State of the Code: April 2023

Next Update News from lead programmer Ursa Senior

Welcome back again farmers, for another round of news coming-up in Cloud Meadow's world

We've expanded our team - two more developers!

• The last couple of months have honestly been hectic, and hopefully this will be remembered as the darkest point in the project's development

  • Between core staff leaving unexpectedly, illness & overwork, we have persevered to bring you the next major update - in full - albeit later than expected

• However the silver lining to lapsing on our short-term goals is that we've achieved the best outcome for mid- and long-term goals!

  • We welcome two new full-time developers to Team Nimbus; Norimoo & Neuropa!

    • Both developers are experienced professional Unity3D/C# game programmers with a solid history and real commercial experience bringing Unity games through to completion

    • We hope you can welcome them on their journey with Team Nimbus and bringing Cloud Meadow to full release by our early 2025 launch target

      • If you missed the launch date memo, please revisit our previous announcement for details

What else are you working on? How about...

Here's what you can expect in the upcoming Monster Migration update:

• New enemy combat units

  • 8 new wild enemy monsters will roam the wild lands outside of town

    • The next major update after Brownie Caravan new enemy Wolf & Holstaur units

• Monster migration system

  • Introducing a bit more variation & replayability to the Savannah - instead of the dungeon 'resetting' unexpectedly, wild enemy monsters will migrate in and out based on a calendar cycle

    • This will allow the new enemy types to be found in the existing dungeons from time to time, also offering different loot drops and a way to gather different essences & eggs

    • Will be used to introduce new enemy monsters when those are integrated later

    • Enables us to extend this system in the future, with more ways to change the dungeon between migration cycles

• Combat ability ranks

  • One of the benefits to leveling-up characters is not just the permanent stats gain, but also the option to rank-up the unit's skills

    • This content will allow the player to max out each ability at 15 ranks for combat NPCs and party Monsters

    • Each rank permanently adds extra power, duration or special extra effects to an ability's behavior

• Dungeon Fast travel

  • No more need to painfully revisit every floor en route to a specific part of the Savannah - we will be adding curios to some dungeon floors that thorough explorers can use as a quick-travel point!

• Overhaul for dungeon visuals

  • Most players have definitely noticed some issues with sprite layering in the dungeons

    • We know - this is something we've known about basically since they were created, but has been a pretty low priority to revise until now

    • Tro's Lab, Savannah F1, F2 & F3 will receive some visual updates to bring them up to standard for our newer dungeon floors

    • These floors and others may revise the level flow to improve navigation

More work behind-the-scenes:

• Integrating HD sex scenes & their questlines

  • Town NPCs Minerva & Kellam have new HD sex scenes, with the animations for these are in various stages of near-completion

    • We're in the process of designing a series of quest objectives leading to matchmaker-style date sequences

    • The goal of these is to enable the player to get to know these characters more, gain their trust, take them out on a date, romance and bed them!

• Way more town NPC dialogue

  • You ever noticed how one of the first things you can do after arriving in Cloverton is talk to almost everyone - once and only once?

    • It's been our biggest shame that the Cloverton area is filled with NPCs who offer almost nothing - so we're going to bring the town to life

    • Town NPCs will have a wealth of dialogue, commenting on everything from the player's storyline progress, seasonal events, weather and more

    • This plus more plans are slated for Katarina station; we aim to turn this walk-through town into a bustling quest hub for dungeoneers in the future. Stay tuned

• Way more emotive dialogue

  • One of the dialogue improvements showcased in the Brownie Caravan update is the addition of player & NPC expressions

    • Characters in dialogue will show joy, fear, sadness, arousal and more

      • Since this is a new feature, we will be adding it to newer dialogue sequences going forward

        • Revising existing dialogue to include these expressions will take a lot longer and is lower-priority task for now

        • We hope this makes reading dialogue more enjoyable for casual players & loremasters alike

If you have any questions we are always readily available in the following places:

Introduce yourself, discuss the game or send bug reports directly under the eyes of developers - in our very own Discord [ https://discord.gg/cloudmeadow ]

Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple ]