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It seems we meet again here on the dusty development road. Since your last visit, we've been building a brand new region for your delectation. It's called Tir Na Nog and we've just opened its magical doors for the first time in today's "Gnome Pun Intended" update.

In addition to this new region, we've also been keeping busy cramming in a few extra bits and bobs. World Builder Charlie has been roaming all over Quill placing brand new lights by using an updated lighting system that Master Linguist Neal conjured up into existence. Meanwhile, Musician Magician Matthijs has been locked away in his chamber of instruments creating all manner of auditory delights - some of which include the sounds of a singing plant. Most curious. There's also a new minigame, a new shop, a new dog breed, plus a handful of other lovely things you can read about below.






We've been looking forward to opening up Tir Na Nog for quite a while, as it's the very first time you'll be able to visit and explore a Fae realm. Though like the rest of the land of Quill, this new region is very much under construction. There's still a good deal left that we want to do with it, ranging from basic polish to adding more activities over time. Tir Na Nog's inhabitants will also need further fleshing out as well.

That said, there's still a number of new things to play with and explore in the meantime. Just don't be surprised if you encounter a few layering issues or perhaps even find yourself breaking free of your earthly shackles and slipping outside region bounds.

You can find some highlights from today's update below, followed by a more detailed changelog at the bottom. We welcome you to report any bug sightings in the usual places, such as on our Discord, our forums, or straight to Bugs@Kynseed.com. As we tell all our bug visitors, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

• A new Fae region now accessible after the Prologue, including:
  
• A new minigame to discover
  
• A new shop selling fine wares
  
• New music and audio effects
  
• New items and collectibles
  
• New mines containing rare ore

• Hosted by Tir Na Nog local celebrity, Gnome Edmunds
  
• Strategically pop pig balloons and try to strike a deal
  
• A number of potential prizes up for grabs

• Sells a few local Tir Na Nog goods, among other things
  
• Also sells H. Pepper's Naming Nut, a new item for renaming pets

• Hair dyes are now an in-game item
  
• This allows for changing hair colour at any time
  
• Can be purchased at various stores across the land
  
• Plus, a few new colours added!

• Pugs!
  
• Pugs.
  
• Pugs...

• Pets can now be renamed when purchasing them
  
• Added 'the naming nut', which allows for renaming already owned pets
  
• Players can now return to Fairweather (similar to how players travel to Tir Na Nog)
  
• Fairweather items can now be bought at the cost of years off your life
  
• At the end of the year, Fairweather claims his tax of years owed
  
• Ambience added for mines
  
• Plus a big ol' buncha fixes, improvements, and background work (see below)
  
• For a complete look at all changes, check out the full changelog

Today's update marks yet another spot we can cheerfully check off our trusty Kynseed roadmap. Now that the update is out, we'll spend the remainder of this week looking into and fixing any bugs you report. Then, starting Monday, we chart a course for our next destination: an optimization/flexible update. These are updates in which the PixelCount team will work on a number of less visible but otherwise important background areas.

Such areas will typically include systems for larger features to come as well as traditional optimization to help keep our engine well oiled and running smooth. We certainly don't want our faithful ol' engine to start slowing down in the middle of our journey.

As always we'll keep you updated on progress with things like our periodically periodical, The PixelCount Post, as well as on other cozy corners of the internet such as our Discord. There's many stops still ahead on this dusty development road, but with good folks like you at our side we're rather enjoying the journey. See you at the next rest stop for tea time and bathroom breaks.

Love,
PixelCount

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Welcome to Issue #48 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie lights the way, Neal adds little big things, Tice grows a singing plant, and Matt posts a much nicer screenshot than last issue's.
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Game development is like going to a buffet. You arrive hungry, with a cornucopia of delicious food laid out for the taking, but you realize all too soon there's no way you're making room for everything you want to eat.*

As we continue down our roadmap journey, we've found we have to be mindful of that very thing. For the upcoming "Gnome Pun Intended" update, we kept going to Neal (Kynseed's sole programmer) with small little ideas we wanted to squeeze into the update. But the thing with small little ideas is that if you string enough of them together you'll find yourself with a large collection of ideas.

So originally we planned to push the update out a few days ago, but all those little ideas take time to implement and test, so instead we'll be pushing this new update out in the middle of this upcoming week. Though we do have an early version up on the 'latestupdate' branch for anyone interested in taking an early spin.

Overall, progress is going along nicely though. All major parts are working as intended and a few of those unplanned ideas are pretty much complete as well. One such example are new lighting system changes which now gives us the ability to hand place light sources rather than relying exclusively on in-world sources (such as candles and lamp posts). In fact, Charlie has recently done a pass over the entire game's regions placing new light sources around. He chats a bit about this in his update below. We'll have much more to share on all that next week when we push the update out, so be sure to pop back in soon.

* Games are also like metaphors. There's too many of them and most aren't that good.







As mentioned in his post below, Neal kindly provided me with placeable lights.

This seems like a small thing, but to someone with a history of lighting fetishism on Fable II and Fable III, I was very happy to get back to placing them down after years in the darkness.

Lighting a level is definitely trickier in a 2d game, but no less rewarding. I found the best effect comes from placing a subtle blueish light in patches to look like midnight moonlight in Cuckoo Wood and Tir Na Nog. During the day you can’t see them, but come night and they add a bit of visual aid and also a chunk of atmosphere.

Lighting is best used to highlight things like cave entrances/doorways/paths, but it can also be used to add some nice ambient colour, such as from colourful strange plants and pools. The brief for Tir Na Nog was basically ‘Avatar the movie but with Faeries’. This gives ripe opportunity for glowing foliage and strange colours.

I'm not a lighting artist (nowhere near), but there is something satisfying about bringing a bit of light and colour to the world. It was the same in Albion, and now it is the same in Quill. You can make a home feel cosy from a warm glowing fire. Make a henge stone seem cold and mysterious. Tempt a player lost in darkness, or be their guide.

Now, back to a little light work.







Since last time, I've sorted out the lighting to allow light placement. So far I've kept it very basic without even going in for different shaped lights (though the source rectangle area can be stretched which helps achieve reasonable results for now).

It did take a few days to hook up everything correctly as it meant recreating the systems that game objects use for lights. In the end I went for the path of least resistance by recreating instead of rewriting/refactoring to accommodate for both. It's a choice which could mean later pain but felt like the safer option in the circumstances than finding out I've broken something!

Thinking back on it now, I do wonder on the wisdom in that or if it's even possible to have a 'best' solution except in retrospect. In some programming books I've read they talk about skill or mastery as being a process where experts instinctively know which way to go from having the experience to know the best approach that avoids pitfalls. I feel like my instinct mostly leads to muddling through still, because I don't have enough experience of the specific situations to know the right one. I probably just need to not get hung up on it too much (and practice more)!

I've been working on revisiting Fairweather along with more polish to the minigame and setting up the extra details that come with a new level/items/fish/audio. It feels like a good next step to be iterating through these things and making improvements along the way. It has taken a bit longer than intended though, where we were hoping to have the update done this week but it'll likely be middle of next week instead.

Once that is done, we'll be working on the first optimisation update since Early Access which I'm looking forward to. It won't necessarily be easy to show what has changed from it but it will really help to get into some of the deeper issues of an ever-evolving design and codebase of 3 years.

It's funny writing my update this time, as the last few weeks have been honestly a bit hard work without feeling like there's much to show but talking about it I'm starting to feel excited about it all again so I best head off and use that energy!







This week a lot more sound effects were made. I went back to the Fairweather meetup and added in a magical sound for when he presents you with the items he wishes to trade. Then there's the sound for selecting which item you want.

I also adjusted some existing effects, such as a little less volume on some water here, a gentler start to a minigame tune there, little touches that make something turn from gradually annoying to a detail you won't even consciously notice. Then there's a celebratory sound I had to make for a minigame where you hear confetti pop and party blowers, and also the sound of bubbles coming up from thick gloopy water.

I also noticed that crickets still sound when you enter Fairweather's domain. Now I'm fairly certain that crickets don't stand a chance in a realm of ice and snow...so gotta fix that. There's also some incorrect ambient noise in some places that I still need to tend to - or Neal does, as he codes what sound goes where after all.

But my personal favourite thing I've worked on this week must have been the sound of a singing plant. Yes, I kid you not.

The tricky part: I don't want to use human vocal sounds in the game, so I had to look for other sources of a biologically produced tone. After some searching I found some dog howling sounds that I then heavily processed. The end result hopefully sounds nothing like a dog, but everything like a magical singing plant. (I mean, everyone knows what those sound like of course...).

