Orange Season Update 0.4
Hello, everyone! Today I'm releasing Orange Season version 0.4, which changes a lot of things on the game:
The most important thing is that Rock Town and Orange Town were merged into one, with every Rock Town villager moving into Orange Town. While my initial idea was for the game to have three towns (Orange, Rock and Pudding), as I watched different people play the game I decided it was better to have everyone closer to the farm.
With the merge, Orange Town was redesigned to accommodate everyone. I also changed it so the whole town is loaded as a single area, to hopefully prevent people from getting lost on it (the map is still coming). Festivals are held on a special area on the north side of town, while your farm is now to the south (and bigger than before). The mountains and forests are on the same place as they were before, while the beach was temporarily removed.
The mountains and forests were also redesigned and are loaded as a single area now. Additional new forest areas were created to hold the special seasonal fields (all four of them are on the other side of the forest now, accessible only after the first fall season).
Those new huge areas may require a little more CPU power to run smoothly, so I took some time to make a lot of performance improvements to balance things out. I also added a new setting that will let you change the game to run at 30, 40 or 48fps if needed.
The art style was also improved, with changes to the grass, land and snow that reflect the changes made to the trees on a smaller update a few months earlier.
The fishing system and the way that the fish spawn was also changed. From now on, you'll see new fish shadows showing up and also disappearing as you walk by. If you use your fishing rod, they'll no longer swim towards your bait, so you need to throw it on their path. Bridges are usually the most effective places for fishing.
I've added many new conversations and cutscenes. I also changed some of the existing ones. From now on you'll start the game with a dog instead of getting one from Mia.
Due to some recent issues with the wild animals, this update will move all of them back to their original position. If you have already tamed any wild animal, you will need to pick them up again if you want them on your farm. The friendship level will not be lost.
Other than that, I've also balanced some item prices, changed spawn rates and fixed lots of bugs that had been reported.
If you haven't played in a while, there are also some more changes that were done on smaller updates that I didn't write any announcement for. Those changes include the possibility of crops dying, new hair and skin colors for your character, new types of fish and items, new options on the storage screen, new caves, new jewelry, a brand new database screen, the ability to jump over fences and a lot more. You can check the in-game changelog for a full list of changes.
Even though this update was huge, it is still not everything that I wanted to have ready for this version, so I'll be releasing a 4.1 update in a couple weeks to make up for it.
One last thing: yesterday the game completed 4 years in production. It's a very long time, a lot more than I expected it would take to finish the game, but things have been moving faster now, as I'm no longer working alone. While I'm still calling the shots on everything, I've three people helping me with the game now. They are:
Since I'm no longer alone, I'll soon be changing my dev name from Hudell Tales to "Tropical Puppy", the studio name we picked. This is just a heads up so you all don't need to worry if the name suddenly change. It'll still be me behind the game! Thank you all for playing it and I hope you enjoy the update. As always, let me know if you find any issue!
The most important thing is that Rock Town and Orange Town were merged into one, with every Rock Town villager moving into Orange Town. While my initial idea was for the game to have three towns (Orange, Rock and Pudding), as I watched different people play the game I decided it was better to have everyone closer to the farm.
With the merge, Orange Town was redesigned to accommodate everyone. I also changed it so the whole town is loaded as a single area, to hopefully prevent people from getting lost on it (the map is still coming). Festivals are held on a special area on the north side of town, while your farm is now to the south (and bigger than before). The mountains and forests are on the same place as they were before, while the beach was temporarily removed.
The mountains and forests were also redesigned and are loaded as a single area now. Additional new forest areas were created to hold the special seasonal fields (all four of them are on the other side of the forest now, accessible only after the first fall season).
Those new huge areas may require a little more CPU power to run smoothly, so I took some time to make a lot of performance improvements to balance things out. I also added a new setting that will let you change the game to run at 30, 40 or 48fps if needed.
The art style was also improved, with changes to the grass, land and snow that reflect the changes made to the trees on a smaller update a few months earlier.
The fishing system and the way that the fish spawn was also changed. From now on, you'll see new fish shadows showing up and also disappearing as you walk by. If you use your fishing rod, they'll no longer swim towards your bait, so you need to throw it on their path. Bridges are usually the most effective places for fishing.
I've added many new conversations and cutscenes. I also changed some of the existing ones. From now on you'll start the game with a dog instead of getting one from Mia.
Due to some recent issues with the wild animals, this update will move all of them back to their original position. If you have already tamed any wild animal, you will need to pick them up again if you want them on your farm. The friendship level will not be lost.
Other than that, I've also balanced some item prices, changed spawn rates and fixed lots of bugs that had been reported.
If you haven't played in a while, there are also some more changes that were done on smaller updates that I didn't write any announcement for. Those changes include the possibility of crops dying, new hair and skin colors for your character, new types of fish and items, new options on the storage screen, new caves, new jewelry, a brand new database screen, the ability to jump over fences and a lot more. You can check the in-game changelog for a full list of changes.
Even though this update was huge, it is still not everything that I wanted to have ready for this version, so I'll be releasing a 4.1 update in a couple weeks to make up for it.
One last thing: yesterday the game completed 4 years in production. It's a very long time, a lot more than I expected it would take to finish the game, but things have been moving faster now, as I'm no longer working alone. While I'm still calling the shots on everything, I've three people helping me with the game now. They are:
- Marcos Freire (RyanKamos), who has been working on the game art for over a year now.
- Rafael Magnino (Rajuma), who's now helping me write the story, cutscenes and conversations.
- And Bruno Nicodemos, who has already played the game for hundreds of hours and is now helping test and analyze bug reports.
Since I'm no longer alone, I'll soon be changing my dev name from Hudell Tales to "Tropical Puppy", the studio name we picked. This is just a heads up so you all don't need to worry if the name suddenly change. It'll still be me behind the game! Thank you all for playing it and I hope you enjoy the update. As always, let me know if you find any issue!