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
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
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
This update features the following changes:
- 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.
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, update
So, what have we been working on these days?
We’ve been working on the next Avatar Farm Online Update as usual, and finished/tested most new features. These are the ones that we included these days:
- New building: Winery , allows you to sell grapes.
- Fixed an issue when showing a level 100 farm full of items on the world camera (too many objects were drawn at the same time and the game crashed!)
- Finished the Pets feature: We have a total of 4 cats and 4 dogs available to select from. If this feature is popular, we’ll add new pets on next updates.
We’ve also spent lots of time looking for the root of the freezes some people have been experiencing on both White Noise and Avatar Farm Online, both related with online features. Sadly, we couldn’t pinpoint the cause (we’ve never managed to reproduce these hangs on our development systems), but we’ve added new measures that I hope will fix or at least avoid a total freeze of the console.
Tomorrow we’ll probably submit the update for Avatar Farm Online, and finish work on the White Noise one.
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, dev diary, White Noise
Happy new year! Now the new website is up and running, we’re starting a new development diary so you can know what are we working on.
I can’t guarantee updates on a daily basis, but we’ll try to keep a steady rate.
So, what have we been doing lately? After a week vacation, we’ve gathered many reports and feedback from users for both White Noise and Avatar Farm Online, and we’re working on updates for both games.
Today we’ve been working on Avatar Farm Online, with the following changes:
- New animals (texture and stats variations mainly).
- Users with pending friend requests are no longer granted friend permissions.
- New feature: Move items.
- Now you can move buildings, animals and trees (you can’t move plants or plowed land, it just didn’t seem right). The way to do this will be by pressing X. To sell items, you will have now to press LT+X. We’ll add this to the How To Play section, but it may end in some confusion for the users, let’s hope we make it clear enough.
- When moving items, you’ll be in Move mode, you will have the preview of where to move, and can cancel anytime. We’ve had to check the system works in online (the move mode cancels if anyone sells or moves the same item before you do), as well as add new icons, new descriptions, etc.
- New plant: Mushrooms (high level plant with 20 minutes grow time).
- Fixed a minor issue with the preview of animal trucks.
There’s still a lot of things we want to add to this update, specially the pet feature (cute animals that follow the player around), and they won’t be finished until next week. Meanwhile, we have lots of pending bugfixes.
Ok, that’s it for now, and please let us know what do you think of this initiative :).
Tags: Avatar Farm Online, dev diary