It doesn't stop there though. This plant can be plucked. And if you do, it screeches! The screech I ended up using came from a baby owl - it was just perfect! I really hope you'll love these sounds when you encounter them. Time will tell...







One of the side effects of working on a game, especially within a small team where a myriad of responsibilities are shared, is that it's easy for one's thoughts to consist only of the game. Now that we're past the early backer builds and the initial Early Access launch, we're now in the part of the project where it's a long stretch of sustained content development - all the way to game completion.

Because of that I've found that my mental bandwidth has had room for very little else. I wake up thinking about the game, I spend my entire day working on the game, and then I go to bed thinking about the game. I generally try to give myself at least one day off a week, but even on a day off I've found my mind keeps wandering back to the game and all the things I need to get done and want to get done.

After a few weeks (or months) of this, it's easy to see how the mind could use a refresh of sorts. I suppose I talk a little about that in last week's Post, in regards to how it's always nice having new fresh content to work on. That can certainly help to a degree, but even still it doesn't solve the problem of mental bandwidth being maxed out by thoughts of the project.

For times such as that, we've found that relying on each other as teammates and as friends can be the best thing. Whenever we find ourselves dragging our feet during the long hauls of development, we're always quick to pump each other back up and recalibrate our mentality. Sometimes all it takes is a team call. Other times all it takes is a team member saying "turn off your bloody phone and take a day off". Not that I'd ever be guilty of needing such advice...



In completely unrelated news, I somehow managed to get my hands on a working Steam key for Fable III. To provide a bit of context: in 2011 Fable III was ported to PC (a year after its release on Xbox 360) on Games for Windows Live and simultaneously for Steam. However, a couple of years later Microsoft closed the Games for Windows Live store and with it the Steam version was pulled as well. All that to say, Steam keys for Fable III are hard to come by and for some reason I never managed to get myself a copy (despite already owning a half dozen copies for Xbox).

So I was rather excited when I found a working key and now my Steam library can proudly include Fable III among its ranks. There's even a community hub for it still lurking in the shadows of Steam's website. I also managed to do a bit of fiddling with my graphics card and the game's files to increase texture quality, to smooth transparent items (like grass), and to run at a perfectly smooth 4k 60fps. This may well be the first time anyone has ever seen the game running at these graphics settings, and it looks pretty good.

Now if only somebody could get to work on a Fable II PC port.

Welcome to Issue #47 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie writes new items, Neal sheds light, Tice gets ready to rumble, and Matt apologizes in advance for the article he wrote.
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We've been thinking with portals this last week and have been adding in the initial system to allow for travel to various Fae realms. In fact, so distracted have we been by all our portal pondering that it was hard to wrangle the team together to put together this issue of The Post 'til now. That said, the portal's visuals are looking rather fantastic and, what's more, are running entirely in code without the need for any external art assets. We've also begun adding a few other basic particle effects here and there as well which, combined with the portal effects, is really helping give the game world a whole new layer of visual depth.

For now, these portals will let players travel to two Fae realms in particular: one is to return to Mr Fairweather and the other is to visit a brand new region called Tir Na Nog. However, the citizens of Tir Na Nog have a strict height limit enforced which means the player will have to shrink themselves down to gain admittance. This new region also uses an entirely new set of environment assets and has a colour palette not seen anywhere else in the game world.

Additionally, the initial framework of a new minigame is coming along nicely. It's called "Squeal or No Squeal" and involves strategically popping inflated pig balloons to see what their contents are. This game is run by a chap named Gnome Edmunds, whom players will get to meet in the next update.

So it's been a very productive and successful first two weeks of work for the "Gnome Pun Intended" update. We'll spend another week or so on it and then dispatch it your way to download and check out. Though for now, it's back to work for us. These pig balloons aren't gonna inflate themselves.









Items! That's been my main thing over the last few days. Creating, naming, giving stats and effects, and adding 'funny' descriptions. It's great fun, but slow work - especially when redistributing everything.

I tried to ensure each Haven has at east 3 unique fish types, a couple of herbs, an ore type, a few flowers, and their own fruit and veg. The Smithy in each has 2 mould types they specialise in and the Apothecaries have shared cures, but their own brand perfume and speciality item. Each tavern has 3 local drinks of differing strengths and each store biases towards certain types of items.

When designing such things as part of world building, I consider the environment, the people, and the potential uses for each. Then I hit the biggest hurdle...the descriptions (as often my references are very obscure, if clever). Plus some items are invented, so that makes descriptions even harder.

What is my method for inventing, I don't hear you ask? With things like fish or Fae, I say letters out loud and you get a feel for which letters work and 'feel' right to start with. I start to combine letters and make sounds and your instinct tells you if a word fits and rolls smoothly. It also helps to look up Celtic folklore names, or at actual fish species lists, and those are great starting points for names.

If a wordplay can be used, or a pun, then all the better, but it is best to mix and match. And that leads me to now, looking at my Excel sheet, trying to think of a description for the Shalewyrm, a type of eel found in Pinehaven, our most northerly region. We have an eel already in another region, and that description simply reads....'Ongated'.

That's pretty much the level we roll at around these parts.







These last two weeks I got stuck into work on the next update. It's been a nice change of pace with a minigame to sort out along with setting up a method of teleporting to other realms. The latter isn't too complicated for those who have played the game already but it's allowed some improving on the presentation side of things. We had a review of the WIP work on Friday which had things moving along nicely.

Though one aspect which did come up is lighting, which is an extra bit of work I hadn't considered. Outside a few interactable objects that have a light component, there's a basic ambient light setting for everything else right now. So what's needed is to put together a way to add in extra lights to highlight particular bits and work in a more bespoke way per level. I've started work on this and it shouldn't be too long to start testing it out. The tricky bit is defining a good set of shapes for different circumstances.

I'm sort of torn between just providing a few different shapes and seeing how to handle overlap or going a bit further in allowing more of a tile based area of effect. First things first though: getting a system in place to test!







This week I got to figure out what portals sound like. From the low rumble as the ground shakes when opening a portal to the eerie hum as it stays open, to an otherworldly wailing as you go through one...

It all sounds a bit ominous - and that's intentional. These are magic phenomenon, so how could you possibly have the slightest idea of what to expect? There's been some internal discussion about the technical side of how to do it. Sometimes the ideal of how we want sound to work in the game isn't exactly the least resource intensive way, and Neal tends to have to come in to say something just can't be done right now, that maybe further down the line we can do something more elaborate. So sometimes I have to figure out what still sounds good within all the restrictions that reality imposes.

Then when you get to that other world, everything should sound different there, including the ambient track. Previous ambient tracks were made from recordings in nature, but with nature itself being so different in these other worlds I can't do that here. Thus, I'll have to construct my own soundscapes. That'll be a lot of work I reckon, as even water sounds differently in other realms. So I've certainly got my work cut out for me!







It's good to be working on a new region with the team. We'd been working so long on the blacksmith and pre-existing regions that I think we've all been happy for the change of scenery.

To provide a (much) more extreme example of this feeling, I remember once reading a Gamasutra article about the mental weight of working on graphic games and one bit of it that always stuck with me was Bungie Halo artist Vic DeLeon talking about making the flood-infested level "Cortana" in Halo 3. For a few weeks he absorbed himself in researching things like colonoscopy videos as well as medical images of tumors and lesions. As DeLeon says in the article:

"I started associating that level with feeling disgusting. Once it was built it took months and months of polishing, and in those months I couldn’t wait to work on something else. The level was so disgusting, and what I thought was neat at first really came to bear down on me."

He spent a total of eight months on that level.

Though it goes without saying that this is a much more severe example of what I'm talking about. Thankfully our team isn't dealing with gruesome levels day in and day out. In fact, I suppose it's quite the opposite - running through wheat fields on warm summer days as the bees buzz and melancholy music plays. Not walking through automatic anus doors.

Side Tangent: I gave pause when writing the above sentence, wondering if perhaps it was 'too much'. However, upon browsing the Halo wiki in search of a reference image, I've learned that their official description is "a sphincter-like orifice embedded into the floors and walls". So alright then.

All that to say, it's interesting to me how working on the same game environment for months at a time can lead to a sort of overexposure to it - even for the most pleasant of environments. Don't get me wrong, I still absolutely love running through these regions and exploring our game world. But there is something incredibly refreshing about having a brand new (and fundamentally different) environment to suddenly explore. A bit like that moment in the first Red Dead Redemption when you travel to Mexico for the first time and suddenly realize that there's a lot more scope to the world than it first let on. Granted, Tir Na Nog is just one region of many, but as we continue developing this game our hope is that you'll be constantly surprised and excited by every new place you discover in Quill's vast open world.

