Animal Shelter News

Changes and additions: - The default bowls located in the medical isolation cages were not working as intended, so they've been completely removed from these cages. Now, players will need to purchase the appropriate bowls for the isolation cages, but this ensures they will work correctly with the save system.
- For diseases requiring a stool sample examination, we've reduced the amount of health points that animals lose due to the illness, giving players more time to collect and analyze the sample.
- We've added an additional safeguard to the save system, which manifests as a block on the ability to save the game while a helper is attempting to carry out their assigned task (e.g., cleaning up something, which means removing an object from the shelter, or filling water/food containers).
- We've appropriately seasoned the veterinary food, so sick animals should be more keen to eat it. We've adjusted the hunger statistic level at which animals will be inclined to eat it, too. The animal still needs to be a bit hungry, thought. But now it should crave veterinary food even more than regular one (but only when it's needed to cure a disease!).

Bug fixes: - We believe we've successfully fixed the glitch that occasionally made pets turn invisible in certain scenarios. No more ghost hunting needed!
- Few items - such as the biopsy needle, hoof file, and claw scissors - lacked an outline - now they have one.
- Fixed an issue where the notification indicated that water containers were filled when in reality, the helper filled the food containers.

Changes and additions: - We've adjusted the treatment for pets with 'Stomach Ulcers'. We've reduced the amount of veterinary food required for treatment from two doses to just one. We realized that asking you to feed an ailing pet, often with a reduced appetite due to the illness, frequently led to challenges in timely healing. This change should make recovery more achievable. Furthermore, for illnesses requiring veterinary food treatment, we've reduced the health degradation rate for the sick pets. This gives players more time to wait for the pet to get hungry again, allowing for a more manageable treatment process.
- We've fine-tuned the "pop" sound effect, which you might recognize from when a new panel appears (like when there's a new pet available for adoption on the computer). This sound will now be half as loud and have half the previous range. But be aware, if you're carrying a tablet with an open window that can produce this sound (e.g., the 'Pets to take in' window), escaping it won't be an option – sadly, character movement speeds in our game fall short of Mach 1. If you find yourself pursued by persistent popping, the recommended solution is to close the windows on your tablet.

Bug fixes: - Fixed an issue that was preventing some players from saving their game. The bug was triggered by samples taken from animals that were no longer in the shelter at the time of saving the game (e.g., a blood sample from a dog that had already been adopted). Those lingering samples were, quite literally, holding your progress hostage!
- Fixed an issue where you could promise a pet to more than one person. The "promised" status wasn't saving correctly, so upon game reload, the same pet could be paired with another individual despite already being promised to someone else. Breaking promises like that is not behavior we endorse...
- Fixed a glitch where occasionally the medical cabinet would load without its doors.

Changes and additions:
- New diseases from the Vet DLC are now available regardless if the missions are completed, disabled or enabled (before they were only available if missions were finished or disabled when using the mail box).
- We've rebalanced the generation of sick animals: after the changes in the disease system introduced in the Vet Clinic DLC, the chances of
encountering a sick animal were far too low at lower shelter reputation levels. Now, the game should offer a more balanced challenge across all reputation tiers.
- Further refinements have been made to the system that generates prospective adopters from pet adoption ads. We've enhanced the system that generates interested humans for pets based on ads. Now, if a pet doesn't have any trait considered as "positive", the system will also take into account their "neutral" traits. It's important to note that there's always a possibility of a "difficult" animal (perhaps due to traumatic past experiences, improper care, or lack of training) arriving at the shelter. Such animals might not possess traits seen by the system as either "positive" or even "neutral." Matching such an animal with a human will be more challenging. However, to boost the odds of finding the best possible new owner even more, we've also doubled the number of people responding to adoption ads. This ensures that every furry friend has a greater chance of finding a loving home.
- We've enhanced the system that generates visitors coming to the shelter for animals not listed in adoption ads. Now, the generation of potential adopters for available pets should be more precise, ensuring every kind of critter will find someone eager to welcome them into their new home.
- We've made significant adjustments to the way inventory contents of both the Warehouse and Medical Cabinet are saved. Some players reported instances of
items mysteriously disappearing or moving between the Warehouse and Medical Cabinet after saving. We believe we've pinpointed the root cause, but addressing it
required an overhaul of the save system for these elements. As a result of these changes, if players have a Medical Cabinet in their save data, upon the first load after the new patch, all items from the Medical Cabinet should be safely transferred to the Warehouse. This is a necessary step to "reset" incorrectly saved item parameters. After this adjustment, everything should return to normal. Feel free to move items back from Warehouse to the Medical Cabinet, and they should now be saved and loaded correctly.
- We've improved using microscopes by disabling exiting the mini-game by using the secondary/alternative interaction button (which happed a lot by accident). Additionally, when the sample is "infected", the chance of detecting an infection while scanning key points in the sample is increased (from 50% to 75%), making it easier to detect an infection using the microscope mini-game.
- Occasionally, the wound treatment status was saved incorrectly, causing the wound to load with a dressing applied, yet the Medical Chart would show that the wound needed treatment first (and it was impossible to remove the currently applied dressing). We've added a safeguard to prevent improper loading of wounds on animals, ensuring that healing goes smoothly and your pets remain in tip-top shape.
- We've supercharged your shopping experience! The maximum allowed number of items in a shop order has been cranked up from a mere 9 to a whopping 99. Time to stock up like never before!
- Horses, by mistake, were given the ability to have the "Wound" disease in the base game. However, they couldn't be treated because it required the Treatment Platform, which is exclusive to the new clinics in the Vet Clinic DLC. To resolve this, we've disabled the possibility of adding this wound to horses in the base game.

