Harder Beta Faster Farmer: Community Update 03/23/16
Howdy, folks!
We’re hoping you already know what time it is--community update time! We’ve got lots to discuss, but before we get to our post, we’d like to let you guys know that it’s Holy Week, so we’ll be taking a quick break. Apologies if you send us something and we don’t get back to you right away. Never fear; we’ll be back and hard at work next week!
WHAT WE’RE DOING
Great news for y’all: Our game designer and devs have been working on improving the farming UX and overall UX of Wild Season! These are changes that haven’t been implemented yet, but that we are currently testing out, with good results so far! So expect these and many more in the near future:
Faster farming tool animations
Sickled Weeds disappear instead of appearing in player’s hands
New layout of tillable land on player farm
Primary and secondary action key functionality for mouse
NPC walk movements are slower
Simplified current Dialogue tool for performance purposes
If you guys have any comments about our UX / UI, check out the next section below!
WE’RE LISTENING
Last week, we sent a survey out to all our Kickstarter backers, so we can get a better idea of what people like about the game and what they’d like to see more of. The answers we’ve been getting have been crazy helpful to us, and we’re taking them very seriously as we continue to make improvements to Wild Season and our game community!
A huge thanks with a side of milk and cookies to everyone who answered! And if you’re a backer and haven’t heard about this survey yet, check out our backer-exclusive March 18, 2016 Update on Kickstarter for the survey link.
What about non-backers, you say? No worries! If you’ve played Wild Season for more than 2 hours and you want to let us know your honest impressions of the game, send us an email at support@quickfire-games.com, and we’ll send you the survey link so we can hear from you.
BETA TESTER SEARCH STILL ON!
We’re still looking for Dev Build Testers for Wild Season, especially for the platforms Windows 7, Windows 8, Mac, and Linux; so if YOU want to beta test Wild Season and get first look at new adjustments and events in the game, email Mads via support@quickfire-games.com!
FANART CONTEST DEADLINE EXTENDED!
We want to give all you talented artists out there more time to participate in our Wild Season Fanart Contest, so we’re extending the deadline until April 24, 2016!
If you want to win Wild Season artwork made especially for you by our fantastic game artists, check out the contest guidelines here! Winners will be announced on April 27, during our community update.
That’s all we got for now, folks! Till next time.
If you have any questions or would just like to say hi, email us at support@quickfire-games.com.
Not 2 Late: Community Update 3/10/2016
HOW WE’RE DOING
Hey y’all! Apologies for the slight delay, as we had a lot of team meetings to do--but it’s time for the first of our March community updates, and boy, do we have good news!
For the past couple of months, we’ve been focused on doing bug fixes for Episode 1, and while we know there are still a bunch of bugs to get rid of, we also acknowledge that we have to keep moving forward as well. So as of today, we’re announcing that we are focusing on the production of Wild Season Episode 2!
Don’t worry though--bug fixing is still a major priority for us, and it’ll be going hand-in-hand with what we’re doing for Episode 2. All this means is that you can expect to hear even more about what the dev team is doing!
Their first update for you is that the devs are working on implementing cozy chibi outfits for Winter, so expect to see some hot--or maybe just warm--new looks for everyone when the snowy season hits ;)
WILD SEASON DEV BUILD TESTERS!
As mentioned in yesterday’s build update, we’re now opening our doors to Dev Build Testers for Wild Season! Check out the details below:
Who is eligible to join? Anyone who currently owns a copy of Wild Season.
What’s in it for the testers? This is a volunteer position, and as such, players who sign up to be testers will not be paid. However, you guys will be able to test out new features of Wild Season before the general public does, and learn how professional game testers work! (Disclaimer: There is a chance that playing the dev builds as a tester will cause your current save files for Wild Season to become lost or corrupted, but it’s just part of the job!)
Why become a tester? Aside from being short on machines and manpower, we’d like to show everyone that the game dev industry is not all fun and, well, games! There’s a lot of hard work to be done and a lot of factors to consider. If you’re thinking of taking a career path in the game industry, or just genuinely curious or passionate about games, this is a great chance for you to learn--and you’ll be a huge help to us as well!