Did I just spend my entire update talking about colonoscopy videos and Halo 3? Yes. Yes I did.

Welcome to Issue #46 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie updates Ledger UI, Neal talks of updating code framework, Tice kicks brass, and Matt makes video cuts and cut-scenes.
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The "Down to Business" update was pushed out last week and with it our first forray into business ownership mechanics. There was also a hotfix released a few days after that, which you can check out in the changelog. Of course, longterm there'll be much more added to the game's business ownership mechanics.

Though for now, we're switching gears from a feature-dominant update to a more content-dominant one in the upcoming "Gnome Pun Intended" update. Surely the star of this update is that we'll be adding a new Fae region to travel to and explore. This'll be the first time players will get to visit a Fae location and it's got a very different look as a result - complete with a color palette unlike anything else in the game. We're also adding in a few other things like a return trip to Fairweather, some new ingredients and effects, and even a new tongue-in-cheek gameshow called "Squeal or No Squeal", hosted by Gnome Edmunds. We're all rather looking forward to working on this for the next three weeks and we'll be sure to keep you all posted here as we go.











This past week I got into looking at the UI with our environment artist Weekes and Neal. A lot of screens are basic boxes and we want to improve the visuals. So the Ledger and things like the Selling table really needed sorting out.

We didn't look to Stardew Valley for inspiration but rather a game called Pathway. For our Ledger, it is about making it look more like a book with tables and notes and bookmarks. This should give a nice feel that you are accounting and taking stock from a big dusty old book.

We also need to keep in mind both gamepad and KB&M controls, but feel we have a nice layout and look with all the necessary info clearly visible. I can just imagine players getting really in-depth with their business management, hunched over their Ledgers, by candlelight...







Last week saw the next major update of Early Access go live. I had a busy following weekend with the test branch going out and having to fix several problems found on that. Fortunately, it was pretty quick to turnaround and get reasonably stable. I used the remainder of that week as an opportunity to dive into bugs mostly related with the update but also some lurking ones from a while back. It's been quite satisfying to solve these problems and I think it'll likely be a practice to take up after each update to try and reduce the buildup of issues.

There are a few reports of some crashes on startup that need addressing too. The dilemma with these problems is that they seem to be very PC config specific, so it's not easy to prove a fix has worked without having a PC with the problem (and the problem can temporarily or permanently go away even just by restarting the game too). In addition, the potential solution (which is unproven to be 100% guaranteed given the aforementioned limited testing and the way the problem can go away) involves upgrading the version of MonoGame (the code framework for Kynseed's engine) that I'm using...

This comes with a new set of problems with the possibility of new unknown issues which could affect more people worse than the current version! The current version has had a sufficient quantity of players over this last year to be reasonably confident that the majority of problems have been found and fixed where possible. It's a tricky balance in indie development I'm finding; to try resolving these issues once and for all when it could take weeks or more to fix the problems and then there's the bottleneck of my time being needed on updates as well. What I'm aiming to do is split off a chunk of time each week to making progress on it. Hopefully that should make inroads on the solution while still allowing update work to continue and maybe it might turn out my estimate on time taken to fix them is on the high side (fingers and toes most definitely crossed for that).







Since nothing new came up recently, my main focus has been this piece of music I'm not sure I can be very specific about. It's in-world music that takes place outside. This means it has to come from instruments that can be used outside. Brass, for the most part.

British culture has a long tradition in brass bands, especially in miner towns. These are instruments that can withstand bad weather and can be played easily with big hands full of calluses. It'd actually make a lot of sense if the world of Kynseed had a brass band or two in it. Especially if there's a dedicated mining town in the game at some point.

So for creating the sound of this special event, I've been thinking ahead to possibly link it to the sound of a future town. I'm hoping Charlie will agree with this line of thinking. Beyond that, with the recent update out the door (and I hope you're all enjoying it!), I get to focus on the next one. There'll be some interesting tasks ahead...







It's always an interesting transition when concluding one major update while simultaneously starting another. Part of the mind wants to exhale and enjoy the satisfaction of completing a large task. Yet take it in too much and suddenly it gets near impossible to rebuild energy for the next large task.

So keeping a brisk pace in the project is something I've found invaluable. In a way, it's more a matter of taking the satisfaction of completing one update and converting that into a fuel source to help motivate work on the next. That's why we've gone from our last update straight into the next without skipping a beat. Already we've conducted a playthrough of the next update's initial ideas and work is well underway as we speak.

For myself, there's a wide range of things I'm needing to get done in these next three weeks, including a fair bit of video work even. There's also some game-specific work that I'm looking forward to diving into, ranging from doing a full pass over refreshing UI placement in addition to working within our cutscene editor tool to slowly start assembling various scenes, story points, and maybe even some small vignettes as I find the time.

All in all, I'm finding the brisk pace effective in keeping my momentum going from update to update. There's a long ways left to go with the game, as our roadmap has no doubt made obvious, and while being indie does allow us the freedom to not have higher-up deadlines breathing down our necks, we also don't want the project to dawdle unnecessarily. Unless we randomly pivot the entire game over to a multiplayer 2D RPG Battle Royale, in which case we'll see you at release in a decade.

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Hello there traveler, welcome back. Your timing is impeccable as always, for we have a lovely new update made fresh just today!

We've certainly been keeping busy here at our magically metaphorical home of Castle PixelCount, with nary an idle hand in sight. One can even detect a bit of energy in the air, perhaps in anticipation for the first day of spring which, as it happens, is tomorrow: March 20th. It was nice having a bit of winter hibernation to focus on some background work and preparations, but we're rather looking forward to getting back to our usual pace of things.

For anyone who hasn't already heard via carrier pig, one such preparation we recently took time for was the Kynseed Roadmap. This handy map gives a detailed view of the short-term as well as a broader view of what to expect long-term. We'll be updating and adding to the map as we go and, as it happens, we've just marked a major update as complete mere minutes ago.






Which brings us to today's news! The "Down to Business" update is out and ready for perusal.

This update includes our first batch of basic shop ownership mechanics and essentially lays a good deal of code foundation for shop related gameplay to come. We've focused specifically on the blacksmith shop for now, but a few updates from now we'll begin fleshing things out further. Things like staff management, business rep impact, customer variety/personality, constant balancing, and of course other ownable shop types. (In fact, if you check out the roadmap, you'll see that running the Goods Store is just a few updates away!)

Though for now, we'll be spending the next few days sorting through all the feedback and sending out any piping hotfixes that might be needed, fresh from the oven. Then starting next week we'll begin work on the "Gnome Pun Intended" update. This'll be more of a content focused update, including a brand new Fae region called Tir Na Nog, a new minigame called "Squeal or No Squeal", a Tinker shop, and even a return trip to Mr Fairweather - among other things.

For each of these updates (and especially for today's), we'll rely on your feedback and reactions. You've probably heard us mention incessantly that we're a small team, and that means we absolutely depend on hearing how you get on with these updates. So don't hesitate to report any bugs or general thoughts, ranging from the urgent to the trivial. We want it all.

For casual no-fuss bug reporting, you can drop them into the PixelCount Discord bug channel. For traditional bug reporting, or for bugs requiring a bit of explanation or screenshots, there's our bug report forum and Bugs@Kynseed.com. Dealer's choice.

Though for now, let's dive into the highlights from today's update! Give that scrollbar a tickle and read on below.

• Purchase the blacksmith shop by interacting with its ledger
  
• Interact with the sign to open and close the shop
  
• Use the ledger to manage the shop, check on profits, rename your shop, and so on
  
• This update is for our initial batch of shop owning mechanics, with more to come in future updates
  
• (The shop running tutorial is fairly basic for this first pass, so don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or need help)

• Create, sell, and recycle blacksmith goods
  
• Store crafted items in a shop cabinet
  
• Greet customers at the counter before they get tired of waiting
  
• Choose to either accept or refuse their order
  
• If busy blacksmithing in the other room, you can tell customers to hang on to get a bit of extra time before they get impatient
  
• All balancing (prices, rep, etc.) is first pass and will undergo numerous tweaks over development

• Locals can be hired to run the counter for you
  
• Use the ledger to see available locals, hire them, set wages, or fire them
  
• Some staff will have better traits than others
  
• More in-depth staff management to come just a few updates from now

• Trough (to assist with pig-related chores)
  
• Rootways (a magical way to get around)
  
• Home Sweet Home (keeps your farm close)

• Updated art for growables
  
• NPC chat/favour improvements based on feedback
  
• Some new books
  
• Put new common fish in
  
• Snow in winter
  
• Dandelions can now be picked up for later uses
  
• Highlight effect added around majority of gatherables
  
• Plus some fixes, optimizations, and background work (see below)
  
• For a complete look at all changes, check out the full changelog

At its heart, Kynseed is a sandbox world. That's why we're pretty excited about this update, as it represents the first major set of mechanics to flesh out the variety of activities you can undertake. It won't be long before you'll be owning a handful of shops all across the land of Quill. Run a successful enough business and you'll surely become well known in your field (other than the ones you farm, of course).

