At long last, I’ve uploaded the Nature Reserve update, and it’s about five times bigger than I originally planned! Before I dive into the detail, I just want to say thanks for your patience everybody. Life got crazy for a bit, and I certainly haven’t been disciplined with regards to not adding extra stuff!
So, the here’s the first round of Nature Reserve details, then some extra changes that have happened too!
Nature Reserve
What is it?
Ever wondered whats behind the fences to the north of the town? Well, it’s a huge open space. Once your friendship level grows with Hal, he’ll take you there and pitch you his dream of creating a reserve for animal research.
A few scenes and a completed workshop upgrade later, you’ll find a new museum looking building, complete with a basement for managing it, and a walkway going over the terrain-editable field.
With this in place, you and Hal have a joint business interest, animals will start to arrive, and Autumn will have its first tourist attraction!
How does it work?
Animals
There are currently two ways that an animal can arrive at the reserve.
- Donate them from your biome barn
- Animals can also arrive overnight, based on the terrain you’ve set
Once an animal has arrived, it’ll need feeding! You can donate feed for them, or just settle the bill later. Hal takes care of the actual feeding, and he’ll give you any produce he finds whilst out there.
Just like on your own ranch, animals will move on if you change the terrain away from their preferences.
Small exhibits
This update also adds endemic life to Autumn! Mice, snakes, scorpions, and other small creatures that live just about everywhere!
During the opening scenes for the reserve, you’ll be given a ‘Capture cage’. This is a humane trap that can be placed outdoors anywhere in Autumn, and overnight it’ll have a chance to catch the local small one!
The next day you can check if you did, and either let the animal go, or send it for a very comfortable life in one of the four displays at the reserve.
There’s a whole calendar for where and when each species will arrive, and about 20 different species at the moment. I thought I’d see how people get on with it before adding too much more!
Tourists
When he sees the reserve, Morgan the trader gets inspired and shares an idea to start bringing tourists with him every Saturday.
This introduces the concept of a ‘Reserve rating’ or ‘Tourism score’, where the reserve is scored based on several factors, such as how many animals are here, how populated the small exhibits and displays are, and more.
Your rating then directly effects how many tourists show up each week to visit the reserve, and pay an entrance fee! The entrance fee is small to start with, but it can be used to offset the animal feeding costs.
There’s 15 tourists at the moment, and I’ll add a few more as time goes on. A maximum of 10 can show up on a given Saturday for high scoring reserves, and one of which may even show some interest in staying in Autumn…
Displays
Alongside the small exhibits displays in the reserve’s foyer, there’s display space for animal produce. Contributing items will increase your tourism rating, brighten up the place, and please Hal greatly!
Management
In the staff area (fancy way of saying basement!) of the reserve, you’ll find the food stores but also a computer where you can manage everything, see your current animals and ratings, and get extra information on how this all works! This can also be an effective way to boost your animal knowledge, as once an animal joins the reserve, viewing it’s details on the computer will immediately grant you species knowledge if you didn’t already have it!
Extras
There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that changes once the Reserve is open too, such as an additional upgrade, townspeople changing up their routines to visit, and more. Oh, and of course some new animals to be found!
Additional changes
Some extras that I added that have nothing to do with the reserve
- Ruth’s farm store now has an ‘Out of hours crate’, where you can buy feed over the weekend
- Danica’s insect collecting story now doesn’t require you to have level 4 affection with both Henry and Danica
- Henry’s portrait now changes as you progress his story
Bug fixes:
I’ve fixed a whole bunch of issues, with the below being the most notable, or already discussed directly players. Most were already released in small patches throughout January.
- Danica and Henry’s cutscene sequences weren’t always triggering
- Couldn’t remove terrain from the rightmost areas of the farm field
- Quests weren’t always showing in the menu when first loading your save
- Closed loophole where gifting loved and liked items wasn’t always rewarding NPC affection increases
- Fixed a crash issue when exploring the dunes
- Fixed a crash when trying to sell an animal to Ruth without selecting the animal first
- Opening the tool crate was hiding the main GUI, but not always activating the smaller GUI
- Stop Matty leaving the workshop whilst your browsing the upgrades
- Fixed a case where ‘old’ crops were harvestable multiple times a day. Sorry!
I also spent quite a while changing the way text is drawn to hopefully appear clearer on different resolutions, which some players were struggling with. I can’t mark this as complete yet because there are a few places where it can still look stretched, but early players told me its already a huge improvement so I’ll release the progress so far!
Whats next?
I’m going to get back into smaller updates for a while! Obviously any issues that crop up from this update will jump the queue, but my next round of priorities are:
- I have a small list of extra content to add for the reserve (a few scenes showing the townsfolk interacting with tourists!)
- The reserve introduces a new character, so I’m going to continue her story
- Spend some time on Quality of Life features
- Redesign the calendar to look like a calendar
- ‘NPC tracker’ player upgrade
- New building designs!
Finally, you may notice that I’ve added a splash screen with a new company name. I shouldn’t have named the company the same as it’s first project. For any fellow indie devs reading this, learn from my mistake!
As always, let me know your thoughts here, on the forums, or Discord!
Scott