CHKN - TeamCHKN


It’s here! The Adventure Update (v0.2.0) is now released, just in time for the holidays. There’s still some work to do but we really want to get the update out to everyone and start getting your feedback on the new features.

You’ll find some build highlights and the full patch notes below. We’ve also added a link to our bug/known issues list for your reference. Onward!

What’s New
There are a LOT of improvements, updates, and brand new features in this build, with a big focus on Adventure Mode and creature interactions. Here are just a few of the highlights.

■ All New Map
Remember to bring a creature or two with you while exploring. You never know who you might run into.


■ Creature-Powered Structures
Put those creatures to work for you powering your homestead’s treadmills. (You only have to pay them in food.)


■ Survival Progression in Adventure Mode
Get stronger and build larger, more powerful creatures to take on more difficult challenges as you explore the island.

Here we see the rare three-headed dragon dance-fighting technique.

■ Creature Stat System
See your creature’s strengths and weaknesses as you build it! Experiment with different lifeblock combos to see what stats you get.


■ New Contextual Interactions and Prompts
Interact with your creatures and the world in different ways depending on what you’re holding. You’ll have your creatures eating out of the palm of your hand.


■ New Adventure Mode Starting Area
Make your way through the temple ruins to learn the ropes and build your first creature!


■ First-Person Hands, Items, and Animations
New items and use animations so you can see what you're holding when in first person view. Even the chickens are jumping for joy.


■ New Creature AI
Completely rewritten for more intelligent and emotionally responsive creatures... including scaredy cats.


■ New Whistle Command Radial Menu
Point and click, then select from a set of contextual actions. Your creature will take care of the rest.


■ New Creature Animation System
Better movement and improved performance! Everything an angry creature chasing you over uneven terrain could wish for.


■ Avatar Armor
Protect yourself and look snazzy at the same time. Your creatures are sure to be impressed by your fashion sense.


■ New Weather System
Poor soggy chicken. Maybe we should have made him his own house?


■ A Whole New UI
Menus, inventory, health and hunger meters -- everything’s been upgraded! See how your creatures are doing at a glance.

“Hey guys, I heard there were donuts over here?!”

There’s a lot more! For a full list of updates, you can check out the...