Lastly, for those of you keen to follow the minutia of our game development journey, we do regularly released progress reports called The PixelCount Post - such as this recent example. Each issue contains personally written entries from the team where we talk about progress made that week and other interesting tales of development. You can look for these to get posted regularly in all our usual spots (many of which are linked below).

Thank you all for keeping us company during our winter hibernations and we look forward to seeing you again soon in Tir Na Nog!

Love,
PixelCount

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• Twitter - Kynseed
  
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• Facebook
  
• YouTube
  
• Twitch
  
• Official Website
  
• Kynseed Media Kit

Welcome to Issue #45 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Matt gives a date for the update, Neal gets meta with game grinding, Charlie keeps busy, and Tice's audio goes down the tubes.
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ










This last week was spent on a few extra bit of fixes and preparations for the "Down to Business" update, which will get pushed out in just a few days this Tuesday, March 19th! We'll spend the next few days after that knocking out any hotfixes needed and then the following week work begins on the "Gnome Pun Intended" update.

We look forward to seeing how you get on with these initial business ownership mechanics. There are more code systems and mechanics (and balancing!) still to go before running a business is a fully realized experience across the whole game, but this next update lays much of the foundation for which we'll build that experience atop. In fact, many of the blacksmith ownership systems are going to be the same underlying systems used for all other ownable businesses added in the future (such as the Apothecary, Goods Store, and Tavern).

We'll also put out a proper written update in tandem with the build's update this Tuesday, including a changelog and any other bits of useful info. That'll likely all drop sometime around midday to afternoon on Tuesday, so keep an eye out at the usual places. See you then!







With the Kynseed Roadmap now up, I switched most of my focus back over to preparing for the next updates release on March 19th. Generally this means team playtests and solo playtests, with the goal being to write out feedback and critical issues. There's also a bit of a balancing act to strike with that, because some of the feedback items listed may not necessarily fall within the scope of the update we're working on at that time.

In addition to playtests and feedback, I've also begun capturing screenshots and video of the new update. These will come in useful for next week's update announcement but will also be used to update a few old screenshots on places like our store page and elsewhere. That's the tricky thing about a game like ours, because it doesn't take long for screenshots to get outdated. Going back and looking at our earliest of screenshots, it's always a bit crazy to see how different some parts of the game once looked.

It'll certainly be nice to have this next update out in a few days, as it does really help flesh the blacksmith's role so much more. Then after this week, we begin work on a new content update. I'm particularly looking forward to that one, as it'll include some new places and faces which I think the artists have done an absolutely stellar job on. Though for now, we'll see you again on Tuesday with the "Down to Business" update!







Another week flies by! I did have a very slow start to the week where I just couldn't seem to get going. I kind of realised it was due in part to just getting really tired with working on the blacksmith.

It's probably not a very positive thing to say like that but sometimes in games dev it really gets to points where the work feels like grinding through an unending list of items on an area that comes back again and again. Combined with some of the items feeling 'weighty' by virtue of being tricky connected tasks, it made it a struggle to get going.

Funnily enough though, as soon as I told Charlie about it, that provided some relief and I could just get on with what needed doing and then time went very fast indeed. So fast that it has extended estimates on the game update by a few days, with the 'latestupdate' test branch going live yesterday and then the default branch will be Tuesday. The build has come on a lot in the last few days but as always there's more to be done...







A new update's on the way,
With Charlie busy all day.
He had no time,
So I made this rhyme,
But next Post he'll have more to say.







Most of this week has been focused on adding more sound effects to the game. From mouse click selection sounds, to the sound of a pneumatic tube, or the sound of returning home by unorthodox means...

I noticed I feel a lot more confident doing sound effects now than I used to. While I still often use samples collected from various places, which I then piece together in new ways to create unique sounds, I now also feel confident enough with sound synthesis to create my own sounds from scratch.

For instance, I used this technique to create new mouse click sounds to be used in the various new menus and interfaces being added to the game. To make such a sound, you start with a standard wave form, like a sine wave. It sounds like a pretty boring tone, really. To turn that tone into a click, you need to make it really short. Then you remove all the tone's decay and sustain. Following that, you add a white noise sound to it that you give higher priority than the sine wave (if you even still need the sine wave at all). So you actually end up with a really short tick sound.

To turn it into a recognizable mouse click you can try adding a second click shortly after, at a different pitch. This will make it sound like the pressing of a mouse button (one click for pressing it down, and the second click for the button coming back up). This general principle has been used so often to emphasize that you've clicked something that it's pretty universally recognized now.

But there was much more to be done than just clicks. For instance, I had to create a sound inspired by The Wizard of Oz - 'something with a harp', Charlie's instructions said. So I looked up that part of the movie and quickly found what he was referring to. Of course I can't copy it directly so I had to make my own thing within the same vibe.

Then there was a sound that's going to be used for deliveries in running the smithy. Charlie described this one as a delivery type swoosh, which I interpreted to mean the sound of a pneumatic tube - an old technology still in use today in some places where air pressure is used to propel a capsule through a tube. I knew my sound synthesis skills weren't good enough yet to make this from scratch, so I looked through our sound library for the sounds of a pneumatic tube. I found none. So I had to make it out of other sounds.

The tube portion of the sound I ended up getting from the sound of an airplane toilet sucking out its content. The swoosh was much easier, just a random object being flicked through air really fast.

Then there were a few more sounds that were much more straight forward to create. Having completed the list of sound effects I was tasked with, I've now moved on to a track for a special event inspired by a scene from the 1973 movie The Wicker Man. That movie is pretty much required viewing for working on this project, as the game draws from it so much!

I hope I get this track done asap. I really had wanted it to be completed sooner already, but I've been keeping too many plates spinning. So I better get back to it!

Welcome to Issue #44 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie basks in books, Neal hires some NPC's, Tice gets in a fight with his muscles, and Matt posts the big Kynseed roadmap.
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ










If you've not noticed yet, the Kynseed Roadmap is now up! We just posted it mere moments ago, so go give it a gander if you've not already. It's a pretty hefty bit of reading though, so we'll be keeping this week's issue of The Post short and sweet.

In addition to the roadmap, we also had a very productive week working on the next update. Many of the basic blacksmith ownership systems are starting to feel cohesive and tied together. To get it ready for players we still have a few little things we want to do though. Most of them are just minor bits of presentation, such as replacing the 'code art' of customer's patience timers with some UI element art. We also need to write up a bit of tutorial text to let players know how to do some of the basic shop tasks. Long-term we'll go back and put in a more robust tutorial for such things, but the current one should still do the trick for now.

We've also found a bit of extra time to start adding in some of the initial staff hiring mechanics. We originally thought we'd not have time for this until a future update, but it ended up timing out pretty conveniently for this week. A bit of other smaller things have been recently added in as well, such as a few new Fairweather items. All in all, the next update is coming together rather nicely. Be sure to check back again soon for when this update gets released later this upcoming week!











I have had to interrupt my book writing to write this update, as I have schedule-heavies beating at my door. So, I have been writing some more books this week and editing old ones. This means those who enjoy awful writing can go seek out the new wads of literature scattered around.

I also took the chance to fix up a few things around the levels, including hiding proverbs in cuttable long grass. Am not going to tell you which though...

Coming up with lore and 'funny' stuff in-game is the most enjoyable part, although most will need to be rewritten for other countries. Am sure our friends in Russia, China, Japan, Brazil etc are not familiar with obscure British TV shows and some of the word plays are even more puzzling.

However! All is not lost. I plan to create a Wiki of sorts that will explain every single joke and reference. However! I am going to hide it inside a dragon. Get sifting.







