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Hello again from all (seven) of us here at PixelCount! It's been a few weeks longer than usual since we last chatted and there's been a hefty batch of six individual new updates to catch you all up on in that time. So pull up a chair and warm yourself by our virtual fireplace as you enjoy a brief respite from this crazy ol' world of ours.

Over the last month-plus of work, we've had a flurry of seemingly small but impactful polish improvements that we've rolled out across various areas of the game. It's a bit of a balancing act really, because we have to ensure we work on adding 'new stuff' while simultaneously applying gradual polish to 'existing stuff'. For a complex game like this, it'd be a huge cobbled mess if we were to only ever add new bits and never polish.

It's a challenging balance to strike though - one we're constantly adjusting and learning from. There's a slightly exponential component at work too, which is to say that the more we add to the game the more we'll have to eventually polish. That's why it can be hard to fully predict the timing and scope of major content milestones (like our upcoming relationship milestone, for example). To put it another way, there's an oft-used proverb you'll sometimes hear in game development that asks, "How long is a piece of string?"

But of course, we've still got to do our best in predicting those metaphorical string lengths and ensure we don't get tangled in development knots. These are the sort of things we've been recently mindful of as we worked on this latest batch of updates. To nobody's real surprise, it turns out there's a ton of deeply interconnected game systems that underpin all relationship-based mechanics.

So our focus was to not only continue paving the way for that next milestone but to also apply some important polish as we go. Read on below for some examples and highlights or feel free to just jump straight into our game update thread for a full look at the six recent changelogs.

CHANGELOG HIGHLIGHTS

One of the things we've been keen to continue adding is additional player customisation, so for the last few months our programmer has been working hard to rig all player graphics (every single tile and/or frame of animation) to a system that allows for per-pixel color grading. This has been an ongoing project for a while now and so we're happy to report that we've just recently added our first pass at these new customisation options. Of course, there's still quite a bit of work left to do for this new system (and player customisation in general) and so we'll continue refining it in future updates as well as taking in whatever feedback you good folks throw our way.

You'll also find a slew of new UI graphics and tweaks have been made. Experience has taught us that UI is something that tends to lag behind in many game's development, and yet it can have such an important impact on how polished a game feels. So in the spirit of that balance we mentioned in the section above, we've taken some time during this last month to make improvements to UI where possible. So give that scroll wheel a tickle and check out some highlights below.

More Player Customisation

We've spent the last couple of months adding in a new per-pixel color grading system to allow for additional player customisation options. Much of this is still just an early pass but we'll be gradually refining and adding to this system as we go along.

New Proverb Setup

We've done a slight adjustment to how proverbs work. They've now been standardized so that relevant items will have exactly three findable proverbs - two to hint at the item's location and one to hint at the item's effect. As such, we've redistributed proverb's placements around the game world (in addition to adding some new ones here and there).

Higher Star Ratings

Making higher star ratings attainable for growables and fish is something we've been keen to do, including updating parts of the star rating UI being used. Across current items, approximately 140 of 260 possible extra stars are now obtainable through certain conditions being met (with more to come of course).

Growable Indicators UI Improvements

Some of the information displayed for growables when viewing Status Mode (accessed via CTRL or Left Trigger) have been given a new coat of polish and now have less of a 'programmer-art' look.

Auctions/Races/Markets Now Drawn on Map

Work continues on adding to the world map. Most recently, the maps will now show indications for various events and info. (The visual presentation is still fairly work-in-progress at the moment.)

Additional Goddess Offering Balance & Setup

Goddess offering saw a number of changes and adjustments in the recent updates. It now has slightly new functionality, updated UI, and better overall balance. (Though feedback on this particular mechanic is still very much appreciated, by the way!)

Improved Status & Skills Screens

Viewing your current progress for your various skills should now be easier with these new UI changes.

Continued Work on NPC Aging

Progress continues at a gradual and steady pace as we work to add aging to our expansive cast of characters. Most recently you may notice that Ash and Boots now age (which also makes Ash eligible for dating once they reach adulthood).

