Kynseed News

Welcome to Issue #57 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie playtests the new build, Neal balances the Goods Store, Matthijs gets lost in a fog, and Matt whips up some GIF's.
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Progress continues along on the forthcoming Goods Store update. Neal has been chipping away at his list o' things for this update and it's all starting to come together. One of the trickier things with this update is that we've added in some new systems for overall world economy and balancing. Such systems will play an important role for any business owning player, but the challenge is we want non-player owned businesses to generally follow the same systems.

Ensuring that level of economic consistency is an involved task, but an important one. It's those sort of things that bring us closer to giving the world that 'sandbox' feel that we want. In this way, the Goods Store and its ancillary systems will be a big help in adding depth to the game's business ownership. We're getting so close to pushing the update out we can taste it. Mmmm...new update taste.





Been mainly testing/playing the build this past week, as well as getting ahead on future story stuff and clearing up some old design docs for the update after next.

We got a couple of new characters through from Gary: Marshtyt the Master Gardener and a Druidic wedding priest, who looks like he likes a sip of altar wine and longs for the old days of blood sacrifice. Weekes has been pumping out more environment art, with a lot of UI stuff including the Larder, which you stock to keep your family fed. I am looking forward to seeing him create the 'Wheel of Copulation'...something we will reveal on Twitter in the coming weeks.

Matthijs (Tice) has been making lovely sounds. Caz, our icon artist, has started on the Master Items list (there's a lot to do!) and Mr Allen has been busy prepping the update stuff for the stores and various social media gubbins. So it's busy busy....but my hat tips off to the mighty Neal who has been working through the complex nightmare that is the Goods Store and has done fantastic work.

Right then! Back to testing and trying not to get distracted by Antstream Arcade...





This week saw yet more progress on the Goods Store update. It's been a tough week to get everything all working correctly with all the needed items done. It is firmly staying in the single digits and in fact down to the last couple of items on the list today (but then likely a new playthrough will bring up more).

This week's big contributors to time (and also improving the Goods Store experience in general) is dynamic balance. Such as where the shoppers come from based on tracking the rep balance and getting shops to start working the same when the player doesn't own the shop. So progress is still happening and it's getting ever closer, but it has seemed like every build I made this week just had at least one little thing off that needed looking into and it kind of adds up into slowing down progress on the remaining items.

I think also nearly every day I've been predicting or expecting to get things ready the next day but then it doesn't work like that! Perhaps that's in fact the general rule: if you predict/expect a perfect outcome down to the day, the likelihood of it happening is pretty low. It will be a good feeling when it finally does happen though!





This week, other than the continuing effort to remodel my studio, I turned the draft I did last week into a full length track and I finished the ambient track for the swamp. I'm quite happy with how they both turned out, especially when played at the same time. The ambient track will be for areas of the swamp that aren't that dangerous, but also won't be for areas that are too populated. Both of those examples will be getting their own ambient track.

Rather than the many frogs and flies and winds of the current ambient track, the more dangerous areas of the swamps will be quieter. Charlie talked about how a thick fog would muffle the sounds and remove all sense of wide open space. If I manage to get it to sound like what I have in mind, every little thing that you hear will jump out at you because of how quiet everything else is. I'm a big fan of Frank Darabont's The Mist', and I can't wait to evoke the same sense of creepiness! Plus, I already know from what I've seen the art team do...'there's something in the mist!'.





I started capturing a few GIF's for the upcoming Goods Store update release. Whenever I write up an announcement for any new update, I always like to include a handful of GIF's to sprinkle into the text. Typically, the function of these GIF's is to highlight recent feature/content additions in the update.

However, whenever the meat of an update is still being worked on, this usually means there's a lack of presentation polish in the meantime. Things like placeholder UI, animations not always lining up, and other little things like that. Because of this, I have to wait to make GIF's until the updates are nearly finished. (Presentation and UI polish is almost always the last thing done for any given update.)

