Salty Hounds News

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Dear players,
Thank you for playing Salty Hounds and supporting us through this important period. With your help, we've been able to find many small oversights and bugs, improving the stability of the game.

Contents-wise, we have addressed the issue that the prologue was feeling slightly sluggish by completely rewriting and reorganizing the main story events in the early part of the game.

• Changed: Rewrote and reorganized the first main events, accelerating the pace of gameplay in the first weeks.
  
• Fixed: the black screen issue at startup that was occurring for certain combinations of region settings. This problem should be gone now.
  
• Fixed: the rare freezing issue when going from Flower street to Winter street.
  

• Fixed: The issue of the current revenue progress now resets after the checkpoints of the weeks 11 and 21.
  
• Fixed: The flower crafting activity at the flower shop deducting money twice.
  
• Fixed: the grit increase rate for 'browsing the department store' showing the wrong values.
  
• Fixed: the issue of cooking level not going up when cooking at home. Now a message will show each time the cooking count increases. The cooking level will go up when you repeat this same activity for a designated number of times.
  
• Fixed: several minor visual glitches and character animation issues.
  
• Fixed: the roll bonus from your stats not being applied during the work phase. Now all stats are appropriately considered, providing bonuses to your chance to roll a success.
  
• Fixed: Junho's one-time story events recurring after seeing him play with the cat.
  

• Changed: Reduced the length of the call connection sound.
  
• Changed: the ending checkpoints will occur at Monday morning of week 11/21, instead of Friday night, for a more coherent narrative flow.
  
• Changed: Item prices were reduced in general.
  

• Removed: the "drink at the bar" quest which was malfunctioning.
  
• Added: a hint to Junho for where to find him to progress with his story events.
  
• Fixed: the freeze issue after talking to Jaewon when you talk to him in the flower shop.
  
• Fixed: the event with Jaewon handing over documents on Seha's request was occuring too early.
  

• Removed: The early event with riding the car with a client which now became redundant due to the rewrite.
  
• Changed: The call from the celebrity's manager now happens on a Wednesday.
  
• Changed: The text message from Noru, calling you to the Brunch Cafe, now occurs upon waking up in the morning.
  
• Changed it so that the update announcement pops up at startup regularly.
  

P.S.
You can submit bugs or issues while playing through this Google form.
Thank you for your support.

Dear players,

we have now uploaded the first patch since the release of the reboot version.
It contains a lot of fixes, major and minor, and one big content update, which is...


You may have noticed that you were getting the same phone call event over and over.
We have now unlocked multiple phone call events at the sofa. (In the evening)
Please give it a go!

Thank you, and we hope you will have a lot of fun with this update.




[h2]TRANSLATION[/h2]

• added missing translations, corrected some typos and rewrote some parts for higher clarity.
  

[h2]VISUAL[/h2]

• fixed the sleeping animation glitch at night.
  
• added the designated animation to taking calls during the prologue.
  
• added the designated animation for sofa phone calls.
  

[h2]GAMEPLAY[/h2]

• fixed the bug that was giving you the same phone call event over and over.
  
• Reduced the chance of phone calls returning absence messages.
  
• fixed an occasional freezing bug when giving a present to the bartender.
  
• added a system message to each main character to notify you when you have reached the 'temporary' affection level cap with each character.
  
• fixed the issue of the Wisdom stat not increasing from some activities.
  
• completing each quest now gives you a reward.
  
• After obtaining a main's address, his face icon will show up on the minimap. It doesn't have any functionality for now.
  
• fixed the bug of cooking level not increasing.
  
• changed the time cost of stargazing activity at the planetarium from 3 hours to 1.5 hours.
  

