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January- Operation: Flip the Backend

Overall: I was beyond stressed out. Learning and then applying a brand new backend system is never fun. Reminder to always have up to date documentation.

February- Only the Hottest Keys

Overall: Hotkeys are super important! Remember this! Having the ability to change hotkeys in your game is a necessity. I also tried to combat the “Stare at the minimap instead of the environment” problem a lot of games have by creating the local minimap. The problem still persists but it was a really fun experiment and I have some idea on how I’m going to rectify this issue already.

March, April, May- Zzzz….

Overall: (Drooling on pillow)

June- I’m Awake!

Overall: The eye rendering change was… 50/50 for players, I think. A lot of them understandably liked the textures made by players, but I’d been dreaming of making an eye system work like this for the longest time. It still needs a bit of work but I’m very happy with it. I think for newer players it’s quite the surprising level of detail.

I also got to make some items just for Pride, the community really likes Pride so I think having some items for it will be nice going forward every year. Plus they just look like nice items on their own, which is exactly what I was going for.

Treasure hunting returned, working on the same hotter/colder system as before but with some added complexity of showing exactly how far the player was from their find.

The new loading system was meant to curb as much of the wait-time as possible between scenes. It’s still causing a few issues, documentation is not great, and communication with the developers of the system could be better… So I’m navigating it rather blindly just to get it to work properly. Overall I still enjoy the speed of loading so I can’t say I’m absolutely disappointed in it.

Interaction pop-ups were added in addition to the sniff to examine system. I did previously have items highlight when they could be interacted with, but that system was finicky at best and depended entirely on the item’s code. I rewrote this to be entirely on the player’s code instead so that if items didn’t have whatever they needed to be identified, it was handled properly regardless. A very smooth optimization I’m pretty proud of.

July- Ambiance (pinky lift)

Overall: I wanted to focus on the sound of the game. I didn’t want to add music because in roleplay games I felt like it would push the feeling of the moment a specific way, and I didn’t want that to be the case. Any moment should be allowed to feel tense, or calm, or sad, or happy regardless of noise. I put a lot of focus into ambient sounds like the crickets at night, rain, wind, and objects like wind chimes and bells were added to specific places in the map for an even more natural ambience. I hope to incorporate more instruments like this in the future, and I’m glad I started with a few already to set the stage.

August- Editor Revamped!

Overall: The editor was… kind of a mess before. I had a General tab, two Add on tabs… what if a player was looking for somewhere to change their ear shape? Would it be under General? The second or the first Add-on tab? It was confusing. Splitting the editor by body shape meant forcing every change to be categorized and having the game tell those bits when they could be visible. This is so much better, even for me who had the editors somewhat memorized. Do I need to change my ears? They’re in the Head tab, of course! Claws? Check the feet tab! Everything is so neatly organized now, adding new bits was incredibly easy. I didn’t have to worry about space anymore or how it all looked together, I could just trust my own system to organize and put them where they belong. One less nightmare to be concerned about.

People wanted me to stop with additions and quick pushes for a bit to focus on just bugs. Initially I was a bit upset with this but I swallowed my pride and put my head down to work on it. I’m glad I did, because it didn’t seem to change the amount of work I ended up getting done this year in terms of additions. It’s just hard to tell yourself to stop sometimes.

September- First Merch Giveaway!

Overall: Another somewhat selfish desire was fulfilled. I always dreamed of the nametags fading in when another player came on screen, and would disappear after a while. As well as being able to re-enable the view of the nametags by rotating your camera. I wasn’t sure I could ever pull this off, so I was absolutely stoked when I figured it out. Younger me would be screaming about the feature.

I decided to pull the trigger and add locks to every bit of the editors for the ultimate randomization ability. A surprising number of people just choose to use the randomizer, myself included. (Perhaps that will prove to be an issue one day) It’s nice to have some extra help with that. Was a bit of a pain in the ass but it was most definitely a labor of love for the community. In doing this, some of the species ended up with more customization than they started with, just to make things easier on my end.

October- Shopkeeper!

Overall: I’ve had this NPC for years and years. He’s finally in game! That’s a pretty cool accomplishment in itself. I was also surprised that he barely needed much fixing for his model in blender. I love his design, thanks to Mr. Blackmailchan for the creation of his concept art.

Minimap got even more love, and the last thing I think it needs is custom waypoints and it should be (chef’s kiss)!

November- Frens Time Frens Time Frens Time

Overall: The friends list is such a complicated relationship of back end and front end. If I can help it, a feature is either 90% front end or 90% back end. I prefer to have the work only require small tweaks when it comes to situations like January where I have to move to a brand new SaaS and all of my code becomes defunct. BUT I managed to get it done. I hate it, but there’s no other way around it. The friends list is a love-hate relationship between backend and server. Atleast they’re still on speaking terms.

I also decided that inventory items shouldn’t stack. This was mainly so that the gathering of each item felt more important. It was less like being handed a deck of cards and more like being handed a vase at a department store. You can only carry so many vases, so each vase you are carrying has it’s place and meaning to you. This should put more value on space and what’s worth picking up and leaving behind.

I also went ahead and finally properly fixed body colliders on the animals. My hope is that when I start making smaller tunnels, some animals just won’t fit, or must crouch to make themselves small enough to fit. Size is a big deal to Cereal Soup (and you’ll all see more of that later). It’s very, VERY hard to design a game where the players can be any variable of sizes (Which is why most games do not have such a wild size slider or allow players to be a species twice the size of another) But it is a challenge I’m willing to take up, because I absolutely love how much you guys enjoy the diversity. There’s something so charming about a felis napping with 6 tiny suricates between it’s paws, and I could never take away that special piece of Cereal Soup.

December- Delicious

Overall: I’ve been wanting something like Curry to guide players within territories. Trust and believe this won’t be the only time you’ll see him! I’m hoping every biome will have Curry on his travels to tell you about all the interesting spots of every zone. Ideally you could just see it and run towards it yourself, but I have yet to add enough interesting places and features to the maps for that to be the case.

I added the food item to the shopkeeper’s stock, as a little goofy thing as well as to test placing and removing items from inventory into the real world. Eventually players will be able to drop their items (for anyone to grab or not) and I want to test it out early with something relatively low in worth. I also think suricates just look so cute with the little sausage in their mouth, no? They remind me of when dogs steal food and look at you with a guilty expression. You can have that little sausage, suri. I don’t want it after it’s been in your mouth!

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