This week after more blacksmith work, I've been looking into the 3 Fairweather items from the initial player choice. This was a nice change of pace and was reasonably self-contained new code to add. With the blacksmith I got the 50 points down to maybe 20 but another 30+ have sprung up in its place after the playthrough today and more rough edges showing in need of work to get on with. It should all add up to a better experience and gives some lessons learned to handle when it comes to other businesses.

I've also started on the hiring of some staff for the blacksmith counter. This wasn't originally planned for this update but it felt like it would be worthwhile to get closer to a complete experience with shop ownership. That should be seen in-game pretty soon with the update going live in the "latestupdate" test branch next week and then hopefully the default branch by the end of the week!







"Don't settle for less", I said last time. And this week I'm still working on that. Sometimes you hit a bit of a roadblock, which is what happened this week. I found that while working on the town music of the region I've been writing music for in the last month or so that it just wasn't 'inspired'. I could write, and it wasn't outright bad, but it wasn't of the same quality of what came before it. So I took the drastic step of removing some of what I had done and redoing it again.

This happened a few times over on this track, which is why it's been taking so long. I feel I'm getting closer to a full-length track now, and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't settle for less, even if it was a lot more work this way. I find that any work is often judged by its weakest element. I'm not going to let that be this track!

On a more personal note, I've finally managed to get a work-out routine going. My muscles are hating me for it right now, but overall my productivity benefits from it. Your body and your mind form a symbiosis. If you don't respect that, both will suffer for it. The routine I'm following uses a lot of muscles that I otherwise never use at all, so they're all "What the hell is happening!? It's the apocalypse!" At some point it'll sink in that it's just the new normal. Though for now, time to get back to work and finish this track!







As mentioned in "The Short Report" from up above, the Kynseed Roadmap is posted! It's good to finally have this out for everyone to see, as it'll help give players a nice look at all that's yet to come.

Something that we wanted to make sure we did for our roadmap was strike a balance between having a solid executable plan while also ensuring we retained a bit of flexibility. Kynseed, like most sandbox games, requires a slightly organic approach in how it's developed. There's a lot of iterative design to things and sometimes that means you discover changes to make that you hadn't planned on. So a little wiggle room typically has to be afforded to be able to dynamically develop like that - this is especially true for a feedback driven Early Access game.

We're pretty happy with how that balance turned out in the roadmap, and it'll hopefully be interesting for everyone to see how it all comes together in the next handful of months (and beyond). Though now that it's posted, I'll be turning my full attention to helping the team get the next update ready for posting later this upcoming week!

ᅠᅠ





Making a game is a notoriously unpredictable path filled with all manner of random encounters. To traverse this development landscape, we'll need a map. Preferably one with a road. Thus enters the Kynseed Roadmap! Within this map you'll find a look at what updates we've already completed, an overview of what updates to expect in the near future, and lastly a long-term view of the entire game.

Having a clear outlined plan is a necessary component for any game, but one of the benefits of being a small indie team is the freedom to approach development more organically. So as we devised our roadmap, it was important to us that we balanced structure with flexibility. We want to remain agile so that we can react to things that a roadmap can't possibly predict.

To do this, we'll map out upcoming updates one batch at a time. Each batch of major updates will include a small sentence or two describing that update's primary focus, but updates further out will be a bit more mysterious. Once we finish an update, we'll mark it as complete and include a bullet list of highlights (in addition to a larger community announcement and changelog.) Each update may take around a month, sometimes more depending. As always, we'll keep you updated every step of the way in our community and with our weekly devlog, The PixelCount Post.

Check out the map legend below for more details, plus instructions on how to access other development branches. We're easy to find around the community, so don't hesitate to give us a shout if you have any burning questions we can extinguish. Thank you all for joining us on this road trip and for being our travel companions. We've packed plenty of snacks and our Spotify playlists are primed and ready.



Each update on this roadmap will get rolled out to all players on all platforms once ready. While we can't guarantee there won't be bugs or other issues from time to time, these major updates will be as stable as we can manage for an in-development game such as ours. However, we know some of you are hungry for more frequent updates, even if it means things might be less stable as a result. That's where update branches come in!

So what is a 'branch'? In development terms, a branch is a sort of update channel you can subscribe to and change at any time. Whatever branch you subscribe to will automatically download whenever we push an update to it. Below is an overview of the different branches we'll be using during development, as well as information on how to access them.

Main Branch
This is the default branch all players are put in at the start. In general, this branch will receive an update whenever we complete one of the major roadmap updates listed on this roadmap. As such, this will be the most stable branch and is what we recommend to the average player who wants no-fuss straightforward game updates. (We make every effort to keep saves as stable as possible on this branch.)

Preview Branch
Before we send out an update to the main branch above, we push the update out a week early for players who like to help us test things first. This assists in squashing out any bugs or feedback that we didn't catch ourselves in our own playtesting. (Saves can sometimes be backed up, but may occasionally break.)

Experimental Branch
Some players love getting their hands dirty by helping us playtest the more frequent incremental changes to the game. While it's by no means a requirement that you send us feedback if using this branch, we do encourage such players to work closely with us by giving feedback and bug reports for this branch in the usual places (forums and Discord preferably). This branch is perfect for players who want to work more closely with us and have a more hands-on impact on development. (Save stability cannot be guaranteed!)

How To Select Branches
ᅠᅠ1. Within the Steam application, right click Kynseed in your library
ᅠᅠ2. Select "Properties" from the menu
ᅠᅠ3. Click the "Betas" tab
ᅠᅠ4. Choose either the 'latest' or 'experimental' branch as outline above



Upcoming Updates
This is the current batch of updates being worked on, organized in the order we'll do them. Once a batch of updates is complete, we'll then map out the next batch. An update's main focus will typically represent first implementation, not full implementation.

The Entire Journey
This is the overview of all game content still to come. This overview covers only new content at the time this roadmap was first written and doesn't necessarily represent all content already in-game.

Update Types
To cover ground at an even pace, updates will fall under one of three categories: Features, Content, and Future.

Release Timing
The further out a roadmap goes, the more difficult it is to predict its timing. So to ensure we don't promise inaccurate far-off release dates, we're instead focusing on a release rhythm. Each update will take around a month or so, with smaller in-between patches released as needed.

The Entire Journey Symbols
ᅠᅠ🌰 - Initial first pass implementation
ᅠᅠ🌱 - Progressively more polished and refined
ᅠᅠ🌳 - Generally implemented as intended



























































ᅠᅠ• Havens
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 The Vale
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Candlewych Village
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Surrounding Regions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Summerdown
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Poppyhill Village
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Surrounding Regions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Mellowfields
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Mellowbrook Village
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Surrounding Regions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Deepstone
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Sagtyt Village
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Surrounding Regions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Woemarsh
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Gaslight Village
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Surrounding Regions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Pinehaven
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Tunt Village
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Surrounding Regions
ᅠᅠ• Hubs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• The Circle
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Stonecrown
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• The Shingles
ᅠᅠ• Combat Regions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Simplewood
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Softwood
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Midwood
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Toughwood
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Nightmare Hallow
ᅠᅠ• Fae Realms
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Tir Na Nog
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• E’ergreen
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Briar
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Voide

ᅠᅠ• Quill Hoarders
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Regional Collectables (Food, Recipes, Books, Etc.)
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• More Insects to Collect
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Scattered Ancient Relics to Find
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Special Fae Shops
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Gems & Runes to Imbue Items
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Home Delivery Box
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Noticeboard
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Mailbox
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Home Larder
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Seasonal Temples with Goddess Challenges
ᅠᅠ• Getting Around
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Rootways
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• World Shortcuts
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Glowing Trail
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 'Wottyzit' Interactable Highlighting
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Additional Map Icons/Elements
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Campfires When Travelling
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Goddess Interactions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Statue Travel
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Statue Offering
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Goddess Curses
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Goddess Boons
ᅠᅠ• Attending Events
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Village Festivals
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Seasonal Events
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Pig Racing
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Sheep Racing
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Chicken Racing
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Pig Auctions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Sheep Auctions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Chicken Auctions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Marble Minigame
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Squeal or No Squeal Minigame
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• (Other Minigames Likely to Come)




ᅠᅠ• Generations
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• First Generation NPC’s for Each Village
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Generic NPC Components for Future Generations
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Visual Aging for Life Stages
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• NPC Funerals
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Generational Family Feuds
ᅠᅠ• NPC Systems
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Schedules & Routines
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Reactions & Emotes
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Chat System
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Asking Favours
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Family Secret Boxes
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Birthdays & Favorite Items
ᅠᅠ• Pets
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Buying Pets
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Interacting with Pets
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Riding Pets
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Pet Whistle
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Pet Aging

ᅠᅠ• The Role of Masters
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Each Master Gives a List of Tasks
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Players Learn a New Ability for Each Completed Task
ᅠᅠ• Master Skills
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Melee Combat
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Ranged Combat
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Exploring
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Nature
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Gardening
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Fishing
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Hook
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Drag
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Cooking
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Bard

ᅠᅠ• Combat Zone Denizens
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Hobs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Nobs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Lobs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Nymphs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Forest Hag
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Remnants
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Jabberwock
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Fachen
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Barghest
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Dragon
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Banshee
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Buggane
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Plus some nasty surprises!

ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Tir Na Nog
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Gnomes
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Fairies
ᅠᅠ• E’ergreen
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Mossmen
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Dryad
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Puck
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Green Children
ᅠᅠ• Briar
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Fel
ᅠᅠ• Voide
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Shimmerkyn




ᅠᅠ• Player’s Life
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Player Appearance Customisation
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌳 Kid Age Player Sprites
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Adult Age Player Sprites
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Elder Age Player Sprites
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Life Mirror
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Selecting Kynseed Inheritor
ᅠᅠ• Passing On Legacies
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Physical Possessions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Genetics
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Training
ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Relationships
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Friendship
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Dating
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Marriage
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Copulation
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Children
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Orphanage Adoption
ᅠᅠ• Family
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Kynseed Tree
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• All Tree Growth Stages
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Branching Upgrade Tree (Literally)
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Nurture Children to Teach Skills
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Gain Positive/Negative Perks from Activities
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Choose Family Traits & Perks

ᅠᅠ• Combat
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Additional Melee Weapons
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Range Weapons
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Combat Death & Fairweather Revival Cost
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Unlock Combat Abilities
ᅠᅠ• Farming
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Buy or Find Seeds
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Plant Seeds in Farming Areas
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Water Crops
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Fertilise Crops
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Upgrade Farming Tools
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Unlock Farming Abilities
ᅠᅠ• Fishing
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Seasonal & Weather Dependent Fish
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Find Rare Fish
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Unlock Fishing Abilities
ᅠᅠ• Mining
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Mine for Ore in Dungeons or Caves
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Upgrade Tools for Better Materials
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Knockers!
ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Digging
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Digging Minigame with Rewards
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Upgradeable Tools for Better Rewards

ᅠᅠ• Sequences
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Scripted Cutscenes
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Mystery Events/Appearances
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Vignettes
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Among Other Surprises
ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Mr Fairweather
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Returning to Fairweather
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Fairweather Items
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Yearly Tax




ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Blacksmith
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Craft Weapons, Tools, & Other Items
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Use Different Ore Materials & Moulds
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Cabinet for Storing Crafted Items
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Add Augment Gems and Runes
ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Goods Store
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Sell Various Goods & Animals
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Barter with Customers
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Display Items
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Feed & Care for Animals
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Simple Customisation of Store Decor
ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Apothecary
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ🌰 Mix Powders, Potions, & Creams
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ🌰 Use Ingredients with Different Effects/Traits
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Herb Garden for Growing Ingredients
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ🌰 Cabinet for Storing Mixed Goods
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ🌰 Crafting Room
ᅠᅠ• Tavern
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Craft Beers to Sell
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Assign Beers to Kegs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Serve Local NPC’s
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Hire Entertainers
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Beer Crafting Process
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Malt Roasting
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Mashing
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Boiling

ᅠᅠ• General Operation
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Open & Close Shop
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Customers Order at Counter
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Common & Rare Customer Types
ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Ledger
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Manage Orders & Stock
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Set Employee Hours & Wages
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 View Profit/Loss Info
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 View Shop Status Info
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Rename Shop
ᅠᅠ• 🌰 Hiring Staff
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Hire Staff to Run the Store
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Local NPC’s Can Be Employed
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 NPC’s Have Different Job-Related Skills
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Staff Will Impact Business Reputation
ᅠᅠ• Reputation
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Businesses Can Gain or Lose Reputation
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Local Rep - The Village Level
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 World Rep - Word Travels at Higher Rep
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Personal Rep - Combined Total of Local/World Rep
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Business Gets Known for Highest Quality Item
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Can Earn Business Awards
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Unlock Shop Upgrades from Special Fae




ᅠᅠ• New UI
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Kynseed Tree Interface
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Wheel of Delight
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Family Skills/Status
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Job Crafting Stations
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Font System Refinements
ᅠᅠ• Icons
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌱 Pop-Up Bubbles for Interactables
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• NPC Emotes/Reactions
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Inventory Items
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Control Icons (Keyboard, Mouse, & Gamepad)

ᅠᅠ• Mouse, Keyboard, & Gamepad
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 Keyboard Remapping
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Gamepad Vibration Feedback
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Ongoing Improvements to Existing Controls




ᅠᅠ• Writing
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Flavour Text
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Books
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Proverbs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• 🌰 More Dialogue Variety for NPC’s
ᅠᅠ• Other Systems
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Balancing (Economy, Combat, Etc.)
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Localisation Preparations
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Game Speed & File Size Optimizations
ᅠᅠ• Backer Rewards
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Backer Names in the Credits
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Digital Art Pack (Wallpapers, Posters, GIF’s)
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Digital Uncompressed Soundtrack
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Digital Lore Bible & Art Book
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• ComboSprite Editor
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Backer Named Wandering Fae
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Personalised Gravestone Epitaphs
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Custom Backer Statues
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Custom Backer Legendary Items

ᅠᅠ• Audio
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Music for All New Content
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Additional SFX for New Content
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Refine Volume Mixing for All Music/SFX
ᅠᅠ• Scenery
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Wildlife Creatures
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Squirrels
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Hares
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Different Birds
ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Possibly Others
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Additional Weather Systems
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Particle Effects (Chimney Smoke, Etc.)
ᅠᅠᅠᅠ• Rooftops for Buildings


ᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ

Welcome to Issue #43 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Charlie takes gnome for an answer, Neal dabbles with invisibility, Tice goes to market, and Matt summons Captain Planet.
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Hi there, it's us again. Now that our whole team is back we've been able to resume our usual work tempo, which means we can finally get back to releasing these written updates more regularly! Though for this one, we're kicking off a new section called The Short Report, which we're going to begin putting at the top of every issue. This new section is specifically for sharing recent game progress only. So for those of you who don't want to wade through us waxing poetic about making games just to find the development updates, you can now get them right here at the top every time. So let's dive in!

Yesterday we did one of our standard team playtest sessions. In this most recent one, Neal took us through the progress he's made on blacksmith ownership. Running a business will be something the player can do for many different shop types, so the systems that Neal's adding are ones that'll help provide the skeletal frame for other businesses too. These systems include such things as customers approaching the counter, opening and closing your shop, managing your business in the ledger, accruing your reputation, and so on.

Though something we have to consider is all the different ways a player might interact within these systems. For example, if they open the shop and then leave the region with the shop still open, what happens? Or how the open/close sign is off-screen when inside the shop, so is there an easy way to visually indicate open/close status without having to run outside to check? If the player can set their shop's hours in the ledger, what happens if the shop opens while the player is somewhere else?

Those are just a few scenarios we've had to work ourselves through this last week. Here's how we answered some of them (though bear in mind anything is subject to change right now): If the player leaves the region while the shop's open, it'll auto-close on region exit. Since the open/close sign is usually off-screen, another visual cue to indicate open/close status will be the large ledger book on the shop counter - if the shop is open then the book is open, and vise versa. Lastly, the shop hours the player can set in their ledger will only apply to hired help, not the player. (Though hiring employees won't be added until some other future update.) This'll help give the player autonomy to choose when to run their business. Plus, it'll also give players a compelling incentive to hire help once that feature gets added.

Neal will be spending the next few days doing additional work on blacksmith ownership, but come Monday he'll be switching gears and spending this next week working on the non-blacksmith areas of the update, some of which we listed in the last issue of The Post. We'll check back in and let you know how it goes in the next issue's Short Report. Then a mere week after that, we'll be prepping the update for release!







Last week I was away with the fairies, literally. I had ventured into the Fae realm of Tir Na Nog and was laying it out and prettying it, with the amazing assets our very own Matthew Weekes provided.

Tir Na Nog is a land of pink waterfalls, strange glowing flora, weird symbols on the ground, and clusters of Gnome and Fairy homes. I tried to go for a mix of places to explore; the main village with its stacked homes, Tinker's shop, and the Goods Store. Then we have a deep exotic forest inspired by Avatar the movie and an area of mysterious symbols based on the amazing Nazca Lines in Peru.

