Cloud Meadow News

Changes

• Added 10x and 100x modifier keys to the Essence Market UI
  

Fixes

• Fixed a crash when trying to feed monsters with unassigned or 0-quantity food item
  
• Fixed a crash when Crab’s counterattack is invoked in the same turn that the counterattack buff was removed by an enemy
  
• Fixed image distortion affecting a lot of HD sex scenes
  
• Fixed timing issues in Evan x Brontide sex scene
  
• Corrected colour of fluids in Eve x Kreyton sex scene
  

Changes

• Equipment items will now stack in inventory
  
• Significantly reduced memory usage for combat FX - offering better performance for low-end PC hardware
  
• Updated the look & feel of Farming & Monster interaction UI:
  
  • Player can now preselect a food item for fast manual feeding of farm monsters
    
  • While planting seeds, the selected seed item quality is now shown
    
• Attacking an invulnerable enemy will now display IMMUNE status text
  
• Numerous improvements for Essence Market UI
  
• Added ‘World’ volume slider for adjustment of all player & environment action sounds
  
• Improved Farming & Monster interaction icons
  
• Slight improvement to interaction targeting after concluding dialogue with an NPC
  
• Some players encountered an exception when moving monsters between groups, or when adding items to an empty Storehouse - some extra information has been added to help in reporting & identifying these issues
  

Fixes

• Using the correct seasonal fertilizer should protect crops from extreme weather, including universal fertilizer
  
• Fixed crash when any combat unit with “Targeted” debuff causes their Evasion to become negative
  
• Fixed crash when equipping Worn Items and Held Items while using a combination of mouse and touch screen
  
• Preview sounds should be audible again when adjusting volume sliders in options
  
• First character to appear in a dialogue interaction could slide in too quickly; max speed has been smoothed
  
• Previously the player had to walk in & out of an NPC’s interaction zone to target them in some situations
  
• Prevented repeat-interaction with Mason on Savannah F5 during fade into his sex scene
  
• Players who have already cleared Savannah F8 will have Sieger’s optional quest removed from their logs, and the quest should no longer reappear when defeating pirate mobs from F8 recurring
  
• Player can repeatedly feed the giant Shettle in Savannah F5, but it will no longer attempt to complete the Mason’s quest
  
• Djinn Merchant colliders modified to remove an area where player could get stuck
  
• Monster farm actions nameplate now updates if monster was renamed while viewing stats
  
• Fixed monster traits occasionally appearing in duplicate
  
• Cooking ingredients with long names should now be displayed in full
  
• Removed additional redundant Game Difficulty slider when starting a new game
  
• Correctly layered shrubbery that was obscuring Dire during his date sequence
  
• Corrected some spelling mistakes in dialogue
  
• Fixed an issue caused by 0-quality crops when opening the Job Board
  
• No longer able to feed a monster with equipped food item if it has 0 quantity remaining
  
• Upon starting dialogue, the first character to appear would often move too quickly
  
• Font text was blurry on some UI
  
• Revised collider on Savannah F6 that players could cause players to become stuck
  

Hello again farmers!

What's been happening since the previous major update?
With 0.1.3.1b as our last update for the year, we've slipped in a fully revised dialogue system - though you may only notice some UI changes or different behaviors - as well as a better, more expansive Jobs Board system on the farm.
Some of our staff are winding down for few days off to stay energized for the next year of pushing Cloud Meadow towards completion.
 
So, what was actually accomplished in 2022?
Summarizing a year's worth of effort and patch notes comprehensively is no simple task!
However, I would like to draw attention to some of the features I feel we're most proud of:

• Savannah dungeon floor 8, our single largest & most complex area yet
  
• Concluding the first story act of Cloud Meadow's multi-act story arc
  
• Greatly expanded the spring Royal Matchmaker Event
  
• UI overhauls & improvements across the board, including; combat, loot rewards, farm jobs management, monster traits & family, farm buildings, cooking & more
  
• Way better resolution scaling, UI readability & reduced memory usage for players on older systems
  
• Combat mechanics overhaul; significant changes to combat stats, scaling, status effects, fundamental mechanics and a full difficulty balance adjustment
  
• Introduced Plankton to the farming ecosystem
  
• Total number of sex scenes up to 332 (40 HD scenes + sprite scenes) with more to come...
  

