Village Monsters News

Well, there's no denying we're living in some strange times right now. I know some vague platitudes from a no-name indie dev won't do you much good, but I promise you that this isn't forever.

If you're feeling stressed, panicked, depressed, whatever - that's normal. Give yourself grace and patience. Just chill out at home and play some relaxing games - I can think of a few :D

On a personal note, although I live in one of the hardest hit US states (Washington) I have no plans on suspending work on Village Monsters. One benefit to being a solo indie dev working from home is that I've been following all these social distancing requirements for many months now.

Anyway, enough doom and gloom. Time for some patch notes!



[h2]Game Feel[/h2]
Since November I've received a steady stream of feedback that the game feel isn't quite right yet. This is to be expected for any unreleased game, but I don't want to wait to the end before polishing things up.

Here are some changes I've made to improve the game feel of Village Monsters.

• Drastically adjusted the inspection range to improve behavior and make it easier to inspect the object you mean to
  
• Player movement now has acceleration and friction, meaning movement should now have more "weight" to it and feel less swim-y
  
• Improved interaction points with merchants / services NPCs
  
• Improved the deadzone when using a gamepad
  
• Made camera a bit more dynamic and smoother
  
• Added support for changing the camera speed to account for fluctuation in FPS
  
• Lowered player's default max speed slightly (sprint is unaffected)

[h2]New & Improved Features[/h2]
Every update brings more features and systems online. Here's a few of them new to v0.65

• Villagers now reply to your letters. Their response depends on what they thought of your letter / gift
  
• Your mailbox is now properly saved on game exit - you will no longer miss new mail if you quit the game before reading it
  
• A new Odd Job for Treasure Hunting (Tutorial) has been added
  
• Sending Feedback / Reporting Bugs is now accessible via the main System menu
  
• A number of new gifts have been added to the store
  
• Added a large number of new potions. The most useful might be the Potion of Agreeable Affections which makes it easier to befriend people
  
• New entries for villager profiles have been added
  
• Added a large number of new effects for the Dr. Klaus Human Experimentation job
  
• Added a huge number of new treasures to find, including new rings, amulets, and more
  
• Added or improved description and lore of existing treasures
  
• Each region now has their own distinct list of treasures to find
  
• Added a new message for unlocking post office boxes and added more items to discover inside
  
• Dig spots now spawn at a slightly higher rate

[h2]Cutscenes[/h2]
Village Monsters now has cutscenes - it's finally like a real video game!

Most of my time was spent creating the infrastructure itself to support cutscenes, so there aren't many in the game yet, but that'll change soon pretty quickly.

• Added the concept of cutscenes to the game
  
• There's a new intro cutscene involving the mayor when starting a new game
  
• There's a new cutscene that plays when encountering the glitched bridge in Firetree Forest for the first time
  
• In general, story cutscenes will only trigger for new game files. In the future, other cutscenes - like for villager relationships, etc. - will trigger for existing files
  
• Cutscenes currently can't be paused or skipped, though that will change in the future
  
• Cutscene conditions are saved between sessions - meaning you'll never risk missing one before bumping into its trigger

[h2]Improved Graphics & UI[/h2]
I improve the graphics with every release, but for this one in particular I spent a lot of extra time with art assets that have been around since the early days - this includes UI elements like the timepeice, many villager sprites, critters, shadows, and more.

• Improved the sprites of many villagers, notably Umbrae, Edmund, Bugs, Trundle, Lindwyrm, Mayor Ludo, and others
  
• Added movement sprites to a number of villagers
  
• Added a brand new clock & calendar UI element and retired the old one
  
• Added a new "virtual keyboard" for gamepad users
  
• Completely redid the exterior and interior of the village library
  
• Added an enormous amount of new furniture and decoration
  
• Greatly improved Dio's home interior
  
• Greatly improved Zigi and Bug's room
  
• Improved the Active Effects page + descriptions for each effect
  
• Improved various tiles in the spring tileset
  
• Improved the look of several critters and fish
  
• Changed (and standardized) a large number of fonts
  
• Improved the look of a large number of buildings in the village
  
• Improved a number of "flat" sprites by adding proper outlining or shading
  
• Upcoming World Modifications are displayed in the End of Day summary
  
• Added new & improved keyboard and gamepad icons
  
• Updated a number of portraits for non-NPCs
  
• Improved journal fonts across the board
  
• Most list elements (like the main menu and dialogue choices) now properly loop

[h2]Bugs Fixed[/h2]
As usual, I took the time to fix an absolutely shameful amount of bugs. The following will no longer plague the land.

