Hello everyone! Happy New Year!
I hope everyone had a wonderful year! This post will wrap up some of the things I've been working on for Cloudscape since the last update. For the past year I've been hard at work on the game, and not everything has made it to Steam in terms of updates. I'm looking to change that now with transparency going forward on a regular basis.
Speaking of the holiday season though, I think that would be a good place to start off this dev log!
Holidays
With the holiday season wrapping up, I just wanted to show a bit of the Jolly Day décor and stuff I've been working on.
I also spent a day adding Snowmen to the game! This is just a fun little winter activity to do which I really wanted to add. You can find tiny snowballs randomly while digging in the snow. You can then push the little snowball around until it gets bigger and bigger. Eventually it will get so big that it will no longer be pushable. This is the base of a Snowman! You can then roll two smaller sized balls into the big one to stack them. Once you have a three ball stack, you can interact with the stack to craft a Snowman! You will be able to obtain more Snowman recipes to have different styles.
The best part is that you can use your Hammer tool on a Snowman to dislodge it and turn it into a normal decoration item. You can then place your Snowman decoration anywhere, during any season! You can even put him inside if you really want to.
You can also pick up snowballs and throw them as projectiles, so if you're ever in a fight with monsters you can always pick up a snowball and hurl it at them!
I've also worked on other holiday events and items, including Heart Day and Frog Day. Islands will automatically decorate for holidays that they celebrate, and different shops will have various holiday related items available only for that holiday!
There's a full set of Heart furniture and Frog furniture for you to collect. You can even get a Frog Hat on Frog Day or special Heart shaped Animal Treats on Heart Day which can boost your animal's affection more than usual.
Buildings + Decorations
I've worked more on buildings/decorations, including the ability to change the Flooring and Wallpaper inside a building. I've also added Rugs which can be placed down and resized.
I've added Sinks and Waste Baskets which actually have functionality. You can turn a Sink on and use your Water Can to fill it up with water.
The Waste Basket allows you to discard unwanted items (instead of just throwing them on the ground) This works like a single slot storage object. You can directly place items you're holding inside, or you can interact with it to drop items into the storage slot from your inventory. The cool part is that the last item you drop in can be retrieved, so if you accidentally throw away something important there's still a chance to get it back! Just be careful, throwing away a new item while another item is currently inside will completely erase the existing item!
I've also added a new type of Storage object which is the Cabinet. These work much like normal storage, except with the addition of also being a hybrid Display object! The first row of slots in the storage will actually display on top of the Cabinet while the rest will just be stored inside.
Speaking of displaying items, I've finally added Wall Shelves. These can be placed directly on walls and accessed like normal storage to display items on your walls!
Last but not least, there's of course a Wall Calendar you can place on your wall to quickly access your Calendar (if you feel inclined to do that). Your Calendar is always available directly in your Journal at any time, but you know… it's fun to have an interactable one. :)
I've also added a bunch more wall decorations like paintings, portraits, mirrors, etc which you'll be able to obtain.
Wimnim Interiors
All of this helped me flesh out the interiors for all of Wimnim's villager houses. These have all been finished up and reflect the personalities of the inhabitants. I'll add more little personal touches to these as development continues. Here's a couple of the interiors I've created:
Oak Trees + Tree Tappers, Resin and Syrup
I've finally got around to adding one of the remaining tree types to the game, which is the Oak Tree! With this addition I've also implemented Tree Tappers which can collect Resin or Syrup from trees.
You can craft a Tree Tapper and then place it down directly on an untapped tree. These will automatically produce Resin or Syrup after some time which you can then collect. You can use your Hammer to dislodge the Tree Tapper at any time to move it if you'd like.
Oak and Pine Resin will be used in a variety of crafting recipes and Maple Syrup will be used in various cooking recipes.
Shipping and selling items
Speaking of recipes, one way to obtain new recipes is to ship new items in your Shipping Bin! Some items when shipped for the first time will result in special rewards from the shops. These can be coupons, different items or recipes that use the item you shipped.
For example, shipping that Maple Syrup for the first time can reward you with a recipe for Pancakes! This is a great way to incentivize shipping items (aside from getting the most money for items) Some recipes will ONLY be available through shipping rewards, so you'll want to try shipping at least one of everything you produce!
Animals
I've finally finished up the interface and functionality for purchasing animals. This was actually a far more complicated process than it would appear. This is because each animal needs to be assigned to a Barn, Stable or Home, which requires the game to pull up all the info on your owned buildings and keep track of what goes where. Since you can have multiple Barns on up to four different islands, this required a bit of planning on my part to work out the logistics. With that said, it's all working now so you can finally purchase animals! (instead of me using a debug tool to spawn them in to test, haha)
On a final Animal note I've added Animal Sickness along with Medicine and Treats. If your animal goes without food and water for 48 hours they will become Upset and no longer produce anything. This can be easily fixed by providing them with food and water and they will return to a neutral mood the next day and produce items again. At 72 hours without food and water, your animal will become Sick. While Sick they will not produce items but simply giving them food and water will not fix the issue.
You will need to obtain Animal Medicine and administer it to your animal directly. It will then take 24 hours of being medicated before your animal is healthy and able to produce items again. So it's important to always provide enough food and water for your animals as it's very easy to go adventuring for several days and not return to your island to care for them. There will be methods to provide them with longer term food/water (bigger troughs, automated troughs, etc) but even then you'll eventually need to return to refill these.
Upset and Sick animals will also lose Affection daily, which will result in lower quality animal products.
Bug Fixes/Optimization
As always, there has been an absolute ton of bug fixes, optimization and quality of life improvements that I work on pretty much every day. That list is incredibly long and I won't bore anyone with looking at it. It's the majority of my build notes on any given submission. Just know that the game is always improving and I'm working hard to not have the game be a buggy unplayable mess on release.
Speaking of release….
Early Access and Release Date Information
I'm sure most of you are reading this update because you're eager to play Cloudscape already, and you've been waiting a long time. I understand your frustration and I'm glad that you're still excited to play the game. Unfortunately I've realized I'm quite terrible at predicting how long any given thing is going to take me to finish. This is something I'm trying to work on, but it does appear that I've fallen into the same problem as many Kickstarter-funded game projects in that the deadlines I've set just are not realistic for the scope of the game I've planned.
With that said, I'm sad to say that Early Access did not happen in 2024 like originally planned. I can't give a specific time when it will happen at this point. All I can say is I'm still making a lot of progress on the game and I think it will be worth the wait.
Just to give you a timeline of Cloudscape's development. It's been only me working on the development of this game since 2020. I realize 4 years seems like enough time to make a game, but to put it into perspective, Stardew Valley took at least 4 1/2 years to make, and I believe Cloudscape will actually release with more content than SDV initially did. We're heading into the 5th year of development now, so I actually feel like I'm close to the same development speed in that regard. My initial 2 year development timeline (releasing in July 2023) was extremely inadequate for a game with Cloudscape's scope.
Wrap Up
Once again I just want to thank everyone following the project. I will be starting the new year working harder than ever to deliver everything I've promised to you all. Here's to the start of the new year, and hopefully the conclusion of the game's development.