Patrons

6.6 Patch Notes

Additions
- Added Preferences: monsters can now have preferences that give them more happiness when bred with certain monsters, and can develop new preferences over time (unfortunately, happiness events still waiting to be implemented)
- NPCs now appear in the environments and follow schedules so you can talk to them on certain days (much of this is placeholder right now, may look/feel a little wonky)
- Added new consumable effects for the Mandrake and Swine
- Added Stallion and Seraph skin and color variations
- Made some alterations to the Save Menu and Ranch Addon Menu, should be more intuitive/easier to use, and you can now delete saves

Bug Fixes / Balance
- Fixed issues with unfulfillable melf and felf requests being generated
- Updated elf and cockatiel skin variations
- Fixed swine ears to correlate properly with their heads
- Changed how enabling/disabling fetish traits like futa and neoteny works; now you can activate it/deactivate it and already existing monster will switch their animations when you do
- Auto-harvester no longer harvests frenzied monsters, and gives a small happiness loss
- Some small graphical UI updates

Known Issues
- Monster descriptions, consumable effects, and game mechanics are unfinished/unimplemented on a number of new monsters
- Some animations have been disabled or are glitchy due to the new overhauls and colors
- Due to the on-going overhaul of the color system, colors are incorrect in a number of pens and animations
- There's been a slight increase in lag from the new color/animation system, which we still need to optimize

Zombies!

The halloween event is coming along smoothly, all that's left is animation! The monsters are about done as well, just tweaking colors and making sure they don't bug out.

Some concepts for merfolk

And the last of the inquisitor mock ups!