Snacko News

February went by fast. Only 28 days?? Terrifying.

Anyways, this month was a lot of smelly and boring (but necessary) work. There’s some improvements thrown in there, too!




Long story short, we have slight depth of field in Snacko to help blend the horizon line together. One of the issues with this was the ocean used to be one big pancake. So, when it blurred the horizon, it would also blur what was immediately in front of you.

To fix this, we split up the ocean into a smol pancake, and a large outer ring. The outer ring now also has a “simplified” ocean shader slapped on to help with the rendering cost. You can see the seam if you zoom in or bring out the camera very far, like this:



You can’t see it in the usual game camera, though. This also had us fixing the horizon shader. It used to use your camera’s position to kind of give the edge that glow to match the sky. The issue with that was if you were very low to sea level, that edge would be way too wide. If you were high up, it would be almost nonexistent.



The solution? Simple works best. Now that we have that outer ring that’s separated, all it is is two colors blended together with a gradient.



The horizon color is controlled by a curve we went over two months ago. Easy peasy!



We also have all the trims done for the town as well. Here’s a shot of the town:



The pier has little round foam discs!




The other chunk of work that took up some time was the collision. Interestingly, we were watching a speed run video about Mario Kart on the Wii when they showed a screenshot of the game’s collision, and it was very similar to how we handle it in Snacko. It was a relief to know our method wasn’t dumb.



If you’d like to watch the video by SummoningSalt, here’s a link!

Why is it an actual wall with depth instead of a single plane in Snacko? Because anyone who has watched enough speed running will know that thin enough walls will let you clip through by jiggling your character around enough…

Even though I know if you try hard enough, there’s probably some way of getting out of bounds, I still have to try, right? 😢



There’s…a lot of collision. Walking collision, boundary collision, building area collision…

Included in this collision work was also making sure all the building areas in the farm and town were proper. This was kind of difficult for ramps, or areas where there was a steep angle. These areas had to be separated out and use different kinds of collision calculation. The payoff is nice, now you can place slanted buildables on these ramps!



Oh? My decorating skills are very good? Why, thank you!

Before we move on from the town, there’s also an event square now. The town square has area for buildings, the quest board, and the cultural center. The event square is where events (hah) will be held. It’s got lots of space for everyone to gather!



Right in the middle is this bunny statue, which was a Kickstarter tier. Recursive’s parents backed it, and they chose to design it based on his first favorite stuffed animal and book.



Very cute, right? I hope they choose something embarrassing for the plaque text.



We have some more work by Stefan who just finished some idle animations for NPCs! Sometimes, it was kind of sad to just see them stand around doing nothing, so now we have personal animations for each character that will randomly play when they’re just hanging out. Cute, right?



We’ve also made progress with our story cutscene implementation…but no peeking! We’ll be keeping that a secret 😊

[h3]That’s all for this month, thank you so much for reading![/h3]

Meowllo everyone! How was your first month of 2021? This month, we started focusing more on the main story and the content behind it.

We are also excited to say that, with everyone’s generous support, we were able to bring on Stefan Åhlin (@quitefreshgames) to do the sprite animations! We’re hoping this means we’ll have more time to implement more NPCs to give the friends you can meet more variety.

[h2]🌼 Trims and polish[/h2]
The farm map is now considered done, so we’ve added the finishing touches: water trims and collision! You used to be able to just walk off the map, since we tend to change around map layouts quite often as we spend some time walking around them.

It’s nice to be able to finally walk up to cliffs and not fall off the map!
The town map was also put on a bit of a diet. There was too much unnecessary walking between the town and the connecting areas leading to the plains and the forest.

It’s been a bit of a challenge to create a town map that had some sort of structure to it, without being so locked in place that players would feel limited in where they felt like they could place buildings.


(The cobblestone isn’t done yet…don’t mind me 😳)

The new sky colors from last month for dawn match quite well with the snow, right?