• Further reduced memory footprint by booting unused data structures to the curb. Get a real job, losers!
  
• Fixed text formatting issue with the Donkey Fly
  
• Fixed name and description of the Mail Key treasure
  
• Fixed issue where player character could interact with objects during the end of the day transition
  
• Fixed a number of instances where Zigi was incorrectly referred to as Zero
  
• Fixed a large number of typos hiding in some new idle dialogue
  
• Fixed an issue that could result in infinite confirmation boxes when performing Odd Jobs
  
• Fixed villager relationships not increasing the proper amount when receiving gifts
  
• Fixed portraits for a number of inanimate objects, like mailboxes
  
• Fixed rare issue when the mayor would erroneously send cancelled holiday letters in the mail
  
• Fixed issue where fish would not bite in the ponds of Firetree Forest
  
• Fixed a number of missing words and typos caused by Valentine's textual glitches
  
• Fixed a collision issue with ladders and other rotated objects
  
• Fixed coloring issues in Vara's house
  
• Fixed some furniture weirdness in Mock & Birdie's house
  
• Fixed wallet display issues
  
• Fixed collision box surrounding player mailboxes
  
• Fixed tile issues in Saley & Stapes home
  
• Fixed issue where UI elements would overlap objects in Saley & Stapes' home

Stay safe, keep cozy, and have fun!

Happy Day-After-Valentine's-Day, villagers! This is one of the best days around if you like discounted chocolate and red-and-pink colored tchotchkes.

This is yet another big update addressing basically every facet of the game. However, the main focus was on villager relationships (to go along with Valentine's Day!) so you'll see a common thread throughout the update notes below.

Have fun!



[h3]Pen Pals[/h3]
One of the larger updates this time around is to the village post office - in the sense that the village post office actually has a function!

• You can now send mail to villagers from the Post Office located in Town Hall
  
• Sending nice letters will improve your relationship with the villager you sent it to
  
• You can also attach gifts to your letters to increase your relationship
  
• The General Store now stocks a variety of gifts to send to villagers
  
• Villagers now have simple letter parsing and gift preferences, so try to be nice!
  
• A new UI was made for picking villagers (eg., sending them mail)
  
• A max of 5 letters a day can be sent
  
• Fixed an issue where social networks would cause you to "meet" a villager before you actually met them
  
• Stopped relationships from going into the negatives

[h3]Critter Catching[/h3]
The Critter Catching hobby was in need of some love and improvement, so I dedicated a bit of time this update to making it more fun to catch & tame creatures. I also was able to fix a large number of bugs.

• You can now pet critters that you've tamed
  
• The happiness level of a critter is now displayed in the interaction dialogue
  
• You must now add one food item per tamed critter per day
  
• Failure to keep tamed critters fed will result in them running away
  
• Critters must now reach a certain happiness level before they'll follow you
  
• Changed critter fleeing to be percentage-based depending on how "aggressive" (speed) the player is moving
  
• Critters may now flee even when you're stalking them, so act fast
  
• Critters will now permanently flee (disappear) a bit more quickly than before
  
• Added helpful text to the critter trough to help you manage your critters' food needs
  
• Added a new indicator above the critter trough when it needs to be filled with food
  
• You can now permanently dismiss critters via an interaction option
  
• Fixed: Resolved crash related to the Boo Bee critter
  
• Fixed: Critter poop will no longer spawn so dang frequently
  
• Fixed: Redid critter food code to resolve a large number of logic bugs
  
• Fixed: Food added to the critter trough will now be used
  
• Fixed: The critter trough now has a name
  
• Fixed the critter collection display in your journal

[h3]Flavor & Worldbuilding[/h3]