The Goods Store update recently reached this point and so I've been running around the game world capturing GIF's of the new bits and bobs. As I talked about in last week's Post, I employ the use of our engine's debug mode to help speed things along for GIF creation. (Namely, giving myself enough Brass to buy the Goods Store instantaneously.)

Capturing game GIF's is an interesting process, one that always seems like it'd be easier and more straightforward than it ever is. Sometimes I feel a bit like a Quill photographer, roaming the countryside in pursuit of interesting things to take pictures of. I've actually been meaning to start streaming during my workdays some more, so perhaps I'll do so the next time I go on a GIF hunt.

Welcome to Issue #56 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie runs out of stock, Neal prepares the update for the test branch, Tice writes swampy music, and Matt is a dirty cheater.
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With E3 fading away as a distant memory, the whole team was able to fully jump back into update progress last week. Most of that work is falling on Charlie and Neal who are polishing up the final bits. Meanwhile, art and audio are working ahead by making all the assets needed for the next few updates (such as adulthood and relationships, which is what we're tackling in the update after this one).

As Neal mentions below, we're planning on releasing the update to our Steam test branch for any who are interested in taking it for an early spin. From there, we'll get it prepared for pushing it out to the public branch and then we're on to the next update!





I am always amazed by what our team comes up with. Other than marvelling at Neal the machine and his tireless engine, we have great artists and a superb musician. So this week we got the line up of all Mellowfield NPC's, idle animations for some of them, cool new caves, a bunch of nice UI elements for a better looking chat system, music concept for Woemarsh, and more!

I spent a lot of time playing the build and running my shops and loving it...then time passing and me realising stock was running short and that I hadn't paid my staff or looked after my farm and pets. We hope that when you play the update, you'll share some of your stories with us. Just who buys what, and what you did to make money. What did the window shoppers say about your wares? How did you run your business? We can't wait! Now, back to gazing at art and listening to awesome music...





This week has kept things rather busy on the update front. On Tuesday, we had a playthrough to establish what to concentrate on and I've been busying away on that ever since. That 60 item list from 3 weeks ago had gotten down to about a net 40 on Monday. (Scanning my completed list, I've done about 200 items of varying sizes in that time so you can see there's quite a bit of extra work getting figured out!) This was then pushed to one side with the playthrough for a new list of 15 essentials.

In the last few days I actually got that down to about 4 of the 15 but now even more items have popped up in their place to drag things back to about 30 (albeit, these are definitely the smaller kind fortunately). This might all seem a bit meaningless to talk about, but I guess it just goes to show the chaotic nature of development and how you never quite know what's around the corner.

I think one thing I've also found is how lists can degrade in value pretty quickly. What seems optimistically possible a few weeks back becomes a burden when you get down to it and slows things to a crawl. There's definitely items on my list that I actively push to the bottom cos I just don't want to get to them quite yet, but the drastic improvements often come when you finally get to them because they really complete the experience. In this update's case, it's been about me figuring out shop reputation levels and how to handle the frequency of customers. Both of those fall into this tricky category of balance and felt fiddly to get a handle on to construct, but now that they're in it really starts to tie it all together as a whole.

Next week should see the build up on the test branch once the list is finally down to the single digits again and then we get to start again with new lists of feedback and the next update to work on. It's a good thing I like working on lists!





Since being back from the US, my focus has become an entirely new region. It's swampy and I was asked to make its music less 'happy-go-lucky' than what has come before. So in the last week I've been experimenting with creating a new sound. I ended up using a rather jazzy acoustic bass, banjo, and fiddle on top of a soundpad made by mostly strings and woodwinds.

I want the overall feel of these places to be bordering on scary, but not really scary. I want them to be bordering on sad, but not really sad. Swamps can be pretty from time to time. I just presented a draft of what I'm going for to the team today, and they seemed quite happy with it so it's full steam ahead for the whole region. Other than the music, I also have to create an ambient soundscape for these places. I'm going to be looking for the sound of frogs, flies, and water...all wrapped in mist. It's going to take a while, but I'll have a lot of fun doing this!