Patch Notes

NEW FEATURES:
  • Brand new environment: 5 unique biomes (tropical beach, forest, desert, swamp, volcanic) and points of interest to explore
  • New wild creature combos, with unique “mini-bosses” to challenge
  • New Adventure Mode intro experience (tutorial)
  • 4 mysterious temples added across the map (look for the beams of light to investigate!)
  • Magic eggs and lifeshaper relics added: unlock the ability to build more powerful creatures by finding the lifeshaper relics in Adventure Mode
  • New creature stat system: Important stats are displayed on screen while you build a creature
  • Creature-powered structures: craft building blocks and higher tiered items by putting your creatures to work
  • New whistle command radial system with contextual commands
  • First person hands, items, and animations for better immersion when using the first-person camera
  • New contextual interactivity system: available actions change depending on what you’re pointing at with the crosshair
  • Brand new UI/HUD throughout the game
  • Environmental effects for each biome added
  • Weather: relax on a rainy evening or find your way through the rolling fog
  • New, completely rewritten creature animation system for improved performance and visuals
  • AI completely rewritten for improved performance and more intelligent creatures
  • New pathfinding implementation: allows creature to accurately transverse structures and uneven ground
  • New tools added: like the club and hammer
  • Player armor added: craft new armor to protect yourself in the wild
  • All new food items added: like meatloaf, donuts, sushi and, of course, PIE
  • Procedurally generated trees: different types of trees found in different biomes for environmental variety; also provide new types of tree blocks when chopped down
  • New plants/foliage found around the island in different biomes
  • Game difficulty setting added: Explore in peace or challenge yourself by giving your enemies the advantage. Choose from “easy”, “normal”, or “hard”. Creative Mode defaults to “peaceful”.
IMPROVEMENTS / CHANGES:
  • Creatures now respect diet type: herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore; they will get sick if feed the wrong food type
  • Creatures that have been commanded to attack another creature will no longer eat the lifeblocks of their vanquished foe
  • Creatures will now automatically help break things: start chopping down a tree, for example, and your creature will come assist
  • Creatures can now pick items up in their mouths: they’re helping!
  • While building a creature, removed blocks no longer fall to the floor and need to be picked up; instead, blocks are magnetized to the player and picked up automatically
  • Cooking now requires a fuel source (like some wood) and time for the item to cook
  • Camp fire is now a low-level tool: can only cook low quality foods (get a furnace for higher quality cooking!)
  • Creature lifeblocks and tree blocks drop rate has been reduced in Adventure Mode for survival progression balance
  • Tamed creatures burn energy when using abilities
  • Breakable objects now regenerate “health” if left alone for a period of time: for example, your walls will “heal” up soon after you stop a raid on your homestead
  • Breakable objects now have a minimal attack value required to break them, and any damage that’s too weak will bounce off: for example, your fist doesn’t do enough damage to break an iron deposit; you’ll need to use a strong creature or craft a stronger tool
  • Drag/drop added to inventory
  • Improved flying speed
  • Off-hand slot improvements: now easier to use items in your left hand
  • World interactions reworked: now based on where the crosshair was placed when you first interacted to help prevent misclicks
  • Explicit “Rotate Block” key added when building/place (R)
  • Can't hurt tamed creatures while riding or if multiple valid hits
  • Tooltip descriptions added to all items
  • Partial controller support added and inputs cleaned up (NOTE: Only tested on Windows 10 with Xbox 360 controller so far. Please let us know if you test this out and have any feedback!)
  • Lifeblock values adjusted for progression
  • Structure block values adjusted for progression
  • Item values adjusted for progression
  • All new creature leg animations
  • Smoother chunk loading
  • Object pooling expanded to all objects in game to help improve chunk loads
BUG FIXES:
  • Sound fall-off values tweaked
  • Tooltip now stays on screen near edges
  • Floating structure blocks fixed
  • Optimizations to many core systems

Known Issues
We’ve got a list of known bugs and issues over on our Trello board, and we’ve made it public so you can see them, too. If you encounter anything on the list, you’ll know that we’re working on it. If it’s not on the list, please let us know so we can investigate!

View the known issues list here.

Here are a few of the important ones we want to make sure you’re aware of:
  • For anyone on a computer with around 4GB of RAM (min specs), there will be some memory issues: lengthy black screen and slow loading at startup, and a lower framerate while playing. We recommend exiting any other big apps while you have CHKN running to help alleviate this. We’re looking into it!
  • Creature collision detection is still in progress, meaning that sometimes creatures collide with objects in the world (walk through a huge boulder, for example).
  • If you’re on a 32-bit OS, you may have noticed we increased the minimum requirements to 64-bit. This is temporary! We added a lot to this build and went over the limit, so we’re researching the best way to bring 32-bit back.
  • You may notice a change to the multiplayer menus. We’re in the process of adding Steam peer-to-peer networking with lobby support for the next update, but it’s unfinished at the moment. We recommend avoiding multiplayer for now!



Tell Us What You Think
We need your help to make CHKN better here in Early Access so please don’t hesitate to send your feedback along to us. We’re very happy to hear from you guys, whether you have comments to give, bugs to report, or just want to show off the stuff you’ve made.
  • Bug Reports: Submit bugs to this forum and we’ll take a look.
  • Feedback: Let us know what you think about CHKN, or post your ideas and suggestions.
  • Share: Tweet us @chkngame or upload your screenshots to Steam. We’d love to see what you create!


“Sup?”

More to Come
We’re excited to share this update with you and we hope you like what we’ve added so far. We’re still hard at work on the known issues, as well as some other things we want to get into this update before we move on to the next one, so look out for another build in a few weeks.

Thanks, everyone!

- Team CHKN

P.S. A special note to our pre-release testers: Thanks for all your feedback and bug reports! We really appreciate all your help.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930
CHKN - TeamCHKN


It’s here! The Adventure Update (v0.2.0) is now released, just in time for the holidays. There’s still some work to do but we really want to get the update out to everyone and start getting your feedback on the new features.

