Friday, May 27, 2016

Programming Update

Hey guys, it's been way too long since I've done a programming blog update.

Apologies on the delay on the 7.4 public release: I was trying to get the browser embedded version working again but continue to run into issues. Unfortunately, we may just not be able to have browser embedded versions again until we launch the website. As a result, I'll just put the download version of the 7.4 public release up now.

As to when we'll finally launch the site; we should see the new site go up in the next couple of months (at the very least, we'll launch the blog portion of the site with the community portion to come afterwards). Right now I admit I'm the bottleneck for getting the site up and operational and I've just had my attention split between too many things at the moment, exacerbating the delay. Following the next update I plan on re-focusing on getting the site going ASAP. Thanks for bearing with us.

As for game progress: I've been working on cleaning up and adding a lot of new functionality to the new breeding menu. You'll now be able to sort monsters between your own custom tabs as you please using a drag-and-drop menu, as well as rearrange the monsters in the tabs however you like. Please continue to give us feedback on changes you'd like done to the menu, I want to make sure it's as perfect as we can make it since it's where the vast majority of the gameplay happens. I've also been dedicating time to writing more storyline events, including working on the events leading up to getting Alita, your first ranch assistant, who you should be seeing in-game relatively soon.

Fleet has been working on implementing the ranch assistant UI in between making animation set-ups, and it's coming along nicely. Right now our plans are to have the ranch assistant system finally make it in-game with update 7.7 (the July 1st update).

Friday, May 6, 2016

Hotfix 7.5.1

Hey, here's a small hotfix with some bug fixes/minor changes to 7.5 that will be going up in a few minutes. We'll be continuing to tool around with the look/feel of the breeding menu based on feedback.

Hotfix 7.5.1

Additions
- Added in Kay's bikini dialog sprite to the clam event
Bug Fixes
- You can now click the feed or harvest button in the breeding menu without opening the selection menu
- Made the selection menu open a bit faster
- Fixed a "test text" event showing up at the beach
- Other minor bugfixes, including issues with the beach event

Monday, May 2, 2016

Alpha Build 7.5 for Patrons

Woo, I'm exhausted so these patch notes may not be comprehensive; I'll go back through them and add anything I missed later.

Sorry for the lessened communication this month: scheduling and workload made it difficult for us to keep up with blog updates. We'll try to have more consistent blog updates next month.

Mostly this month was heavily dedicated to the UI overhaul which has been quite a task. The vast majority of the game takes place in the breeding menu, so we tried to focus on getting it right. Unfortunately, the new tabs and sorting system are not in place yet, but those should come soon. Also, we delayed the inclusion of the ranch assistant system, as much of the UI we'll use for that will be based on UI we develop for the breeding menu, etc. I'm pretty pleased with how the breeding menu is turning out, but I'm eager to see feedback on it.

Also, the writing for this month's new Kay event comes from Gats! (with some hackish editing from yours truly :P)

7.5 Patch Notes

Additions
- New Kay Event, complete with animation! Explore the beach when you have adequate affection with her to trigger the event. If you have more affection, you'll get a better sex scene!
- New Breeding animations: Dire Titwolf x Fbreeder, Titpup x Fbreeder
- Brand new Breeding and Item Menus: these were significant overhauls that are still in progress, so some functionality is not yet implemented/expect some bugs/poor optimization. Also, give us feedback on how you like these new menus!

Bug Fixes / Balance
- Did some optimization with how colors are applied to monsters, hopefully this means animations should load faster, but it may have introduced some color issues to some animations
- Minor bug fixes

Known Issues
- May be some bugs/lost functionality in the breeding and inventory menus due to the overhauls; we plan to hotfix these over time
- Removed the Aitako event (Kay's event is replacing it), also, the sponge Kay gives you currently looks the same as the pink pearl; this will change in the future
- There may be some weird game behavior when monsters with disabled traits are obtained
- Some animations are glitchy due to design changes and colors
- Colors/variations are incorrect in a number of pens and animations

Expect the public release sometime this week.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Status Update

Hey, for those of you patiently waiting for 7.5; we're dealing with some last-minute bugs with the new UI giving us a slight delay on the update and I want to polish things a bit more before I unleash it on you guys. For now, expect the patron update to go up around 6-7 AM CST today (5/2), so about 5-6 hours from now. If you guys want to hang out or help with testing I'll be streaming up until release and dropping downloads to test versions in the stream chat periodically as I root out the bugs: https://picarto.tv/Hbomb