Cloud Meadow News

It's been a while getting here but here it is! Just in time for All Hallow's Eve! A huge number of updates with tweaks to party members ranging from their new skill ranks to changes in how their personal mechanics work! In addition to that, we've breathed new life into the Dungeons in the form of migrations!

Below you'll find a big list of a thoroughly tested and expanded system intended to help breath more life into playing the game. As time progresses, the number of monsters and the types of encounters will be expanded and refined, and we very much look forward to your assistance in this matter! With your help testing the game, we know it will continue to improve and expand! Once again, thank you for supporting all of us here at Team Nimbus, and we hope you enjoy the update!

Additions

• Combat ability skill ranks for all Monster & NPC units (except Kiram)
  
  • Max 15 ranks per ability slot
    
  • Each unit gains 1 spendable rank point per level
• New Monster Migration system replaces Dungeon Reset system
  
  • Each migration changes which monster types will appear in enemy dungeon mobs
    
  • Enemy Cats, Centaurs, Holstaur & Wolves will rotate through the Savannah on new Migration weeks
    
  • Pirates & Homunculus mobs will also appear regularly
• A brief tutorial segment will notify the player when Migration has been unlocked
  
  • Migration is first unlocked when resting after clearing the Savannah F3 boss
    
  • Migration is enabled in stages of dungeon progress; Savannah F1-F3, F4-F6 & F7/8 after major story events

Changes

• Adjusted Jaero’s abilities for a faster water/wither cycle
  
• Balance changes for Camellia’s combat abilities
  
• A confirmation panel will now require you to accept (or cancel) before resting in your bed
  
• Farm Weather Balloon now also reveals Migration species in addition to weather
  
• Calendar UI updated a lot of visuals & icons to improve readability
  
  • If Migration is discovered, migratory species will be viewed as hidden or unlocked on the event day
    
  • When viewing a farm monster’s graduation day, buttons will appear on the sidebar that allow you to view the character sheet for each of those monsters
• Fast Travel UI updated to show active migration species
  
• Updated all Farm Monster Interaction icons
  
• Migration units are now selected from a 3-tiered unit table that matches the player’s level
  
  • Tiers are divided into level ranges 1 - 14, 15 - 39, 40 - 60
    
  • Third tier also introduces a small chance to include boss units to enemy mobs
• Balancing improvements for migration mobs rules to eliminate unfair combat encounters
  
  • Migrations will also have no more than 1 healer class unit
• Added item drops to numerous enemy unit loot tables
  
• New music for cave interior rooms
  
• Slowing debuff from Pirate Headhunter’s Caltrops ability will no longer stack
  
• Updated visuals for Alpha Wolf’s Huff n Puff ability
  

Fixes

• Combat units involved in both Counter & Interception should now properly return to their original position
  
• When selecting units to embark for the dungeon, unassigning a character slot should now behave as expected
  
• Enemy Cat Nap should now correctly end the status effect if sleep is interrupted early
  
• Shuffle behaviour used in Kaleida’s combat passive should now be producing more random results
  
• Fixed migration-related error when entering Tro’s Lab or Poacher’s boss stage
  
• Fixed Joy King locking the player into a repeated dialogue on Prank Day
  
• Fixed Kaleida’s fortune-telling schedule only meeting with Simon
  
• Fixes monster migration activating on floors that are not yet unlocked for migration
  
• Fixed an error in Floor 6 Stonebreaker sequence when the party contains multiple party members of the same name
  
• In monster selection UI the party level filter will no longer fully obscure the first row of monsters
  
• Cloud bridge from Cloverton to Farm now using the correct material again
  
• Prevented integer overflow when generating fixed random numbers for seeding migration results
  

Long overdue - we've got some things to share! The Summer Update pt 2

• Development of the major Summer Update has now concluded
  
  • Beta branch release is playable now for those who want to get involved in playtesting & feedback
    
    • Steam general release will be ready in a week or more - just for stability & balance
• The major features of this update include:
  
  • Ability skill ranks, allowing you to rank up & change the affect of all playable combat abilities
    
    • Monster migration (replacing the old Dungeon Cycle system) to introduce new & different enemy mobs to the dungeons
      
    • 8 new wild enemy monsters; 4 Holstaur & 4 Wolf units will now appear in the Savannah on different weeks
      

• If you would like to playtest the new update immediately you can join the beta branch by reading the pinned topic at the top of our Steam Forum
  
  • This will help us rapidly shape this update for our general Steam release by solving issues & balancing new content appropriately
    

It's nearly the end of 2023! How is development progressing?

• Roadmap progress is behind schedule
  
  • This latest update's major feature took longer than expected, especially when deliberating on combat balance
    
    • We have hired a 4th programmer to join our team in a fulltime capacity
      
      • This will give us the best possible chance of staying on-target and with the full feature set laid out in the roadmap
    • We actually started some of the content for next update ahead of time
      
      • See more below in 'what else are you working on?'

Will Cloud Meadow's development be affected by Unity licensing changes?

• As we are quite far into development it would likely not be viable for us to change engines for Cloud Meadow
  
  • The proposed runtime fees in addition to our ongoing Unity Pro licenses would approximately double (or more) our total license costs to Unity, for no benefit to us.
    
  • However at the time of writing this, Unity have declared their intention to adjust the proposed policy changes again

What else are you working on? How about...