You’ll find some build highlights and the full patch notes below. We’ve also added a link to our bug/known issues list for your reference. Onward!

What’s New
There are a LOT of improvements, updates, and brand new features in this build, with a big focus on Adventure Mode and creature interactions. Here are just a few of the highlights.

■ All New Map
Remember to bring a creature or two with you while exploring. You never know who you might run into.


■ Creature-Powered Structures
Put those creatures to work for you powering your homestead’s treadmills. (You only have to pay them in food.)


■ Survival Progression in Adventure Mode
Get stronger and build larger, more powerful creatures to take on more difficult challenges as you explore the island.

Here we see the rare three-headed dragon dance-fighting technique.

■ Creature Stat System
See your creature’s strengths and weaknesses as you build it! Experiment with different lifeblock combos to see what stats you get.


■ New Contextual Interactions and Prompts
Interact with your creatures and the world in different ways depending on what you’re holding. You’ll have your creatures eating out of the palm of your hand.


■ New Adventure Mode Starting Area
Make your way through the temple ruins to learn the ropes and build your first creature!


■ First-Person Hands, Items, and Animations
New items and use animations so you can see what you're holding when in first person view. Even the chickens are jumping for joy.


■ New Creature AI
Completely rewritten for more intelligent and emotionally responsive creatures... including scaredy cats.


■ New Whistle Command Radial Menu
Point and click, then select from a set of contextual actions. Your creature will take care of the rest.


■ New Creature Animation System
Better movement and improved performance! Everything an angry creature chasing you over uneven terrain could wish for.


■ Avatar Armor
Protect yourself and look snazzy at the same time. Your creatures are sure to be impressed by your fashion sense.


■ New Weather System
Poor soggy chicken. Maybe we should have made him his own house?


■ A Whole New UI
Menus, inventory, health and hunger meters -- everything’s been upgraded! See how your creatures are doing at a glance.

“Hey guys, I heard there were donuts over here?!”

There’s a lot more! For a full list of updates, you can check out the...

Patch Notes

NEW FEATURES:
  • Brand new environment: 5 unique biomes (tropical beach, forest, desert, swamp, volcanic) and points of interest to explore
  • New wild creature combos, with unique “mini-bosses” to challenge
  • New Adventure Mode intro experience (tutorial)
  • 4 mysterious temples added across the map (look for the beams of light to investigate!)
  • Magic eggs and lifeshaper relics added: unlock the ability to build more powerful creatures by finding the lifeshaper relics in Adventure Mode
  • New creature stat system: Important stats are displayed on screen while you build a creature
  • Creature-powered structures: craft building blocks and higher tiered items by putting your creatures to work
  • New whistle command radial system with contextual commands
  • First person hands, items, and animations for better immersion when using the first-person camera
  • New contextual interactivity system: available actions change depending on what you’re pointing at with the crosshair
  • Brand new UI/HUD throughout the game
  • Environmental effects for each biome added
  • Weather: relax on a rainy evening or find your way through the rolling fog
  • New, completely rewritten creature animation system for improved performance and visuals
  • AI completely rewritten for improved performance and more intelligent creatures
  • New pathfinding implementation: allows creature to accurately transverse structures and uneven ground
  • New tools added: like the club and hammer
  • Player armor added: craft new armor to protect yourself in the wild
  • All new food items added: like meatloaf, donuts, sushi and, of course, PIE
  • Procedurally generated trees: different types of trees found in different biomes for environmental variety; also provide new types of tree blocks when chopped down
  • New plants/foliage found around the island in different biomes
  • Game difficulty setting added: Explore in peace or challenge yourself by giving your enemies the advantage. Choose from “easy”, “normal”, or “hard”. Creative Mode defaults to “peaceful”.
IMPROVEMENTS / CHANGES:
  • Creatures now respect diet type: herbivore, carnivore, and omnivore; they will get sick if feed the wrong food type
  • Creatures that have been commanded to attack another creature will no longer eat the lifeblocks of their vanquished foe
  • Creatures will now automatically help break things: start chopping down a tree, for example, and your creature will come assist
  • Creatures can now pick items up in their mouths: they’re helping!
  • While building a creature, removed blocks no longer fall to the floor and need to be picked up; instead, blocks are magnetized to the player and picked up automatically
  • Cooking now requires a fuel source (like some wood) and time for the item to cook
  • Camp fire is now a low-level tool: can only cook low quality foods (get a furnace for higher quality cooking!)
  • Creature lifeblocks and tree blocks drop rate has been reduced in Adventure Mode for survival progression balance
  • Tamed creatures burn energy when using abilities
  • Breakable objects now regenerate “health” if left alone for a period of time: for example, your walls will “heal” up soon after you stop a raid on your homestead
  • Breakable objects now have a minimal attack value required to break them, and any damage that’s too weak will bounce off: for example, your fist doesn’t do enough damage to break an iron deposit; you’ll need to use a strong creature or craft a stronger tool
  • Drag/drop added to inventory
  • Improved flying speed
  • Off-hand slot improvements: now easier to use items in your left hand
  • World interactions reworked: now based on where the crosshair was placed when you first interacted to help prevent misclicks
  • Explicit “Rotate Block” key added when building/place (R)
  • Can't hurt tamed creatures while riding or if multiple valid hits
  • Tooltip descriptions added to all items
  • Partial controller support added and inputs cleaned up (NOTE: Only tested on Windows 10 with Xbox 360 controller so far. Please let us know if you test this out and have any feedback!)
  • Lifeblock values adjusted for progression
  • Structure block values adjusted for progression
  • Item values adjusted for progression
  • All new creature leg animations
  • Smoother chunk loading
  • Object pooling expanded to all objects in game to help improve chunk loads
BUG FIXES:
  • Sound fall-off values tweaked
  • Tooltip now stays on screen near edges
  • Floating structure blocks fixed
  • Optimizations to many core systems