• A new system of daily bonuses called World Modifiers has been added to the game
  
• World Modifiers add bonuses to one or more areas of the game - for example, "Jumping Fish" makes fishing easier, while "Good Vibes" allows you to build friendships faster
  
• Several item and creature descriptions have been updated with new lore
  
• A number of new flavor critters - like squirrels and jackalopes - have been added to the game

[h3]User Interface[/h3]

• (Request) Your available silver is now listed while in a merchant's shop
  
• The Villager section of your journal has been overhauled. In general, most info starts off hidden and becomes revealed over time
  
• You'll gain more knowledge and gradually fill in your journal as you get to know each villager
  
• Each villager page now lists their likes, dislikes, and where they're generally located
  
• Icons have been added to the villager list
  
• Fixed: Solved a problem where villager text and icons appeared over non-villagers

[h3]Improved Graphics[/h3]
The journey to improve the look and feel of Village Monsters is never-ending. Here are a few things I worked on this time.

• A number of Valentine Day's items and furniture have been added to the game
  
• As usual, a large amount of new furniture and decor have been added and sprinkled throughout town
  
• A number of villager sprites have been improved
  
• A number of villager homes and other buildings have been improved
  
• More color changes and improvements. I'll get there one day
  

[h3]Other Changes & Fixes[/h3]

• Made fishing a bit easier by slowing down fishing marker and altering its initial spot
  
• Slightly lowered the default fish spawn rates, but increased fish spawn rates during the morning, evening, and while its raining
  
• Resolved a crash related to selling all your items down to zero and pressing up / down
  
• Cleaned up a number of data structure issues that could potentially cause crashes or mismatched data
  
• Improved memory footprint in Linux and Mac versions
  
• Corrected a number of typos and awkward text
  
• (Request) You can now cancel and leave in-progress Odd Jobs by pressing Escape or Start
  
• Stopped bad artifacts from appearing in the identification process
  
• Fixed a rare issue where you could go out of bounds when exiting the residential section of the village
  
• Fixed an issue where the shrine outside of town expected 100 bits in some situation

Hello hello! Are you all having a good new year so far? Has anyone abandoned (or maybe completed?!) their resolutions yet?

My 2020 has thus far been full of snow and sickness, though thankfully both gradually disappeared earlier this week.

I'm very excited to release update v.0.55 - aka the first update of the year! It's a real big one this time, so I've decided to make this update a bit more fleshed out than usual.

The march to v1.00 gets ever closer! Thanks for stickin' with me.

[h3]Relationship Changes[/h3]


A number of new relationship systems have been added to the game. This is to make building friendships with villagers more interesting and consist of more than just talking to them until their hearts increased to max.

The two primary features are social networks and Lockhearts.

• A behind-the-scenes "social network" feature allows for your interactions with villagers to influence other villagers related to them
  
• Villagers now have relationship values with each other as well as the player
  
• You can now negatively impact your friendship with a villager with actions they dislike
  
• Several villagers now have Lockhearts that prevent your friendship from deepening until they're cleared
  
• (Note that many methods for unlocking Lockhearts are not yet available)
  
• Relationship values have been rebalanced
  
• New dialogue has been added for every villager, especially for higher friendship values
  
• New visitors have been added

[h3]Player Progression[/h3]


Players now earn experience as they perform hobby actions. Experience is earned on a per-hobby basis; this means that fishing makes you better at fishing but it won't make you better at growing mushrooms (like in real life!)

I had hoped to also add ability trees but ran out of time. You can still gain experience and ranks in each hobby, but for now it's mostly superficial.

• Players now earn XP and rank up their skills based on their actions
  
• Stamina has been re-balanced - generally, most actions require more stamina than before
  
• Stamina restoration from food has been increased
  
• Lowered sickness chance
  
• Added a number of new dialogue interactions related to your experience and hobby rankings
  

[h3]Art & Graphical Improvements[/h3]


My never-ending war on art rages on unabated. This time I tried to focus on colors and interiors.

Beyond improving the look of the overall game, the main goal has been to reduce the overall number of colors to make things feel more consistent.

