The long awaited update to Avatar Farm Online has been released, fixing most bugs reported on the last weeks.
This update has the following changes:
- Bugfixes:
- Fixed other players crashing when a player that never entered the “My pets” section joins the game.
- Fixed heavy fps slowdown when a player with a pet selected joins a game.
- Fixed incorrect button layout shown in the How to play to sell/recycle items.
- Fixed rare crash ( ArgumentOutOfRangeException – WorkToolTile )
- Prevented rare crash ( NullReferenceException – PlayerStartWork ) (couldn’t find the root cause, but it will be ignored).
- Prevented incorrect scores from showing on the leaderboard (couldn’t find the root cause, but they will be discarded).
- Ensured data is saved when autosaving (A small pause can be noticed now on certain consoles). Should help with the farm lost issue.
- Found and prevented a farm list glitch when using more than one storage device or user profiles in the same session.
- The game performs better when a storage device is pulled while playing.
- Fixed Warmblood horse harvest money.
- Gameplay changes:
- Increased accumulation building (stands, carts…) capacity to 5 times the base amount (instead of 3).
- Improved accumulation building selection logic (now the building that’s nearest to get a complete batch is selected).
- The amount of accumulated items in a building is shown even when you can already sell them.
You should be notified next time you start the game, but you can download the game from here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Avatar-Farm-Online/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550c37
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, release, update
Hey guys! Here’s an update on the state of our current projects:
- We’ve just submitted the Avatar Farm Online v1.45 update for certification, after making sure everything is okay. We estimate around 7-10 days until the process finishes though, so please be patient.
- On top of the features already included in the never-released v1.4 (which was mainly an important bugfix release), we’ve included some new bugfixes:
- Found and prevented a farm list glitch when using more than one storage device or user profiles in the same session
- The game performs better when a storage device is pulled while playing.
- Fixed Warmblood horse harvest money.
- An update for White Noise was just released. It’s just a small update with some minor bugfixes:
- Should have removed or reduced stuttering while playing on some circumstances.
- Fixed Critical Error (NullReference on Player_OnScare)
- Work for White Noise Online is approaching its final stage:
- We’ve just finished animation for the 4 characters. We want to do some additional unlockable characters, so we’ll do some skins using the base models. These characters will be unlocked either by collecting pages or by purchasing other games of ours.
- We’ve added a small perks system, so each character has slightly different attributes (some move faster, some are brave, some have a better flashlight…). We have to test this thoroughly to ensure they are more or less balanced.
- This way, the characters are useful for single player too, since otherwise the character selection wouldn’t mean anything.
- Some characters will be unbalanced on purpose, to add some sort of difficulty selection based on which character you pick.
- We’ve started work on the menu interfaces, and added basic level and character selection screens.
Here’s a gameplay screenshot that reflects the current development state:
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, dev diary, White Noise
These past days we’ve kept working on White Noise Online, which is already showing great results in the character area!
- We’ve got some working animations for the character. They’re not final yet, but we’ve put them in the game and they look great!
- We spent quite some time testing and fixing some issues when importing these animations, so code-wise there’s not much new features: We’ve improved network prediction so players didn’t float as much as they did before.
- We’ve kept working on the snowy scenario, the main structure is mostly complete and we’ve started adding decoration items.
Looks like next week we’ll finally reach the “feature complete” stage! There’s still a lot of work ahead (specially on the menu GUI), but at least we’ll have a fully working game :).
Tags: dev diary, White Noise
Hey guys, how are you today? Here’s the update on our current projects:
- We’ve had to remove the Avatar Farm Online update from certification due to showing crash reports too frequently: On a prior update we treated all load errors as a critical crash (so the report could be seen), but showing it in some not-really-critical cases (such as yanking an USB device after selecting it) is a failable reason.
We’ll submit the update again next week.
- As for White Noise Online:
- We’ve finished texturing the 4 main characters and started rigging (preparing the model for animations). I’m not posting any screenshot yet because they lack animation and their pose is rather ugly :P.
- We’ve also started testing the 1st scenario, but it’s not finished yet. We need to add some additional points of reference (rocks) so the player doesn’t get lost that easily.
- Meanwhile, we’ve started work on the 2nd scenario, a snowy field.
- As for coding, we’ve added the following features:
- Flashlight cones for network players: You now can get a bit blinded if you look at the flashlight of other players, and see them from a distance if they have their flashlight on.
- Idols: Idols are items on the scenario that can render you crazy when you look at them, just like the monster (but they don’t pursue you). They also emit a sound, so although dangerous, they can be used as a point of reference. We’re not sure yet if we’re going to use them though (the game might end up being too hard), we need more testing.
- We’ve added some stats to the ending screen, much like the ones you see on Left 4 Dead when you end a game.
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, dev diary, White Noise
Hi guys, quick update on our current projects:
- We’ll submit today the update for Avatar Farm Online, mostly a bugfix release and minor gameplay improvements.
- We’ve decided to postpone the White Noise update because we accidentally introduced a bug that would cause frequent crashes :(.
- As for White Noise Online:
- We’ve finished modelling of the 4 playable characters and started work on texturing.
- We’ve got a fairly complete interface for finding games, the game lobby, etc.
- We’ve almost finished the first scenario, but still haven’t tested it enough.
Here is a Work in progress screenshot for White Noise Online:
It’s been a while since our last update! Here is the state of our current projects:
- As you might have noticed, an update for Avatar Farm Online was published past Friday, and had some nasty bugs that could lead to crashes and slowdowns. We noticed this before receiving any report, and couldn’t sleep (literally) until we located the issue and fixed it. We did a post explaining the issue , and we’ll submit the update as soon as possible (we can’t submit it until Friday). It will take some time until it’s approved though.
- We also spent a whole day trying to fix other less frequent reported crashes and issues:
- Fixed incorrect button layout shown in the How to play to sell/recycle items.
- Fixed rare crash ( ArgumentOutOfRangeException – WorkToolTile )
- Prevented rare crash ( NullReferenceException – PlayerStartWork ) (couldn’t find the root cause, but it will be ignored).
- Prevented incorrect scores from showing on the leaderboard (couldn’t find the root cause, but they will be discarded).
- Ensured data is saved when autosaving (A small pause can be noticed now on certain consoles). Should help with the farm lost issue.
- If you have an issue with the latest update that’s not mentioned here, please report, as these are all we have been reported lately.
- White Noise was also updated past week, and we received two reports since then, both of very rare cases. We’ve already submitted a bugfix update for these.
- We’ve also continued work on White Noise Online:
- We had a playtest session on Friday with three players, to check how the gameplay felt. Once a few technical issues were addressed, the game worked as expected, but…
- The game has a feature to force players to stay together (more or less), you can go crazy if you get too far from other players. This mechanic was added to avoid players from exploring the whole scenario in a few minutes.
- But, the game had no way to avoid the opposite: To force players to be a bit spread and not walk in a tight group. This means there were no chances of people disorienting and getting separated from the group (which we think will be the main point of the coop mode), and the monster can be easily avoided if one player tries to distract him while the other players keep going forward.
- We’ve added a new mechanic that allows the monster to appear closer to the group if the players walk in a tight group. It should help in disorienting the players, but haven’t been able to properly test it yet.
- Content-wise, we’ve decided to restart work on the scenario we were working on. The idea was to increase the playable area since the original scenario was rather small, but we got too far and had to reduce it.
- As for characters, they are almost ready to start rigging and animation. We’ll probably show some previews in the next dev diary :).
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, dev diary, White Noise
The latest update for Avatar Farm Online has been released.
It features the following changes and additions.
- New items and features:
- Unlockable pets that follow your player around (available on Extras->My pets).
- Now you can move items (everything except plowed land and plants) by pressing X and then placing them somewhere else with A. The sell action is now performed by pressing LT+X.
- New building: Winery that allows you to sell grapes.
- Accumulation buildings (such as greenhouses, veg cart, fruit stand…) can now accumulate additional items (up to 3 times the base amount).
- Farm recovery: Farms that for some reason disappeared from the farm list should be found and added again.
- 9 New animals.
- Gameplay changes
- Increased the minimum time it takes for crops to die from 24 to 48 hours.
- Bugfixes:
- Fixed pending friend requests being granted Friend permissions.
- Fixed crash when joining a multiplayer game while some building is being deleted.
- Fixed crash when switching to world camera on a level 100 farm full of trees/buildings (by limiting number of items drawn).
- Fixed animal truck preview tiles not shown correctly.
- Tried to fix freezes related with P2P score sharing.
Important: We’ve detected two issues related with the pets when playing online that slipped through our tests. These two issues are the following:
- You may have a crash when joining an online game or when someone joins your game, with a mention of “RemotePlayerData” in the crash report.
- After joining a game or when someone joins your game, you may experience a serious drop in framerate, to 1 frame per second or less.
First issue happens if an user never entered the “My pets” section, second issue if an user with a custom pet joins a game.
The way to fix both issues is to just go to “Extras -> My pets” and select “None”.
If you intend to play offline, you can select a pet without risk, as this only applies to multiplayer.
We’ll submit an update as soon as we’re allowed (by 25th January).
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, update
We’ve continued work on White Noise Online mostly:
- Still working on the networking code. The players and the enemy data is now synchronized: Everybody can see each other, walk, pick pages, spot the monster… and the monster correctly walks around, pursuits players, teleports, etc. The two most important things not coded yet are player deaths, and the lost soul mode after a player dies. Anyway, nothing has been tested yet so lots of bugs may appear later.
- After finishing some landmarks, we’ve started working on a new, bigger scenario layout, with a bigger river and a proper bridge, etc.
- We’ve continued work on the main characters, modelling is almost finished and we’ll start texturing / animation soon.
Tags: dev diary, White Noise
White Noise 1.2 update has been released! You will be asked to download the updated version next time you start the game.
It features the following changes:
- Tried to fix freeze issues when Lost souls setting is enabled
- Added unlockable Hard mode
- In Hard mode, only 3 tapes will be placed at the same time, and new ones will appear each time you pick one, so you’ll have to visit again already checked landmarks.
- The monster will be a bit more insistent in its pursuit too.
- Added unlockable Lithium batteries (Unlimited flashlight power)
- Added unlockable Smiley mode
Tags: update, White Noise
Hi! Here’s the state of our current projects:
- White Noise update approval progress is at 92%, meaning it’s almost ready for release!
- Avatar Farm Online update approval progress is stalled at 0%, so it might take a while until it’s available :\
- We have continued our work on White Noise Online.
- From a code point of view, we’ve put together some basic networking code ( creating and joining games, and sending player position ), but there’s much work and tests to be done yet.
- We’ve been working on some landmarks for the new scenario, trying to mantain the level of tension and weirdness of the first location.
- We’ve also started work on the player characters (There will be 4 characters, 2 males and 2 females). I won’t make any comments of the design decisions of the characters, that’s for a future post :). But here is a preview of one of the male characters.
Tags: dev diary, White Noise