How do I sign up? Just email Mads at support@quickfire-games.com to get started!
THE RETURN OF THE PODCAST?
We’ve decided to shake up our usual Wild Season podcast format; rather than livestream sessions on Twitch, we’re switching over to vlog-style video content which we’ll be uploading directly to our YouTube channel! (https://www.youtube.com/user/quickfiregamesstudio)
We’ll be doing features on the various characters and aspects of the game like before, and also making a new series of videos called “A Day in the Life,” about what it’s like for each of us working at Quickfire Games. Expect to see the first of our brand-spanking-new videos sometime in the near future!
Is there anything you’d like to see us talk about or feature in one of our videos? Feel free to leave us a comment and let us know!
Wild Season Build Update v1.0.2.5
Hey there, old sports!
We know it’s been a long time since our last Build Update, and I bet ya’ll have been wondering where we’ve been, well folks, we’ve got news for you! Which we won’t be telling here, so you guys will have to read all about it in our Community Update tomorrow! (talk about building up the suspense)
And while we have your attention, we’d like to give a huge thanks with a side of hugs and virtual cookies to all those who sent in their Bug reports and continuously supporting the game. It means the world to all of us, and the people of Bedford Valley.
In light of this, we’re opening our doors to volunteer Dev Build Game Testers, to explain it in a nutshell, volunteers will be given access to the development branch of the game, help the team test and play the game before the General Public .
We’ll talk about it more in our Community Update but if you’d like to volunteer as tribute, go ahead and email Mads via the support email so she can add you in.
So back to the topic at hand, Wild Season Build Update v1.0.2.5.
Thanks to the bug reports from the community, our devs noticed that most of the bug reports were old recurring bugs and has come to the conclusion that doing a General Optimization (which took forever) was the remedy to finally exterminate the pesky bugs. For less rambling, here are the listed bugs:
Fixed bugs in v1.0.2.5:
Optimised AI Pathfinding
Optimised UI Assets (50% done)
Updated building schedules
Fixed BGM in graveyard bug
Fixed missing store item bug
Fixed fishing and animal tool bug
Fixed money bug.
Fixed William shopkeeper bug
Fixed glitching NPCs
Other minor bug fixes
Known bugs:
Game not pausing
Weird Arm Animation when fishing
Missing Bulletin Board
Missing NPC testimonies on Summer 1
Lettuce seed bag has a Lettuce icon
Sometimes the game won’t launch for Windows x64
General Store sells Acosta Rod for 1500, looks like Old Rod
Doors not locked during some events
There are still other persistent issues, so please be patient with us as we continue to tackle the bugs, our team can only find a handful so if you found a bug that we haven’t mentioned, you can report them here.
Wild Season v1.0.2.5 is now available on Steam and Greenman Gaming then will be available on Humble Bundle, Itch.io, and Mac Game Store within the week.
Huge thanks to our Backers and Fans for without your support this game would never be possible, this concludes our Build Update so until then, we hope you’re enjoying Wild Season, and to see you again on our Community Update tomorrow.
Have a swell day!
Build Update v1.0.2.4
Hey there, old sports!
We know it’s been a long time since our last Build Update, and I bet y'all have been wondering where we’ve been. Well folks, we’ve got news for you! Which we won’t be telling here, so you guys will have to read all about it in our Community Update tomorrow! (Talk about building up the suspense!)
And while we have your attention, we’d like to give a huge thanks with a side of hugs and virtual cookies to all those who sent in their Bug reports and continuously supporting the game. It means the world to all of us, and the people of Bedford Valley.
In light of this, we’re opening our doors to volunteer Dev Build Game Testers. To explain it in a nutshell, volunteers will be given access to the development branch of the game, help the team test and play the game before the general public does.
We’ll talk about it more in our Community Update, but if you’d like to volunteer as tribute, go ahead and email Mads via the support email (support@quickfire-games.com) so she can add you in.