I often had to stop and gaze at the beauty that the assets provide and I've really enjoyed detailing even the tiniest sections. Combined with the music, this is a strikingly different region with beautiful songs and plenty for the eye. I could pretty this region until my brain said Gnome ore.


The Nazca Lines are enormous geoglyphs found in the ground of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created sometime between 500 BCE and 500 CE. So yeah, a loooong time ago.







This past week I've mostly been working on blacksmith updates. It's been kind of surprising how much work has to go into something that visibly hasn't changed very much. I'm about 60 points of feedback/work in but couldn't really show where most of that is. I've been trying to fit in some bits around the edges of anything that helps with the presentation, though that will undoubtedly need another pass.

We've also been chatting through the roadmap and how it all fits together. Although it may seem to double up work, our intention is to try and get in a first pass version of all the remaining features before we truly go in and polish everything up in a second/third/fourth pass. The reason for this is primarily that until all the pieces are there it's really hard to be sure how it fits into the whole game. The time gap also helps lead to fresher impressions to see issues and solutions that were blind to us without a different perspective.

Next up I've still got maybe another 50 points of feedback/work to go (with another team playthrough as well). Hopefully the majority will come together in the next few days which will free up the next week for more visible update work!







Last issue, I talked about writing themes for a bunch of new regions and making all those themes come together in the town center. This week it's time to put that into practice. A handful of days ago I completed music for a market in this area, which was the last of the surrounding regions of this town. That market's track has its own theme in it, but the track also references a theme I established in the Candlewych fairground's music. The idea being that this shared theme is for markets in general, whereas this new market's theme is for just that specific area.

Another way in which this fairground's music differentiates itself from other fairgrounds is the instrumentation I use, which is a combination of instruments that I've been using all over this area's regions. Its main ingredients are the banjo, ukulele, marimba, and violin. (It's not the same violin heard in the Vale either.) I really hope these little details help sell the idea that the people that live in one area are of a different culture from the people who live in another.

The piece I'm currently working on is for this area's main village, and I decided to start entirely from scratch rather than try to modify one of my older tracks that I'd already written for it. I felt that the vibe of this area had evolved so much since I created those old versions that I needed to make a new track altogether - one that better reflects what that vibe had evolved into.

This means a lot more work for me, but you have to embrace that. Don't settle for less if more can be done within the limits that have been set for you.







This last week has been all about getting back into our usual routines and preparing for the next stretch of development. The team's not only been working on the blacksmith update but we've also been assembling our full roadmap.

There's a certain balancing act required with roadmaps I've found. For one, there are many features that will need to be spread out over multiple updates - things that are simply too large in scope for a single incremental update. However, it's equally important to balance the need for new features with the need for new content. In this case, 'content' refers to things like new regions, additional characters, minigames, new creatures, additional Fairweather items, and so on. So the question becomes: when do you focus on features and when do you focus on content? If one gets too far ahead of the other, bottlenecks happen.

The trick is to find an even pace between the two, frequently alternating between each. In a couple of days we'll be having another team chat in which the focus of discussion will be on mapping out that balance. By the end of the call, we'll have a proper draft that I can mold into our final roadmap - the one that I'll be sharing with all of you! In fact, you can look forward to seeing that get posted this upcoming week.

In other news, now that our programmer is back from his few weeks away, our team is fully assembled once more. It certainly feels good to be back to my usual work rhythm. I start to get a bit restless if I go too long without having work tasks to tend to - I'm very momentum-dependent. If I keep working at a healthy pace, it's easier for me to keep that energy going indefinitely. But if I slow down for even a little bit, it becomes all the harder to build back up to that momentum. Which is why it can be difficult to convince myself to slow down now and then.

So it was no doubt a good thing that our programmer being away forced some of us to catch a bit of breath, to take stock of our progress, and to think on our goals for the year ahead. It was also a good opportunity for us to dabble with some of the more fun and relaxing areas of game work - areas that can sometimes be hard to find time for during our normal work weeks.

I think with Charlie that tends to be making new regions. In recent weeks he's become completely absorbed in making the new Tir Na Nog region and from what he's shown me it looks like some of his best work yet. Despite all the different areas of the game that he works on, I imagine that level design will always have special significance to him. His passion is undeniably in building worlds.

All that to say, it was nice to restore our energy from our breakneck pace of the last couple years. We're very enthusiastic about this game, so it can often be hard to pry our fingers from the keyboards. Kynseed, for all of us, is definitely a passion project.

In fact, just last week Tice and I were having a meeting via voice chat when the topic of passion projects came up. We found ourselves discussing how we've both been waiting for an opportunity like this for many years - over a decade, even. Making games is an aspiration shared by many people these days, perhaps even by some of you reading this, and that includes both Tice and I. We've spent many a year trying to carve out a little spot for ourselves in this industry. For myself, that journey began long ago in the early Lionhead community and, in some ways, I'm still on that journey even now. In fact, it led to me working on this. As we talked, Tice and I were sure of one thing: that this is our chance to work on a dream game and we'd be damn fools if we didn't give it our all. We know enough to know that passion projects like this don't come around often.

I guess what I'm saying, if indeed I'm saying anything, is that we're all in on this game. As much as we may love the journey of Early Access, it's a journey with a clear destination in mind. Don't get me wrong, the industry's approach to Early Access can be a bit of a dumpster fire at times. So I totally get why folks might get antsy if it's been a few weeks since a game update or new issue of The Post. We get antsy about it too. But Kynseed isn't just some regular ol' game job to us. It's a passion project. It's dream fulfillment.

We've got a good deal of development left to go, of course. A game like ours is going to take more than a handful of months to complete and because it's a sandbox game we'll be relying on a ton of player feedback. It's why we're doing the whole Early Access thing. That, and we were inspired by some of our other favorite Early Access games like Factorio and Prison Architect - the sorta games that took time to properly develop, all while working closely with their communities each step of the way. Though thankfully we don't have to rely on determination alone, because this group of yahoos I call teammates have a staggering amount of experience with this sorta thing - such as with Charlie building RPG worlds, Neal coding vast game tools, Tice writing multiple hours of music, and our artists working their pixel magic. Not to mention, we have you lot to help us steer the way. We've got so many powers combined we might as well start summoning Captain Planet up in here.

Welcome to Issue #42 of The PixelCount Post, a periodically released update from Kynseed's team. In today's issue: Matt talks about what's in the next update, we give Neal a break, Charlie busies himself with new assets, and Matthijs feels the love.
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Hello there! It seems a new issue of The PixelCount Post is finally here to once again grace your virtual doorstep. Admittedly, your poor doorstep has been made to suffer a longer wait than is usual for us, but it shan't have to wait any longer. Today we bring some news on all manner of things, including: progress on the next update, details on what it'll include, some work-in-progress images, and even tales of our programmer's recent adventures.



If you've occasionally popped in to our Discord server or forums, you've probably seen us frequently mentioning that Neal, our trusty programmer, has been away for a few weeks. For those of you just getting to know our team, Neal is the madman who has been singlehandedly programming the entire game - engine and all. Right after Lionhead closed (RIP), Neal got straight to work coding what would eventually become the Kynseed prototype. That was in 2016. He's been diligently coding Kynseed every single week since - commonly putting in 6 day work weeks, the nutter.

Altogether, Neal's been working nonstop for about 32 months straight! Thankfully the plan was that once we got The First Steps Update out, he'd finally take a few well deserved weeks off to recoup and give his noggin' a break from the 60,000+ lines of code he's written so far.

One of the challenges of being a small team with a single programmer is that without said programmer there's not much code progress to be made. The only thing Charlie and myself are qualified to program is a microwave.

Though as of last week, Neal is now back amongst our ranks once again, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Neal chats a bit about his time off further down in this issue, but first: progress reports on development!



Our last major update was all about getting a few basic game systems in place to help pave the way for more complex systems to come. This included such things as a first pass for player hair customisation, the start of the NPC chat system, a goods store selling table, Fae wanderers, multiple saves, and a decent handful of other things.

With that inaugural update now under our belts, it's time we begin adding in one of the gameplay systems we've been particularly looking forward to: owning and running the blacksmith shop!

Running your own business is one of the major activities that players will be able to undertake in Kynseed. Long-term, the types of businesses that you can own will range from the blacksmith to the apothecary to others. Each business will be unique and unlike the others. If running the blacksmith, you'll keep busy by using your forge and other tools to fulfill customer's orders. If running the apothecary, you'll concoct elaborate potions using ingredients you grew yourself.

