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The new $3 tier: Patreon changes
Meowllo! We've implemented the $3 tier that includes all the rewards for $1 and $5 patrons.For now, the mini-devlogs are available for all patrons to view until the end of the month. After that, the old tiers will be deleted and you'll be put onto a "no reward" status.If you were not planning on pledging more than $1, we understand! You can cancel your pledge or keep your $1 with no reward.Keep in mind that if you're just really passionate about giving us $5 instead of $3, yo...
Thank you for your support!
We've written about our feelings about 2020 in a blog post here.But this is an extra special thank you! Patreon has allowed us to have the wiggle room needed for something as unpredictable as game development.The support we have received has allowed us to hire Paige as an additional programmer, and we're looking into more ways to efficiently use our funds to make development go as smoothly and as quickly as possible.If you haven't yet, make sure to link your Discord account to Patreo...
Introducing a new member of our team...thanks to YOU!
Meowllo! We've recently brought on Paige Marincak as an additional programmer to help us wrangle the giant ball of game code that is Snacko.She has been helping us run automated test and fixing pesky bugs. We just had one recently where if you harvest a fully grown corn, it'll leave behind a half-grown corn...that can regrow into another adult corn. Infinite corn...bug or cheat code?Anyways, all of this was only possible thanks to your generous support through Patreon! The monthly funds ...
Mini-Devlog #36: Shh it's a secret
We got a lot of things smoothed out this week for the ranching! Unfortunately, we can't show any of it off yet. It's a secret 🤫Fortunately, you'll be able to learn more about it in May during the Wholesome Direct! Wholesome Games is a community of game lovers and game creators centered around wholesome games.They've decided to host a video showcase May 26 featuring a ton of cool games with some new exclusive content! Snacko will be apart of it, so I hope you can forgive us for...
Mini-Devlog #35: Things are moo-ving along
Do you like my pun? I think I'm funny.Our biggest thing to show off this week is the addition of farm animals! We still have a lot to add, though. We struggled a bit back and forth with whether or not to call the chicken and cows something different. In the end, we settled for not naming them, as we feel like it can be hard to remember unique fantasy names for something with such a distinct real-life parallel, and it's likely that people will just default to calling them chicken and cows...
Mini-Devlog #34: Something's Fishy
It's the first mini-devlog of April! And we've also decided to make all our Patreon posts this month public due to the world, uh burning down. It feels a little weird because I'm writing for a larger audience and it's sort of embarrassing. Hi!Anyways...Behold! New fish! The old fish looked a little scary, and they were also just bad in general. The biggest problem with them were the sizes. The medium sized fish were so big they didn't fit in the lakes! They did, but it looked...
Snack Pack #7
First peek at the fishing mini-game! Featuring the original Place Holder Art™No more getting stuck on bushes. Now you can walk through them, and they'll do a little jiggle.Fish underwater use a unique, flatter mesh to help it show up better in the water. The different sizes of fish also share the same "mystery mesh". You'll have to wait for it to bite to find out what you hooked!
We're suspending physical reward shipments
Meowllo everyone! We hope you're all well. You've probably gotten dozens of emails already about COVID-19, and we'd like to add to that pile.Since letters are passed through many hands and many facilities once it leaves our office, we'd like to minimize the risk to you by suspending physical rewards until further notice. Worried about missing out? We'll send out any missed shipments once business resumes as usual!Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any question...
Changes to merchandise shipping
Meowllo!An unexpected side of moving to another country became shipping costs. Due to the way Canada Post handles their mail and the prices for international (non-US and Canada) mail, it's not sustainable for us to send out monthly merchandise for Guild members.Don't worry! We're not getting rid of merchandise completely!As a compromise, we've decided to send out merchandise in batches once every two months. You will still get monthly rewards, if applicable.❓ What does this mea...
July Devlog
This month's tail-end has been a little quiet...because we're moving! On top of throwing everything we own into a shipping container bound for Canada, we're also transitioning to full-time work on Snacko in August. More time = more Snacko!🍑 Interior BuildingLast month, we showed off some interior building features like dyes. We finished that up the first week of July with fancy effects, cursor cues, and placing objects on other objects.There are no restrictions on items that can b...
Dev Tutorial: Wet sandy shores
Here's a super easy material in Unreal you can use for sandy shores! The concept of it can be broken down easily, since it's just math, so there's a bunch of different ways you can implement this for different purposes.There are fancier variations of this shader for sure, but keeping in line with Snacko's art, most of our shaders are quite simple and easy to recreate.1. OverviewThis is it! No spaghetti code here, just three chunks of nodes. I'm using world aligned texture for...
June Devlog
If you've seen our roadmap, you know we were supposed to work on some existing systems like mining and fishing. Somehow along the way, we decided to completely rework the building system! The good news is, it was absolutely worth pushing everything back for it. Before I get ahead of myself and forget about everything else we did this month, let's start from the very beginning.🍑 New resource collection nodesLast month, you've seen the mining nodes - now are the trees! Different tre...