So on to the topic at hand--Wild Season Build Update v1.0.2.4! As mentioned, thanks to the bug reports from the community, our devs have noticed that most of the bug reports were old recurring bugs, and have come to the conclusion that doing a general optimization was the remedy.
Fixed in v1.0.2.4:
- General optimization
- Updated building schedules
- Fixed glitching NPCs
- Fixed BGM in graveyard bug
- Fixed missing store item bug
- Fixed fishing and animal tool bug
- Fixed money bug
- Fixed William shopkeeper bug
- Other minor bug fixes
Known bugs:
- Game not pausing
- Weird arm animation when fishing
- Missing Bulletin Board
- Missing NPC testimonies on Summer 1
- Lettuce seed bag has a Lettuce icon
- Sometimes the game won’t launch for Windows x64
- General Store sells Acosta Rod for 1500, looks like Old Rod
There are still other persistent issues, so please be patient with us as we continue to tackle the bugs. Our team can only find a handful, so if you found a bug that we haven’t mentioned, you can report them at wildseasonthegame.com/feedback .
Wild Season v1.0.2.4 is now available on Steam and Greenman Gaming, then will be available on Humble Bundle, Itch.io, and Mac Game Store within the week.
Huge thanks to our backers and fans, for without your support this game would never have been possible. This concludes our Build Update, so until the next time, we hope you’re enjoying Wild Season, and we'll see you again during our Community Update tomorrow.
Have a swell day!
Build Update v1.0.2.2
Hey there, old sports! At long last we have a build update for you; check out everything we've fixed below!
Fixed in V1.0.2.2:
- General optimization
- Updated building schedules
- Fixed BGM in graveyard bug
- Minor bug fixes
- Fixed missing store item bug
- Fixed fishing and animal tool bug
We're aware there are still other issues, but don't worry--we'll be working to have them fixed as soon as possible!
Until then, thank you for your continued support of us and Wild Season, and we hope you have a great day!
Wild Season Fanart Contest!
Howdy, y’all! We at Quickfire Games thought it might be fun to have a little friendly competition! So we’re officially announcing a Wild Season fanart contest, and the theme of this contest is nothing other than food, glorious FOOD!
Show us Sophie and Nick frying up a feast with their new frying pans! Show us Mary burning a pie in the Cat with the Fiddle Inn, or Will dressed as a giant stack of pancakes! We’d love to see what you can cook up for the cast of Wild Season with your own imaginations!
Winners will receive special Wild Season artwork created especially for them by our talented arts team. So if YOU want a chance to get such an awesome prize, check out our contest guidelines below:
Contest Guidelines:
1. Entries to the Wild Season Foodies Fanart Contest must contain one or more of the official Wild Season characters. The chosen theme of food should also be evident in the artwork.
2. Acceptable file formats for contest entries are JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs.
3. Contest entries should be uploaded on the fanartist’s personal Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr account with the tag #WSfanartcontest. A link to the fanartist’s social media post should also be emailed to marketing@quickfire-games.com, with the subject line “Wild Season Fanart Contest.” Entries should be submitted on or before March 23, 2016.
4. All entries will be uploaded to a photo album on the Wild Season Facebook page, which will be closed on the day of the deadline. If an entry has not been added to the album, it either means that the fanartist did not follow one or more of the guidelines, or that the entry was not officially received by the Quickfire Games team via email and the other approved social media channels.
5. The fanart contest will have three winners; one based on Technical Skill, another based on Creativity, and a People’s Choice winner which will be given to the artwork in the Wild Season Facebook album with the most number of likes. All three winners will receive the prize of an original digital Wild Season artwork created especially for them, and signed by the entire Quickfire Games team.
6. Contest winners will be announced on March 30, 2016 via community update on Wild Season’s Steam page, and also notified via the email addresses they used to send in their entries.
7. NSFW submissions will NOT be tolerated. The rating of Wild Season is PG-13, and entries to this and any subsequent official contests related to Wild Season should be in keeping with this rating unless otherwise specified.
