Devlog #23 - The Path to Success is Sloped

Not really, but the paths in Snacko can be on slopes.

Wait, there’s a lot to unpack in that sentence. Before that…

Meowllo everyone! It’s time for the monthly devlog! Does it feel like August? This year is weird, isn’t it? It’s simultaneously long and short at the same time. We’re over halfway done 2020, and we’ve been working harder than ever on Snacko.

🐾 Paths

Yes, that’s right. You read our first sentence correctly - we now have two new features: paths and building on uneven surfaces.

To start off, we added Softwood, Hardwood, and two variations of Cobblestone paths. These can be snapped to the grid, or moved and rotated freely like the other buildable items.

We also added the ability to place buildables on slopes and such. You can’t place buildings on uneven terrain, but it still opens up a lot of new decorating possibilities, like a menacing wall of Scarecrows all dyed different colors.

🌳 Organic is Good

To help facilitate this new “wow, I can have slopes!” thing, we gave the map a little bit of a makeover. You might’ve noticed some new landmarks, like the different waterfalls or arches, and the new way cliffs are done. All of these changes are so we can make our maps more organically shaped.

Now with more cliffs and more lookouts, it became more apparent that the horizon was a little…sudden. We added a slight depth of field to the distance to soften up the transition between sea and sky.

One of my favorite additions to the farm map is the new lake south of your farm. We’ve also expanded the building areas so you could decorate that as well. Lots of space for your creativity! Or your Scarecrow disasters, either works.

Having the extra bit of terrain and cliffs really help the island feel more alive!

🪑 Decorate Everything!!

In addition to expanded building areas, we also connected the farm (tiles) and the farm (map) building areas. Now you can easily place your fences, paths, and more!

The starter furniture set also became the Softwood furniture set, and we started working on their cousin, Hardwood furniture. The Softwood set has more of a cozy, suburban feel to it while the Hardwood set takes a lot of inspiration from traditional Japanese furniture. Some changes were made to make the sets more cohesive, like swapping out the low table in the Softwood for a more standard, rectangular tall dining table with chairs (and optional mats!)

We’ve had this feature for a while, but all the surfaces can have items placed on them as long as they fit. That means we purposefully left some cubbies in the Hardwood Bookshelf empty so you can decorate them to your taste!

📌 What Else?

Here’s the part where we list off a bunch of other things that we worked on that doesn’t really fit into one category or the other.

We’ve started working on more story and quest content. We don’t want to spoil everything, so we’ll be showing just the bare minimum of that! We hope you can enjoy all the dialogue for the first time when you play the game in it’s final form 😊

The first thing that needed some touch-up was the dialogue selection choice. We never really had…one. So it was just floating text. But no worries! Now the box creates itself so it better fits the contents.

The second thing we noticed that needed a bit of polish was the quest tracker. The old one was quite small, and the checkbox looked stiff and not very fun.

Now it’s extremely fun, featuring a cute lil’ paw stamp that goes bonk when you complete a subtask! Don’t you feel more productive already?

The little opacity shift as you complete the subtask was suggested by one of our Kickstarter backers and Discord members, Foxling! If you haven’t yet, you should join our little community!

The last little bit of UI Juice™ is the pickup notification. It used to just kinda…pop up in the lower right corner. It didn’t even really have a quantity counter. It just told you “You got Item!”. So we made it better!

The new item pickup notification sits in the lower left where your inventory bar is, and updates in the same stack if you pick up additional items that are the same. Very handy! Also, it goes pop just a little bit.

That’s all for this month! Thanks for reading, and extra thank you to our Patreon supporters! We love you 💕