We've been getting back into our usual groove this week and my schedule has thankfully returned to some semblance of normality. Lately I've been spending much more time just playing the 'vanilla' game - basically, the public version that's up on Steam and everywhere else. Typically I do all my playtesting using internal dev builds. Which is to say: typically I do all my playtesting as a dirty dirty cheater.

Usually I do this purely for time saving reasons. A fair chunk of my work involves making a lot of our screenshots and video, so if I need to quickly take a screenshot of the player running the Goods Store, it's a whole lot easier to give myself unlimited Brass so I can quickly purchase it in a few seconds. Playing the game as normal would mean it'd take me hours just to get a single screenshot set up.

However, the biggest disadvantage to this is something that happens to a lot of teams: debug becomes a crutch and they can end up playtesting almost exclusively with dev tools enabled. All that to say, it's wise to still make time to playtest the game as it's intended to be played. I've been making more time for those kind of playtests as of late and they've been a really nice change of pace. Perhaps it's a good sign that as more of the game is put together I find myself more inclined to play it without debug.

Personally, I'm most looking forward to our current update and the next ( with aging and relationships) get added. I can't wait to start a new character from scratch to playtest it all. Perhaps this time I'll play as shop owner who sales delicious pies that become famous across the land.

Welcome to Issue #55 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie gets carried away prettying, Neal whittles down his list of tasks, Tice copes with E3 jetlag, and Matt gets chummy.
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Welcome back readers! We've been rather busy these last couple of weeks due to some team members traveling and attending E3. This led to our virtual office being a bit more quiet than usual, so the other team members used it as an opportunity to dive deep into update work. As of earlier this week, the whole gang is now back together and we're running at full capacity once more as we get the "Song of Price and Hire" update prepared.

You can read accounts of E3 adventures in the individual dev updates below, some of which include double updates to make up for not having a new issue of The Post in recent weeks. (As fun and worthwhile as E3 is, it does make for quite the development disruption!)

Earlier this week, the team did a catch-up meeting to play through progress on the update. Goods Store ownership is coming along nicely and its various mechanics are all starting to fit together into a cohesive gameplay experience - placing items, setting prices, bartering with customers, managing staff, and so on.

We've still got a bit of UI presentation and economy balancing to do before we push the update out (both of which will continue to evolve during development, of course). With E3 over and the full team back in place, we're back to firing on all cylinders, so keep an eye out for update news very Soon™.





I got a bit carried away recently. I was meant to be starting on the next haven, Mellowfields, and the plan was to block all the levels out roughly. However, I got carried away with the first area and ended up prettying it.

This was mainly due to the lovely art assets provided by our very own Mr Weekes, and the fact that as I built it, it was looking nice. Then I got onto the next region...and did the same. Then the next...

There is just something very relaxing about prettying and detailing everything. I would often step back and look at the layout, then change chunks of it, which is why you shouldn't pretty until layouts are done...but I don't seem to care apparently!

I have also been utterly addicted to the Goods Store ownership. It's enthralling seeing who comes into the shop and what they buy. Your brain fills in the story. It was great building my reputation and seeing more people come from further afield.

The balance still needs to be done this weekend, as currently everybody is happy buying strawberry pies at 99,999 Brass. Now excuse me while I go dive into my gold pile like Scrooge McDuck...





7th JUNE

Following from the first week on the update, I've been carrying on filling in the main areas of Good Store ownership and business reputation. As mentioned before, I've been trying to front-load the work a bit. I went through my list of things to work on and started labelling all the different types of tasks as gameplay/strategy/immersion/presentation/UX followed by concentrating on the gameplay/strategy ones first (such as reputation, blacksmith ore stock ordering, regional preferences, and customer price preference).

Now that those bits are in place, I've started moving into the other categories to improve the feel of it. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that these tasks are spreading out in volume to fill up the rest of the update (in fact, I'm pretty sure my list is bigger now than when I started the week).

