What started out as a 4 week project to overhaul the User Interface and User Experience turned into almost a year of completely reworking the game. I went full OCD on this. Let's get on with this then.
Your save wont work. Sorry. I overhauled everything in this game. It should be a sequel.
Graphical Overhaul
Went from Unity default renderer to the "Universal Rendering Pipeline" URP. This gave a massive performance increase. Downside is a lot of custom environment and lighting effects went bye. It was a trade that I'll work towards fixing. New cartoon Shader. It's faster and more efficient. It gave the characters and environments better and more consistent look. User Interface redesigned. This is consistent across the game finally. No longer looks like the Treasure Goblin hobbled it together. This actually kicked of redoing the entire game. Since a HUGE portion of the game code was actually in the various UI elements. Textures, lighting, everything in between got reworked. Tree and other assets replaced with more stylized versions. I always wanted more cartoon and less "real world". I'm no artist, so I was limited by ($0) budget. Things all worked out well. I did other stuff. If you played the original you'll notice. Icons updated and reflect the world better. I totally changed more stuff than I can remember and didn't write down any of it.
Game World
Almost all of the levels have been adjusted and some areas experienced a major overhaul. I'm terrible at playing this game so I may have accidentally made things too easy. The Stars have been moved around and even I missed a few cleverly hidden ones. My ADHD completely made me forget where I hid the stars. Anyway good luck finding them all. Diamonds, fruit and health items are now loot items. Breakables like barrels have been updated to gift out a procedurally generated loot item.
AI
AI got some reworking. Boss fights are a bit more interesting. I am still terrible at this, But I'm working on it. Baby steps. Bosses will now use Melee and ranged attacks. This depends on your distance. I had to calm the Yeti down because he was constantly owning me. I suck at my own game and I'm sort of ok with that. After breaking 42 controllers I finally found balance for the boss fights. The Spider needs reworking again. But it is beatable and that is what matters most. Enemy normies have been reworked a bit too. They can go up and down hills better... (this was actually challenging to program). They won't get stuck at edges and in some cases will jump down them. I changed a bunch of other stuff but can't remember. Play the game it's pretty awesome what I did.
Other Stuff
I'm burned out and working on 5 hours sleep for like 7 days. But I love Game dev and this has been a most excellent learning experience for me. Honestly, I hope you enjoy the game. That's all I really want, is my education to go benefit some people in having a truly fun time. Oh and the Sarcastic Sign... Yeah he's back and in a lot more places. I think Sign is my main character. I dunno may delete later. Lucky Wheel ownership went from Lenny to Daria. She was just super eager to do something productive. I love Daria Deer and hope she can get her own game some day. Lucky Wheel also got revised. There is a new loot table and other random items. The Pet stuff was revised as well. I made the interface less confusing and more streamlined. I really do need to hit this again. The Unity UI system was a beast to master.
There were a ton load more changes and I just can't write them all down. I had rewritten possibly 90% of the code to revise this game. I also changed level design , took out most of the annoying features and slimmed the game to what is raw and fun.
I thank you again. This has been a tremendous undertaking and I am Pleased with where it has gotten to.
Happy Holidays Update
So I was doing a playthrough video series, a year late I know. I noticed some sounds were missing so I went on a quest to find them. A fortunate project backup had the missing sounds and I added them back in.
But the project was bugged and I spent 4 days trying to fix an issue. During that time I decided to also update the UI. I stumbled on an exceptional cartoon cell shader as well and decided to add that to the game. The results are amazing. The game is as colorful and cartoonish as I had originally desired. Trees and objects now pop out more and have vibrant coloring. This is how I imagined the game.
User interfaces are simply not my thing. But I learned some tricks over the past year. I'm hoping to upgrade the entire User Interface with a more modern yet cartoonish look. This will free the project of NGUI and use the standard UI. Buttons will look significantly better as well. Overall even if I fail, it will be a great learning experience.
I'm still supporting this game best I can. I'm also working on another project and rely on sales to fund a much better and bigger game. So share this out to your friends who support extremely small Indie Dev Studios.
The Great Patch
Hello everyone!
It has been an enormous span of time since I updated Animal Friends Adventure. Trust me, there has been a lot going on since release. I love this game a lot, and really want to expand on the story and spirit guardians (pets). There's so much background that hasn't manifested yet. I'm a solo dev, so time is a bit rare. Anyway let's get to those patch notes shall we?
The Patch notes you want
I have not abandoned this game at all.
I updated stuff, like lots, and it's pretty cool.
Updated Unity version to 2019.4 branch and cried for a few months. There was this bug with Visual Studio 2019 that all PC games would crash right after the splash screen. The guy who made Rewired helped me and I am eternally grateful.
Mesh merge was used to optimize stuff. Unity uses lots of drawcalls and the less the better. Mesh merge reduced this by 80% making super amazing frame rates on weak hardware. Not that your rig is weak or anything.
