Village Monsters News

I’ve been putting off writing this post for far too long. That... probably goes without saying, eh?

So let’s jump right to the good news: active development has resumed on Village Monsters! The fabled v1.1 will release this October.

If you want to know more of the details of my hiatus then please take a look at the following post on my website.

I am so sorry to have abandoned the game without explanation. You deserved so much better than that, especially after the buggy mess that was v1.0. To be frank, the last year has be awful. Every plan I made blew up in my face, every decision I made was the wrong one.

The last thing I want to do is wallow even more, so instead I want to focus on what I can for you and the game right now. From here until release I plan to release weekly (or more frequent) updates on my progress.

Here's Week 1!

[h2]tl;dr[/h2]
Everything is still on schedule for an October release for v1.1, aka the reboot, the restoration, the redo. Still gotta nail that name.

This past week has been mostly a technical slog as I get back in the saddle. It’s necessary but slow going work.

Previous Restoring a Village: Week 0

[h2]The Good[/h2]

[h3]Flyswatting, aka fixing the small (but annoying) things[/h3]
First thing I did was update GameMaker and look at all the errors, warnings and “suggestions” it made to me. There were… a lot.



Most of these are false positives or can be ignored, but going through them and fixing them was a really useful way to get back in the swing of things. The code base is now much more robust and should be less prone to breaking as I continue to bring it up to release condition.

[h3]Music and sound compression[/h3]
One of the “small” bugs ended up turning into a bigger but worthwhile fix: many sound files (including music) were being incorrectly converted into a different format and then back again. This resulted in both crunchier sounds and audio bugs. It’s fixed now!

[h2]The Bad[/h2]

[h3]Slow Going[/h3]
I had hoped this part would go faster. I know that it’s all so necessary and important to dig my way out of my self-inflicted hole. But I had hoped to be able to show off more things, while 80% of the screenshots I took this week are all of code or bugs. Blech.

[h3]Missing Kickstarter Rewards[/h3]
While auditing something unrelated, I noticed that one of the Kickstarter backer messages wasn’t where I knew it should be. I went and checked and found that many of them are in fact missing.

I added almost all the KS backer rewards during a two week stretch in early 2022. Most were just text appends and I hadn’t noticed their absence among all the other missing or corrupted files.

This is a huge oversight and was not intentional. I’ll need to re-add these items by hand and it is a priority to fix in this next week.

[h2]The Weird[/h2]

[h3]When bad weather crashes the title screen.[/h3]
Depending on the (in-game) season the weather on the title screen changes. However, some update or other changed how particle systems work when destroyed, and the punchline is this: bad weather could crash the game before it even started. That’s fixed now.

I'm not dead yet!

Work continues on v1.1. I'll spare you the litany of excuses as to why every little thing is taking longer than promised. I'm sure you're as tired of hearing them as I am typing them.

In summary, life has continued to be unkind, and I've needed to prioritize my family and health over everything else. The good news is that the septic tank hasn't exploded again. So, you know, I've got that going for me!

In truth, the past couple weeks have been the best, most productive, and most tragedy-free I've had since last February. I'm a little nervous to admit it for fear of it going sour again, but I'm in a much better place than I've been in for a long time, and Village Monsters has benefited greatly from it.

[h2]What's New?[/h2]
This post will not be a deep dive into what I've accomplished - I just wanted to get something out to assure you that I haven't forgotten or abandoned the game. Here are the quick notes:

• All milestones for v1.1 have been finished
  
• In total for this release, I've completed 100+ new feature tasks, 350+ improvement tasks, and 200+ bugfix tasks. The update notes are very long!
  
• The past week has been focusing on new and existing tutorialization, both in written form and via Odd Jobs in-game
  
• v1.1 is now in the hands of playtesters. Feedback and testing is expected to last a while

[h2]When is it Coming Out?[/h2]
Clearly, I cannot be trusted to give an ETA anymore. Even whispering a date to myself in a darkened room feels like it'd be tempting fate to come along and teach me a lesson.

I'm bending all my efforts and energy into getting it out before the end of the year. I can say this: it'll release soon, and with almost no warning.

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I hope everyone had a good week! For me, I had a very nice, if somewhat muted Thanksgiving, and now I'm working in my office enjoying the sounds of a November rainstorm.

Until next time, villagers!

I have mentioned before my terrible luck this past year, especially when it has coincided with Village Monsters stuff.

So it wasn't surprising to me when my entire family came down with the flu the literal day I published the last dev log. 2+ weeks of sickness, including an incredibly grumpy 3 month old? No surprises there!

"Ha! This time I knew it was coming, so it doesn't bother me at all. Now it's out of the way and I'll have a funny anecdote for the next dev log!"

Then our septic system failed, with everything that entails.