[h2]🐶 New Friends[/h2]
Like we mentioned at the beginning, we have Stefan helping animate all the characters of Snacko now! Look at this super cute walk animation he did for Buffpup’s tourist!

To make sure Stefan has as many sprites to work with as possible, we finished all the directions for Kickstarter tourists and villagers. There’s such an amazing variety of awesome ideas and cute pets, here’s just some of them:

Generally, the “canonical” villagers take a bit longer to make, since I have to write their backstory and form their characters myself. But, this month, I was happy with a rework of an older NPC I had shelved away for the time being.

Meet Rejka (ray-ka). He’s a very good boy that is a little grumpy, but we hope you’ll look past his attitude and get to know him!

[h2]🚗 Beep-beep[/h2]
We’ve been working on another mode of transportation once the island gets too large to simply explore by foot.

It’s a car.

Ayup.


Anyways, that’s all for this month! Before we leave, we just wanted to say that we started using our Ko-fi page! You can check it out if you’re interested in the bite-sized mini devlogs we post on there as well as our sneak peek posts. All support goes towards paying for dev costs like software, hosting, and paying the lovely people who help us make Snacko possible!

We hope you enjoyed reading through the devlog. Thank you as always for your support 💖

[h3]New year, same game! Welcome to 2021 🥂[/h3]

We took a bit of time off at the end of the year to do non-game development things and celebrate the holidays together. From the two of us and the three studio executives Momo, Mikan, and Nobu, we hope you had a great holiday season!



[h2]🥞 Food for the eyes[/h2]
This month, we did two dev streams on our Twitch channel for two Kickstarter recipes: Pandacakes and a Breakfast Burger.


Backers will usually give me a list of items that they’d like to be in the food, and provide me either drawings or photo references for the asset. We’ll then adjust the ingredient list to suit Snacko’s cooking system and items.



In the Breakfast Burger’s case, while we don’t have bacon in the traditional sense of pork, we will have a Snacko-world equivalent. We had a bit of fun with the burger on the stream:



[h2]🌟 Let there be (less) light![/h2]
One issue we’ve always had with something in Snacko was how we set the light and sky colors. We used to use curves to control the brightness, colors, and all that in the game engine.

I can’t read this…and I picked these colors…I have no idea what they are…

We still do, but there are different kinds of curves in Unreal, and for whatever reason, we weren’t using a color curve. We did have to change some code to have it work with our day/night cycle, so maybe I was just too dumb last year to realize it could’ve worked.



Now, it’s actually human-readable. Plus! You get to use a color picker, which saves me a lot of time. Now, it’s super easy to go in and adjust everything.



The old “night time” was also way too bright. It was so bright I couldn’t tell where my night screenshot was because I assumed it was a regular daytime one. Now, it’s much more suitably dark. I don’t even have to label which one of these is the old one, it’s quite obvious, huh?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Here’s a little time lapse. The sunset came out quite pretty! Set to one of Dale’s amazing tracks for the game.


[h2]💎 Refining[/h2]
There’s more than just the workbench when it comes to making things with your own two paws. You can recycle items in your inventory using chemistry sets to distill them into their original elements. These elements are useful for feeding your sprite and in crafting recipes.



I think in the future it’ll be cute to add other chemistry sets that are much smaller that can go indoors, like a work table with some equipment.



We’ve also polished some of the mini-game we showed off last month.



We originally showed off the game cabinet last month, but the game still needed some work. It’s come a long way since then!

[h3]That’s all for this month! See you next month…let’s see how 2021 plays out 🎉[/h3]

[h3]As dubious as 2020 was, we have a lot to be thankful about this year. Every Tweet, every comment, every like, every message, and every share has been a driving force for us to continue doing our best developing the game.

2020 has been hard in many ways, but because of you, it has been one of our best.

From the bottom of our hearts, we’d like to thank you for believing in us.[/h3]



[h3]Here’s just few of the many things we are thankful for this year[/h3]


This year, we were able to enter a collaboration with Armor Games Studios as our publisher. From marketing, to QA, to business development, and of course, production management, Armor Games Studios has been helping us navigate the rocky terrain that is game development.