Improved Inventory Organization

Sometimes it feels like RPG's are actually more like Inventory Micro-Management: The Game™, so we've added some new categories to help make your time in the inventory a bit easier to navigate.

Poo Effects

We've enhanced poo's visual effects in our ongoing quest to polish turds.

Full Changelogs

As always, there's vastly more additions and fixes made than we can list here. So jump on over to this recent changelog of ours to check out the details or just drop by the game update thread itself to check out all six of the updates we've recently released.

NEXT ON OUR JOURNEY

As we continue to work towards that hefty relationship milestone, our next steps ahead will be to turn our attention to adding various spouse behaviors and other similar spouse-related mechanics. We'll be sure to let you all know how it's coming along in our usual community spots (such as Discord), so feel free to pop in anytime and hang out with us while we work. Take care everyone and we'll see you all again very soon. Cheers!

Love,
PixelCount

Hello again! This is just a quick patch to followup from the larger update earlier this week. Thanks to everyone who helped squash these bugs!


🔷 Gossip and secrets can now give out info on how to obtain higher star rated items (this info gets recorded in a summary in the inventory)
🔶 Bees now hibernate in winter
🔶 Updated icons for inventory subcategories
🔶 NPC's given food can get buffs from them similar to the player
🔶 Updated a few proverbs to show up in the right category
🔶 Tweaks to improve delivery box setup and the player status screen
🔶 Some small tweaks to buildings to improve their setup for layering and tiling
❌ Preventative fix for crash interacting with growables
❌ Handling shoppers consistently of them not stopping for target by the player
❌ Corrected order of text for boons and blessings on offering
❌ Fixed circumstance where extra weekly reports could be made for shops
❌ Hooked up some proverbs to the correct items
❌ Fix for extra sprites drawing above the heart for NPC's when they are at values in excess of the cap
❌ Fix for transaction log showing the wrong season in a certain situation


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Time for another update to grace your download queue. This time we've got some UI improvements, proverb adjustments, further fish setup, new player customization, and more fixes. Check it all out next time you launch the game and let us know if you run into any problems. Cheers!


🔷 Player skin tone options now available on the intro screen
🔷 Proverbs are now standardized to contain either a hint for item location or a hint for item effect/use
ᅠᅠ• Many proverbs have also been spread across the levels to find
🔷 Fish setup has undergone a reworking to match their proverbs and split them up into appearing in rivers/pools/ponds
🔶 Seasons and timings for growables and fish rebalanced according to proverbs
🔶 F1 help key now remappable for keybindings
🔶 Added in an all star item filter as default for various screens
🔶 Altered equipping via inventory for gamepad to initiate via A to equip and accept like on pickup, so B isn't treated as both assignment and closing the menu
🔶 Various minor tweaks to presentation across the UI's
🔶 Various level changes
🔶 Some price data balance adjusted
🔶 Home/End keys as shortcut for transaction log if not otherwise used as a keybinding
🔶 Can gift multiple of the same rating item at once for the delivery box
🔶 Gossip can now tell other NPC birthdays and the rate of mentioning their age is reduced
❌ Fix for softlock when Hazel interacting when no cats to buy
❌ Fix for crash on trying to gift when no item is selected with an active noticeboard cooking task for the same NPC
❌ Prevent double yield from fishing rod by picking it up while it is on the line
❌ Fix for new rootway to be a both-way teleport
❌ Prevent certain UI elements sticking when forced to sleep
❌ Shrunk animal shadows and layering adjusted
❌ Fix for hair color not completely changing on player due to customisation changes
❌ Lantern offset on pig fixed
❌ Rain shouldn't cause funflower animation to stutter
❌ Should be able to buy up to 3 animals for the farm of each type as intended


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Hello again from Castle PixelCount! Seems it's already time for yet another issue of this devlog of ours, but before diving too far into things we wanted to quickly let you know that we just put a player feedback survey up! It's a pretty short survey which can be completed in about 5 minutes, so hop on over to the survey announcement for some quick info and the survey link itself.

