Meowllo! The things we have to do pile up fast, and the days are going by faster 🙀 We covered a lot of ground last month over a variety of things, so we’ll just go over some of them briefly:
🌿 PLAINS PAIN
We started going through the main story and implementing the dialogue, cutscenes, and quests. We’ve had the pleasure of Ken helping us wrangle all the implementation and all we had to do was play through it and fix any outstanding issues.
On paper, that sounds easy! Right?
Well, Scarecrow disagrees.
This is supposed to say turnips...
Without spoiling anything, there’s a quest where you must give a scarecrow 20 turnips. He then does a little animation. I was but a naive child when I wrote this part out, not knowing the headaches a Simple Spinning Scarecrow could cause.
There is supposed to be one (1) scarecrow. In this screenshot, there are four (4). Why are there four? Why is only one spinning? Why are there four??
How I feel about the scarecrow
We did eventually figure it out, but not after a long day of cursing and confusion.
Luckily, by the end of the Grassy Plains, we got through a lot of growing pains and were able to get through the Desert Canyon section much faster.
Here’s a bonus picture of a bug where we had some camera misconfiguration that resulted in the characters facing the opposite way. But it’s fixed now! I felt so smart 😊
📝 TAKING INVENTORY
Snacko has a lot of stuff. Just…stuff. Lots of it. This includes recipes, furniture, buildings, NPC data…stuff.
Well, we had to start organizing the stuff so we could take inventory and make sure everything will be actually implemented in the future.
It looks a bit different depending on what sort of information it is, but now that we have everything mapped out, we’ve been going through our internal database and custom tool to make sure all the items are in, which ones need icons, which ones need an item description, etc. It’s not the most glamorous or fun work, but it’s necessary!
Part of that is also going back and realizing we’re still missing some tutorial popups 😳 Popups will occasional happen mid-cutscene during a tutorial given by Nobu or someone else, but you can also read through them at your own pace via any bookshelf. We were missing some for things like ranching and fishing, but now they’re in!
Every time you mash through a tutorial, I cry just a little bit.
And lastly…
⛏️ ALL MINES
We had originally shown our maze-like approach to mines in Snacko, where the layouts are procedurally generated using pieces and parts we’ve made and set up.
The art never got updated, and it finally got the makeover it deserved!
Floors, walls, foliage, and assets are now in line with what you’d expect to fit in with the rest of the game. It’s a big relief knowing we no longer have a big brown box. The top screenshot was taken 9 days prior to the bottom screenshot. The atmosphere now fits Dale’s awesome mines themes much better!
We also had an issue of seeing through the doorways would diminish the feeling of discovery, so we made a shader that fades as you get closer to you - but only once you’ve removed the blocker! We hope you have a lot of fun in the mines 💖
…And that’s all for this month! Thank you for sticking with us until the end. January had a lot going on, and development will probably keep this pace up until we hit the light at the end of the tunnel!
Thank you so much for your support, and we’ll see you next month~
Hello 2022!
Meowllo everyone! Happy new year!
It’s amazing that after…39 devlogs and 2 years, we’ve finally hit this point. What point? The point in development where we’re focusing on content creation and implementation, and fixes and balancing!
It felt like we’ve been creating an endless stream of features, systems, and designs…but the end of the tunnel is near. We still have some small things to tie up, but we’re mainly into filling out the bones we’ve made with some juicy, meaty, content.
Honestly, it’s a little scary. For the months and months we’ve spent on creating the foundation for the game, and now we have to tie everything together. We have to make sure all of the things we decide to fill the game with result in a fun game.
It feels like a lot of responsibility.
This also means there’s going to be less and less to show in the new year. For the past 2 (wow) years, we’ve been able to chat a lot about what we’ve been doing with development. Putting in day-night cycles, dialogue choices, and so on. But now, with content becoming our new focus, there will be less to show. We don’t want to spoil the entire game before it even comes out!
So, now that we’re in the new year, we’ll be working extra hard to bring Snacko to the finish line. Thank you for all the support you’ve been giving us. We’re extremely humbled by everyone’s excitement for Snacko, and we want to do our best to live up to these expectations and succeed!
We’ve heard about you sharing us with your friends, we've noticed your wishlists on Steam, we’ve seen your pledges and donations on Patreon and Ko-fi, and we’ve felt your enthusiasm through your Twitter replies and YouTube comments. We’re not exaggerating or joking when we say this is the fuel that helps us keep going.
Sincerely, from the bottom of our hearts, and our four cats, thank you for an amazing 2021. We hope you can continue your love and support for us in 2022 🐾
As a quick recap, I thought it would be fun to summarize what we've achieved in 2021...
🌱 You can now walk around in all 4 biomes!
🏗️ Redesigned the building system to make it easier to use with controllers! Added more options like multi-slot dyes and more!
🎵 Dale North finished the OST! All the tracks are great, by the way…
🎮 Announced we were coming to the Nintendo Switch on Wholesome Direct with a shiny new trailer!
🎬 Implemented a system for cutscenes and events!
📑 Finished the game’s script and started implementing content
🐧 Stefan Ahlin has given us the joy of idle animations for all the NPCs
💌 Brought the world to life with visual effects by Ken Visudharomn and Adam deGrandis, and sound effects by Fat Bard and José Ramón García
