Snacko News

Hello! I have emerged from the other side of July a new person, battered by the onslaught of NPC implementation that I started last month.

I don’t remember if I mentioned we’re working on our first pass for the Kickstarter backer beta yet, but if I didn’t. Yeah.

So, this month, we’re nearing the end of implementing some of the connective tissue to bind some Snacko features together.

[h2]🐐 Why does everyone talk so much?[/h2]

Oh right, I wrote the text, it’s my fault.

Anyways, the bulk of this month for me was continuing to put in NPCs. This entails a couple of things…

Sprites: Stefan did all the animations, but not all of them have been put in as Flipbooks (Unreal’s system for sprite animation)



Portraits: I had the PNGs, but they were just floating around in my PC



Schedules: the bane of my existence, responsible for my deteriorating husk of a person I became. There was more detail on this last month, but essentially, it’s just a lot of careful busywork that needed just enough brain power to wear you down



Dialogue: each NPC has a “dialogue resolver” that tries to determine what dialogue asset to use. For example, a shopkeeper will have a “come back later” set of dialogue when you bother them during store hours, or a specific set of lines about food when they’re eating. It’s essentially just a bunch of true or false checks.



Alongside the resolver are the actual dialogue assets (spaghetti monster). Within these, there are sometimes trees to determine which set of text to use depending on the time of day for hello’s, or the relationship level. As you befriend them, they’ll let you in on a bit more of what makes them tick. I hope you’ll spend some time getting to know everyone and their quirks!

…and that’s the bulk of what I’ve been doing! You can really watch me melt into my skin through my source control commit descriptions:



[h2]📬 Return of the Mailbox[/h2]

Ever since we remade the player house, the mailbox was replaced with a shell of its former self. It no longer had a little flag animation when you stepped outside and had new mail, it no longer had a little floating notification for your new letters…

Truly tragic.

But despair no more! I put it back in.



Also, recursive hooked up the rest of the letter system for inviting NPCs. In the past, we had the UI and framework, but only Mack ever replied. No matter what. You cannot escape Mack.



(Un?)Luckily for you, that system is now in, so you can escape from Mack. For the duration of the beta, we’ll be just giving you the house you need to invite NPCs for free, but in the final game, blueprints for building different kinds of houses and shops are unlocked as you progress for that sweet ✨dopamine✨.

[h2]🪑Don’t Be A Birch About It![/h2]

Also to give some more meat to the build, I added in a select few pieces of buildables from a set you can craft after razing the Grassy Plains of its natural foliage. Here’s a sneak peak at some of the pieces:



The vibe I was going for with the Birch set is a mix between some mid-century modern and Scandinavian vibes. All the white parts are dye-able, like the seat cushion and lamp shade. You can really change up the feel of the pieces by making them bright colors!

[h3]And…that’s all for this month! Thank you for reading until the end 🌼 We’ll see you next month![/h3]

Meowllo everyone! It’s already the end of June, which means the year is half over, which means I’m in despair.

That aside, a couple weeks ago, we announced through Wholesome Direct that we’re coming to PS4 + PS5! Ameowzing! Huey is handling a lot of the porting just like the Switch version, so we’re excited to try their implementation of the special PS5 controller haptic effects.

We’ve been mostly focused on other things, though…so let’s run through those!

[h2]📑 RIGHT ON SCHEDULE[/h2]
A long…long…..time ago, we mentioned our rehaul of the NPC schedule system. Up until now, we haven’t had a chance to implement any NPCs outside of making sure the system works. Now that the bare bones storyline is playable, I’ve been working on implementing getting a select few NPCs alive and running.



We’re aiming to complete a build for Kickstarter backers and old Patreon supporters who were grandfathered into the beta test. Having just an empty island with a bunch of story isn’t what we want people to experience, so the past month and the foreseeable future will be spent polishing that experience.

It’s kind of exciting that a few months ago, we were still trying to get the game to even go through the tutorial properly. Now we’re tying everything together and implementing content for it to be playable. It’s a nice feeling, but also kind of scary.