In other news, we've been keeping busy over these past couple of weeks with some much improved goddess offering mechanics as well as some newly added star ratings to many items. Our last update was pushed out just yesterday in fact, so feel free to visit the changelog for the full list of improvements and fixes.

In addition to the recent build's work, we've also been preparing some new content for the updates just ahead. Charlie, for example, has been adding tons of new dialogue for NPC's so that they can start saying more unique dialogue based on various factors. Neal has also begun work on providing different skin tones for players to choose from and it's been coming together nicely over the last number of days. Read on below for more details from Charlie and Neal as well as other updates from the rest of the crew. Take care everyone and we'll see you again soon!







Been trying to get back on to levels recently. I made some tweaks to Tir Na Nog and added a path to the unreachable cave in Crumblechalk. Also want to get E'ergreen finished off and expand the mines in various regions.

On top of playing the game I have also been doing tons of dialogue, NPC stories, and 'rumours' - which are a mix of clues, news, and steaming piles of nonsense.

It has also been great seeing the star rating stuff and worship system start to bring out more of the gameplay loops. Plus the UI improvements. I am admittedly addicted to levelling up tools such as the sickle and rod and seeing the effects that gaining levels have. It does feel finally that the glue is settling and now we need to expand on the stories and reasons for doing lots of this stuff.

To that end I have been writing more NPC letters and a very special one...

I still get excited about what lies ahead for you all to see and experience. Plus this week Gary, our character artist, delivered another amazing knockout punch that we will only reveal when you find it ingame. And trust me, you won't miss it.







Looking back at my notes from the last two weeks it seems there's been a variety of work keeping me busy! First up there was more goddess offering work taking it towards that 100% done mark. In terms of my list, I was content I'd actually made it to that point but it turned out I had a bit of a blind spot when it came to the sound effects and the results screen. The sound effects are getting there thanks to Tice's help and making some recordings of the screen in action. Though the results screen is still in need of a pass but for now I'm compromising to leave it as is while there are bigger wins to be found in the consequences of the offering setup, but more on that in a bit...

Next up I've been setting up an indicator for growables to show how they are doing. It's now functional but undergoing some alterations for its look so will need a followup. It is reasonably straightforward, though there's a few aspects showing their age (4 years old code) for the old bushes and trees where it uses a less robust setup. My thinking is to revisit that once the art is ready to implement, as again there are bigger wins.

After this I've been looking into customisation. The focus was mainly on looking at being able to provide different skin tone options, but I felt like it would be worth investigating outfit colours as well. To that end, I've created a testbed for evaluating the setup which has found a bit of a tangle to unravel! All 4 versions of the player character (the two kids and two adults) have different colour palettes with around 70-120 different colours. With this proving a bit daunting, I ended up sticking to just the skin tones and getting that all figured out. I've reached the point now where it should all be ready to add in different varieties and a bit of testing before then being available in the build.

One other practice I've been starting to put in play is to do two mini playthroughs each week. In the past I've always felt like my best results in work (on the scripting side for the Fable games) came from this quick daily iteration cycle of playing>fixing>testing>repeat. It's a demanding cycle though and one where I got a bit too caught up in the need to just make things work and move on because there's always more to do. This twice weekly pattern though seems to serve me well in keeping on top of bugs and spotting improvements to be made which help refine the experience. In some ways it is perhaps more noticeable when something like the goddess offering work takes place, as the high quality bar of that makes other inconsistencies stand out more! There's definitely a lot of UI work which I'm slowly working my way through based on these playthroughs.

The final area I've been working on is item ratings. Linking back to the goddess offerings this was one consequence of our quite light initial pass on ratings which, apart from fish (and a few skills/tools/boons), there wasn't much available to get even two star rating items. With the design in place for the ratings, I've started implementing it all in earnest such that even some five star ratings are now possible. It's quite exciting to get this in as there's potential to add a lot to the gameplay experience in terms of player discovery as they gradually uncover the overlapping conditions leading to getting the best items.