I cleaned up a lot of the source code, optimized the heck out of it. removed the chain function calls. You can't see this in game, but heck it made managing code so much easier. You get some extra FPS, I get less sleepless nights. Win win.
I reworked a TON of levels, like all of them. I took out a lot of stupid stuff. Added in lots of cool stuff. What am I talking about?
Reworked the sliding mechanism to be, well, less dumb. It was annoying me a lot too.
Reworked levels where you'd slide and bounce mindlessly. Now you actually have to play the game in these areas. More jump puzzles. Nothing too difficult.
New story line!
Lots of bug fixes, optimizations and future plans. The last part sort of relies on you.
Our new community manager (my BFF) will be assisting where I cannot.
The Patch notes you really didn't want
So that new story line thing. It's still in my head, but little hints here and there are coming out. Still some minor performance issues here and there. I'm working it out. I said "here and there" 3 times in a row. I have a day job, so time developing this love of a game is limited and takes more time than I'd like. New worlds, abilities, items and character controller are planned. Above point is why it's not in game yet. I'm working on a 3rd game and need to balance on a tight rope to improve this game.
Long needed update out.
Hello everyone. I am so sorry it's been a long time since the last update. Been working with an actual publisher for console and have neglected the PC side too long.
Fixed the Save file. I misplaced a variable and it never loaded your saved game file. This is a huge blunder. Sorry it took so long to get this one.
Lots of levels were redesigned to be less annoying.
The Sliding mechanism works a whole lot better now. Instead of guessing how long the slide takes I just put a trigger where it should end.
I took out almost all of the sliding and bouncing over water. Now there's some challenging jump puzzles instead.
Interface is more uniform. Fonts should all be the same now.
Lots of other things have been added and fixed. I just cannot remember them all.
Anyway, please drop us some happy ratings. More fixes are on the way now that we're wrapping up with the publisher.
New Update out!
Hello fellow and valued Gamers!
I've been extraordinarily busy really polishing up this game. It's something I just love doing. I didn't get everything I wanted done yet, but am far enough in to provide a really good and meaningful update while the sale is going on. There will be another update following soon after this one. I did a serious pass over every level in the game, played each one at least 10 times over to adjust, fix and rework things that just were not fun. I'm still cleaning up, feel free to report bugs. I may have missed something.
List of major fixes
Major playability pass World 1 through 7.
Personal light in overly dark areas like "Creepy caverns" now works as intended. It lights objects and casts frightening shadows.
I botched the "Steam AppID" and it was building for the wrong game. I took steps to prevent it from defaulting to original number.
Honestly, I am tired of the "skipping over water like a stone" portions of the game and am making these areas more engaging, and dangerous. This will take some more time.
Removed excess creatures. With the new combat system, they became seriously problematic.
Tuned damage of all the player characters. Ape and Bear obviously do the most damage.
Thrown weapons also do various damage amounts. Again, Bear and Ape.. They can break the metal bricks...
Double jump has been mostly fixed. Sometimes you can still pull 3 or 4 jumps. That is not how things should work.
Fixing Double jump also made midair weapon attacks tricky. They're cuddly animals not Ninjas, so there's that :-p
Water damage types is tuned. Green is highly toxic and kills no matter how much life. The more clear water is only 1 damage. Lava, well we all know what lava should do.
Water looks a lot better now.
Fixed falling through world in many areas.
Added crushing to the falling blocks.
Added a nasty spike trap.
Fixed animations and weapons on several monsters. (I left gravity on the treent club and it fell out of his hands, oops)
Disabled timed levels. It was a silly feature that just didn't get implemented as well as I'd like.
All the boss fights are relatively fixed now. (they're all beatable)
The desert has falling blocks now. More to come.
Known Issues
SPIDERS! I hate these things. Unity is so strange with colliders. I did a frame by frame view and the shovel does hit them. But sometimes they ignore the shovel and continue being creepy. I may have to switch weapon damage to raycast. But I like the fun of whacking boxes and barrels. I could do an add force, but physics is way more fun. So many choices.
Boss battles are annoying. Except that one dude, he's scary and fun.
The shovel, it's a silly weapon. I'm adding more.
The shovel again, it sometimes wanders from your hand. It's a mildly annoying bug.
Sometimes creatures that resurrect won't.
Sometimes Creatures will register two hits despite that they were hit once.
Some creatures will die while their "damage flash" is going on. They shouldn't.
Player controller needs a complete rewrite.
In some weird instances Panda and characters will "Float" after resurrection. It also happens after hitting some monsters. I have theories, like maybe an alien mothership is trying to kidnap them.
I took out some blocks in the Desert level and forgot to fix the hanging vines and foliage.
Me.