Above is what the overview of a schedule looks like. Depending on the NPC, they might have more than one. For example, Nobu has a different schedule when it’s raining, because he doesn’t have to water his crops. Shopkeepers might have a different routine on days their store is closed.



Inside each action contains the actual logic. This might be things like setting flags for dialogue, or adding in locations for where to walk next.

The actual system is quite simple and intuitive to use (thanks recursive), but it’s still a bit time consuming and dry…

[h2]🎨 NEW ART[/h2]
So, I’ve been dispersing some of my NPC work with art work! Do you remember Lan?



Her happy portrait debuted when we launched our Kickstarter in 2020 (oh no time flies). Now, she’s got the full gamut of emotions!

In the Switch trailer, there was also a portrait of Rejka looking bashful. I’ve revisited that portrait and improved it, since it’s always bothered me a bit. Now our beautiful eyelash boy gets the beautiful portrait he deserves.



Asides from some portraits I don’t want to show you just yet 🤫, I’ve also done some new asset work. There’s a lot of placeable furniture for one person to work through, so I’m going for a couple at a time to break it up.



What I’m trying to accomplish with the furniture sets in Snacko is having each set correlate loosely to a style. That way, if you’re not into the default rustic vibes the softwood set provides, there’s other things for you to get excited about.



[h2]Anyways, that’s all we have for June. Thank you for reading all the way until the end! We’ll see you next month 👋[/h2]

[h3]If you missed our new trailer debut during 2022’s Wholesome Direct…[/h3]
[h2]We’re also coming to Playstation 4 and 5![/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

In addition to the Nintendo Switch and PC releases, we’ve been working quietly in the background to bring Snacko to PS4 and PS5.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us, read our devlogs, shared our Tweets, wishlisted us, and followed our journey so far.

This is all new to us…from juggling dev and other game-related work, to figuring out how to navigate the seas of tying up the loose ends of a big chunky game.

There’s been a lot of challenges so far, and probably more ahead (sorry QA…sorry programmers……), but we’ll get through them!

We’re getting to the end, and we can’t wait to see Snacko released into the world!

Meowllo everyone! How are you? You may have noticed this devlog is a bit late. We were visiting family and have just returned. I thought about writing the devlog while I was away since I did bring my laptop, but recording videos and GIFs on a smaller screen is a bit sus.

So anyways, I figured it’d be worth the wait for me to get back on my work computer to do this.



[h3]Before we begin, here’s a reminder that the Wholesome Direct will be tomorrow!

You should show up. Because I’m telling you to (there’s gonna be Snacko news).[/h3]


Miguel has been helping us implement all the NPC friendship events! There’s a lot…26 NPCs, x3 because there’s 3 friendship events per NPC…



Sometimes, when I complain about the amount of stuff the game needs, I remember that I made it this way, so I shouldn’t complain.

Anyways. Can you imagine testing these all either manually by spam gifting poor Frits to raise his friendship level? Or typing in the console command? Imagine typing.

So, we added a little panel with all the buttons that will run the console command for you. Which means I did have to at least type it once, unfortunately.



It’ll be good in the near future where we’ll have to test everything, though.


Outside of friendship events, we’ve also been implementing other tutorial or onboarding quests and cutscenes. There’s a couple outside of the main storyline that will teach you the basics of farm life, like ranching, fishing, and more!



If you’re already a farming pro, you can skip most of these lectures, but you’ll make Nobu Jr. sad. So really, who wins?


Well, not really. The camera floats. So maybe wings? But it’s a stable camera, don’t worry.

We added camera controls to build mode!

Amongst a bunch of other improvements. Recursive has been turbo-working to improve and streamline the building process. We started the redesign a few months ago, but prioritized wrapping up the main storyline so it fell to the wayside. It looked something like this:



If you’ve been subscribed to our Ko-fi or Patreon, you probably remember us talking about something like this a few months ago in more detail. But the gist of it is combining the old place and edit mode into one, and “auto-triggering” the states depending on the status of your cursor (if you’re holding something, etc.)