In doing the item ratings though, there then is the question of uncovering the info for them and also the actual item effects which currently are also lightly implemented. So that's the next consequence to unwind and one that'll again bring more to do. On top of that, Charlie's been working on dialogue which I'll be putting into the game soon along with other relationship update improvements. That's certainly enough to keep me more than busy for the next few weeks, so 'til next time wishing everyone all the best!







Ah...good to be back! And immediately after returning, I was able to get started on the redesign of the worship system. A lot of its sound effects had already been made and could carry over from the previous iteration. Only a few new additions needed to be made for now, until further polish is done to the mechanic.

We also now have a new internal channel in our team's Discord where we keep track of everyone's progress. This made it very smooth to return to work and be all up to date on things quickly. Matt Weekes also made a full design document for the mechanic which noted where sound effects would probably go. Me and Neal then discussed what was feasible and what we could still use from the old system. What we ended up with is still subject to change, so at the time we put it out on the experimental branch first so people could feedback on it.

I suspect some of the sounds will be too long for how quickly one can operate the interface, especially with a controller. If that's the case, sounds will overlap and it could all turn into a loud mess. Neal tells me that under the wrong conditions, quickly stacking sounds can even crash a program.

The trick for me is to see what 'normal' use of the mechanic will be when using the various controls available. At what speed will people go through the mechanic and what sounds sound right at that speed. The current sounds for getting jinxes and boons are rather long, but they were originally intended to be heard as the last sound before a player is finished with the mechanic so as they walked away the sound could play out and not conflict much. But as it is now, you can hear those sounds while still operating the interface. Time will tell what this'll do for the user experience. Of course without your feedback we'll never know, so please do give us your feedback!







Things have been going well over here at Chateau Matt. In the past couple of weeks I've gotten into a fairly nice work rhythm and have been enjoying some nice productive momentum. Some of this is partly due to refocusing my energy on better schedule habits and health habits. I've no doubt some of it is also due to the recent organization efforts we've implemented on the team alongside some recent productive team-wide meetings.

For example, the new channel I added to our team's internal Discord server has been proving useful. We'd been finding that between all our internal channels dedicated to the different departments, all the lengthy discussions in each were making it difficult to ever get a broad overview of where the team was on various tasks. Thus, the new channel was made in order to serve as a strictly no-fuss location for team members to share high-level info with each other. This includes things like new design documents getting posted, new build release candidates that need signing off on by each team member, or even just simple things like whenever I post a new community announcement. Overall we've been finding it very helpful.

This last week I also made a player feedback survey which I posted and shared just earlier today. I've wanted to do a survey for the past couple of months but it seemed like other work was always getting my attention instead. So recently I decided to finally make sure I carved out some time to get it up and also set myself a self-imposed deadline to get it done by.

Since this is our first survey, I kept many of the questions relatively broad and general. This way we can get a sort of baseline of results which will then serve as a jumping off point for future potential surveys. I'm interested to start looking through the results and seeing if our internal predictions line up with what the survey is telling us. I'll let you know how it goes the next time we talk, but until then I hope you all have a great rest of your weekends and I'll see you lovelies around the community. Cheers!

Hey there Seedlings! Something we've been thinking to do for awhile is put together a short player survey and now that we're into the meat of development we figured it'd be a good time to do one. As this is our first survey you'll find that the questions are fairly general and don't necessarily cover every aspect of the game (though depending on the response to this one we may potentially do future surveys that get into more of the nitty gritty). Also note that this particular survey is aimed at existing players only.

The survey should only take about 5 minutes, so feel free to hit the link below and dive on in:

📜 Take the Player Survey 📜

A big thanks to anyone who participates and gives us their two cents...erm, brass. Getting frequent and direct feedback like this is such a big part of our development process and is hugely appreciated. Take care everyone and we'll see you all around the community!

Love,
PixelCount

Another week, another update! For this patch batch we've done some work on star ratings, growables, gifting fixes, among other tweaks. Have a lovely rest of your weekend folks and we'll see ya again soon!