Stability and Feature update
Fixed a crash error with the Post processing filter. Turned off two pesky features, and got a nice frame rate boost as a bonus. Initial Game loading significantly increased. Everything was moved out of Unity's "Resources" folder, which globbed everything into a 5 gig file. Pets: lots of fixes. This really got a decent looking into and a framework updated to expand pets. Rockster needs a new talent. Currently he's borrowing Impy's. Give us ideas. I'd like to make them chatty. The Seas turtles were absolutely annoying. Fixed them to be less annoying. The Scorpion had a wrong animation playing on first death. Also for creatures that resurrect, colliders are left on. This is a temporary work around for weird behaviors. Initial rewrite of the player is happening. Fixed the jumping mechanic and other annoyances. Planning on adding more variety to the player's abilities. No crashes through world 4 confirmed. More updates later. Adjusting the AI. they get less confused on slopes. The Golems will no longer ponder the meaning of life at edges. Adjusted a lot of annoying things with The desert levels. One pushable springboard was too heavy. Made it lose weight. The mystery block in the desert was removed. In the desert, level 4, There was a switch to open a door. But it's dark in that room and it was behind a bush. I had the gardener remove the bush and added a light to brighten your day.
Not done fixing things. Will try to update more often. Thank you for your patience.
Patch notes: Stability and Quality of life
Just some fixes added for improvements.
Fixed the pet store interface. It was neglected for too long.
Game no longer crashes when playing as Lenny the Lemur.
Optimized load time, especially for console. (was loading 1.5 gigs of audio data into memory)
Reduced memory demands by not preloading so many audio files at once.
Level end menu now has option to go straight to next level, or back to character select. This keeps the fun going.
Clicking the gift box should no longer bring you back to the home screen.
Updated some more graphical items to give UI a better look.
Some important fixes
Fixed a major issue with a full screen white glare blocking the view. This was cause with our Post Processor conflicting with a shader. The Shader was replaced with one that won't argue as much. Fixed the last boss' fireball. It'll no longer set the character on fire causing childhood trauma. Fixed the final boss to throw his fireball a lot slower. Fixed the final boss so you can actually whack him with your shovel.
After mission complete and character select, the game will go to level select instead of straight to next level. We may later add a button to give the choice for this behavior. Mission select scrolls properly to the oldest level. No more scrolling forever to find your level.
Some monsters that were not stompable got stomped anyway. Fixed this with a bool, how cool. The shovel will go away as intended if you decide to throw something while swinging. Gamepad controls have been significantly improved. We'll be working towards making this 100% gamepad enabled so you can play your way.
Phase 1 of performance optimizations have gone through. We're working on making sure the game is consistently above 60fps.
Thank you to everyone who's supported this game from the beginning. Thank you new customers for sticking around while the game gets patched and improved.
Gargantuan Update dropped!
Good morning Gamers. After a few tweaks and final touches I made the call to make the update go live. This is a massive and exciting update. Please send email for support. I cannot always answer questions on the Steam Community forums.
So what's new? Pretty much everything. It's like a new game.
Graphics
This is the most significant change because it's what you see.
All new high res models. Trees, landscapes, statues... the list goes on, have all been replaced with higher detailed models.
Almost all billboarding and flat models were replaced with the real thing.
High res textures and bump maps. This "simple" change really improved the overall game look and feel.
Water. This too was updated. waterfalls look more real and natural. Lakes have waves and reflection. Ice lakes are frozen over. (I know sounds obvious, but this had to all be added in)
Wind zones. Thanks to the use of real tree and grass models, wind affects them naturally.
Post Processing. This one gives the game that AAA look. Lighting is amazing and dramatic now. Serious, see for yourself. Caves are dark and eery. Water has the green glow of contamination and radioactivity...
Lots of other exciting additions.
AI
The AI was completely rewritten from the ground up. Admittedly the original monsters were dumber than rocks.
Monsters are aware of their environment. They're full of senses that allow them to react to changes.
Some monsters will use projectiles.
Some will punch you.
Beware of the Treasure goblin. They're extra stabby. They're also a real fun fountain of gold coin.
Bees are annoying as they should bee.
Some are pretty angry and will attack barrels and other destructible objects. This is not a bug.
Lots of new Monsters
Thanks to the new AI and Combat system I was able to add in a plethora of new monsters.
Monsters have been moved to their proper environment.
Combat System
The new combat system allows a greater variety
Monster attack timing, reflexes and hitpoints.
The Gorilla and Bear player characters do more damage than the rest.
Player can engage in Melee. For now there's only a shovel.
More weapons will be added and an RPG style in-game store opened for weapons and upgrades.
Monsters attack with range and melee.
Some monsters resurrect.
Many monsters cannot be headstomped.
Not all monsters will bump hurt anymore. Mostly this is melee monsters.
Bug Fixes
A lot.
Like tons of bugs.
I must have ripped out all my hair tracking some down.
Almost ready for major update.
My apologies for not being overly active within the community. There's a lot that needs to be done for this massive update. Animal Friends Adventure is like an entirely new game now. :)
I'm really hoping by the end of the week the game will be re-released. Bigger, prettier and a ton of improvements with more on the way.