We’d like to thank everyone at Armor Games Studios for their hard work and dedication to Snacko. As well as the speed running jokes and stick item memes. And especially Dora, our producer, who puts up with me.




Patreon is the reason we were able to take the leap of faith and start working on Snacko full-time. Without all the support we have received since 2019, Snacko would not be where it is today.

We grew from a handful of dedicated supporters - many of which who are still patrons today - to enough income per month to help us hire additional help. This year, we were able to bring on Paige Marincak for additional programming funded through Patreon alone!




Despite everything, we ran a successful Kickstarter campaign. Launched at the peak of financial uncertainty during the midst of a pandemic, we are thankful for each and one of you for setting aside money to support Snacko.

1,250 people (!!!) decided to pledge Snacko and collectively raise $45, 700 to fund the project. This has allowed us to pay for development costs, like the soundtrack composed by the amazing Dale North.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


This year, we’ve made huge changes to the game. The art received a complete makeover, and many aspects of the game were polished and changed from our first playable build. It was a lot of work to flip the game on its head, but it has been worth it. We’re happy where Snacko is right now, and we’re excited to see it grow in 2021.




You. Yes, you! We want to thank every community member for reading our blog posts, for wishlisting us, for viewing our tweets, for chatting in our Discord, for making fan content, for telling your friends about us…and most importantly, for being excited.

We love Snacko, and nothing makes us happier to know that other people are also charmed by our game. Thank you!

We’d like to give a special shout-out to our Discord mod team. They have all stepped up voluntarily to help keep our Discord a safe and cozy place for everyone. Thank your time and hard work!

Heyo! The holiday season has begun and time has warped to even weirder dimensions. 2020 sure is wild, we’re glad you’re still hanging in there!

[h2]📣 Is this thing even on?[/h2]
We spent the first couple of days in November finishing up a build for our publisher’s QA department to start breaking. They’ll be able to help us find all the different ways you can break Snacko. Since it’s so early on, we’re expecting tons of bugs. Fun.



To help make testing and working on Snacko features easier, we also made a testing map! We should’ve had one a long time ago, but we just never got around to it…



It’s like cheat codes! I guess that’s what cheat codes are, huh…Water all farm tiles, fast forward crops…very handy and time saving.

[h2]⛵ Land, ho![/h2]
We’ve resumed work on the town map. We’ve been taking it bit by bit and working on it between other parts of the game. We’ve added the port by the town square - that’s where all the boats will dock! While you can’t get on a boat and sail around, Mikan leaves by boat every morning to sell your shipping container contents. Be jealous.



The island should also be in a…not so good state. To communicate that, we started working on debris that will be scattered around the town. No worries! While they take a bit of elbow grease (do cats have elbows) to clean up, you’ll be rewarded with lots of resources.




[h2]🪑 Comfy interiors[/h2]
The town isn’t just the outside, Mikan also received her very own house upgrade! To match the exterior of her bright yellow and orange house, her interior has become equally…citrusy.



I wonder what she’s reading…?



You can also change your wallpaper and flooring style through your local carpenter now!



As long as you have a style unlocked and the Cocoa Beans to cover the renovation, you can select any room in your house and change the wallpaper, flooring, or both! Or neither. We’re not going to shame you.

[h2]🚀 Just stuff[/h2]
We also added saplings back into the drop pool for cutting down trees. Cut down a tree, plant a tree. Make sure Snacko Island stays green!



There’s also been a mini-game we’ve been working on lately…we’re excited to polish it up so we can show everyone 👉👈



The last bit is some dialogue polish! We’ve fixed a weird fading bug with the NPC emotes, and also made the dialogue choices more fun. They go bloop when you hover over them. That’s fun, right?



Well, that’s all for November. Stay cozy, and we’ll see you next month for…uh oh…the end of the year. Yikes. 💦