Village Monsters Changelog

Village Monsters Changelog

Last updated 04/10/2017

New changes since this page was last update are colored in blue

Current Changes (Pink Crow)

Player & Actions

  • Movement Improvements
    • Tweaked the movement code to give it an overall better feel
    • Fixed bug related to footsteps either triggering too much or not enough
    • Increased speed of sprinting
    • Made sprint a toggle
    • When using a controller, movement speed is based on analog stick pressure
  • MAJOR: Controller Support
    • You can now play the entire game with a gamepad
  • Lantern at night
    • Toggle with “T” for now 
    • Added a lantern to help light the way at night
  • Dialog timing changes
    • Dialog should overall be easier to read and also easier to skip through
  • Persistence
    • Player object has been persisted across all rooms
      • Player Authority created to manage creation and tracking of player object
    • Player location will be maintained between room transitions
  • Shadow changes
    • Removed ‘hardcoded’ (and bad) shadow
  • MAJOR: Completely revamped collision system
    • Collision is handled via tile instead of objects
    • Collision is much more performant
    • You can no longer walk over things like water
  • MAJOR: New Action: Roll
    • Rolling moves a bit faster, but is primarily used for shaking and breaking things
    • Roll into trees to make items (and birds) fly out
    • Roll into pots to break them and pick up bits
    • Rolling is on a cooldown
  • MAJOR: New Action: Pickup & Throw
    • Some items can be picked up and thrown
    • You may find secrets and other valuables by throwing everything you can
    • Pots can be thrown to create bits
  • New Action: Kick
    • Walk into some items – like a ball – to kick them around
    • Kicking may be useful in the future. It currently isn’t.
  • MAJOR: Toolbelt
    • A new UI element called the ‘toolbelt’ has been added
    • Use the toolbelt to cycle through tools (like fishing rod, bugcatching net, and lantern)
  • Inventory Grouping
    • Items are now grouped within the inventory

Hobbies & Activities

  • MAJOR: New Hobby: Fishing
    • Players can now fish for, uh, fish!
      • Go to any body of water, select your fishing rod, and press the Use Tool button to fish
      • A new fishing “minigame” has been added
      • You must cast your hook and reel it in strategically to attract fish
      • Watch out for your line tension – if that breaks, you lose the fish
    • A boat has been added with which you can fish from
      • The boat has a very boat-y feel to its movement
      • Added a torch to the boat
    • Fish are added to your inventory
  • Bug Catching changes
    • Holding the “Use Tool” button while the net is equipped will cause the player to enter ‘critter stalking’ mode
    • You’ll move slower while stalking, but bugs will be less skittish
  • New Critter: Sun Fly
    • Added the noctornal sun fly
    • Sun flies glow and act similarly to Sea flies
  • New critter fleeing behavior
    • All fleeing critters now fade into the background as they run
  • New critters: Butterfly Leaders
    • Monarch, Emperor, President, and Caeser butterflies have been added. Catch ’em all
  • S-Fly Spawner
    • Fixed issue preventing flies from spawning by the pond
    • Better ‘annoying buzzing’ behavior (they won’t just congregate around your beard)
  • New Gatherables
    • More than half a dozen new mushrooms types have been added. You’ll have to hunt them all down!

Villagers, Dog, & Other Entities

  • Portrait Changes
    • Added villager names underneath the portrait
  • New Ambient Creatures
    • Owls that fly overhead at night
    • Crows now hang around and will scatter when you try to get close
  • Dog Bug Fixes
    • Fixed returning fetched items from directly up / down
    • Fixed issue with sprite offsets that made the dog changing directions look mega goofy
    • Migrated to new movement system
  • Path tileset
    • A new tileset was created for paths and the entire village and surrounding areas have been pathed
  • New Villager: Lindwyrm
    • He’s a dragon, and he helps runs the Historical Society
  • New Villager: (Post-Punk Pixie Postman)
    • She’s unnamed for now
    • In the future, she’ll handle all postal services in town