Bug fixes:
- The bandage wrapping for the paw of the Inu-inspired breed had an incorrect rotation, but it's now fixed and looking proper.
- Fixed a bug in the mission involving a dog with a sick paw that needed treatment (a block was applied incorrectly for admitting sick animals, which inadvertently stalling the mission progress).
- Fixed a bug causing some of our new decorative items (like the fresh armchairs or coffee tables) saving and loading incorrectly.
- Fixed a bug causing the urination sound effect occasionally loop way longer than intended.
- Fixed a bug where a disease would save with zero suggested tests during the diagnosis phase, resulting in an empty test recommendation list in the Medical Chart upon loading.
- Fixed a bug that prevented changing the type of food in a bowl that's already filled.
- Fixed a bug that messed with the pathfinding system near the northern wall of the shelter (ever tried to put your pet in its cage and witnessed it magically teleport out?).
- Fixed a bug causing the dog's animation when hopping into the van after adoption looking a bit off.

Known issues and workarounds:
We believe we are close to fixing the issue of disappearing animals, but it will still take a bit.
Animals are not being removed - they are still in the shelter, but unfortunately due to an error, they might become invisible.

In the meantime, here is a workaround if that ever happens to you:
- If, using superhuman tracking skills, you manage to locate such an invisible animal (it should show a tooltip then you look at it - just like with normal animals) please pick it up
- Take it to a cage in a building with walls (i.e. not to the enclosures surrounded by a mesh, but e.g. in dog/cat/puppy/kitten buildings or veterinary isolation rooms)
- Close the cage door (to prevent the animal from leaving it)
- Completely exit that building - not the ROOM, but the BUILDING - and close the door behind you
- Upon re-entering the building, the invisible animal should materialize

Why it happens (if you're interested in the details): The disappearance is caused by an error in the system that turns off objects invisible to the player to improve performance, but only in a very specific situation, precisely when the animal has the cage door open and leaves it by itself, while the main building doors are closed (so objects in that building are invisible). In such a situation, upon re-entering the building, the animal that left the cage on its own does not properly turn back on.

This issues can be avoided by closing the cage doors and preventing the animals from leaving them on their own. Sorry for the temporary inconvenience.

We had to revert the terrier model changes from last patch due to missing points used by many systems. Once we correct the model we will re-apply the fix for terrier's paws. This should resolve A LOT of issues with this type of animal.

Changes:
- Individuals coming to adopt a pet from an advertisement will now be better informed about the specific pet they're interested in. At the very least, one of the desired positive traits will always match the traits of the pet. Additionally, there's an increased likelihood that other traits will align more closely with that particular pet compared to individuals who visit the shelter without responding to a specific adoption advertisement. This should lead to happier matches and better-informed adopters!
- Added generating of humans who want to adopt a pet based on the cages in the shelter. A human is generated when there is no potential adopter who wants to adopt a pet from the cages we have
- The detection of pets in the camera lens has been improved. We've refined the photo camera functionality, ensuring a more precise detection of animals in the lens during photography sessions. Previously, the camera would sometimes mistakenly detect obstacles, concluding that the animal was obscured even when it was visible in the lens. Now, you can photograph your furry friends without the camera misjudging them as behind obstacles, ensuring that every precious moment is appropriately captured
- Fixed a bug that caused the perks and conditions of people in the process of adopting animals from the shelter to not save correctly. As a result, upon loading such a save, their list of perks/conditions was always empty. This is a save error that cannot be retroactively fixed - saves without perks will not recover them after this fix, but from this point on, people's save should work correctly
- Added new, more informative, tooltip when we try to use sample on a microscope
- To prevent errors added additional checks in: dirt manager, adoption summary, wounds system, plaster, mission task 17, pillow, dog interact with a cat, cat interact with a dog, dirty cages, when checking shelter name, when trying to sort an empty list of dirtying items, disease
- Added missing terrier paws
- Re-added colliders that went missing from the park map. Animals and objects will no longer pass through trees while playing in the park
- Changed "Dog Run" to "Cat Run" sign in lvl 1 kittens building
- Added animal icon background in adoption summary
- Fixed getting back from horse run when the player was teleported back to the main shelter
- Fixed bug that occurred when checking dirtying items count
- Fixed issue that sometime prevented to pick an animal up from washing station
- Fixed trait points count on summary panel
- Fixed number visibility in adoption summary traits
- Fixed fonts for Asian languages
- Fixed bug that caused constantly sending prizes for 1st place in the world league
- Fixed a bug with blocking the admission of sick cats to the shelter
- Fixed a bug causing the dog to get stuck in the "Bark At Tree" action
- Assigned vet buildings function as surgery (for taking in animals requirements)
- Updated translations for new Achievements