Hello Birders!
Today we have another patch that includes a variety of quality of life features, requested tweaks, and more bug fixes! We just wanted to give everyone a heads up that things might slow down a bit until mid-June, as now that the game is in a stable state for the vast majoirty of players, the team is going to take some much needed time off. We'll still be monitoring the server and steam discussion forums, but don't expect us to reply with the speed we have been the last few weeks.
Patch 1.0.31
Major Feature: Warp Totems!
Each biome's shop now has a new section. Currently the only item in each section is a Warp Totem that will teleport you to that biome.
Major Feature: Shiny Bell!
This item can only be bought in the Snow Biome. It's a consumable item that spawns a Shiny Bird instantly! Shiny hunters rejoice!
Fixes
Pressing the Guidebook key while Identify Birds Upgrade is active will open the page for that bird only while that bird is targeted by the camera (was persisted longer than that)
Seeds now float in the water
Water birds no longer get stuck while doing their eating animation
Camera and Binoculars are no longer affected by your FOV.
Items no longer make a UI click noise when left clicking.
Fixed obscure UI bugs in game session window, namely: kicking 2 players consecutively works.
Fixed bug where "Is There Fall Damage" achievement was obtained by getting snagged in world geometry.
UX Changes
Cosmetics Menu buttons are no longer animated and instead use static thumbnails. Technically a visual downgrade but should prevent the cosmetics menu from crashing on some computers.
Seed Bag thumbnails are rotated towards the camera.
Seed Bag designs are updated to be more visually distinct.
Beige Seeds are now Blue Seeds (functionality unchanged, just making them easier to tell apart)
Whistle thumbnails are more centered
Whistles now show up in the guidebook for each bird page.
Latin name in the guidebook is now italics (I had to write a shader for this because our font doesn't have an italics variant, I hope you appreciate my hard work)
Selecting a photo to be swapped out now shows the current photo as the first photo in the camera roll.
Swapping out a photo will now append that photo to your camera roll.
Adjusting an audio slider now plays a sound on the relevant audio bus so you can gauge how loud it is.
Changed the Shiny Spawn Sound... again!
Adjusted some colors in Develop-o-tron UI
Misc Changes
Replaced the "Missing Image" that shows up if a photo is not available.
redevelopallphotos debug command no longer runs the develop cutscene (so you don't need to page through all 1000 photos or whatever)
Camera shutter sound is now audible to all players (ie: you can now hear when other players are taking a photo)
Add diagnostic telemetry when Steam fails to initialize and when a loading screen sits for too long.
You can now access the cosmetics menu from the Outhouse by pressing the interact button.
Changed ordering of Camera upgrades so Scrapbook Pages are last on the list.
Also! The whole dev team was interviewed on DevDive, where we talk about games that inspire and Flock Around's development cycle.