8. Current and former Quickfire Games employees and interns, if they choose to enter the contest, will not be eligible to win prizes; however, we will be happy to upload their artwork to the contest entries album and share them with the rest of the community.
9. Fanartists retain the rights to their own work, while Quickfire Games retains the rights to Wild Season and all its characters and settings.
We look forward to seeing all your gorgeous artwork!
Community Update 2/24/2016
Hey y’all! February is almost over, and it’s time once again for our regularly scheduled community update!
After the Podcast
Last week we held our first Q&A stream for Wild Season on our Twitch channel; thanks to everyone who tuned in to watch and ask us questions! During our podcast, we cleared up some confusion and made some very special announcements--so if you missed it, you can still check out the recording on Twitch, or catch the highlights video on our YouTube channel sometime later this week!
Coming Soon: New Build Release!
We know it’s been a long time since our last build update. However, it’s only because the devs have been working tirelessly on fixing the numerous bugs you guys reported to us, as well as ones we’ve noticed ourselves--so we’re happy to finally be able to say that you guys can expect a new build release real soon!
Look out for an announcement when we do upload the latest build; and in the meantime, if you find any more bugs that you think we don’t know about yet, hop on over to http://wildseasonthegame.com/feedback.html and kindly inform us. We always appreciate your help!
Wild Season Foodies Fanart Contest!
While we all wait for the next update, we thought it might be fun to have a little competition! So today we’re officially announcing a Wild Season fanart contest, and the theme of this contest is nothing other than food, glorious FOOD!
Show us Sophie and Nick frying up a feast with their new frying pans! Show us Mary burning a pie in the Cat with the Fiddle Inn, or Will dressed as a giant stack of pancakes! We’d love to see what you can cook up for the cast of Wild Season with your own imaginations!
Winners will receive special Wild Season artwork created especially for them by our talented arts team. So if YOU want a chance to get such an awesome prize, check out our contest guidelines below:
Contest Guidelines:
1. Entries to the Wild Season Foodies Fanart Contest must contain one or more of the official Wild Season characters. The chosen theme of food should also be evident in the artwork.
2. Acceptable file formats for contest entries are JPEGs, GIFs, and PNGs.
3. Contest entries should be uploaded on the fanartist’s personal Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr account with the tag #WSfanartcontest. A link to the fanartist’s social media post should also be emailed to marketing@quickfire-games.com , with the subject line “Wild Season Fanart Contest.” Entries should be submitted on or before March 23, 2016.
4. All entries will be uploaded to a photo album on the Wild Season Facebook page, which will be closed on the day of the deadline. If an entry has not been added to the album, it either means that the fanartist did not follow one or more of the guidelines, or that the entry was not officially received by the Quickfire Games team via email and the other approved social media channels.
5. The fanart contest will have three winners; one based on Technical Skill, another based on Creativity, and a People’s Choice winner which will be given to the artwork in the Wild Season Facebook album with the most number of likes. All three winners will receive the prize of an original digital Wild Season artwork created especially for them, and signed by the entire Quickfire Games team.
6. Contest winners will be announced on March 30, 2016 via community update on Wild Season’s Steam page, and also notified via the email addresses they used to send in their entries.
7. NSFW submissions will NOT be tolerated. The rating of Wild Season is PG-13, and entries to this and any subsequent official contests related to Wild Season should be in keeping with this rating unless otherwise specified.
8. Current and former Quickfire Games employees and interns, if they choose to enter the contest, will not be eligible to win prizes; however, we will be happy to upload their artwork to the contest entries album and share them with the rest of the community.
9. Fanartists retain the rights to their own work, while Quickfire Games retains the rights to Wild Season and all its characters and settings.
We look forward to seeing all your gorgeous artwork!
Finally, in light of the discussions we had during our podcast and all the questions we’ve received from you guys about the Wild Season characters, we’ll start to reveal a little more about them, one bit of trivia at a time! We’ll be posting fun facts about your favorite Bedford Valley residents on our Twitter and Tumblr, starting real soon, so stay tuned!