🔷 Setup for most growables and fish to now reach higher star ratings
ᅠᅠ• Across current items, approximately 140 of 260 possible extra stars are obtainable through certain conditions being met
ᅠᅠ• Future builds will make more stars obtainable and give players more guidance on how to obtain them!
🔶 Growable indicators have had further UI refinement
🔶 Old crops updated to draw the new versions
🔶 Various minor tweaks to presentation across the UI's
🔶 Auctions, races, and markets drawn on the local map when visible and text for offscreen exits should be a bit more visible now
🔶 After getting a skill there's an option to jump back to gifting state for the next skill
🔶 New sound effects for star rating in gifting
❌ Refined hitbox for hitting trees/bushes with slingshot and no XP from repeated hits!
❌ Gifting inaccessible if left on a blank star rating tab
❌ Goddess offering gets greyed out if left on a blank star rating tab
❌ Clicking a star rating can gift an item for the NPC gifting screen
❌ Pig riding animation alignment and tool holding positions improved
❌ Fix out of hours crash with animal racing while riding a pig
➕ Mostly hidden work on item traits setup for over 70 items
ᅠᅠ• Some of these will affect the player in the current build and the next build will expand this much further
➕ Hidden work on customisation for player skin tones which should be available in the next build


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Today's patch notes include some presentation improvements as well as a few balance tweaks, among other things. Cheers!


🔷 Various level adjustments across the Vale haven
🔷 Status info and Goddess offering and Inventory have had additional visual presentation polish
🔷 Slight rebalancing of goddess offering for one and three star items to only affect one of the adjacent Goddesses
ᅠᅠ• There's a help screen via F1 key or clicking the left stick on controller which describes the current balance of points in case it changes further
🔷 Various minor tweaks to presentation across many UI's
🔷 Noticeboard showing on the local map
🔷 Tweaks to the pixel font to be hopefully even clearer
🔷 Tweak to display adult hero on the load save screen if applicable
🔷 Only the first unexpected gift per day to an NPC affects their friendship rating as intended
ᅠᅠ• Favours and noticeboard tasks will still allow more friendship rating to be obtained per day
🔷 Poop effects adjusted
❌ Fix for workers not working when loading from a save if the shop is not visited
❌ Fix for bug where certain items weren't drag as mappable
❌ Fix for larder not being accessible if you have no items but there are items in it
❌ Fix for crash using triggers on gifting where no categories are present


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Here's the latest batch of changes that we recently pushed out to all players. Of particular note is the new Goddess offering system which we've recently reworked. As always, don't hesitate to let us know how you get on with these changes in the community. Cheers!


🔷 Goddess offering system reworked
ᅠᅠ• Now happens on the Solsday, the last day of each week, and has had a complete change of points setup to use star ratings and UI to be clearer of the consequences
ᅠᅠ• Missing weeks will start to stack up random negative effects.
🔷 Local map has several more bits of information labelled on the map with icons
🔷 Status info has a bit of extra info to help with discovered growables and when they'll replenish
🔶 Level tweaks to Tir Na Nog and Mellowbrook
🔶 Improvements for targeting priorities so growables are above NPC interact, object interacts are above follower interacts, and the interact sign should clearly show when it is the priority
🔶 More goddess boons/jinxes setup where possible
🔶 Shop's transaction view now includes the date
🔶 Shops have a weekly mail summarising what has happened
🔶 Gifts subcategory populated in the inventory with some stuff from the Other subcategory
🔶 Secret info limited per NPC per season
🔶 Blacksmith shops on buying show what you'll get on buying them (the exact items are still due a balance pass)
🔶 More reputation effects are tracked in the transaction log to make it easier to pinpoint reputation losses
🔶 Presentation tweaks for filtering based on star rating
🔶 Up/down can be used on buying screen when there are sufficient items
🔶 Keyboard input boxes converted where newer gamepad boxes are used
🔶 Glutton trough handles star rating items and doesn't auto add item on interacting
❌ Fix for inventory where select dragging an item to use/discard would actually lead to selecting and using/discarding a different item the mouse went past
❌ Fix for workers not always using their current sprite if they had aged
❌ Fix for crash on gossip with NPC with no other NPC's of that region to gossip about
❌ Fix for transaction when you run out of money paying staff not being included correctly
❌ Fix for Silver Skipper icon
❌ Fast travel to Naida's Glory was going to the level start rather than statue
❌ Calendar should only show birthday rather than age if you don't know that info for NPC's
❌ Wheat now usable for baking as per the recipe
❌ Pet up for sale won't appear outside the shop level if it was following
❌ Fix for some tasks not being creatable
❌ Fix for crash when trying to view inaccessible NPC's during the first season
❌ Removing last task in the list doesn't select previous one
❌ NPC's for lemonade stand and racing weren't set up correctly with their stats
❌ Adjustment for pig riding collision that should make interactables targetable as intended
❌ NPC's don't teleport to appear at their beds just after waking in their routine
❌ NPC's don't start moving at 6 in the morning while targeted