I also added a huge amount of new furniture and decorations to give rooms more interesting and completed looks. Houses are still a bit generic, but it's improving quite significantly.

This will be continue to be a constant point of emphasis leading into the final release later this year.

• A number of trees have received seasonal sprite changes
  
• The spring tileset is overall more spring-like
  
• The summer tileset is now more saturated and colorful
  
• Colors in general should skew more pastel
  
• Lighting has been adjusted in a number of spots
  
• Adjusted a number of bad shadows
  
• Added tons and tons of new furniture items and decorations
  
• Color and dimensions of more furniture items have been standardized
  

[h3]User Interface[/h3]


Improving the UI is as important as improving the overall art of the game. I've made a series of small but important changes this release.

• Most notifications now appear as a proper UI element on the side of the screen instead of over your head
  
• Notifications now persist between screens
  
• The opacity of several UI elements has been adjusted so it's easier to read
  
• A few areas of text aliasing have been removed
  
• The End of Day screen has been reworked and should flow a bit nicer
  
• IMPORTANT: The game is not saved until it tells you the save is complete, so don't close out until you see that!!
  
• Certain text and phrases have been standardized

[h3]General New Stuff[/h3]


For this update I tried to break out each major feature into its own category. These are items that are still important but don't otherwise fit anywhere.

• Added a number of new "flavor" creatures throughout the world
  
• Fish health bars now reflect their remaining HP (before it would decrease at a set value)
  
• Added a number of few fish, treasures, and critters to collect
  
• Added a number of new forage items (herbs and flowers)
  
• Flavor creatures now have more complex behavior
  
• A number of villagers without homes are no longer homeless

[h3]Technical[/h3]


Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) the majority of work I've done in the past few weeks has been under-the-hood type of stuff. It's not glamorous or even interesting work, but it's necessarily to set a strong foundation in order to launch v1.0 later this year.

The more immediate upside to this is that I've surely (though inadvertently) fixed a number of bugs, performance issues, and other technical snags in the process.

• Fixed a rare crash related to thunderstorms and blizzard weather types
  
• Fixed rare crash related to selling some usable items (like food or medicine)
  
• Fixed a large number of collision issues, particularly with interior furniture items
  
• Fixed performance issues for lower end Mac and Linux platforms
  
• Improve randomization elements
  
• By request, I've added a new feature to Three Wall Island that lets you enable Dev Mode
  
• (Dev Mode) Press Page Up while in Dev Mode to advance time
  
• (Dev Mode) Press Page Down while in Dev Mode to advance season
  
• (Dev Mode) Press F2 while in Dev Mode to bring up debug teleport
  
• Added a message to the Three Wall Island raft to make it less abrupt
  
• Steam icon now links to forums, not the Store page
  
• Fixed camera weirdness when trying to cast your rod
  
• Fixed a few issues with Glimmer collision and layering while in the mail room
  
• Fixed several embarrassing typos
  
• Cleaned up a huge number of other bugs I didn't bother to document because I am a bad developer

This is a small update - so tiny I thought about skipping notes entirely - but I suppose that's to be expected with the holidays sapping so much of my time.

I ended up spending most of my time hunting down a crash bug people had been reporting since launch. Turns out it was related to toggling full screen for certain situations and resolutions (like 1366×768 using integrated video cards)

I'll be back at it sometime after Christmas. I may try to squeeze in one more release before the end of the year, but if not then I'll package up everything with a release in 2020. Have a good holiday break!

• Added several new furniture items and display knick-knacks
  
• Improved the look and feel of the date display
  
• Improved the loot found in waterlogged chests in Bonfire Beach
  
• Fixed: Solved an issue with full screen causing a crash for some resolutions
  
• Fixed: Solved a bug that prevented certain treasure chests from spawning
  
• Fixed: Corrected tutorial description which incorrectly referred to the wrong key binding for Use Tool
  

Today (12/12) marks the one-month anniversary since Village Monsters was released! Thank you all so much for your support, bug reports, love, and feedback! This is still early on our journey together, but you can start to make out a distant outline of what the end looks like.

And I think it looks real dang cool. Anyway, onto the patch!

