December 2024 Update – Making a New Friend

Hello! We're just about in 2025 here, which means these posts have been happening regularly for over a year now. Sometime soon I would like to reflect back on everything that's been added and changed about the game in that time, but for now: here's one last update for 2024.

As a reminder, subscribing as a premium patron will not charge you until the release of the first playable milestone build, which is still at least a few months out. An announcement will be made when a release date has been selected.

Self Talk

There's an interesting little oversight about the way the game handles dialogue: it needs two ponies to be able to make talking happen. Or, it did, anyway – thanks to a new script I've added in, characters (most notably the player) can actually talk to themselves; useful to bring direction or flavor into the world without breaking immersion with a menu or game hint!

Fixed Map Art

In the pantheon of bugs I've encountered, this one really stood out as a more perplexing one: when the art you drew on a map was saved, and the loaded again, it was often re-drawn significantly... well, crappier than its original iteration. Almost like the computer was redrawing it from a foggy memory.

This has been fixed so that all of your drawings are perfectly re-created each time the game loads the art, which is good for more than one reason...

The First Village Quest

I really want players to feel like they arrive in their first village with absolutely nothing, which means even the map needs to be procured on site. It's not far at all from the train you'll first get off of, and hopefully the little animation I've made of it flapping in the wind will draw new players' eyes to it (though you're not forced to pick it up). But the map isn't actually blank, when you first grab it:

In trying to stick with the theme of avoiding clunky UI and immersion-breaking quest markers, I've had to train this map to draw its own art. Essentially, upon grabbing the map for the first time a new player will gain permanent access to it as a tool, but it will also quickly mark an important location in the village for them to seek out. And crucially, that marker isn't just an image or something: it's literally drawn on, just as you the player can draw on it. You can even erase it! Though I – don't recommend doing that before discovering the pony that it points to...

As previously discussed, villages are also randomly generated, which means the location of this marker has to be randomly located – meaning other than physically drawing it onto a new map, the game also needs to place it in the correct acre in each village, which was another "fun" challenge.

But who drew the mark, and is waiting for you in the village? Well, if you'd like that to remain a mystery, I'd recommend scrolling back up from here (though I will say to not get your hopes up of it being a pony you'll recognize, as they were created exclusively for this early build of the game).

Meeting Somepony New

So I did briefly mention last month that I didn't want to launch Milestone Build 1 without something for the player to do (besides explore), which is where our new friend comes into play:

Say hello to Violet Spade, an eager explorer of a pony who will help you learn your way around the village, and perhaps even point you in the direction of some valuables. She's a little weird (maybe a given for the fact that she's digging through the soil of a lost settlement for fun), but kindhearted all the same, and will be happy to befriend any similarly early-arriving ponies to the village.

She's go a lot of stuff dangling off of her too, which of course meant that I needed to clean up and flesh out a whole host of animations! This is good future-proofing though, as it applies to all ponies, including if the player chooses to dress themselves up.

I don't want to just dump the script I've written for Violet so far, but suffice it to say, she'll have plenty of opinions on the village and its history.

Miscellaneous

Some other smaller developments include pony wandering tech, which Violet Spade uses to look a little more full of life than say, Cooper at the train station (he's old, he has an excuse to be lounging around). Smarter and more flexible pony memories are also in (grabbing the map from the station creates a memory of that in the player, which through the absence of, Violet Spade will know to give you a new map if you somehow find her without one in the first place), and of course as ever, bug fixes. Like ponies sometimes continuing to stare directly at you when you finish talking to them (creepy). I mentioned moving last month, and also in my infinite wisdom during that process I forgot to bring the hard drive with my custom brushes I use for the game's art, so I was tasked with recreating that as well.

Coming Up...

The world is there, the tech is there, we're just setting up simple gameplay loops now for the player to (hopefully) enjoy. Once that's finished, maybe throw in some cosmetic rewards to chase, final bug fixes, bada bing, bada boom: Milestone Build 1. WAY later than I expected, but... for sure still on its way.

Beyond that, I hope you've had a nice holiday break, a merry Christmas, and are looking forward to the new year! As mentioned, I do want to post like a 1 year reflection on all development, but if that isn't around in the next few days, I'll see you in 2025!