Because of how uniquely different each business is to run, we have to begin by implementing each of their systems one business at a time. The blacksmith seemed to us a perfect place to start, especially seeing as the current game version has a handful of blacksmith components already in place (forging items, mining for ore, collecting moulds, and so on).



The sign out front will let you open or close your shop. This is how customers will know that you're open for business. (The final version of the sign asset will have some light animation.)



Below is a general overview of the things that we're currently working towards including in the update. Blacksmith ownership is the highlight of course, but we'll be adding in some other bits as well. (As always, bear in mind that smaller items may change or be moved to a future update once we start seeing how all the code's puzzle pieces are fitting together.)


Blacksmith Ownership

• Open and close shop
  
• Fulfill customer orders
  
• Create, sell, and recycle blacksmith goods
  
• Basic first pass of the business ledger
  
• Among other things

New Fairweather Items

• Trough (to assist with pig-related chores)
  
• Rootways (a magical way to get around)
  
• Home Sweet Home (keeps your farm close)

As well as:

• Updated art for growables
  
• NPC chat/favours improvements based on feedback
  
• Snow in winter
  
• New books and item collectibles
  
• And probably a lot of behind the scenes optimisations

Now that the entire team is back at full capacity and firing on all cylinders, we'll be hard at work getting this next update pushed out. Our aim is to have it ready in about three weeks. For those of you who like living on the edge, you'll be able to download early versions of the update via our Steam 'latestupdate branch'. We'll also be keeping you more regularly updated on how development is coming along in the weeks ahead and I'm sure you can expect us to share some work-in-progress screenshots around the community as well.




Speaking of screenshots, I've just posted a bunch of brand new Dev Pub threads! Of particular note is a thread where I've posted dozens of new character designs for the adult versions of the twins! Deciding on which of these new designs to go with is an important decision and we'd love to get you Dev Pub members to hop into that thread and tell us what you think. Hit this link to visit the ol' pub and check it all out.

(The Dev Pub is a forum available to anyone who backed the Kickstarter at the Land Shaper tier or higher. If you backed at one of those tiers but don't yet have Dev Pub access, just head to the Backer Verification Thread and we'll get you set up.)

However, we haven't forgotten about the rest of you lovely people. Whenever a thread has run its course in the Dev Pub, we then move it over to the public forums. So in the spirit of all this blacksmith talk, I've moved over two blacksmith related Dev Pub threads to the public forums.

The first is the Blacksmith Art thread, which takes a detailed look at all the art that went into designing our blacksmith interior. It covers the whole process, starting with Charlie's design doc blacksmith diagram, then the concept art, and then ends with showing how the in-game art slowly came together over multiple iterations.

The other one is the Blacksmith and Apothecary Code thread, which is written by Neal and takes a deep dive into showing some of the early code work that went into setting up the blacksmith and apothecary shops.

Expect more of those types of threads to come in the future and if you have any special requests for a particular area of development you'd like us to highlight don't hesitate to let us know. And, of course, if you ever just wanna chat us up about game dev stuff in general you can always find us hanging out in our cozy Discord server.

As always, thanks for being the awesome people that you are and for joining us on this adventure. See you around the community!







It's been a while, perhaps too long, since the last Post. Since then, we've gone through our first update and commenced work on our second. Although time was limited with the first one I was happy with the systems that went into it. The chat and task systems have good potential to expand on and will be slowly iterated on over time to give more guided player activities. For our second update we've started work on the blacksmith shop ownership system as well as tentative steps on NPC relationships. The hope is this will again be a good starting point to iterate on as well as a further outgrowing of Kynseed's core gameplay loop. The system is already playable internally allowing us to grow it over the coming weeks for the next update.

There is a slight wrinkle in the timing of this next update because, at the time of writing this, I'm about to be away for several weeks. I do feel a certain anxiety/pressure in taking time away when the game is still in development, but it's something where this seemed like a good opportunity before getting back into the full flow of the next year-plus. My hope is to come back refreshed and with renewed energy which I've found myself lacking a bit lately. I'll be taking my laptop with me so it'll be interesting to see how long I last before getting back into coding. In a way it might be that being in a new location will give me itchy fingers to be getting on with the game. Either way, I'm really excited for the break and to return to work, as this year is going to be all about heading towards full release.

*cue an elaborate time warp transition*

Well I'm back now! The holiday was good with a lot of sun/food and change of scenery. One week I did get into some daily coding on some of the backlog of areas that felt worth exploring for a day or two outside the usual update plans. This went quite well and I think showed the power of keeping things fresh where possible. This week I've taken it easy getting back into the routine and sleep patterns while getting some business matters wrapped up. The art, design, and music that's been done while I was away leaves me eager to get back into it. As always, there's a lot of work ahead which needs to be paced out for this marathon effort.







Where did that time go? Our coding machine was silent for an entire month as we sent it off to sunny Thailand to have its engine restored. In that time, the rest of us took full advantage and collapsed into our beanbags for some gaming, movie watching and lots of resting. Things still ticked along here and there. New books were written, new levels blocked out, new artwork appearing, NPC's fleshed out, design docs caught up on, new music drifting over from the Dutch fields, and so on.

Now though, the break is over. The cobwebs are being swept away and the engine has been started anew. Planning meetings, roadmaps, and game updates are all on our plates currently.

Meanwhile, the music continues to appear and we have even seen Gnome & Fairy shop art as well as Spriggans assets made, a grotesquely intimidating Jabberwocks, and we even decided on the appearances of the adult player characters - which look absolutely fantastic it must be said.

So, onwards and upwards as the train continues its climb up development mountain. Glad to still have you all aboard. Onboard meals will be served shortly.




Some folks can get a bit feisty if they have to wait too long at the counter.







Wow, has it been that long already? Much has happened. Last I wrote anything for The PixelCount Post I was talking about one of the Fae realms. Meanwhile there has been work done on a Fae mini-game, which meant I had to write a game show tune. Never done that before. Though doing things I've never done before is kind of the new 'normal' these days. Then Christmas happened and the lovely community gifted me a new batch of guitar samples. (And goodness, it's awesome. Thank you!)

After completing the tracks for the mini-game, I was tasked with creating music for a new region in the game that's connected to the musical culture I established in Poppyhill and the surrounding regions. In this case, I needed to lean closer to French influences. Love and romance play an important role in this area and French accordion music seemed like a natural fit for it. Though if I went full French on the track, it'd be too out of place compared to the rest of the game, so I had to combine it with the already established Kynseed sound. I hope I've succeeded!

Every now and then we'll do a developer voice chat on our Discord server that members are welcome to eavesdrop on. In one of those recent chats, Matt Allen and I did collaborative feedback passes over many of the game's new tracks. The French influenced track mentioned above was one such track that was previewed and discussed, though by now it's more developed than what was heard in that public meeting. Initial feedback from the folks who listened in on this impromptu meeting was positive, so I hope I'm headed in the right direction with it.

In that same meeting we made a list of things to improve about many other aspects of the game's audio, so I imagine I'll never have a moment where I don't have things to keep me busy. This year is going to be most interesting as we move closer to fully realizing our vision for this game. It's gonna be an exciting year I'll not soon forget.

Recently, I also received a list of regions that make up a brand new haven. 6 regions in total, 1 of which I had already made a track for a while back. Just like I did with Poppyhill, I'm establishing a sound profile for this haven so that its music sounds cohesive across all its regions. Well, all its regions minus 1. That 1 region is...different. In it, there's 3 stones called 'the dancers' - an ancient structure of unknown significance. The creative direction I got for its music was to make it creepy, similar to this peculiar clip that Charlie gave me as reference.

Tricky thing is is, the reference uses voices, and we agreed early on not to use vocals in the soundtrack. So I had to achieve a similar creepiness but with a very different sound profile. Luckily, my very first stab at it got approved right away.

I've also recently been working on a track for a new farmland area. In fact, during a recent community voice chat, Matt and I spontaneously started discussing the new track and brainstorming over what needed changing. I love being able to give the community that kind of insight into the process. It's what I had always wanted from other game developers, but it's rare to listen to actual meetings where decisions are being made and debated on the spot. It's quite vulnerable to do it 'live' like that, but I hope some of you find it interesting to hear the kind of thinking that's behind whether or not 'a fiddle should sound more distant'.

There's a few more tracks still left to do for this new haven. When they're all done, I'll take themes from all the tracks and incorporate them into the track I made for the haven's main town. That should give it a similar cohesion that I attempted for Poppyhill. I may switch to sound effects for a bit after this current track though, just to give my mind some variety. There's so much left to do!