• In addition to the new Holstaur & Wolf enemy units, we've also close to concluding several new sets of enemies for the dungeon;
  
  • 3 new pirate units
    
  • 4 new wild Lamia units
    
  • 4 new wild Harpy units
• We're preparing to begin work on introducing Kiram - the 10th & final recruitable NPC
  
  • Kiram's combat toolkit is getting a revision from the old playable prototypes
    
    • We're setting up his introduction with a unique story sequence
      
    • This will branch the end of the Poacher's story arc into beginning a new arc, setting up their shadowy benefactor & leading into the Forest dungeon

More work behind-the-scenes:

• On the art side of the team...
  
  • Environment assets on the first zone & additional boss area for the Forest dungeon
    
    • Concept art for sections of the second Forest zone, including new harvest nodes
      
    • New expression portraits for dialogue characters!
• The writing team has been busy finalising dialogue & cinematic scenes for the story Act II introduction, especially Kiram's introduction sequence
  
  • Progress is also being made on narrative sequences for the Forest dungeon
    
    • New plans for written content to make Cloverton feel more alive are also in the works
• Our animators have been progressing well in their many-months work on the new HD sex scenes
  
  • Evan x Orchid loop section was completed quite recently
• Animation improvements & finalisation work has been contributed to future upcoming combat units; demons, cyclops & others
  

If you have any questions we are always readily available in the following places:

• Introduce yourself, discuss the game or send bug reports directly under the eyes of developers - in our very own Discord [ https://discord.gg/cloudmeadow ]
  
• Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple ]
  

Fixes

• Revised Magical Saturation logic for trait selection when hatching an egg
  
  • High magical saturation will correctly have a greater chance to roll positive traits and will not be able to lose trait ranks
    
  • Low magical saturation eggs are more likely to roll lower tier traits and will not be able to gain trait ranks
• Wild & merchant eggs should now have the correct item descriptions
  
• Revised descriptions of Thaumaturgical Absorption Guidebook & Companion Collar items
  
• Revised description of Fast Adaptor trait
  

Changes

• Significantly reduced memory consumption in the method used to load ambient sound fx
  
  • This should also fix a crash in Sieger's Royal Matchmaker date scene

Fixes

• Thaumaturgical Absorption Book & Collar of the Companion will now correctly reduce Magical Saturation in monster offspring instead of increasing it
  
• Corrected all Magical Saturation values (converted from old Domesticity value) for all eggs held by pregnant monsters, all merchants & all eggs stored in the incubator or hot house
  
  • Monsters that had a safe level of Domesticity should no longer immediately go feral upon hatching
• Fixed an error when using Kaleida's Karmic Intervention in the Poachers boss fight
  
• Restored missing chest & loot interactables in Savannah 1-3 that would cause an error if the player tried to interact with them
  
• NPCs should no longer disappear when Kaleida is reading their fortune while on Market Day
  
• Jerikan will no longer sell contracts for monsters below 100 korona value
  
• Camera should no longer become stuck after opening the barricade to the Union Camp in Savannah F6
  
• Interaction bubbles should no longer become detached from characters when repeatedly talking to an NPC
  
• Fixed error when trying to rename a monster through the Job Board & then deselecting the monster
  

We hope you're enjoying the first Summer Update!
This update adds 8 new enemy units, new dungeon travel features, new visuals and a wealth of improvements.

We are happy to announce our commitment to another four (4) HD sex scenes

• We can now confirm that work has begun on HDs for Orchid - with Sieger to follow!
  
• Both characters will have a scene with Evan & Eve each
  

What can I expect in Summer Update part 2?

• All Ability Skill Ranks for playable combat units
  
  • You can finally spend those skill points from levelling to improve your combat abilities
• Monster Migration system replaces the Dungeon Reset system
  
  • This will become the framework that changes dungeon mobs & possibly more in the future
    
    • This first iteration add the new Holstaur & Wolf units throughout the dungeon based on migration schedules

When can we play the Summer Update part 2?

• We hope to get this ready in a few weeks - with test builds appearing sooner
  
  • Ability ranks are in their final stages of internal review
    
    • Migration system development is > 50% complete

Was anything dropped from the roadmap?
Not at this stage!

• An overhaul of Tro's Lab and some early Savannah floors have been pushed back until after the Monster Migration feature update
  
• We believe this is important to fix older dungeon content - especially visual & functional issues - and also provide a framework for using Katarina Station as a quest hub within the dungeons
  
• View our development roadmap, and path to Cloud Meadow's launch here: [ https://www.cloudmeadowgame.com/road-map/ ]

What else are you working on?

• New HD sex scenes in addition to Minerva & Kellam HDs!
  
• Here's how we plan to roll out that content in the future:
  
  • Minerva will have a small self-contained questline
    
    • Takes place across the Savannah & Forest in 3 stages
      
      • Includes various conversations getting to know her, a matchmaking-style sprite date scene & the full HD sex scene
  • Kellam's content is still in planning stages and will likely follow a format unlockable via quest sequence.

What about behind the scenes?

• Art team has been grinding out content:
  
  • Building the Forest dungeon's first zone
    
    • Creating environmental assets for the forest biome - such as wild crops not seen before
      
    • Working on UI/UX improvements for combat, to make it more readable and exciting
      
    • Creating emotes/expressions for dialogue characters
• Writing team has been hard at work:
  
  • Expanding & revising early Savannah to become a better intro to the dungeons, with added quest-worthy content
    
    • Completed the story introduction sequence for Kiram - the 10th & final recruitable NPC
      
    • Bridging Kiram's sequence with the introduction to the game's 2nd major story arc that leads into the Forest after the Poacher fight
• Animation team are full speed ahead on the new HD sex scenes!
  

If you have any questions we are always readily available in the following places:

Introduce yourself, discuss the game or send bug reports directly under the eyes of developers - in our very own Discord [ https://discord.gg/cloudmeadow ]
Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple ]