Changes

• Added 10x and 100x modifier keys to the Essence Market UI

Fixes

• Fixed a crash when trying to feed monsters with unassigned or 0-quantity food item
  
• Fixed a crash when Crab’s counterattack is invoked in the same turn that the counterattack buff was removed by an enemy
  
• Fixed image distortion affecting a lot of HD sex scenes
  
• Fixed timing issues in Evan x Brontide sex scene
  
• Corrected colour of fluids in Eve x Kreyton sex scene

Changes

• Equipment items will now stack in inventory
  
• Significantly reduced memory usage for combat FX - offering better performance for low-end PC hardware
  
• Updated the look & feel of Farming & Monster interaction UI:
  
  • Player can now preselect a food item for fast manual feeding of farm monsters
    
  • While planting seeds, the selected seed item quality is now shown
• Attacking an invulnerable enemy will now display IMMUNE status text
  
• Numerous improvements for Essence Market UI
  
• Added ‘World’ volume slider for adjustment of all player & environment action sounds
  
• Improved Farming & Monster interaction icons
  
• Slight improvement to interaction targeting after concluding dialogue with an NPC
  
• Some players encountered an exception when moving monsters between groups, or when adding items to an empty Storehouse - some extra information has been added to help in reporting & identifying these issues

Fixes

• Using the correct seasonal fertilizer should protect crops from extreme weather, including universal fertilizer
  
• Fixed crash when any combat unit with “Targeted” debuff causes their Evasion to become negative
  
• Fixed crash when equipping Worn Items and Held Items while using a combination of mouse and touch screen
  
• Preview sounds should be audible again when adjusting volume sliders in options
  
• First character to appear in a dialogue interaction could slide in too quickly; max speed has been smoothed
  
• Previously the player had to walk in & out of an NPC’s interaction zone to target them in some situations
  
• Prevented repeat-interaction with Mason on Savannah F5 during fade into his sex scene
  
• Players who have already cleared Savannah F8 will have Sieger’s optional quest removed from their logs, and the quest should no longer reappear when defeating pirate mobs from F8 recurring
  
• Player can repeatedly feed the giant Shettle in Savannah F5, but it will no longer attempt to complete the Mason’s quest
  
• Djinn Merchant colliders modified to remove an area where player could get stuck
  
• Monster farm actions nameplate now updates if monster was renamed while viewing stats
  
• Fixed monster traits occasionally appearing in duplicate
  
• Cooking ingredients with long names should now be displayed in full
  
• Removed additional redundant Game Difficulty slider when starting a new game
  
• Correctly layered shrubbery that was obscuring Dire during his date sequence
  
• Corrected some spelling mistakes in dialogue
  
• Fixed an issue caused by 0-quality crops when opening the Job Board
  
• No longer able to feed a monster with equipped food item if it has 0 quantity remaining
  
• Upon starting dialogue, the first character to appear would often move too quickly
  
• Font text was blurry on some UI
  
• Revised collider on Savannah F6 that players could cause players to become stuck

Hello again farmers!

What's been happening since the previous major update?
With 0.1.3.1b as our last update for the year, we've slipped in a fully revised dialogue system - though you may only notice some UI changes or different behaviors - as well as a better, more expansive Jobs Board system on the farm.
Some of our staff are winding down for few days off to stay energized for the next year of pushing Cloud Meadow towards completion.
 

So, what was actually accomplished in 2022?
Summarizing a year's worth of effort and patch notes comprehensively is no simple task!
However, I would like to draw attention to some of the features I feel we're most proud of:

• Savannah dungeon floor 8, our single largest & most complex area yet
  
• Concluding the first story act of Cloud Meadow's multi-act story arc
  
• Greatly expanded the spring Royal Matchmaker Event
  
• UI overhauls & improvements across the board, including; combat, loot rewards, farm jobs management, monster traits & family, farm buildings, cooking & more
  
• Way better resolution scaling, UI readability & reduced memory usage for players on older systems
  
• Combat mechanics overhaul; significant changes to combat stats, scaling, status effects, fundamental mechanics and a full difficulty balance adjustment
  
• Introduced Plankton to the farming ecosystem
  
• Total number of sex scenes up to 332 (40 HD scenes + sprite scenes) with more to come...

 

What else are you working on? How about...
Here's a reminder for what the next major content update will entail, while more expansive detail can be found in my previous monthly update posts

• Adding a new recurring monthly event that takes place in a tiny new side-area called the Faire Grounds
  
• At this fairground event, and a traveling troupe of Brownies arrive for you to meet & 'greet', learn their lore & browse their merchandise
  
• You'll be able to recruit Kaleida as a major party NPC at this event
  
• This will include an overhaul to Kaleida's combat, too

 

More work behind-the-scenes:

• New HD sex scenes are moving steadily towards completion - Eve/Evan x Minerva & Eve/Evan x Kellam
  
• Revamped quest system, which will enable us to use produce way more quest content & town interactions easily - currently something that's quite lacking)
  
• This quest refactoring is currently the last planned system to be rewritten - once this feature is stable, we will be able to fully focus on content-driven updates for the remainder of development
  
• The Forest dungeon is progressing through the design & planning phase, with early concepts completed
  
• Other calendar events that take place in the new Faire Grounds are being concepted for future updates further along
  
• Tutorial and farm mechanic introduction sequences are planned for rewrite - formalized as a series of farm-based & town-based questlines that can be pursued as the player's choice

 

If you have any questions we are always readily available in the following places:

• Introduce yourself in our very own Discord [ https://discord.gg/6ASAxDF ]
  
• Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple ]

Fixes

• Fixed dialogue-related error in Savannah F8 after completing a fight between the Denmother & Centaur Stonebreaker
  
• Fixed dialogue-related error in Savannah F6 when nominating a monster to participate in the Stonebreaker’s challenge
  
• Fixed Jobs Board error when growing Summer Epoch Event seeds in any field
  
• Players who completed the Savannah but found themselves stuck with Sieger’s optional quest from F8 will have this quest entry removed
  
• Improved collision & layering for Jerikan merchant; players should no longer become stuck when invading his personal space
  
• Some visual fx during the Poacher confrontation dialogue sequence were not displaying properly
  
• Improved some dialogue between Jubelle & Camellia on first encounter

This will probably be the last major build of the year! With us having wrapped up the poachers arc and are now focusing on various systems to help finish off the last levels of content, including finding out more about who was buying from the Poachers, and the mysterious forest levels of the dungeon island! We hope that you all have wonderful holidays, and look forward to continuing to work on the game as the new year approaches!

Additions

• Yonten can now spend his ability points to improve his abilities. While currently only Yonten is available, other characters will become available in future updates.
  
• Added a user requested feature to allow pausing the loading screen until a button is pressed, allowing splash screens to be enjoyed when loading completes quickly. This option can be toggled in the options menu gameplay settings.
  
• Crops have a new animation effect when they’re fertilized with an out of season essence

Changes

• Updated layout of the main menu and added some new animation
  
  • Changelog now stands out more as a menu button, and also will now highlight in a new build to draw more attention to version changes.
• Several parts of the existing conversation UI have been updated as we prepare to use improved data for future content
  
  • Updated options to use their own popup panel, allowing us to better display longer text, and also support scrolling so we can show more than 6 options at once.
    
    • Existing conversations may look a bit odd as existing “Next/Prev page” options just appear as regular options
  • Redesigned the conversation history window. New design is a bit more efficient, and also has improvements like:
    
    • Grouping “pages” of text from the same character
      
    • Logging option selections
      
    • Showing “---” when conversations end
  • Made some improvements to text scrolling, and also added a “>>” indicator at the bottom to indicate when scrolling is completed
• Updated the Job Board UI
  
  • Uses the new character card/icons for more details about your monsters
    
  • Now uses a 2 click assignment (click to select and click to assign), which is a bit more inconvenient, but does allow selection of monsters to view related tooltips, rename, or re-equip from the job board.
    
  • New UI includes a map of the farm making it possible to identify where work areas are on the farm
    
  • Each workable location is now selected one at a time and has their own custom job board. These boards use our newer larger icons and show more details about the current work rate, as well as changes to work based on adding/replacing/removing a worker.
    
  • Monsters working in crop fields have a new icon that will indicate if they apply out of season fertilizer
    
  • Managing monster’s locations, Barn and pasture locations, now has a new UI that is part of this board. Along with the map, this should help with figuring out where your monsters are located or moving to.
    
    • Group selection and management was removed from the Breeding/Harvesting UI. When breeding monsters, the right card will now let you select from all monsters on the farm.

Fixes

• Some players were unable to complete the quest to find the lost plankton on floor 8; the missing plankton was erroneously moving out of bounds. It’s position has been restored to the usual location
  
• Fixed a dialog error during the date with Lucia
  
• Fixed a position issue on enemy Mason’s icon sprite
  
• Fixed an issue where HallowHaunt lighting would only apply correctly after loading a save game
  
• Fixed and issue with using Ev’s Rake Throw ability when all targets already affected
  
• Fixed exception when talking to fighting denmother on Sav 8
  
• Fixed ability points triggering “has points to spend” highlight for characters other than Yonten

Changes

• Visual updates around the various water/liquid features in the Savannah Dungeons.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a chest on the Savannah 8 dungeon floor was always empty
  
• Fixed issue where units would not fade out of focus during combat while using the Ghost effect from Hallow Haunt
  
• Fixed issue where discovering a recipe for an ingredient that’s already in your inventory could cause a duplicate ingredient to appear in cooking experiment options
  
• Fixed issue where the combat UI HP bars would not start showing the correct health value on enemies during Hallow Haunt.
  
• Fixed issue where difficulty scaling was affecting more than just an enemy’s primary stats
  
• Reduced the bonus dodge chance gained by monsters during Hallow Haunt to 33%
  
• Fixed Farm action buttons no longer being clickable with the mouse
  
• Fixed click to move handling so that click to move “state” can be held during protagonist animations, such as when interacting with crops on the farm.
  
• Fixed some sorting issues on the farm
  
• Adjusted some colliders in dungeon floors to prevent player getting stuck or pushed out of bounds
  
• Fixed the dropdown arrows on the new game setup not being clickable
  
• Fixed some typos
  
• Fixed dialog error triggered when viewing the Savannah 5 Stonebreaker statue after Mason moves to Savannah 7
  
• Fixed some cases where it was possible to repeat an interaction before it fully completed, causing exceptions when data attempted to update twice
  
• Fixed Time Played on the the load game menu not displaying total hours when selecting a world slot
  
• Fixed Male Lamias facing the wrong direction when carrying goods back from storage, while working at the docks
  
• Attempted a fix to an issue where companion jump animations could fail to complete on slower machines

It’s that time again! Ursa’s brought us the latest state of the game address and how things are planned to play out on the back end going forward now that our last big project is done, and a massive amount of programmer resources have been freed up as a consequence!


Two important notices first:

'XUnity.AutoTranslator' is an unsupported modification which breaks the game.

At this time it appears AutoTranslator causes unavoidable errors & possibly corrupts save files.
Steam players have been reporting errors such as 'Collection does not contain entry with data', which are caused by this modification.
I recommend players who have installed AutoTranslator to uninstall the modification/reinstall the game into an empty folder, and load an earlier save from before they began using the modification.
Cloud Meadow does not support modifications at this time.

New 'High Definition' sex scenes are being developed again!

Previously we've made very confident statements that all HD sex scenes that were planned are fully completed, and that no more are planned.
Over time our circumstances have changed and under the guidance of our animation lead LucidLemonLove, the animation team is now significantly ahead of schedule.
After much deliberation we've decided to allocate the creation of a limited number of new HD sex scenes, starting with select few NPCs from Cloverton.


What's been happening since the previous major update?

As you know, the long-anticipated conclusion to the Savannah Dungeon zone went live on the 24th of October after a lengthy internal review process.
Development on the final Savannah floor has been a long time coming; we hope you can enjoy the content and the end of what will be the main storyline's first act.

With this major piece of content completed, there are several ways the dungeon content will unfold in the future;

• When dungeon development changed hands in Q2 2020, numerous things were left unfinished. The first 3 floors will receive visual and structural changes, as well as improvements & fixes to visual issues such as incorrect layering, as well as upgrading everything to our new visual standard
  
• The Poachers were meant to be more of a driving force in the Savannah's story arc, so there are plans to retroactively give them an appearance over many of the previous Savannah floors; what could they be up to?
  
• We've been collecting feedback over which parts of the dungeon are most difficult to progress, especially when it comes to difficult navigation or vague quests. There are plans to streamline these painful parts to be a better experience, especially for newer players
  
• We want the questfaring player to have more things to do - Katarina Station is determined to become a quest hub for optional content taking place in the dungeons, including vendors, NPCs and more

What else are you working on? How about…

Taking lessons learned from Savannah development, the next dungeon area - Forest - is slated to be a departure from the usual linear dungeon format.
We've revised the structure of the upcoming Forest areas to make better re-use of areas, as well as segmenting development in an effort to shorten development time between dungeon content updates. More on this will unfold next year.


We are still revising the design stages of our next major content update; the Brownie Caravan; a recurring calendar event that will occupy a fairgrounds nearby to Cloverton.

• Kaleida will be recruitable from this event. Kaleida is one of the 10 major NPCs that can be utilized in combat and will eventually become a romanceable companion.
  
• For players that are already familiar with Kaleida, her combat toolkit will receive a significant overhaul
  
• New unique vendors & storytellers for the lore fans
  
• New consumable item recipes to craft
  
• New minor NPCs to share a tent with

Behind-the-scenes:

Our tireless development team have been hard at work studiously rebuilding, replacing & improving tools & backend systems to support the better, faster creation of new gameplay content. When these major systems are complete, anticipate we can fully utilize our programmer output to serve content-driven updates.

• Something that we've noted as sorely missing is a lively town. With the empowerment of our recently-completed internal dialogue scripting tool, we aim to give Cloverton NPCs a breath of life and more activities to grant the player in the non-dungeon portion of the game
  
• Meanwhile in the world of combat mechanics, soon you will finally have the ability to rank up your party's ability skills - offering better power, utility and sometimes even transforming the ability entirely

If you have any questions we are always readily available in the following places:

• Introduce yourself in our very own Discord [ https://discord.gg/6ASAxDF ]
  
• Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple ]

Fixes

• Fixed an issue that could cause characters to get stuck during cutscenes
  
• Players who previously rescued Garst from Tro’s Lab will now find Garst recruited as a combat party member
  
• Fixed an issue where characters would not correctly update their facing during pathing

Fixes

• Fixed a conversion issue. First time startup on this version may take a lot longer as we need to review all save game slots to restore files flagged by the conversion issue.
  
• Fixed issue where “EXP” and “Affection” icon on character cards was colored white, and too hard to see
  
• Fixed a few typos

It's finally here folks! The Long awaited conclusion to the Poacher's Arc of the story, and the end of the first half of the story of the game. In time this will be extended out, and I know Ursa has some things he'd like to tell you all about our future plans, but for now, boot up the game, head over to Floor 7, and get yourself down to finally help Sieger put paid to the nefarious plans of the monster poachers! You'll find a ton of new improvements, including items that will let you change Ev's gender or that of your monsters, the ability to collect plankton and raise them on your farm properly (allowing you to harvest certain pantry ingredients), and several improvements to farming, combat, and breeding systems.

It has been a long hard road for us to get this far, with a lot of back and forth, refinements, and trememendous amount of work polishing this level and getting it all up to snuff. We could not have done it without all of your support! Thank you once again!

Additions

• Added a new animation and UI for hatched monsters
  
• Added new background images to the “standard” character card, for selected characters
  
• Savannah Dungeon Floor 8 is now accessible from the end of Floor 7. This dungeon floor is the end of the Savannah area, containing a huge area full of quests, new sexual encounters, secrets, a climatic boss battle and a narrative conclusion to the first act of the game scenario
  
• Added collectable Plankton nests to Floors 4, 5 & 7. The player can utilise these critters once they have unlocked & built the Plankton Pen, which is available after clearing Floor 8
  
• Added a new monster palette; “Mermaid”, which is obtainable via hidden item
  
• Added a new hidden item to switch the sex of a target monster or player, where applicable
  
• New cursor icons for movement & loading
  
• Overworld sex scenes (such as in the Farm or Dungeon) that do not meet the player’s preference options will now be hidden by a cloud of mist
  
• Added 7 new loading screens

Changes

• Improved some tooltip positions
  
• Crops planted after 10pm count as having been planted for the next day, so will not die at midnight if not watered.
  
• Reduced the price of Sourhead seeds from 20 to 10
  
• Monsters working on farm fields now prioritize crops that are further along in the growth cycle
  
• Reharvestable crops now only have a chance to drop seeds on the first harvest
  
• Tuned Kelpie boss combat so that they cannot remain submerged for too many turns in a row.
  
• Quest tracker will show a scrollbar when oversize, so that it can handle more active quests
  
• The quest tracker panel will no longer expand when moving the cursor over it.
  
• Reduced number of overlapping lights in Savannah F7, since they were causing performance issues
  
• Shortened all Savannah quest log names
  
• Jail cages will now appear in the Cloverton training hall to denote each boss monster the player has defeated
  
• Some friendly characters will now migrate around the dungeon based on the player’s story progression
  
• Restored some new & previously-hidden background animations to Cloverton, also correcting layering issues for autumn & winter town layers
  
• All cinematic sequences now use an improved pathfinding solution
  
• Updated union marine idle animation
  
• Slightly lowered Diamondnium Key drop rate from pirate mobs

Fixes

• Fixed a number of layering and collider issues on the farm
  
• Fixed issue in Edline’s Royal Match Maker date sparkles would disappear behind an invisible box above the fireplace.
  
• Fixed issue where monsters in your party wearing Sebastion’s Shackle would appear invisible with a slight outline instead of appearing as a ghostly shade of blue.
  
• Fixed issues with transitionary weather & lighting fx when moving between indoor & outdoor environments
  
• Harvestable crop node particles should appear at the right scale while zoomed
  
• Sprites that used an interaction outline were previously suppressing any glow-in-the-dark fx on the same sprite
  
• Fixed windows not being illuminated at night in Provision Day combat scenes
  
• Fixed a handful of unit sprites whose interaction outline was distorted
  
• Player’s name should now display correctly in dialogue menu options
  
• Some shading layers in Savannah F6 that fade in and out based on time-of-day were previously not appearing correctly
  
• Loading screens were sometimes encountering a small amount of distortion
  
• Giant catxolotl in Cloverton should be pattable again, along with the statue in union barracks
  
• Fixed an issue where character movement during cutscenes could become stuck
  
• Fixed some typos and formatting in dialogs
  
• Fixed an issue where the player’s walk animation wouldn’t stop, if the last keyboard input was against a blocking object.
  
• Fixed an issue where player could sometimes become stuck after loading completed when triggering a harvest animation before moving.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Sav 8 Centaur/Cat cave would become blocked after a weekly reset, even though the related quest was completed.
  
• Optional quest to return the Plankton Pen blueprints to a sailor on F8 will no longer reward items on each repeat interaction. If the player has any extra copies of this item, they will be removed upon loading this game version.
  
• Sieger’s optional Savannah F8 quest will no longer be available for players who have already cleared the Savannah
  
• Improved some sequencing in the ‘end of Act 1’ cinematic