 
What else are you working on? How about...
Here's a reminder for what the next major content update will entail, while more expansive detail can be found in my previous monthly update posts

• Adding a new recurring monthly event that takes place in a tiny new side-area called the Faire Grounds
  
• At this fairground event, and a traveling troupe of Brownies arrive for you to meet & 'greet', learn their lore & browse their merchandise
  
• You'll be able to recruit Kaleida as a major party NPC at this event
  
• This will include an overhaul to Kaleida's combat, too
  

 
More work behind-the-scenes:

• New HD sex scenes are moving steadily towards completion - Eve/Evan x Minerva & Eve/Evan x Kellam
  
• Revamped quest system, which will enable us to use produce way more quest content & town interactions easily - currently something that's quite lacking)
  
• This quest refactoring is currently the last planned system to be rewritten - once this feature is stable, we will be able to fully focus on content-driven updates for the remainder of development
  
• The Forest dungeon is progressing through the design & planning phase, with early concepts completed
  
• Other calendar events that take place in the new Faire Grounds are being concepted for future updates further along
  
• Tutorial and farm mechanic introduction sequences are planned for rewrite - formalized as a series of farm-based & town-based questlines that can be pursued as the player's choice
  

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

• Introduce yourself in our very own Discord [ https://discord.gg/6ASAxDF ]
  
• Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple ]
  

Fixes

• Fixed dialogue-related error in Savannah F8 after completing a fight between the Denmother & Centaur Stonebreaker
  
• Fixed dialogue-related error in Savannah F6 when nominating a monster to participate in the Stonebreaker’s challenge
  
• Fixed Jobs Board error when growing Summer Epoch Event seeds in any field
  
• Players who completed the Savannah but found themselves stuck with Sieger’s optional quest from F8 will have this quest entry removed
  
• Improved collision & layering for Jerikan merchant; players should no longer become stuck when invading his personal space
  
• Some visual fx during the Poacher confrontation dialogue sequence were not displaying properly
  
• Improved some dialogue between Jubelle & Camellia on first encounter
  

This will probably be the last major build of the year! With us having wrapped up the poachers arc and are now focusing on various systems to help finish off the last levels of content, including finding out more about who was buying from the Poachers, and the mysterious forest levels of the dungeon island! We hope that you all have wonderful holidays, and look forward to continuing to work on the game as the new year approaches!

Additions

• Yonten can now spend his ability points to improve his abilities. While currently only Yonten is available, other characters will become available in future updates.
  
• Added a user requested feature to allow pausing the loading screen until a button is pressed, allowing splash screens to be enjoyed when loading completes quickly. This option can be toggled in the options menu gameplay settings.
  
• Crops have a new animation effect when they’re fertilized with an out of season essence
  

Changes

• Updated layout of the main menu and added some new animation
  [List]
• Changelog now stands out more as a menu button, and also will now highlight in a new build to draw more attention to version changes.
  

Several parts of the existing conversation UI have been updated as we prepare to use improved data for future content

• Updated options to use their own popup panel, allowing us to better display longer text, and also support scrolling so we can show more than 6 options at once.
  
  • Existing conversations may look a bit odd as existing “Next/Prev page” options just appear as regular options
    
• Redesigned the conversation history window. New design is a bit more efficient, and also has improvements like:
  
  • Grouping “pages” of text from the same character
    
  • Logging option selections
    
  • Showing “---” when conversations end
    
• Made some improvements to text scrolling, and also added a “>>” indicator at the bottom to indicate when scrolling is completed
  

Updated the Job Board UI

• Uses the new character card/icons for more details about your monsters
  
• Now uses a 2 click assignment (click to select and click to assign), which is a bit more inconvenient, but does allow selection of monsters to view related tooltips, rename, or re-equip from the job board.
  
• New UI includes a map of the farm making it possible to identify where work areas are on the farm
  
• Each workable location is now selected one at a time and has their own custom job board. These boards use our newer larger icons and show more details about the current work rate, as well as changes to work based on adding/replacing/removing a worker.
  
• Monsters working in crop fields have a new icon that will indicate if they apply out of season fertilizer
  
• Managing monster’s locations, Barn and pasture locations, now has a new UI that is part of this board. Along with the map, this should help with figuring out where your monsters are located or moving to.
  
  • Group selection and management was removed from the Breeding/Harvesting UI. When breeding monsters, the right card will now let you select from all monsters on the farm.
    

Fixes

• Some players were unable to complete the quest to find the lost plankton on floor 8; the missing plankton was erroneously moving out of bounds. It’s position has been restored to the usual location
  
• Fixed a dialog error during the date with Lucia
  
• Fixed a position issue on enemy Mason’s icon sprite
  
• Fixed an issue where HallowHaunt lighting would only apply correctly after loading a save game
  
• Fixed and issue with using Ev’s Rake Throw ability when all targets already affected
  
• Fixed exception when talking to fighting denmother on Sav 8
  
• Fixed ability points triggering “has points to spend” highlight for characters other than Yonten