[v0.3 log] Eric + Minimap + Devlog

Monster Voting

x1 voting result:

x10 voting result:

Congratulations for the latest poll winner: Fairy!!

Eric

Our general store owner is getting his 3D model done~

Minimap

Town is now much easier to navigate with the minimap~

Full Map is available too :)

Selling Items Directly To Shops

We're removing the shipping bin from the ranch~

In exchange, you can now sell items directly to the shops!

Development Woes

I haven't written much about development issues, but I thought now was a good time to do do as we just crossed a major hurdle in the development of the game. For a while now I have been thinking about redefining the scope of the game; this has led to a huge gameplay change that has reoriented and improved the focus of Mating Season.

Merging Mountain to Town

Previously, many hours were spent trying to make catching in the Mountain work, as well as developing areas in the Mountain. However, this has left precious little time to improve other sections of the game, leaving the Town barren and Character development close to nil.

Without a battle system, walking through a semi-open world just doesn't have much appeal as it's not very challenging. There isn't much "progression" in an open world scenario without offering the player goals, such as defeating the boss of a biome. It's little more than a walking simulator. Furthermore, a catching system isn't very interesting when a player doesn't need to weaken enemies before catching them; at this point, it was feeling better to remove it for now and reintroduce it later. 

For these reasons I ended up merging the Mountain to Town. It cuts the scope of the game in half and has helped to refocus the game on Ranch+Town development, just like our original vision to make a degenerate farming sim. This whole separate open world mountain area ended up being a very long detour :0

Other areas now will be connected directly to the Town instead of the Mountain :)

In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish...

Last month, I got sick from a throat infection. When the throat infection was cured, the infection had already spread to my ears so I got ear infection too. It took me 2 full weeks just to recover from that :|

I'm usually in good health, but even being sick just once really slows down the development process by a lot ;( It's not a good idea to be a solo developer...

Development Team

There's also another problem of being a solo developer: the game has become too big for one person to do it all. So, for the past three months I have been taking on new team members to help to better develop the world of Mating Season. We now have a 3D Artist which will allow us to have far, far better designs for our monsters and characters. This includes better clothes/equipment as well! In addition, two programmers have joined the project and a game designer/QA/tester is also being recruited.

Ideally, I'd like to add one more 3D Artist and an animator, but that's for later when we have more funding. Right now I'm doing a Senior Programmer's job, a writer's job, a game designer's...

The past few months have been a bit slow as we have transitioned to a full-fledged team on account of the time spent recruiting and training new members. However, this is what is best for the health of the game and will help make future versions that much better.

v0.3 will be a HUGE update to the game~ Please stay tuned!

Dear patrons~

Thank you so much for supporting the game so far and please continue to support us in the future!

Near-Future Plans

• Feeding monsters / heart system~ Hand-feed your monsters and earn their love!
• More traits~ We're planning on implementing 30+ traits to start off~
• Monster Kennel: Adopt monsters here!
• NPC Schedule + AI: Town NPCs will be more lively; they'll do activities and walk around!
• Teleport Statues

Please give me recommendations for lewd furniture in comments! What kind of things do you want to see in your home?