Added new water system & fixed bug when eating food from the ground
Latest little update adds the new water system, (No boundaries in place currently), also groom now works in basic way - it is auto grooming which will change shortly and fix alignment, I pushed this update as I found game breaking bug when eating from the ground which is now fixed. I should have the improvements to the other updates very soon.
Message now shows when you steal a nest or non troop member steals yours
A small update to show messages when stealing a nest occurs.
Nest Stealing form Rival Gorilla implementation phase 1
A little more activity on the nest building feature. You can now steal nests built by rivals and they can steal yours. Just the beginning of the competition between rival and player male gorilla. Much bigger update coming shortly with more notifications of the rivalry.
Gorilla's can now join your troop.
Players can now add a gorilla to their troop once they find them by increasing bonding/loyalty. You do this by giving them food, building them a nest. Next tasks are to give the player more information in game within the UI. Next up is improving the competition with the rival alpha male gorilla so he can steal your troop members. Following that there will be extra work on the non gorilla animals and AI.
Thanks for the great support
Thank you for the messages and support since I announced work has continued on the game. There have been lots of updates to install and test, thankfully that is complete so now we are getting closer to our first update with the new systems. Initially it will be a simple animal simulator needing food, shelter etc.. while we test the new controller and basic AI of the non player Gorillas.
The environment is looking nice and running better than the old system even now, and the controller is much better with the ability to zoom out much further which will come in very hand when looking at the non player animals and performing troop tasks. I am hoping to add another programmer to help with UI integration and the non player gorilla camera system where the player can check out what members of the troop are doing and see their vitals at a glance.
Back to development
First of all I would like to apologise for the stop in development that happened shortly after covid 19 hit. We were a micro team of two and the pandemic hit both of us hard. My partner had to change his work patterns completely and could not continue and as my main business was hospitality I had to completely focus on that for my staff and business to survive.
Unfortunately this meant not being able to devout any time to game development. Even with this however, the inevitable has now happened and the hospitality business has been forced to close. The upside to this is I can refocus on game development and with that in mind the plan is as follows.
The Lonely Gorilla has a lot of potential and I intend to work on a new update and getting assistance in key areas to fulfil the vision. While this is the case the game will be reduced to 99p (This should happen from the 13/10/21 as this takes a couple of days to activate) so anyone who feels like supporting this endeavour can do so at minimal cost while providing a little incentive that there is demand for this game if it is taken to where it deserves. As we make improvements we will increase the price steadily until it is a finished and acceptable state. Please contribute if you can or feel it is worthwhile but if not please wait for updates and add to wishlist.
I'm sure this has been a tough time for everyone and completely understand if this is no longer of interest and I can only apologise again for the delay to updating the community.
Andy
Overhaul on the way
Hi all, Now our second game has entered early access The Lonely Gorilla is getting a complete overhaul. The problems we have had with some of the systems has led to us not getting the game into the shape we wanted.
We have had to go back to the drawing board on a few things (Especially AI and the player controller). Both of these things have been completely re written so we can deliver what we set out to do. We are still a little bit off from releasing them but the improvements will be worth the wait and as mentioned on the previous announcement as a thank you for your patience we are gifting our latest game to all current owners of TLG.
Our main priorities are better control with keyboard and mouse and reactive social response for the gorillas but feel free to post any ideas/improvements in the forums.
Andy
Sale on tomorrow and Free game soon for the Lonely Gorilla owners.
Hi all,
Due to the delay on getting some of the bigger updates released for the Lonely Gorilla I have decided to extend the free game offer to all current owners as well the easy access owners.
The updates will still be released for the Lonely Gorilla but due to the delay I hope this is a fair apology.
The next game is an episodic adventure with the store page going live in the next few weeks. This will provide more information on the game itself. The first episode is free to all Lonely Gorilla current owners who wish to try it.
If you own the Lonely Gorilla when the store page is live, we will provide information for how you get the free game. Thanks for your patience and I can't wait to get your feedback on the new title.
Andy
Latest Update Live
Hi all, We are back with a working updatable game!
The first of the 3-4 updates rewriting the Gorilla AI and social interactions are live. It is now much clearer the effect on the female gorillas of achieving tasks like feeding, making a nest, achieving loyalty.
A couple of important bug fixes have also been added. Branches for making nests were occasionally disappearing under the terrain, this should no longer happen making it much easier to find branches to build nests.
rescaled the minimap so it is less cluttered and easier to see items close by.
Added nest icon (home) so no longer need the smoke signal on nests.
A couple of nice improvements along with the fixes:-
The terrain is now twice the Size at 4 square kilometres.
Certain errors that have fixed have resulted in a huge increase in frame rate along with denser vegetation. My test machine now runs at an average of 90fps from 60fps
Couple of ideas I am testing:-
Adding icons to make even clearer regarding the troop needs.
Adding a sense button which will then add an outline to items of interest within a radius. Potentially, animals, food, branches, nests. to help locate them.
Adding a call button to any nearby female gorillas.
There is still more progress to be made in regard to player feedback and more interactions. The infant gorillas have a lot more work to be done once you have gotten to the mating stage and they will be the focus of the last AI update once the female Gorillas are finished.
Andy
Almost there!
Thank you all for your patience first of all. I have rolled back the project and finally got a version that works on steam servers. Unfortunately it is a little bit behind the last live version some I am now in the process of getting it back to where it was with the new update.
The new updating version should be live within the next 24 hours. Sorry again I lost a few days in complete meltdown but now I have the ability to update again we should be making strides.