Known Issues
We’ve got a list of known bugs and issues over on our Trello board, and we’ve made it public so you can see them, too. If you encounter anything on the list, you’ll know that we’re working on it. If it’s not on the list, please let us know so we can investigate!

View the known issues list here.

Here are a few of the important ones we want to make sure you’re aware of:
  • For anyone on a computer with around 4GB of RAM (min specs), there will be some memory issues: lengthy black screen and slow loading at startup, and a lower framerate while playing. We recommend exiting any other big apps while you have CHKN running to help alleviate this. We’re looking into it!
  • Creature collision detection is still in progress, meaning that sometimes creatures collide with objects in the world (walk through a huge boulder, for example).
  • If you’re on a 32-bit OS, you may have noticed we increased the minimum requirements to 64-bit. This is temporary! We added a lot to this build and went over the limit, so we’re researching the best way to bring 32-bit back.
  • You may notice a change to the multiplayer menus. We’re in the process of adding Steam peer-to-peer networking with lobby support for the next update, but it’s unfinished at the moment. We recommend avoiding multiplayer for now!



Tell Us What You Think
We need your help to make CHKN better here in Early Access so please don’t hesitate to send your feedback along to us. We’re very happy to hear from you guys, whether you have comments to give, bugs to report, or just want to show off the stuff you’ve made.
  • Bug Reports: Submit bugs to this forum and we’ll take a look.
  • Feedback: Let us know what you think about CHKN, or post your ideas and suggestions.
  • Share: Tweet us @chkngame or upload your screenshots to Steam. We’d love to see what you create!


“Sup?”

More to Come
We’re excited to share this update with you and we hope you like what we’ve added so far. We’re still hard at work on the known issues, as well as some other things we want to get into this update before we move on to the next one, so look out for another build in a few weeks.

Thanks, everyone!

- Team CHKN

P.S. A special note to our pre-release testers: Thanks for all your feedback and bug reports! We really appreciate all your help.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930
CHKN - TeamCHKN
Thanks you you, CHKN made it to the top 100 Indie Games of 2016 out of nearly 30,000 games! That’s amazing and we couldn’t have gotten this far without you.

This means we’re now in the running for the big prize: IndieDB's Indie Game of the Year! So we need your help once again.

To vote for us, just visit the nominees page on IndieDB and click the big “VOTE” button next to CHKN.



Easy as that! Please pass this along and if you voted last round, please vote again! This is a new round so every vote counts. Thank you so much for supporting us.

As for CHKN itself, we’ve just pushed another build to pre-release with some major updates to the tutorial and creature building so check it out if you’re interested!

- Team CHKN
CHKN - TeamCHKN
Thanks you you, CHKN made it to the top 100 Indie Games of 2016 out of nearly 30,000 games! That’s amazing and we couldn’t have gotten this far without you.

This means we’re now in the running for the big prize: IndieDB's Indie Game of the Year! So we need your help once again.

To vote for us, just visit the nominees page on IndieDB and click the big “VOTE” button next to CHKN.



Easy as that! Please pass this along and if you voted last round, please vote again! This is a new round so every vote counts. Thank you so much for supporting us.

As for CHKN itself, we’ve just pushed another build to pre-release with some major updates to the tutorial and creature building so check it out if you’re interested!

- Team CHKN
CHKN - TeamCHKN


Heya! It’s been two weeks since our last progress report so it’s time to check in and give you a few quick updates.

Build/Release Status
If you’ve been playing on the Pre-Release, you know we’ve made a lot of progress (with your help) but it’s still not quite ready. We’ve started pushing updated builds almost daily and the plan is to continue doing that until we feel it’s ready for everyone. We estimate another week or two.


Greg, John, and Roman discussing your bugs and feedback for today’s tasks.

Pre-Release Testing
Thanks to everyone who’s been testing Pre-Release, posting bugs and feedback, and even sending us words of encouragement. You’ve been a really big help!

If you’re not in Pre-release and want to help test or just check out what we’ve been doing, here’s more information on how to join. (It’s really easy!)


Wild creatures are back in Pre-release, too, including whatever this thing is.


Also, llallamama.

Vote for Us
Voting for IndieDB’s 2016 Indie of the Year awards is still on through Saturday, Dec 10. If we get enough votes, we make it into the next round and more people will be introduced to CHKN.

If you’ve voted for us, thank you! If you haven’t yet, please considering voting here. It would really help us out.



Until Next Time
Thanks again for all your support! We’ll keep you posted. If you have any questions or feedback, let us know.

Back to work for us!


Kevin and Saarim checking out a secret new creature Ashley’s been working on. SHHHH...

Okay, we’ll spill the beans. BUNNY!


Concept art and early model. Don’t let the cuteness fool you.

Have a great weekend!

- Team CHKN


http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930
CHKN - TeamCHKN


Heya! It’s been two weeks since our last progress report so it’s time to check in and give you a few quick updates.

Build/Release Status
If you’ve been playing on the Pre-Release, you know we’ve made a lot of progress (with your help) but it’s still not quite ready. We’ve started pushing updated builds almost daily and the plan is to continue doing that until we feel it’s ready for everyone. We estimate another week or two.


Greg, John, and Roman discussing your bugs and feedback for today’s tasks.

Pre-Release Testing
Thanks to everyone who’s been testing Pre-Release, posting bugs and feedback, and even sending us words of encouragement. You’ve been a really big help!

If you’re not in Pre-release and want to help test or just check out what we’ve been doing, here’s more information on how to join. (It’s really easy!)


Wild creatures are back in Pre-release, too, including whatever this thing is.


Also, llallamama.

Vote for Us
Voting for IndieDB’s 2016 Indie of the Year awards is still on through Saturday, Dec 10. If we get enough votes, we make it into the next round and more people will be introduced to CHKN.

If you’ve voted for us, thank you! If you haven’t yet, please considering voting here. It would really help us out.



Until Next Time
Thanks again for all your support! We’ll keep you posted. If you have any questions or feedback, let us know.

Back to work for us!


Kevin and Saarim checking out a secret new creature Ashley’s been working on. SHHHH...

Okay, we’ll spill the beans. BUNNY!


Concept art and early model. Don’t let the cuteness fool you.

Have a great weekend!

- Team CHKN


http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930
CHKN - TeamCHKN


The 2016 Indie of the Year awards are here and we’d love your help getting nominated!

All you need to do is head over to CHKN on IndieDB and hit the “Vote Now” button.



It’s that simple. If we get enough votes, we’ll be officially nominated and move into the next round!

Vote Now!

This would really help us out so if you have a spare moment to vote and can pass this along to your friends, we’d really appreciate it.

Thank you!

- Team CHKN
CHKN - TeamCHKN


The 2016 Indie of the Year awards are here and we’d love your help getting nominated!

All you need to do is head over to CHKN on IndieDB and hit the “Vote Now” button.



It’s that simple. If we get enough votes, we’ll be officially nominated and move into the next round!

Vote Now!

This would really help us out so if you have a spare moment to vote and can pass this along to your friends, we’d really appreciate it.

Thank you!

- Team CHKN
CHKN - TeamCHKN


Greetings, friends! We’re drinking a lot of caffeine and working hard on the next release. (Who needs sleep, right?!) Here’s another batch of sneak peeks for you, as well as an update on the release schedule since the build isn’t quite ready yet. More info on that down below!

Sneak Peeks
Adventure Mode now starts you off inside some mysterious ruins, where you’ll learn the ropes and find an equally mysterious glowy egg.



Creatures can now power structures! Here’s a cat-thing running on a treadmill to power a saw mill. (And then John hops on for a nice workout.)



The new creature command system and radial menu are in, and the options change depending on what actions are available. It makes commanding creatures much easier and more precise.



Avatar armor! If you’re tired of your fancy red cloak, you can craft yourself some new duds. You’ll have to find the resources first, of course… (or just load Creative Mode!)



New animation system + new legs + new movement code = better pathfinding! Creatures avoid obstacles and do a better job of not getting stuck or lost when you call them. (It also makes for some nice chicken daredevil jumps.)




New Release Date
We wanted to get the next release out to everyone this week for Thanksgiving, but there are still some bugs to squash and things that need polishing. We’re going to take one more development sprint to work on these. That means our new target for release is in two weeks, around December 6th. If you were waiting for the release, we’re sorry about the delay! We just want to make sure it’s stable and ready for you before we publish it.

Pre-Release Test Build
In the meantime, we’ve already put the latest test build up on pre-release! We’ll keep updating it as we make more progress. You can opt-in to give the pre-release a try and let us know what bugs you find on the forums. It really helps. Thank you!

To those celebrating on Thursday, have a happy Thanksgiving! Otherwise, have a great week. We’ll talk to you again soon.

- Team CHKN

http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930
CHKN - TeamCHKN


Greetings, friends! We’re drinking a lot of caffeine and working hard on the next release. (Who needs sleep, right?!) Here’s another batch of sneak peeks for you, as well as an update on the release schedule since the build isn’t quite ready yet. More info on that down below!

Sneak Peeks
Adventure Mode now starts you off inside some mysterious ruins, where you’ll learn the ropes and find an equally mysterious glowy egg.



Creatures can now power structures! Here’s a cat-thing running on a treadmill to power a saw mill. (And then John hops on for a nice workout.)



The new creature command system and radial menu are in, and the options change depending on what actions are available. It makes commanding creatures much easier and more precise.



Avatar armor! If you’re tired of your fancy red cloak, you can craft yourself some new duds. You’ll have to find the resources first, of course… (or just load Creative Mode!)



New animation system + new legs + new movement code = better pathfinding! Creatures avoid obstacles and do a better job of not getting stuck or lost when you call them. (It also makes for some nice chicken daredevil jumps.)




New Release Date
We wanted to get the next release out to everyone this week for Thanksgiving, but there are still some bugs to squash and things that need polishing. We’re going to take one more development sprint to work on these. That means our new target for release is in two weeks, around December 6th. If you were waiting for the release, we’re sorry about the delay! We just want to make sure it’s stable and ready for you before we publish it.

Pre-Release Test Build
In the meantime, we’ve already put the latest test build up on pre-release! We’ll keep updating it as we make more progress. You can opt-in to give the pre-release a try and let us know what bugs you find on the forums. It really helps. Thank you!

To those celebrating on Thursday, have a happy Thanksgiving! Otherwise, have a great week. We’ll talk to you again soon.

- Team CHKN

http://store.steampowered.com/app/420930
...

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