Village, Buildings, Decor

  • New External Decor: Streetlamps
    • Streetlamps now exist in the village and help light the way at night
    • There are a couple of varieties
  • Made village lake less ugly
    • Thanks to the magic of auto-tiling
  • Postal Service (?)
    • You’ll find a whole bunch of mailboxes around town
    • They’ll help you identify buildings you aren’t sure of
  • New door behaviors
    • Instead of going into buildings automatically, you need to press the Z key or A button
      • This was done to prevent accidental building transitions
  • New color palettes!
  • MAJOR: New village buildings to explore
    • Mock’s House
    • Historical Society
    • Treasure Chest House
    • Skull House
  • Revamped interiors
    • Less ugly overall
    • Better collisions (meaning that collisions actually exist)
    • No more weather indoors (lol)
  • MAJOR: Music
    • Several tracks of music have been added to the game…
      • Morning track
      • Afternoon track
      • Evening track
      • Night track
      • Music fades in and our at each hour change
      • A nice bell toles during the changing of hours
  • New Items
    • Pots
      • Create bits when smashed
    • Bits
      • Used as currency
      • A new UI element has been added to track bits
      • A pleasant SFX plays when you pick up a bit
  • New detours
    • A gacha machine can be found somewhere. Spend your bits wisely
  • Helpful notes?
    • A number of notes and other signs have been erected around the town and outskirts
  • Pedestals in the historical society
    • Items in your inventory can be placed on pedestals in the historical society
    • In the future, this’ll be how you complete your collections

Areas

  • MAJOR: New areas to explore
    • Crossroads
    • Outskirts Forest
      • A whole lotta trees and other vegetation were created for this area
      • Maybe you’ll find other things there – like mushrooms. Or a TV
    • Outskirts Lake
      • Have fun sailing around the lake on the raft
  • MAJOR: Improved area transitions
    • Transitioning between screens and rooms now places the player in the correct place
  • New vegetation
    • Additional trees, stumps, etc. have been created

Simulation & Systems

  • MAJOR: Lighting Engine FX
    • With darkness comes an actual lighting engine around the player, light sources, and other objects
    • Current objects with lighting:
      • Player (via torch)
      • Streetlamps
      • Sun Flies
  • MAJOR: Time Concepts
    • Added the ‘concept’ of week, month, and year
      • Time advances following these rules
      • A week has 7 days, a month has 4 weeks, and a year has 6 months
  • MAJOR: Weather based on weather patterns
    • Weather now is based on specific patterns. New patterns created:
      • Clear
      • “Seattle” (mostly drizzle all day)
      • Snow
    • The start of the new day randomly selects a new weather pattern for that day
  • Calendar UI Element
    • A UI element of the current date and season has been added to the existing clock UI element
    • The tree and colors of this element change throughout the seasons
  • Day changes
    • A friendly rooster greets the morning
    • A friendly coyote greets the night
    • The SFX pleasantly fades in and then back out
    • Fixed a bug that prevented the popup from telling you the actual time of day
  • Ambient Cloud Cover
    • You may now see the occasional cloud shadow pass by
    • Clouds only show up during daylight hours
  • Weather Bug Fixes
    • Weather no longer ocurrs indoors
    • Rain should now behave properly even when it’s heavy
  • Technical Weather Changes
    • The manager for time and weather has been combined for convenience
    • All existing daylight filters have been converted to surface + blending
  • Added moon phases
    • New, Crecent, Gibbous, and Full
  • Weather SFX
    • Added rain sounds when it rains
    • Improved wind sounds
  • Some sorta…weird…glitch…thing?
    • They’ve been seen around the crossroads
    • The east and western roads have been closed until further notice
  • Completely revamped the clock system
    • Went from 8 times of day to just 4: Morning, Day, Evening, Night

Menus & UI

  • Notification Improvements
    • Removed “x1” from showing up inappropriately
  • MAJOR: Changes to Clock UI
    • There is now an indicator to tell you what the current day is
    • All ‘slices’ but the current time of a day are dimmed out
    • The clock now properly reflects reality
  • The Compendium
    • A new menu option allows you to call up the vitally important Compendium
    • Click tabs to navigate between sections

Other

  • MAJOR: Concept of “Authorities”
    • An “authority” is a technical controller that creates or monitors a variety of game factors, like player location and the creation of ‘headless’ objects
  • MAJOR: Concept of Draw Order
    • All objects now have a draw order for proper “layering”
      • Eg., standing in front of a tree displays you in front of it. Going behind the trees displays the tree on top of you.
    • All layers and other draw calls have been optimized for performance
  • Revamped shadow system
    • Shadows are now “dynamically generated” and are overall a lot better to look at (?)