On the plus side, I'm hoping it'll feel like a comprehensive new addition to the gameplay and it won't need revisiting much in the future. At the moment, the list is up to about 60 items which probably also need more breaking down, so I guess my challenge now will be to see how quickly I can get through them (without breaking anything) while also finding time to prepare for the next update!


23rd JUNE

About 2 weeks on now and am still whittling down the list. It took a while, where the list seemed to consistently expand as I picked up extra bits that needed doing and each item itself turned into a 10-15 step process. Thankfully, that is finally quietening down.

Mostly left is balancing and presentation tweaks which, in theory, should be self-contained. The only challenge is that the recent team playthrough with the shops has revealed a few intermittent issues which are proving hard to repeat and debug. The difficulty is mainly coming from the random chance aspect, where it would seem like some specific combo of events leads to issues.

Though I had it happen once this morning, I've not had it in a few hours of trying since. That leaves a dilemma: A) to carry on trying to figure out that issue or B) to get back on the tweaks. So far I've been on the 'A' choice but, without much to show for it, 'B' is starting to look more tempting.

Maybe stepping back from it for just a little bit will bring up some new angle to work on it as that is probably what is needed. That angle might just be a bit of extra debug that helps navigate the random chance. However it works out, it does seem like we're getting closer on this update. Still not sure exactly when it'll land, as we want to make a good solid build, but it's definitely getting there!





7th JUNE

In the past week, between packing and other E3 trip prep work, I talked to Matt and Neal about the future updates and when more music and sound assets might need to be done by. This allows me to plan and leave for Los Angeles without worry of being late on anything.

When I return, I'll know exactly what to get started on so that there won't be a slow start. (Except for jet lag, maybe.) Now I'm off to add the last few items to my bags and then I'll leave for the airport. E3 has never been as exciting to me as it is this year!


23rd JUNE

Soooo, the past two weeks were pretty epic...

I flew to Los Angeles a few days ahead of E3, but that didn't mean I got to take it easy. Matt and I went to the Bethesda press conference, held in a huge theater. It seemed Bethesda had spared no expense, making sure everyone in line had water aplenty, and when we got inside there were open bars to be had.

This was shortly followed by the press conference itself, which I'm sure many of you saw as well via stream. I particularly liked their GhostWire reveal. Afterward, there was more open bar and free food while people from Bethesda walked the crowd - including Todd Howard himself, whom I was lucky enough to briefly speak to.

In the rest of the time before E3 actually began, we met some familiar faces from communities past and present, sharing drinks and stories. The convention center itself, a huge complex, was adorned with many a giant poster of the latest games. They even painted the side of a whole building to depict Doom Eternal's cover art on a truly massive scale.

Like peacocks, everyone wanted to be seen by creating the largest and flashiest displays they could. Once the convention actually started, the lines to enter were as massive as the displays. An entire parking lot floor was filled with people wanting to be the first gamers to get inside. Once you do get inside, it's truly mind-bending how much visual information you get bombarded with. Companies did things like bringing in monster trucks, a modified school bus a la Fortnite, life-size dragons, elaborate water fountain displays, giant screens everywhere, obstacle courses, augmented reality gardens, huge gate structures, and even entire buildings were constructed inside the massive halls of the convention center - all to be the biggest and flashiest of them all. So many peacocks.

Almost hidden among massive titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Pokémon Sword and Shield, or Watch Dogs: Legion, was a small section of relative calm. Quieter than everywhere else, but filled to the brim with passion and hope, was an area for games of a smaller scale: IndieCade. This is where a dense collection of indie studios could be found, many of them single-person dev 'teams'. While sequels and nearly-guaranteed hits were being flashy like lives depended on it, these small indie devs humbly displayed their games and ideas. There were curious abstract ideas aplenty, like escape rooms that you could take with you in a small box and games that blended programs with real tangible objects.