June & July's Merchandise
We're giving both Snackie Heroes and Ambassadors to receive any merchandise they would like! To do this without going broke, here's how this is going to work: Heroes ($10) may choose to just receive stickers as normal; you may request a specific design or set in the additional information section in the Google Forms linked below Heroes ($10) may choose to opt out of receiving merchandise this month, and receive an item from the store (shipping included!). This means you will not receive ...
May Devlog
Although this month has been a busy one outside of Snacko, we had the ball rolling on a couple of new things!🍑 Additional WeatherLast month we introduced the beginning of some new environmental changes, like snow! This month, we added fall sets of foliage and visual effects and rain.Although cats aren't especially fond of getting wet, the bright side is at least now you don't have to water all your crops!Fall is a big change from spring and summer. Gone are the lush green trees and gr...
April Devlog
I feel like every month I get ready to write one of these, it takes me a while to go through memory lane and figure what happened last month, and what happened this month. They sort of blend together after awhile...April felt a little short - we spent a lot of time developing and designing the meat of the game that will sit on the skeleton that we've created so far. To make sure we eliminate the risk of restarting parts of our game as much as possible, we want to be comfortable with our idea...
March Devlog
It's been a hectic month! So hectic, I forgot what we did this month. During busy times, it's easy to feel like one week was one month, so looking back on the GIFs created within the past 30 days is always a nice surprise.March was mostly focused on polish, getting the game to a state where we could package it up for Windows, and distribute it for other people to play. Of course, it wasn't a full experience - there were no tutorials, story, or much NPC interaction asides from some me...
New Patreon tier & rewards
Keeping true to my word on our $150 goal (wow), I've upgraded Mikan's Magic Shop to handle discount codes for patrons! Here's a list of changes, in easy-to-read bullet point format: Snackie Rookies are now Snackie Recruits Snackie Scouts are now Snackie Explorers Snackie Heroes will receive smaller merch samples, such as stickers, pins, etc. This is a change I've made because I plan on releasing things such as mugs and shirts, and we will go broke if I give those out for free >: ...
Snacko builds available through Discord!
Hurrah! Snackie Heroes can now visit the snackie secret shop to snag themselves the latest build - the current build is slightly different from the one last week, but no big changes. In the future, we'll release patch notes for every iteration of alpha build we put up for Snackie Heroes to play!We'll be removing the download through itch.io to prevent buyers who are not aware that these are early test versions, and do not give you access to the full game.
Post GDC announcements
Wew, it's been a long week! We've been at the Game Developer's Conference this week, and were able to meet plenty of lovely people as well as have attendees play our game! Lots has happened for Snacko in the past couple of days, and there's much more work ahead to slough through. What are we going to do next, and how is this going to affect Patrons?✈️ We're movingYup. I'm graduating (finally) and moving back to Vancouver, so there's going to be a big chunk in May ...
Snacko's GDC preview trailer!
I don't really want to call it a trailer, because it's not really a trailer?Enjoy this short video clip of music with game footage and text.
Dev Thoughts: Starting from Scratch
As college kicked into full force for me in fall 2018, development slowed down. We did spend a lot of our free time planning and talking about the game, but not a lot of time actually executing anything. At the end of the summer, I felt like something was off. I didn't like the direction my art, or the game, was heading in. It looked...okay? But it didn't make any sense. So we had a meeting. A lot of them.📌 Issue #1: It was scatteredWhen we started this project in May, we were honestl...
Programming Tutorial: Poll
recursive will be writing a tutorial or article about his process working on snacko. This will be early access to Patrons, but eventually published for all to read on our blog. What are you interested in learning about?Reminder that snacko is made in Unreal Engine with C++
Stickers have arrived!
Thanks to the generous patrons (that's you!!) we were able to get TWO designs printed! Snackie Heroes will be receiving theirs in the mail at the mercy of the speed of snail mail.We'll also be at the Game Developer's Conference in March, so if you're in the San Francisco bay area or attending the event yourself, find us on the expo floor and pick any of these cuddle snaggies to take home!
January Devlog: Birth of the Town II
Ah, the sequel of Birth of the Town released in July 2018. After our overhaul, I couldn't use 99% of the assets I've already made. So, I had a good cry, and shelved them away. But, TA-DA! It has risen from the flames.What's that? It looks empty and sad? ...You're right. All the houses in there are duplicated, since I only have 3 distinct houses right now: the player house, Mikan's house, and the first NPC's house. The idea of the town is that it's abandoned with only ...
Project Management: a breakdown of our workflow
“I’ve got a great idea for a game! Now what?”One of the earliest hurdles that come up during creative work is the step that bridges “I know what I want” and “now I’ll start doing it”. Especially with something as large as games, there’s just too much to do. What seems like simple tasks can be endlessly broken down and micromanaged as tiny tasks that will stretch infinitely into the horizon.Every individual and team has their own ways of tackling project paralysis. These can ran...
