Cloud Meadow News

Additions

• Monsters assigned to farming work will now also dig holes after removing all dead crops

Changes

• Enemies now only scale with the protagonist’s level. This was done to make it easier to test/tune scaling.
  
  • Enemy stats have been changed, tuning them around the more fixed growth of the protagonist and companions. This should keep enemies from being too easy, too soon; though a well bred/fed monster can still be significantly stronger than all enemies, due to how powerful many max grade traits are.
• All party characters now improve their primary stats each time they level.
  
  • Protagonist and Companions:
    
    • This growth per level is in addition to the stat points they already gained every level, letting those characters scale better with stronger monster species.
      
      • Each character has their own min/max range (and related growth rate per level) for each primary stat.
        
      • Due to these new points and ranges, stat points have been reset again so you can reallocate your points around these new “base” values.
        
        • You can now only spend a max of 100 stat points in a single primary stat (out of a possible 180).
  • Monsters:
    
    • This growth per level is 50% of the range of their bloodline limit traits. This portion can now -only- be gained by leveling, so some of your monsters may have had their stats reduced (you can no longer max out a monster's stats without leveling). For the same reason, monsters you have already leveled will have their stats increased, if they weren't already maxed out from feeding.
      
      • The stat limit ranges of most species have been updated, improving the total points in most cases.
        
        • Dragon limit traits are still among the best stat limit traits, but Dragon limit traits are no longer the best limit trait for each stat.
      • In some cases -mostly cat traits- limits were incorrect, and so those limits have been fixed (reduced).
• Weak bloodline trait limits were updated to be 80% of the normal species limit (easier to maintain) so those ranges have been updated.
  
• The point spend UI has been updated:
  
• The “input” value will now show/track points spent in each stat (player and companions) or stats gained from food (monsters). This value will now change color (reddish brown) when a character has reached the max points for that stat.
  
• You can now hold shift to add 5 stat points at a time (and there's a tooltip for this).
  
• The Farm UI seed selection menu will no longer include out-of-season seeds.
  
• Crops will no longer die on season change, allowing them to complete their next harvest.
  
• Re-harvestable crops are removed during this final out of season harvest.
  
• Crop nodes on dungeon floors will now always drop BOTH crops and seeds; currently 1-3 of each. This should help ensure a supply of food for your monsters at the start of the game, when the farm is not regularly producing crops.
  
  • Fixed an issue with applying the protagonist's Crop/Seed drop modifier to these drops.
• Changed the Wolf's Alpha Strike ability to choose a random ally to join in the attack, instead of a targeted one. This was done because 90% of the time the best “choice” was always the same character (most damage), making that choice tedious.
  
• Changed Fio's Rigged Roll result to no longer reset cooldowns on all of her abilities. Since this result always rolls all of Fio's abilities, having the cooldowns reset meant that the best “choice” was Spade Shooter, almost all of the time.
  
• Changed "Skip turn" in combat to "Delay Turn". Instead of a double-cooldown, now resets that unit's turn timer to 50%. We think this will make this option more tactically useful.
  
• We tweaked a couple of the floor 5/6 enemy groups to make them a little bit easier; these fights included a double Mason, double Headhunter, and double Drunken Pirate.
  
• The poacher can no longer summon Stonebreaker or Denmother enemies.
  
• The Stonebreaker cave challenge on Savannah 6 now resets the volunteer's health to full, before the challenge begins. This way a character that has the required stats won't fail from being damaged from prior fights.
  
• The combat ability selection UI now has an “active” animation on top of selected abilities, or active passive abilities.
  
• Added a new overlay to abilities that are “passive only” (can’t ever be selected).
  
• Abilities that can’t currently be used, such as ones that require an allied target when all allies are defeated, are now darkened to better indicate they can’t be used.
  
• Added tooltips to companion combat UIs to describe related effects.
  
• Added a new timescale “button” to combat, allowing a player to increase the game (animation) speed from 1x to 3x.
  
  • Added a tooltip to the new button which describes the “hidden” option to add a 1x increase to combat speed while the spacebar is being held.

Fixes

• Improved character descriptors in Prank Day & Mason Sex dialogue scenes
  
• Fixed some typographical errors
  
• Goldra’s combat minigame is no longer sped up while fast-forwarding
  
• The animation to move a character into position before each attack in combat has been shortened.
  
• Removed the short delay that was at the end of every combat unit’s turn
  
• Fixed issue where non-existent Blanbala crops were being logged as killed by extreme weather
  
• Removed sugar from Poached Plemon recipe, so not a duplicate of “Gempas” Plemonade
  
• Fixed an exception related to Kreyton’s hunger statuses after switching from max charge no charge between turns (fed multiple times).
  
• Fixed a soft-lock in the Kelpie boss fight related to sleeping or stunning the boss at the same time the boss was being forced to dive
  
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to interact with the game world in the background at the end of dialog sex scenes.
  