There's still a wild west left to discover in game development, and many of these folks were the settlers traversing it. Sure, seeing a big game like Lone Echo 2 blew me away, but I'll always remember the time I spent playing curiously inventive and sometimes bizarrely abstract games like Ascend, Infinite Children, or Neo Cab. Or that time when a small augmented reality game called ARBox had me scanning the real world for a magic seal. No flashy stands, just interesting ideas with a lot of heart.

As 3 days of buzzing conference ended, followed by a magnificent Ludovico Einaudi concert as a cherry on top, I couldn't help but wonder if Kynseed might ever find its way to that cozy corner among the peacocks.





E3 has once again passed by in a blur, and already the week-long extravaganza seems to be fading into memory. This marked my sixth E3 I've attended and it seems like each year feels distinctly different than the ones that came before.

Not long ago the Fable Anniversary team was there, crammed into the Microsoft area right next to Sony and Nintendo's area - each as equally crammed as the other. A couple years after that the Fable Legends team was there. Fast forward to 2019 and suddenly Microsoft's area is gone entirely, having moved down the street to the aptly named (and owned) Microsoft Theater. Not to mention Sony's notable absence this year.

It's all an ever-present reminder that the game industry is a constantly evolving thing. Yet there does seem to be one constant that I've noticed: the people. Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way. *Jim Halpert looks at camera*

The industry might change at breakneck speeds but the family of friends I've made over the years does seem to be the one constant thread throughout it all. This E3, I met up with industry peeps (ex-Lionhead and otherwise), new PixelCount friends, and even folks from the Fable community whose friendships span over a decade. In many ways, E3 serves as a sort of annual reunion for both dev side and player side. It's easily my favourite aspect of E3.

That said, when not gallivanting around with chums of yore, there was still work to be done. We didn't have a booth or anything (we feel the game's not quite at that point yet), but there were meetings to have, panels to attend, contacts to contact, and even the impromptu laptop demo here and there.

I'm sure I'll have more E3 tales to regale you all with in the week ahead (likely in our Discord server), though for now I find myself still recovering from a bit of 'post-con fatigue'. I'm very much looking forward to settling back in to my normal work routines this next week. As much as I enjoy E3, a part of me always just wants to get back to working on the game.

Welcome to Issue #54 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie falls in love with the new haven, Neal continues down the dusty road, Tice lends an ear, and Matt revels in organized chaos.
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Starting earlier this week, the team began work on the next features-focused update: "A Song of Price and Hire". This one will mainly expand upon shop ownership gameplay by adding the Goods Store as an ownable business as well as fleshing out staff hiring and the ledger book. We're also adding in shop reputation, which will help reflect how succesful and famous your business is.

One advantage we have with this update is that there's some basic shop running systems already in place from when we added blacksmith ownership a few updates ago. This essentially means that all the game's ownable businesses will share some underlying code, including the Apothecary and even Tavern. Though for this week, we're keeping our focus primarily on systems for running the Goods Store and building on what's already there.

We've also begun work on formally nailing down details for the next batch of updates on the roadmap. This current batch will end just a couple of updates from now and so it's time we start deciding on the specifics for the updates to come. We'll of course share details for that next batch sometime before this current batch is done - in fact, the next batch has some new gameplay additions that we're very much looking forward to getting to! Though for now, we'll be ensuring the Goods Store is primed and ready for all you would-be shop owners wanting to make a brass or two.





My work this past week has been finally getting back onto levels, with Mellowfields imminent. For now though, I am putting the finishing touches to Loverwood, a region of Summerdown. It is a place for romance, rumpy pumpy, and one of the places you can choose to have your binding ceremony (marriage).

There is also a rather dashing chap living there, and he is a bit of a love guru with plenty of wise advice for those seeking love and woohoo.

I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the next haven, with its idyllic fields and gardens, trickling brooks, and giant vegetables. Am sure there will be plenty of innuendo in there, as is tradition...





The Long Road continues...

This week almost went to plan! Well, apart from the first few days being taken up with editor and initial Festfield event work overlapping from the last update. Work is also getting underway with the Goods Store and business ownership work. As several of the pieces like the ledger and bartering system already exist, it's not as hard fitting it all together for this second player job activity but there are equally a lot of details to sort out. Such as how workers will be handled, dealing with stock, customer tastes, and how reputation will affect visitors to the shop.