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Our carrier pigs accidentally forgot to post this changelog a few weeks ago! They have been turned into bacon accordingly. (Actually, Matt was the one who forgot to post it. He's been punished by a week without bacon accordingly.)


🔷 Ash and Boots Winter now age, making Ash eligible for dating after he reaches adulthood
🔶 Heat/cool range for blacksmith is more challenging while matching better with the onscreen gauges
🔶 Some materials for blacksmith can have moving heat/cool targets to hit
🔶 Noticeboard's 'big requests' limited so they will only show up based on how many active big requests you have (typically less than 6 depending on the type)
🔶 Books now split into 3 subcategories
🔶 Various level fixes
🔶 Updated map screens for most of Summerdown
🔶 Partner gathering UI has slight tweaks to have a bar for stamina once active and footsteps to show it is working (progress only occurs in game hours while the menu is not active)
🔶 Selling a blacksmith shop will give you a percentage rate for any shelf items and return ore to the player
🔶 Selling the goods store will give the items from the store back to the player
🔶 Tweaked presentation of the inventory subcategories
❌ Crash when swapping to selling the pig you are riding
❌ Properly preventing buying more than 3 of each animal type in the auction
❌ Fix for some white pixels in certain grass sprites
❌ Fix for gamepad not handling shop closing with staff correctly
❌ Fix for handling shop closing where it wouldn't close again after already sending the workers home
❌ Fix for trader intro repeating incorrectly based on the player's location


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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It's been a while since our last issue of The PixelCount Post, but we're back and ready to give you more short updates on how things are going here on the team. You may've caught our most recent monthly progress report which included some new lovely bits and improvements, such as adding the oh-so-important feature: poop.

Once completing this last monthly update, we turned our attention to tweaking the Goddess offerings setup (which Neal talks more about below) as well as putting together our final "must haves" list for the relationship features. There's so many moving parts to how relationships are handled in the game (be it romantic or otherwise) that we're now at the point where we need to start focusing on just the absolute most critical parts of that feature set. Which isn't to say more relationship features or polish won't come further down the road (they most assuredly will), rather this will help us prioritize the most important bits so we can get them in game rather than falling into that tempting but endless loop of perpetually working on and polishing a thing over and over.

In other news, Gary continues toiling away at making more and more aging art for the world's characters. No doubt it'll make for an impressive art collection by the end of it all. Weekes, our environment artist, has also been making some new tree types to adorn future regions of the game. As for design, Charlie's been working through design docs closely with Neal. Meanwhile, Matt is diving back into production-focused work and helping put some new things in place to help the team stay more updated with each other and to minimize workflow bottlenecks. Naturally, Tice is still putting out lovely bits of audio, be it SFX or music, though he's away from the computer this week and so you'll not see his usual entry for this week's Post.