• Fixed an issue that allowed a chest to be opened twice using a combat.
  
• Edited the dialogs at the end of Tro’s Lab to make events of the sequence more clear.
  
• Fixed exception from attacking with Kreyton at full charge
  

Changes

• A stack of Macrinas will be granted to the food bin after the farm is repaired - ensuring monsters are fed on the first night. Players who have already passed the farm repair event in a save file will also have this stack of Macrinas added to their food bin.
  

Fixes

• Testing if Unity device error “” can be ignored without impacting performance. We are now no longer showing an error dialog for this case to avoid blocking gameplay.
  
• If encountered, this issue can often be prevented by unplugging additional USB input devices, like gamepads or joysticks, and restarting.
  
• Fixed issue caused by Goldra’s Saboteur ability when none of the attacks hit.
  
• Light aura in Tro’s Lab should no longer double in brightness sometimes.
  
• Fixed animation bug between Harpy’s Hover dodges and multiple hit enemy attacks.
  
• Fixed issue where some players had multiple Bubzilby item stacks due to the 0.1.2.4j converter not handling cases where the player had multiple quality levels (stacks).
  
• Fixed issue with loading saves where items with too high of a quality value had been created by monsters with too high domesticity (issue fixed in 0.1.2.5b).
  
• After clearing Tro’s Lab, Sieger will no longer arrive to inform the player to report to the Savannah 6 Camp Commander if they have already reported to the Camp Commander.
  
• Fixed being able to drag and build locked/unavailable buildings.
  
• Fixed Construction UI tooltips not updating after a building was constructed.
  
• Plankton pen job card now shows “No plankton in pen!” instead of work rate, when no plankton is assigned.
  
• Fixed a chest collider on Savannah 5 where the player could get stuck
  

Fixes

• Fixed issue with load menu locking up if a new save was somehow corrupted
  
• Fixed a combat crash triggered when a unit counters an attack
  
• Fixed issue with not being able to restart conversation with Pirate or Witch on Savannah 7 without loading.
  
• Fixed issue with dialogs where a character could incorrectly move to a far left position if clicking through messages quickly
  
• Fixed swiftness and healing icons being swapped on recipe cards in cooking window
  

Fixes

• Fixed issue with Jaero’s Intercepting Fist ability causing the game to crash
  
• Fixed summer event fight being automatically won if player skipped their turn instead of attacking
  
• Fixed issue caused by interacting with Savannah 7 bar patrons while transitioning to their sex scene from dialog
  
• Fixed domesticity of offspring increasing when breeding two monsters of the same species (should have decreased)
  
• Fixed Chimera Power Struggle ability not healing
  
• Fixed issue in combat with some monsters that possess the Dragon Leyline Drain trait
  
• Edited some dialog lines in new provision day conversations
  
• Fixed job cards not updating when triggering a monster to quit their job by right-clicking on the draggable icons at the top of the menu
  
• Fixed issues with the tracking of how many Spirit Shards have been turned in for the Hallow Haunt event
  
• Fixed combat reward window reporting a different set of items than what was gained
  
• Fixed bonus money item modifiers not actually providing bonus money
  
• Fixed issue with using Brontide’s Brace ability while he’s the only unit still active
  
• Fixed offspring inheriting base stat limitations incorrectly biased towards only one parent
  
• Fixed an issue when weak stat limit traits were improved by mutations
  
• Fixed Kreyton filtering as male in character selection
  
• Fixed issue with Brontide always following player in Cloverton
  
• Fixed issue with taunt status on enemies when taunting unit was disabled
  
• Fixed new games starting the player without any korona
  
• Fixed milk momma exhausting other monsters for an entire day
  

Happy New Year,

I’m Dwarf2500, from the programming team, here to share a progress and plans update. First off, let’s take a look back over the last year! (or just skip to 2022 to see what’s coming up)

[h3]Winter 2021[/h3]
A year ago we were still in the middle of addressing major stability issues. It had become clear the previous fall that there were a variety of structural issues in the project’s original code, which we could not effectively continue forward with, without addressing.

However, thanks to your support over the previous year (2020), Team Nimbus was able to bring in additional staff and these new team members not only allowed us to tackle more tasks, but they also brought in a lot of new experience to the team, experience which helped us identify and address these issues. The first batch of these improvements were still wrapping up at the start of the year, (any new code creates new bugs), and things were still a little shaky.

Despite these “background” changes, we still wanted to introduce new content. While part of our team continued to focus on building new dungeon floors, another began focusing on introducing more seasonal event mechanics, which for this season meant the first components of the spring Royal Matchmaker event (which is coming up again soon😏).