It’s easier to see, so I’ve recorded a video:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

If you’re unable to watch, here’s a quick rundown:

• Toggle the inventory tray whenever to easily swap what you’re holding
  
• When your cursor is empty, you can freely select already placed objects to put them away, dye them, or move them. Fences will reconnect!
  
• You can now pan, rotate, and zoom the camera freely
  

Amazing! Hopefully, this will make decorating a lot more fun and easy with the added freedom. This just means a lot more extra bugs…can’t wait……..



With that, that wraps up what we’ve been up to in May. The end of the build mode marks the end of the last major system that needed big changes, which is a pretty big milestone in itself.

We’ll keep you updated as we slog through the mountain of loose ends and terrifyingly random bugs in the near future. You’ll be updated through my tears.

[h3]Thank you for reading! We’ll see you next month 🌼[/h3]

Meowllo everyone! Is the weather changing for you yet? It’s still kind of cold where we are, so it feels like spring hasn’t sprung. Sad.

Anyways, this month, we have quite a lot of fixes, changes, and assets done. It was great! Let’s go over the furniture first…



We used to have our stuff simply labelled “Exterior” and “Interior”. You can see how that becomes a nightmare really, really fast. A table that can be placed outdoors and indoors…which folder does it go in? I dunno.

So, the first task of the month was to have our folders and data follow the new categories we’ve assigned the buildables: in sets.



Softwood, Hardwood, Birch, and so on. My aim with this is to assign each set a different style. That way, when you unlock new furniture crafting sets by exploring new areas, you can also diversify your style. This also helps me organize the different kinds of items in each set. That way, you don’t get excited about unlocking a new kind of lumber, just to realize you can only craft 5 different kinds of chairs.

The Softwood set needed a couple of UI icons and assets that were missing, so I made those up first to call this first set done.



The little stuffed toys and miscellaneous clutter like an open book and ink bottle topped off the set. I was able to use my super powerful pixel texturing skills (see: more polygons) and fit the entire set into one 64x64 pixel texture sheet. I’m pretty proud of that.

This kind of setup also makes it easy for us to add to existing sets or make new furniture sets in the future when we have time to put in more content. Win-win!



Another thing we changed about building is the way that surface building areas worked. The old system had two issues:

1. It was done manually. Well, the new one is also done manually, but hear me out. In the past, each building area was done by making a box in the modelling program, modelling the collision of the border, and so on. It was a bit of a pain to do, and it also made the process slow.
   
2. There were borders. To prevent you from putting something completely off a surface, we made borders in the old system. Not only did this add time to making the areas, it also meant that something like counters that could perfectly snap together wouldn’t allow you to put objects on the seams of them.
   

But now…ta-da!



You can put them wherever, as long as the collision exists. That also means you can technically stack tables on tables, so I had to add a ceiling collision to prevent you from yeeting yourself outside of your home and into the void. Games are hard.

But, our suffering is not in vain :D

Now you can do cool things like placing two tables close together and putting something on them, like this:



We also double checked to make sure all the food items that exist can now be placed in build mode. You can decorate your home with all the dishes you make! They’ll never spoil. You know, magic.





Do you see something beside the house there? The little crate is a placeholder asset, but we added overflow storage. It needs a bit of UI work, but essentially, if you get anything on your adventure and your rucksack is out of space, it’ll get sent to your overflow storage at home.



You can get items out of it, but you can’t place anything into it. No more worries about carrying too much on your trips!



In Snacko, at least.

We added jumping when you’re in your kart. We’ve had issues of being annoyed during testing having to get in and out of the kart. So, the solution is to allow the car to jump (obviously).



I’m not sure what the ramifications of making this decision will be, like speeding headfirst off the side of your farm, but we can all cross that bridge when we get there as a community.
Asides from all that, we’ve also fixed a bunch of small bugs like, “you can get stuck in the Desert Canyon if you jump off this one cliff and your feetsies touch the side”. Asides from that, this is all we have for you for April!

If you have seasonal allergies, we hope you’re hanging in there…

[h2]Thank you for all your support, and see you next month 👋[/h2]