Previous Releases

[expand title=”Changelog for released version ‘Snow’ – 02/10/2017″]

Player & Actions

  • Basic character movement (WASD)
    • Includes sprinting (hold Shift), creeping (hold Control)
    • Press the Middle Mouse button to move the camera around
  • Dynamic Camera
    • Follows the player and slightly lags behind
    • Use the middle-mouse button to move it around
    • “Shaky Cam” system implement for some actions
  • Player Action – Talk
    • Get near a villager and use the X key to talk to them. X also advances the text
  • Player Action – Interact
    • Currently the only object to interact with is Dragon’s Hoard, the claw machine in the building with Mock
    • Use the X key to interact with it
  • Player Action – Grab / Pull
    • Currently can only grab/pull a box.
    • Use the X key when near a box to grab it
  • Player Action – Swing Net
    • Press V to swing your net
    • Critters caught by your net are added to your inventory
  • Player Action – Throw
    • Press F to throw the ball
    • Requires to pick up the Dog Ball and make it active

Villagers, Dog & Other Critters

  • Two new Villagers
    • Mock, the depressed goblin
    • “Sign”, the unnamed – but still angry – Sign
  • A more complete Dog
    • Dog snoozes when bored
    • Dog wags its tail faster when ball is picked up
    • Dog fetches ball and brings it back
      • To play fetch, first pick up a ball, make it active, and then throw it with F
    • Dog can be pet and spoken to with X
  • New Critters to catch
    • Half Hopper
      • Flee when you approach
    • Sea Fly
      • Spawn indefinitely near pool
      • Chase after the player when close
    • Candy Horn Beetle
    • Holiday Horn Beetle
      • Winter only
  • Initial pass at “ambiant critters” system
    • A occasional bird will fly across the screen

Menus & UI

  • Basic dialog system
    • Typerwriter text and tap noise
    • Different types of text
      • Dialog
      • Narrator
      • Emphasis
    • Portrait & animation
  • Basic inventory system
    • Press I or click the bag icon to bring it up
    • Use your mouse or arrow keys to navigate items
    • The F key allows you the currently active icon. Not all items may be used at this time
  • Basic world map menu
    • Press the map icon to bring it up.
    • Use your WASD keys and mouse wheel to navigate.
  • Notification system
    • Notices trigger for various important events, such as inventory management, day changes, and more
    • Like-notices are grouped together

Simulation & Systems

  • Two new major systems: Time & Weather
    • 8 times of day with their own daylight filters
    • A full day takes about 20 minutes, but there are ways to increase this in the demo
    • 4 weather patterns:
      • Clear
      • Drizzle
      • Heavy Rain
      • Snow
    • A clock UI element to monitor the time and weather
  • Prototype of a 3rd major simulated system – Seasons
    • “Winter” version of map with new visuals, new critters to catch, and new weather
    • Find a way to trigger Winter via an in-game mechanic

Village & Related

  • Completely new and revamped art style and layout of “village”
    • New trees, flowers, and other vegetation
    • Can no longer walk out of bounds
  • Two new buildings
    • Test inn. Contains Mock, Dragon’s Hoard, and some tables
    • Historical Society. Contains naught but spider webs
  • Dragon’s Hoard claw machine
    • Incredibly basic and buggy!

Other

  • Basic SFX
    • Wind noises
    • Footfalls
    • Dialog sounds
    • Pickup sound

Known Issues

  • The player always resets position when changing ‘rooms’
  • Very little is persisted
  • Huge amount of graphical bugs, especially incorrect overlapping and sprite flipping
  • Collision system is frequently dumb
  • Overall, it’s very fragile!

[/expand]