Meanwhile, the world has continued to have its hands full with everything going on which, thankfully, has had minimal impact on our already remote team. Though, as with anything, the situation has still presented its unique challenges for us but we're grateful that we've been able to keep our nose to the proverbial grindstone regardless as we continue working on this game. We hope you're all managing well circumstances considered and welcome you to enjoy this brief distraction of developer ramblings below. Cheers!







Strange times and stranger sleep patterns. Vivid dreams and overeating. But enough about life in Quill...

Trying to sum up what I have been doing since the last post is like trying to catch flies with a straw. The usual fixing, tweaks, prettying, and rearranging. Then the design docs and finalising this, that, and the other. Writing tons of dialogue for various situations and playtesting the game. Oh...I just caught a fly with this straw.

Whilst playing the game one night I realised something: I wasn't testing the new features and was compulsively doing anything but that. And lo it came to pass that the gameplay was really starting to solidify and emerge. Playing also highlights just what is needed next - NPC stories, the next part of the main story, more NPC reactions, recipes, star ratings working, and so on. So many things but so little Neal!

It has been great to see the positivity and continued support and we often pinch ourselves that we have such a thing. So stay safe and keep the Kynseed flame burning, because there is great stuff to come!







It's been a while since last writing a post so will have to see how long this one becomes, though I will try to rein it in! The last month has seen a continued adjustment in routine due to the lockdown. For the most part it hasn't had a great effect on the development work because of working remotely already but there's still some unavoidable ones and a difference between doing something knowing you could do differently and being forced to do something the one way. Development has switched paces a bit from the last update where there were several new features like animal poop, partner gathering setup, and family secret boxes to working more on improving the existing setup as we aim to complete the relationship update work.

At slight odds to that I have spent quite a bit of the last two weeks working on revamping the goddess offering setup. This was a system that had been due an update because it didn't feel exactly right ingame. We've been trying a new process for this kind of work where there is more of a flow between the design and art completing their work before the code is worked on with the aim of reducing the churn when it gets into code that can leave some aspects feeling unfinished (as by the time design/art catch up I'll have moved on to something else). I think this went quite well and hopefully the results (visible soon in the current build) will show a more sturdy setup. That's not to say there isn't still room for improvement though, as there was still some back and forth due to not having a code prototype to look over until after design and art were completed.

The other curious aspect in this case is considering the "connectedness" that the feature had to the game. Initially when we decided to work on this I was expecting it would only take a week at most and that it seemed relatively self contained but as it started to come together it seemed to link with more and more bits! In particular, star ratings and the inventory setup but also thinking about the ingame economy and the effects of offerings which had only been half implemented before. It felt a bit like untangling a bunch of wires to ensure a neater setup.

There's a lot of that untangling work ahead for me to do on this relationship update as I'm determined to start pushing the quality bar higher again with the code. The size and relentless pull of this project has stretched the code work quite thin I've found lately but little by little I've been able to begin to fix and improve on that. Noting down almost triple digits worth of potential improvements to process that will all continue to smooth out the work, I feel like I've started to identify ideas that would previously mostly just be on my mind but never go anywhere and in a way be quite frustrating. Now having written them down there's more of a sense of fun and enjoyment that during an hour where maybe I need a break from the typical grind on updates I can pick one, make things just that little bit better and be satisfied with that. Wishing everyone all the best!







It's been a curiously challenging past few weeks for me and mostly for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. To provide a bit of context, I live smack dab in the center of downtown Los Angeles which, when talking of current events, is the second most impacted city in the US (namely due to its very high population density). So it's not that surprising that the quarantine has been understandably taken very seriously here.

Thankfully though, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, we're no doubt luckier than most that our team situation here at PixelCount was minimally impacted due to the fact that we all worked remotely from home anyway. Plus, I'm very fortunate that a city the size of LA has a robust offering of (relatively) inexpensive delivery services in place. So ranging from groceries to food to even alcohol, pretty much anything you'd want can be delivered to your doorstep with contactless delivery. (Which is to say the delivery person leaves the items at your door, knocks, and then promptly departs.)