Community Update 2/10/2016
Hiya, folks! We hope you’ve been enjoying the start of Spring, and that you’re looking forward to celebrating a happy Valentine’s Day with the people you love (yourself included)! Now, it’s time for our bimonthly community update, so let’s get right to it!
What We’ve Been Up To
We’re aware of the persisting bugs that exist in the current build of the game, especially: the glitching NPC sprites; the money issue, where money is either not enough to buy an item or does not get deducted after a purchase; broken NPC schedules, and broken shops and shopkeepers. Rest assured that the devs are working hard to fix them!
Now, while some of you have said that you’re enjoying the sounds of Bedford Valley, we also know that a lot of you find the background music repetitive. We hear you loud and clear, so we’ve also been working on some new music for y’all. Look forward to listening to some fresh tunes while you’re farming and exploring the town in future updates!
Humble Bundle Update
Some of you have kindly reminded us that our build on Humble Bundle hasn’t been updated in awhile; we apologize for the inconvenience! Thankfully, Humble Bundle has finally given us access to an automated Dashboard, which will allow us to upload new builds ourselves.
Expect to see more frequent build updates there, in addition to the ones we’re already putting on Steam! We’re excited to bring Wild Season to as many different online stores as possible, so we can share and make our game more accessible to you.
Live Q&A Session on Twitch
We’re officially announcing our upcoming Q&A livestream session on Twitch, which will be happening on February 16, 2016 at 7:00 PM CST. Tune in to http://www.twitch.tv/quickfiregamesstudio/ and ask us anything you want to know about Wild Season or Quickfire Games!
From February 10 to 15, we’ll also be taking your questions at support@quickfire-games.com; just email them in with “Twitch Stream Q&A” in the subject line, and we might read and answer them during our stream. Looking forward to hearing from you guys!
Community Update!
Hey there, old sports!
First things first: we are happy to announce that from now on, we’ll be giving you guys a regular community update at LEAST twice every month. We know we were quiet for a long time especially over the holidays, and we made a lot of you confused as you waited to hear from us. This is our promise to you that we are committed to not letting that happen again, and to being more transparent with you guys, our beloved community.
So now, regardless of whether we have a new build release for you or not, we’ll be letting you know what we’re up to as we continue to work on Wild Season. Look out for a new community update from us every second and fourth Wednesday of the month!
And now, on to our updates!
Known bugs in Wild Season V1.0.1.4
We’ve received a couple more bug reports since releasing V1.0.1.4, so we’ve compiled an updated list below:
- Repeating story and events dialogues
- Some testimonials are not being recorded properly in the notebook
- The fishing pole bug
- A delay in round 2 at the dog race
- Glitching / stuck NPCs
As always, if you find any new bugs that aren’t on this list, please let us know at http://wildseasonthegame.com/feedback.html so our devs can get right on fixing them.
Our limited number of machines limits our bug testing abilities so your help is greatly appreciated!
Key distribution
We’re happy to say that as of this update, we’ve replied to everyone who messaged us on Kickstarter about not getting their game keys so far. If you still haven’t gotten yours, please don’t hesitate to let us know via Kickstarter message!
Please also let us know specifically whether you would like a Steam or a Humble Bundle key, and provide the email address you used to back us so that it’s easier for us to look for you in our records.
Backer rewards
Some of you have been asking about the higher-tier backer rewards, such as the postcards and the special limited edition artwork. Please know that we definitely have not forgotten about you; we’ve all just been lasers-focused on the game itself, our artists included. We will be getting your other rewards out to you as soon as we can, so please bear with us!
For the artwork that will go on the postcards and the limited edition signed print, we will be making a poll soon and sending it out to all backers from the tiers with these rewards, so you can vote directly on what you want. We’re also open to suggestions from you guys on what art you want, since the rewards are for you after all!
Community managers
As part of our endeavor to be more transparent with our community, we’d like to officially introduce our five volunteer community managers to you; Madduday, Kasuga Jiyo, Rika, GilesGirl525, and our newest addition to the team, Kouiji, are here to serve you on the Steam forums! :) Expect to see them around on discussions and updates about the game!
