Hello Villagers!
Welcome to version 0.72!
This release was originally going to focus only on home and village improvements, but I somewhat accidentally found myself hunting and destroying dozens of bugs instead.
Frankly, all this bugfixin' work was long overdue, so I decided to change gears and make it my new priority for this update. In total I fixed around 50 bugs which should go a long way to making the game feel more stable and professional. I'll continue working on home / town building in the next release.
Anyway, here are the full patch notes!
Home Improvement & Town Building
- Vastly improved the look of the player house exterior and surrounding area
- Redid the interior (tileset and furniture) of the player home
- Redesigned and moved shops on main street to prepare them for future upgrades
- New Homestead Upgrade: Clean out the polluted pond so you can use it for fishing
- New Homestead Upgrade: You can now move your garden from Agrarian Acres to just outside your house
- Added a new system that can change the look and feel of the village as it evolves over time
- The village is now evaluated and ranked each week. Speak with Jaclyn in Town Hall for more info
Graphics & UI
- Redesigned and improved many of the buildings and decor of Main Street
- Added chimney smoke effects to buildings in the village
- Added a large number of new external lanterns and street lights
- Improved interior lighting of many villager homes
- Improved the look and colorization of the interior tileset
- Improved the shadowing for trees and other vegetation
- Improved the look of "New Dialogue" notification
- Improved the look of room transitions
- Improved camera movement when used in cutscenes
- Improved dialogue box movement in cutscenes
New & Improved Features
- Modified the fishing minigame so that the hit bar doesn't shrink as much
- Drastically improved how 'flavor critters' (like butterflies, squirrels) look and behave
- It now takes substantially longer to unearth treasure if you're exhausted (eat or nap to get rid of it!)
- Added a number of new Critters and Fish to catch
- You are no longer able to move away from a conversation if there are dialogue choices coming up - this solves a few bugs
- You can now speak to an NPC during part time jobs to hear tips or quit early
- Drastically improved state management to smooth things out and prevent you from being 'stuck' in a specific state (eg., being stuck in the casting rod animation)
Game Feel
- Improved player collision. In general, collision should feel cleaner and less fragile
- Your energy is restored to full when starting a tutorial from the job board
Bugs Fixed
- Fixed crash related to UI elements dimming in cutscenes
- Fixed a crash relating to sending following critters back home
- Fixed crash related to certain cutscenes
- Fixed crash when backing out gift selection when writing a letter
- Fixed a major issue in which the camera could become "detached" from the player during some room transitions
- Fixed a major issue in which you could bypass certain areas by walking through them mid-conversation
- Fixed a major issue in which cancelling a letter would cause the gamepad keyboard to display and be unable to dismiss
- Fixed several major issues that resulted in becoming "stuck" after certain transitions (cutscenes, jobs, new areas)
- Fixed a large number of situations in which you could sequence break while performing an odd job
- Fixed jittery collision when performing a job or chore
- Fixed issue where exterior lighting would appear to change during a cutscene
- Fixed some jerkiness / stuttering during cutscene and job transitions
- Fixed issue where players could still move / act during a cutscene
- Fixed issue where players could move while during an area transition and cause it to abort
- Fixed incorrect door collision
- Fixed notes not having a dialogue portrait
- Fixed large number of state-related bugs
- Fixed large number of issues related to purchasing a new home
- Fixed a few weird issues (like orphaned pixels) in the interior tileset
- Fixed collision issues near the Balefire Beach entrance
- Fixed gaps in collision around the edges of Balefire Beach
- Fixed certain UI elements not dimming during area transitions
- Fixed a number of debug commands that were erroneously enabled
- Fixed player house from erroneously changing sprites at night
- Fixed issue where homestead upgrades could appear missing upon entering the area
- Fixed a number of issues with the interior of the player home
- Fixed an issue where the player house would not update to a "fixed up" sprite after purchasing
- Fixed issue where buying a house put you severely in debt
- Fixed layering of the Donkey Fly critter
- Fixed an issue where UI elements would appear partly transparent
- Fixed collision bug in Carefree Crossroads that would cause you to get stuck between a tree and a hard place
- Fixed issue where a temporary 'ghost' item could appear after making a purchase
- Fixed issue where players could release critters that are currently following them
- Fixed a number of discrepancies between gamepad controls across PS4 / Switch / Xbox controllers
- Fixed a large number of lingering issues with flavor creatures (like butterflies, squirrels, and other critters you can't catch)
- Fixed a lack of title on the Villager page of your journal
- Fixed an issue where placeholder items from the bakery, Pots n' Pies
- Fixed issue that was causing weeds to be surprisingly tricky to pick
- Fixed incorrect control labels
- Fixed issue where mail was still being delivered to the mailbox outside of Overflow even after moving into a new house
- Fixed a number of instances of text overextending beyond the dialogue box
- Fixed a number of typos
- Various other misc. technical and stability improvements