My aim is to do a better job at frontloading this update to sort out the details early, potentially leaving a bit of time to get ahead this update. We've been going over the plans for future updates and there's certainly a lot to pack in so any chance to get ahead is handy!

It feels like the groundwork has been a long time coming (and still has some ways to go) but is coming together nicely and increasingly feels solid and ready to start bedding in the details that'll make the game fulfil its ambition. Still a long way to go, which just needs to be taken one step at a time...





For the last week or so I've been delving into the art of mastering. And let me tell you: mastering is HARD! It's where all the elements of a track have to come together perfectly balanced against one another.

Consider that a track can sometimes consist of literally thousands of elements and you'll get a pretty solid idea of why this is so hard to do. You can get help from tutorials and master classes and all those good sources of information, but at the end of the day you have to rely on your own ears. If you can't hear a minute problem, you can't fix the minute problem.

You also have to take good care of your ears if you want to keep doing this job. Monitor the dB (decibel volume) you're exposed to and how long you're exposed to it. And take breaks! A big problem is that when you're composing something that has a sense of big scale, odds are that this sense of scale won't come out until you play it loud. But do that for too long and you'll damage your ears. Don't do it at all and you won't hear some very important things.

I've had a habit of composing and mixing on low volume. This has meant that some things will slip by me. You can look at graphs for additional information but that's not the same as being able to tell what the experience of listening to it is. So it's always a balancing act. I do know this: if you don't spare your ears, you'll be out of commission forever.





It's been a bit of a helter skelter week as I tried to balance getting game work done with getting E3 prep done. We won't be doing any sort of booth/demoing at E3 or anything, but E3's convention center is quite literally two blocks from where I live so I generally end up attending each year anyway. And even though we're not doing any 'official' game presence there, I'll still be meeting up with various industry folks for an equal mix of work meetings and friend meetings.

There's a surprising amount of prep that goes into everything though, both for the event itself and also because I'll be having so many guests in town. Since I live so close, my flat typically becomes a 'base of operations' for many of my attending friends and industry peeps. It makes for a bit of a madhouse week, but I always kinda enjoy how hectic it all gets. It's 'organized chaos', but in a good way.

Plus, everyone's favorite Kynseed composer Tice will also be attending this year, so he'll be palling around with me for much of it. It's actually quite rare indeed to have two PixelCounts together in the same place! Our little team is so remote and geographically removed typically. Perhaps one year, if we can get the full team together, we can combine our forces and...I dunno what. Turn into Megazord, or perhaps summon Captain Planet.

Welcome to Issue #53 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie looks for bad apples, Neal dives into details, Tice goes off on a mission, and Matt humble brags about puns.
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Welcome to another issue of The PixelCount Post! As it happens, we just released a dev announcement mere hours ago for our optimisation update. So we'll be keeping today's issue short and sweet, like a small puppy. Preferably a pug.

This was our first optimisation update and it's really helped clean some things up on the back end of the game. You'd be surprised how much spring cleaning is needed when working on the same engine since the prototype. This proved to be a very useful update for us, so we're glad that we've made time to sprinkle a few into our roadmap. Next stop on our development journey will be a features focused update with an emphasis on running your own Goods Store, managing hired staff, and accruing shop reputation.

We'll be jumping on that first thing Monday, after we tie up any loose ends and bug reports for the current update. If you come across any bugs yourself, feel free to give us a shout or write us at [email protected]. Thanks folks, we'll see you again next week!









This past week has been document catchup and trying to finally get a good pass of the "Items Master" list finished. I was working 'til 1am on it the other night, then realised I didn't like it so started the "Recipes and Traits" doc again and made a lot more order out of it. I'm much happier with it now.

I was also testing the build a bit and just playing around. The seasonal items caught me out and I forgot that some ingredients go missing in certain seasons so I was complaining to Neal about the lack of apples in Spring. It turned out we ended up enabling apples in Spring anyway, so players have fast travel options still.