Then, thanks to school starting, we all got sick again. I am unsure which god I angered or what my offense was, but I am very ready for this curse to be lifted.

Still, the journey continues. Work has resumed on Village Monsters, and I have plenty of news to share, so let's get to it.

• The tools have been updated, the source code recompiled, and the debugger is chugging away once again. We're back up and running, baby!
  
• All feedback and bug reports reported since May (post-baby) have been logged, prioritized, and in many cases fixed
  
• All reported crashes and blocker bugs have been confirmed fixed
  
• Village Monsters v1.1 will launch this October. For real. No redos this time.

It has taken me a great deal of effort to get back up to speed, especially with all the gross distractions in the real world, but I am pleased with where I'm at now.



One idea I toyed with was splitting the work into two releases: one with priority bugfixes (crashes) I could get out soon, and then another, larger update that focuses on the more content-heavy things sometime later.

However, I decided against it. Village Monsters is not a live service game, and it didn't seem like there would be much of a benefit to that. I also worry about the confusion of saying "it's fixed!" while also promising that more fixes are coming.

The plan is to treat October as a relaunch of sorts and making v1.1 what v1.0 should have been. It's somewhat riskier (as all big launches are), and it requires more waiting, but I think it's the right move given the choices.

I can't go back in time and redo the disastrous launch, but I can try to at least make up for it. It's like when you burn dinner while entertaining guests; it sucks, it's embarrassing, but people still need to eat, so climb out the window and go grab some burgers.

Until next time!

Hello again. It's been a while!

If it's seemed like I dropped off the face of the earth for the last few months... that's because I did. In fact, I've barely left my own living room since May.

Long story short, my 2nd son, Arlo, was born on May 17th. In fact, I was in the middle of writing a dev diary the exact moment my wife's water broke.

Note the timestamp. I never did get to sleep that night... nor have I slept since.

Arlo is our 2nd kid, so we had a plan for what 'paternity leave' looked like. Or so we thought. I never imagined I'd be gone for months, and I certainly never wanted to disappear altogether.

In truth, this has been a very hard time for my family. I don't feel comfortable sharing everything, but Arlo has had a heartbreakingly difficult start to his short life. We've were in survival mode, and there was no room left for anything else.

I am so incredibly sorry to have been gone for so long. To release Village Monsters in such a sorry state - only to seemingly leave before I finished fixing things - is unacceptable.

However, I had to prioritize my family over everything else.

The good news is that things have finally calmed down, Arlo is happy and healthy, and I'm finally ready to get back to work in earnest.



Thank you so much for bearing with me during these difficult times.

[h2]State of v1.1[/h2]

Work has resumed on v1.1, but it's going to take some time to ramp back up to full speed and knock off the rust.

I've created a new public Trello board after the previous one was eaten by Atlassian. I'll update this board daily so you can keep track of my progress.

In addition, I'll be resuming live streams over at my Twitch channel starting next week. Keep an eye out on Twitter for the schedule.

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I wish I could provide a more concrete schedule given how long it's been, but history has shown that's not wise. I'm bad enough at making plans, but I also have supremely bad luck whenever I commit to something.

If nothing else, I can promise that - barring any unforeseen circumstances - this should be the last son I sire while developing Village Monsters.

Until next time, villagers!

Welcome to the 2nd State of the Village update, where I talk about how things are going with Village Monsters, as well as what's coming next.



To summarize the past month: the launch of Village Monsters was a supreme mess, and I've been trying to make things right ever since.

However, I soon realized that releasing hotfixes every few days wasn't working - there were simply too many big problems to fix things in piecemeal way.

I needed to change my approach. So I took a step back, regrouped, and began work on a larger, more comprehensive patch.

Village Monsters v1.1, which I've been affectionately referring to as the Let's Try This Again Update, is the result of these efforts.



[h2]What's Coming in v1.1?[/h2]

First and foremost, v1.1 will fix the multitude of bugs that have been reported since launch. Some of these bugs were preventing entire features from working, so it's been a real big effort.

Next, I've gathered up all your feedback and have incorporated as many suggestions as I could. Expect many new quality of life changes, such as improved gamepad support, more sensible energy and time management, and more.

Finally, a number of last-minute things cut before launch have been re-added back to the game.

In short, Village Monsters v1.1 represents a complete do-over of the previous embarrassing launch.



[h2]When is v1.1 Coming?[/h2]

News regarding Village Monsters v1.1's launch date will be revealed within the next two weeks. Look for an announcement as I get closer to the actual date.

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it's been a messy year. A combination of technical issues, naivety, supremely bad luck, and good ol' fashion developer incompetence has lead me here.

I can't redo the terrible first impression I made, but I can make sure to do things the right way going forward.

I hope the results speak for themselves when you play v1.1.