This update is mostly focused on improving the look & feel of the game. Instead of improving any one specific area I just threw a (metaphorical) dart at the board and improved whatever it (metaphorically) landed on. You'll see many improvements to furniture, vegetation, weather, and more, but there's still a lot more to do to many other areas of the game.

The game's visuals will contentiously improve throughout its time in Early Access.

Important Note 1: In order to fix some player home bugs I had to alter your saves. This means you may lose ownership to your home upon loading the game. Don't fret! There was actually one particular bug we can all take advantage of: the game never deducted any money when you bought the house the first time! (oops)

It's a complete coincidence, but this means that even if you lose your home you'll still have the funds you had before to buy it. Just buy it a second time... no harm, no foul.

Important Note 2: There is now a dedicated key for using your active tool (ironically X on both keyboards and gamepads). Don't forget!

Improved Look & Feel

• New furniture assets have been added to each home and building
  
• The initial homestead interior has been altered and improved
  
• New exterior props have been added throughout town and the surrounding areas
  
• While trees are still geometric ( a thematic choice), they now are spikier, more leafy, and overall more tree-like
  
• Added a large number of flavor critters and animals throughout the world
  
• The look and feel of the dialogue box has been improved
  
• A new option exists to switch between multiple dialogue box styles
  
• Improved the look of various weather effects
  
• The item description font is now much more readable for all resolutions
  
• Many furniture items have been standardized in size to give a more consistent sense of scale
  
• The player character now has a mild idle animation to match villagers
  
• Improved System menu's look and feel
  

Hobbies

• Using a tool is now mapped to the X key (Keyboard) / the X button (Gamepad). This will prevent issues such as accidentally swinging your net at a villager when you want to talk with them
  
• Fishing while low on energy is now much harder. Consider napping or eating food to restore energy
  
• You can now earn multiple levels in certain hobby-related goals
  
• New fish, critters, and treasures have been added to the game
  

Odd Jobs

• The Critter Catching tutorial now allows you to try and catch all 3 critters
  
• The Fishing tutorial now requires 2 fish to be caught
  
• Villagers have been added to each tutorial offering additional tips and info
  

Other New Stuff

• An ATM has been added to the general store which allows you to access your brand new bank account! Deposit, withdraw, and even earn interest on your hard-earned Skully!
  
• Interest is earned on a weekly basis and increases with town prosperity. Check your mail for statements! Wow, just like real life!
  

Secrets

• Secrets

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed a crash related to removing an effect when you have multiple active effects
  
• Fixed major (and often unpredictable) issues related to purchasing a homestead
  
• Fixed major crash related to an audio memory leak. Should finally fix the longstanding crash in Agrarian Acres
  
• It is no longer possible to erroneously dismiss Odd Job dialogue in a way that traps you
  
• Resolved a rare situation where you could have 2+ "Low Energy" malus effects has been resolved
  
• Fixed issue where you couldn't purchase some items if you entered the store without the required silver, even if you later sold items to afford it
  
• Fixed music volume issues for seasonal tracks beyond Spring
  
• Fixed issue where your new home's door would stay locked even after purchase
  
• Purchasing the home deed now actually deducts silver from your wallet
  
• Fixed large number of furniture collision or layering issues
  
• Fixed issue with deleted spaces in trophy descriptions
  
• Player sprites / states now properly reset to normal at the end of the day
  
• Improved overall performance for extremely low end laptops
  
• The trophy screen was incorrectly cloning the caught fish or critter. This has been fixed
  
• A number of incorrect or strange tree collision issues has been fixed
  
• Some white assets were incorrectly colored gray in certain situations. This is now fixed.
  
• Fixed wall collision and layering in the player's home
  
• Fixed issue where toolbelt selections would occur in incorrect places + improved the code in general
  
• Powering up a longer rod cast no longer shakes the whole camera
  
• Stopped tool UI from disappearing while in relevant Odd Jobs
  
• Fixed the "Uh oh!" description when buying a house. It was not a proper Uh Oh Moment!
  
• Resolved a few performance hiccups and random misc. bugs
  
• Fixed various typos