We also received some more excellent art from our artists: new UI, environment stuff from Matt Weekes (excellent as always), and monsters from Gary. I just saw a composition of all the latest monsters, and we really do have a fantastic line up. Colourful, detailed, and dripping with character. In the case of the big ones, their teeth dripping with your character most likely!

Next week I am back on the new Loverwood region and then I'll make inroads into Mellowfields, our third haven! Let's just say, I'm continuing a theme from a level I made for Fable Legends...





This last week I've been getting back some of my focus. It's a difficulty on a long project to maintain a consistent pattern of work and intensity. Oftentimes it comes with deadlines and this week was another update deadline. I feel like it's more than that though, where I've been trying to think about the work in a different way. Such as being more disciplined about working on detail instead of holding things off for some unknown future point.

It sounds simple and sensible when put like that, but I have found it easy to stray from and so it does feel like a big backlog exists to work on which I'm never sure when I'll get to. The details can be a problem as well when they mean too much time is spent on something that turns out wasn't necessary, but I think generally those things have tended to be rarer on this project at least.

Anyway, to get away from more general ramblings about process: I've been working on keybindings, skills in-game, and some editor screens. The keybindings took a good two days but am quite pleased with the general results. It was a nice standalone feature to get into the zone for with lots of details which seemed to keep popping up as I looked through the code. Skills in-game I had some trepidation about doing, but I think it's starting to turn out nicely in presentation.

One area I have held off for later is standardising the UI presentation more so that it's easy to reuse visual/audio flair without having to code it each time, but that did seem like a step too far in the circumstances so will have to wait 'til the next optimisation update. The editor screens are to help assist level design and placement of items/fish/growables, which have started to reach a quantity of data that would benefit from improving and, again, to avoid relying on code so much.

The rest of this week will be fixing any bugs with the new update along with more editor screen work and setting up more events in Festfield. Then it'll be on to the next major update with the Goods Store and business ownership. I'm looking forward to introducing more of the gameplay loop and getting stuck in their details!





I have to write this a bit sooner than usual because I'm about to go away on a mission to play percussion at a festival abroad. On the one hand it cuts into what I'm currently doing, and on the other it's a breath of fresh air. Literally, as it'll be out in the open air.

On the game front, the themes for all the shop purchases are done for Candlewych and Poppyhill. At the time of writing this the current update is pretty close to done, and after it releases it all starts again with the update after that. There's shop tunes still needed for the next town beyond Poppyhill, which will keep me busy for a bit.

All in all, we're going through the items on our roadmap pretty quickly. It's great to see things getting crossed off the list as 'done' over time. There's also only 2 weeks left before my trip to LA begins and, believe me, I'm counting the days!





Welp, that's our first optimisation update done then! It was the first update of this kind that we've tackled, so part of the challenge was determining exactly how flexible we wanted the update's focus to be. For the first week or so of the update we started off very flexible. The idea was that we'd give ourselves an opportunity to do some freeform collaboration on things that we've been needing/wanting to do but never found time for in other updates.

Though after a while, we found ourselves preferring a bit less freeform and a bit more balance - a sort of 'structured' flexibility. We've had a long time to work together as a team and learn what keeps us motivated and efficient. We like to stay pretty agile and reactive, but we also like to have a generally structured plan at the same time. A sort of underlying compass to follow behind everything we do.

That balance ended up being the special ingredient for making these optimisation updates pack the most punch. Plus, now that we've found that balance, we'll be able to hit the ground running even harder for when the next optimisation update rolls around. Though personally, I'm looking forward to getting back to focusing on features and content. I'm sure it goes without saying that back end optimisation is one of the least sexy parts of game development, despite being critically important.

For our next stop on our roadmap we'll be adding in Goods Store ownership, deeper staff management, and shop reputation. We're calling the update "A Song of Price and Hire", and I'm far more proud of that title than I should be.