In line with this, our community managers would also like to be able to better reach our fans around the world. Just as an informal survey, what languages, aside from English, would you like our game and support/updates to be in?
That’s all for now, folks; until our next update! Thanks for reading!
Build Update V1.0.1.4
Howdy folks,
We know we’re a little late, but Happy New Year!
We know we’ve been quiet since we released Episode 1, and we’re sorry to have kept you all waiting. But we’re back and working hard as ever on improving Episode 1, as well as working on some other things that we know you’ll be happy to hear about!
So onwards with the game update--
Wild Season v1.0.1.4
Unfortunately the release of Episode 1 was less stellar than we expected, with a lot more problems than we would have liked. Due to this, over the Christmas break our awesome developers did a lot of refactoring and optimising the code and structure of the game. That means the game should be considerably more stable, and most of the niggling issues are now fixed.
Some of the rewritten items that should now work flawlessly (at least they do so in testing) are:
Fixed some NPC (non-playable characters) schedules
Fixed farming tutorial bug where user cannot progress if they decide to pick up the weeds
Fixed animal movements
Fixed barn and coop animal information
Fixed storage (chest, bin, freezer) visual problem, where items suddenly disappear when being stored
Fixed map loop in mine area
Fixed Edward part during Summer investigations
As the saying goes, fix one bug and 177 more bugs will appear; because of that, our devs discovered a few more bugs while they were doing the fixes. So if you’ve stumbled upon the following bugs, have no fear, our devs are working on them:
Repeating story and events dialogues
Some testimonials are not being recorded properly in the notebook
The fishing pole bug
A delay in round 2 at the dog race
Pesky tutorial bug
And as always, if you find any new bugs that aren’t on this list, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could send us a report at http://wildseasonthegame.com/feedback.html (We’re also looking to shift over to Bugzilla so we can have more transparency in bug fixing and the community can see what’s being done, but we need to do so in a way that doesn’t impact our overall workflow.)
Why the refactoring?
The refactoring was also important for our plans moving forward. Although we’re eager to launch Episode 2, it was imperative for us to make sure that what we had released was stable before continuing. We also took the opportunity in the refactor to optimize the game for other platforms, including mobile.
We’re not making any promises yet, but if all goes smoothly we’ll be able to begin releasing on other platforms soon. HOWEVER, in the event that anything goes wrong or requires significant attention, the releases to other platforms will be shelved in favor of completing Episode 2, as that is our present priority.
Having said that, we’re hopeful that the extra time we took to improve the structural integrity of the game will pay off, allowing us to bring the game to mobile with little effort. So fingers crossed!
Calling the cavalry
Finally, with the effort to try and speed things along, we’re officially going to be opening up a call for volunteers on various fronts, including development, engine/tools development, voice acting, translation/localization, mobile porting in Unity, and story encoders.
While we have enough money to finish the game, there is still a lot of work to be done. We understand that a lot of you are starting to get impatient, and scaling up at this stage is something we just can’t afford. :( We know that many of you have been here for us from the beginning, and love Wild Season as much as we do and want to see it finished, and that is why we are asking for your kind assistance so that we can make it happen.
On that note, we know that beggars can’t be choosers, but in the interest of avoiding delays and giving you guys the best quality game possible, we’re only looking for volunteers who have real commitment and a solid background in the field they’re volunteering for. All volunteers should be prepared to submit a portfolio or examples of their work in their chosen field, and should be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
While most of the positions are self-explanatory, the story encoder position requires some basic storytelling/game design background, as the volunteers will not only be copying the script into the game, but also blocking out the character movements. As such, understanding basic storytelling and visual implementation is necessary.
More complete guidelines and details on how to sign up as a volunteer to follow! For now, you can keep watching our Facebook page and our Twitter account. For any concerns, as always you can send an email anytime!
That’s all for now, but we will try to update you guys again really soon. Until then, we hope you enjoy the latest build of Wild Season!