[h2]ONGOING[/h2]

Dear players,

Thank you for waiting.
Today, we have finally uploaded the rebooted version of Salty Hounds, which we have been tirelessly developing from scratch over the past six months. We sincerely appreciate the kindness and support you have shown us in these trying times.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As explained in the previous announcement, unfortunately, due to fundamental structural issues caused by the previous programmers, the initial release version wasn’t even suitable for patching or expanding. After assessing the situation, we completely discarded the broken original build and developed a brand-new game from scratch that we can now present to you.

Now, using this build as a foundation, we plan to add the remaining contents through rapid updates, aiming towards the completion of the game in the quickest time possible.

We will swiftly add more contents to ensure that you will already enjoy Salty Hounds during Early Access.


[h2]The State of the Reboot[/h2]

In the rebooted ver 0.81, we have significantly improved the core system and overall stability of the game, providing a much more enjoyable gameplay experience. Moving forward, we will continue to add prepared content based on this version, progressing rapidly towards completion. Expect the next content update to arrive in two weeks.



[h2]Gameplay[/h2]

You can explore an open-world style city freely, to encounter five romance options, and progress through the story via various events. The story will then conclude with one of multiple romance endings. (Endings are to be added in future updates).



In the game, there are currently a total of 10 male characters to meet and to talk to, including 5 romanceables and 5(+1) supporting characters, each with their own stories to tell. In order to get closer to them, you can engage with them every day, chatting them up, making phone calls, exploring special events hidden throughout the city, and delivering gifts they like.

You set and follow a schedule from Monday to Friday, working and earning money, while enjoying the freedom to move around on Saturdays and Sundays.



[h2]Improved and New Features[/h2]

• A completely revamped weekday phase (with scheduler)
  
• Items, inventory, and a gifting system
  
• A quest list to incentivize you for your achievements
  
• Significantly easier and faster movement and controls
  
• Better minimap: players can now see their current location and instantly teleport for a small fee.
  

[h2]Future plans[/h2]
We will keep expanding the contents of the game now that the core system is mostly in place. In general, you can expect more events, dialogues and graphics to be added with each new update.

In the following updates, we will:

• unlock the Affection Level Cap gradually, giving you access to more conversations and events.
  
• unlock the dating part for an immersive romantic experience with the love interests.
  
• add and unlock more special events with stunning illustrations.
  
• add more random events on weekdays and random encounters on weekends.
  
• polish up the game anywhere we can, and remove any bugs we find.
  

Please consider this build as the first Early Access release that we wanted to give you at the initial launch, according to our original development plans. Please enjoy the game at your leisure, and look forward to upcoming content updates. Thank you.

P.S.
You can submit bugs or issues while playing through this Google form.
Thank you for your support.

Dear players of Salty Hounds,

We apologize for the delay in the game update, which was scheduled for October.

The various systems and features that we have improved and revamped require some time to polish and debug.
This is to be expected, given that we are completely redeveloping the game from scratch, despite our best efforts.

Salty Hounds Reboot : v0.8 Voice Teaser
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We fully understand how frustrating this is for you, and we sincerely apologize.

We are working around the clock to complete the update as soon as possible.
We will keep you updated on our progress. Thank you for your understanding and support.



Sincerely,

Topping Palette

Dear players of Salty Hounds,

The Salty Hounds 0.8 update will be released in mid-October.
We wanted to release the update in September, but we need a little bit of extra time even though we're already done implementing or improving the new features, such as:

- To-do list (aka 'quests')
- items
- interactions with NPCs and the world

We are postponing the move to 0.8 because we want to include all these new features in the first update, instead of adding them over time (0.81, 0.82...).
We'd be grateful for your understanding.

Even though we have abandoned the code base of the buggy 0.7 build and started programming it from scratch, the progress is very good. Everything is moving forward many times faster than when we were developing the previous 0.7 build. The development team is working hard to ensure that the update is as polished and enjoyable as possible.
We appreciate your patience and understanding.

In the meantime, here is a sneak peek at some of the new features:

- Quest feature preview

- Item feature preview

- Improved map interaction

- Improved Mini-map feature

Thank you for your patience and support.

Topping Palette