So I really feel I don't have much room to complain, all things considered. Yet I did detect in myself a bit of a dip in my mood and overall gumption for things in the past few weeks. The conclusion I came to in order to explain this was when it suddenly occurred to me that I had not step foot outside my front door, nor seen another human, for over 5 weeks in a row now. (To go outside in my building requires walking down a long hall, riding an elevator down, walking through a shared lobby door, and then walking through yet another shared community gate which then steps right out onto the sidewalks of downtown LA. Which is to say, I've been very fastidious in leaving my building as little as possible.)

It seems a somewhat petty thing to gripe about I suppose, but if there is one thing I know about myself it's that I'm solar powered and social powered. As anyone with even a modicum of insightfulness has probably detected when reading these devlogs, I'm a very chatty people person. *broadly gestures at his typical wall-o-texts*

Getting outside on occasion and spending time with others is one of the chief ways that I restore my creative energies. Don't get me wrong, my situation isn't that bad really. It's always important to keep perspective in mind and, as that old adage goes, this too shall pass. Yet all the same, I couldn't help but notice the subtle impact its had on my overall productivity and creativity in general.

However, lest this update be an uncharacteristically gloomy update, I'd be remiss to mention the fact that this game's community has been such a source of positivity for me during this all. I think many folks (especially some game devs) have this notion that a game's community is simply the means to a public relations end. As though a game's community were just a cog in the marketing machine. I mean sure, there are tangible marketing benefits to game communities and they do help a great deal when it comes to word spreading and playtesting. But in danger of getting on one of my waxing poetic tangents, game communities are so much more.

To me they're like a support network too. They help celebrate the game's wins and they also help keep your perspective in place. They're also a great litmus test to know which direction the project should be heading, by either expressing doubt when choosing the wrong direction or by expressing encouragement when headed the right direction. Ultimately, though, it's just nice to have folks to hang out with and talk to and ask questions of during the long workdays. We're really lucky to have the kind of community we have and it spurs us all the more to hold up our side of that bargain by trying to do the best work we can. So a big thank you to all of you in the community, ranging from the daily chatters in our Discord to the occasional retweeters on our Twitter all the way to you most lurky of lurkers who still, I promise, are just as appreciated as anyone by being there in the shadows and following along on this journey of ours.

Lastly, to end with a more tangible devlog update from me, we've recently begun doing team-wide calls every few weeks which we're feeling has had a positive impact on keeping our entire team on the same page. It's an obvious thing, really, because of course doing team-wide calls would have a net positive benefit overall. Yet the tricky thing has always been that our time zones don't always overlap and that most of the calls we do are department-specific. If I need to talk with Tice about audio stuff, then we conduct a call between just the two of us. Or if Charlie and Neal and I need to discuss boring business-ey stuff, then we just do a call between us three. And so on.

In fact, on any given week it's not unusual for me to have 3 or 4 calls spanning a couple hours each. Even more if you count our weekly community voice chat on Discord, which I try to pop into as often as I can. (They're every Thursday around noon PST and all are welcome to drop by!) So it's not as though we don't have calls very often. Rather, we just don't have them with everyone very often.

This month, however, we've sought to change that a bit and are now doing team-wide calls more frequently. Interestingly, the benefit of these calls is not so much that we can more easily discuss work. As mentioned above, we have the smaller department-specific calls for those, which tend to be more productive overall. Instead, I've been finding the benefits to these new calls are more from the perspective of just hanging out with each other as a team, something we don't do often enough yet has a noticeably positive impact I've found.

Just as it's important that our community has a 'sense' of community, it's equally important that the team has a 'sense' of teamwork. It's not that we didn't beforehand, but for a small group of individuals like us to embark on this difficult high-risk adventure of Making An Indie Game™, it's important that we're able to occasionally just kick our shoes off and hang out as friends, not just as coworkers. Which, to tie this all together, is often how I feel about our community as well. Between it all, I feel like I've got some of the greatest friends an overly talkative indie dev could ask for.