[h3]Spring 2021[/h3]
This led up to our first major updates of the year: Savannah 6 and Monster Palettes! Savannah 6 included a lot of new mechanics, while also being the intended floor for Tro’s lab (which we had been sneaking into the end of previous floors, pushing it along with each update). The Monster Palettes were also a major milestone and introduced quite a bit of variety to farms, combat, and breeding.

Along with the implementation of palettes, all monster abilities were now working, all monster types were enabled for combat, and a little later, SFX were finally introduced for those abilities.

During this period additional changes were introduced.

• We’d started trickling in some new pirate types (Drunken, Musket, Poacher, and Headhunter), which were seeded throughout existing floors.
  
• The Joy King event was introduced.
  
• Improvements were made to Save game handling including optimizing version conversions, and recycling autosaves.
  
• Meanwhile in the background we had also been hard at work making significant improvements to our item data…
  

[h3]Summer 2021[/h3]
A significant number of item changes (prices, value, recipes, etc), as well as some performance improvements to related UIs (Inventory and Cooking) were finally released.

Bug fixes were now established as a major priority with each build and, thanks to our generous players taking the time to report issues on our discord👍, the game was growing more stable than ever; despite the sweeping background changes made during this period. This even meant new bugs were being discovered, as players began to interact with more of the game’s systems😂


Mid-summer also saw additional changes:

• The new Summer Event put the new item changes to good use. The event included new mechanics requiring special seeds, “harvested” pages, it’s own “boss” encounter, and a special fertilizer reward.
  
• A new popup dialog was introduced, along with monster personalities, allowing you to talk to your monsters.
  
• We updated the cooking mechanics to make it (a little) easier to discover new recipes.
  
• We began trying to improve combat balance and scaling issues (ongoing).
  

Finally, at the end of summer, Savannah 7 was finally released, as well as two more structures: the Hot House to support hatching more eggs, and the Weather Balloon to predict the weather. Along with weather prediction, we also updated the Calendar UI, making it easier to track future events, like holidays or graduations.

[h3]Fall 2021[/h3]
New content to wrap up the year included:

• A new Log window, to better inform the player about background changes on the farm.
  
• New gameplay and event changes to the Hallow Haunt and Provision Day (Autumn and Winter) events.
  
• The Plankton pen which, while the player’s variety of types is currently limited, is an additional source of ingredients on the farm; including ones the player cannot refine from crops.
  

As well, just in time to make it out this year, we also released our second set of significant code changes; this time related to character (protagonist, monster, companion, and enemy) data. We’d been working on these since the start of the summer which, in addition to addressing background issues, added intended function (cooldowns and states persisting), new design (companions now use the player’s level, instead of their own), and laid the groundwork for future features (ability levels).

Along with these changes, the Party Window, Party Selection, and Training Room UIs were updated. Those new UIs included new changes to the new standard “character card” which were added to the previously updated Harvest/Breeding UI, such as: new filters, new sorting, equipment, improved point spending (level up), as well as a variety of new and improved tooltips for that information.

Fun fact: To give an example of how much the project has been cleaned up: a legacy save [0110f] made in the current version [0125c] is 30% the size (70% smaller), for all of the same data. None of that is improved compression, just junk/duplicate data removed.

[h2]2022[/h2]

So what’s coming up this next year? Well immediately going into the new year we’re trying to wrap up:

• Improved scaling and leveling changes.
  
• Improvements to how Buffs/Debuffs stack and are displayed.
  
• An updated traits UI, which includes “links” to parents (allowing you to step through a monster’s ancestry).
  
• The final floor of the Savannah, and the events and encounters that will wrap up that “arc”.
  

[h3]Further along:[/h3]

• Ability leveling will finally be functional
  
• A variety of UIs are still due to be updated, such as: Inventory, Combat Rewards, Hatching, Jobs Board & a new Monster Contracts board!
  
• Early Savannah floors should see a polish pass
  
• A new Forest dungeon will be introduced, populated with new enemy monsters & bosses
  
• Further tweaks and balance changes to the Farm based on player feedback.
  
• Multi-tier upgradable farm house, with plans for customizable rooms
  

As well, a third (and hopefully the last for a while🤞) set of “sweeping” changes will be started; this time improving our dialog and quest data. Those changes should finally allow us to make larger, and more frequent, additions to the game: adding story, tutorial, dating, and town content throughout the game (which we are well aware is sorely missing). To put it another way, after these improvements are made we should be able to switch a lot of focus away from stability and start introducing new content and story at a much more regular pace.

I don’t think anyone on the team expects to finish up the game this year (2022)... But I believe we all expect this to be our best year yet, and to finally put the end in sight. Thank you for all your support so far, as well as your continued support going forward.

And keep those error reports coming. They help so much. Dropping reports off on our Discord ( https://discord.gg/GXt973Q ) is effectively handing your report directly to the programming team. (We programmers monitor Discord directly, though not other platforms, such as Patreon or Steam).