Unity Cloud Meadow [v0.2.4.1] [Team Nimbus]

[guettage]

loosing breeding seasons to this
i just cannot play proprely there is too much bugs

 

[MonsterV]

it's gonna be really interesting how you guys justify these attitudes when we actually fully launch and prove all of these scummy rumors about our integrity false.

Holy shit do you really believe this?
HAHHAHAHAHA!!!!
thats fucking hilarious!!!! The fucking gall for you to throw this bullshit right to our faces, we aren't fucking dumb you know, we havent forgotten how this project started and its previous iteration ended
How fucking dare you after so much money you and your goddamn team made people waste for smoke and mirrors even after i think 7 years
If you think you can come here and spew this revisionist bullshit then you have another thing coming "judge"

 

[mikeqb]

duly noted.


Because we thought we could deliver it all at one time. All of us were veterans of game design to one degree or another, but few of us had direct experience at top level, from the beginning to the end planning or realistic projections.

I'd also argue that the quality of our combat has gone way up recently and we're still in the process of tweaking it.

The combat wasn't ever what ate up most of our budget, it was the animation. Around 50% of our budget at any time is, in some way, devoted to art.

More programmers wouldn't help really, if we got them, it would have resulted in a loss of animation speed and quality more likely than anything else.

We can't pay people less than what they need to survive on while focusing ENTIRELY on our game, and nothing else. People who are concerned about survival will deprioritize anything that does not provide them with the means to survive. That's why paying people a high wage compared to the standards of indie erodev, in our minds, is critical. Games implode more often because someone critical was forced to leave just to put food on the table than because of any other reason after all.

Now, to bring it back around to scope. That's honestly on us. We got over ambitious as fuck, and we decided to commit to it and just muscle through and work steadily on improving quality as we went. It's a strategy that has worked so far. Our next game, whatever it is, is definitely going to be significantly more limited in scope with fewer moving parts though.

Again, remember how I said we realized we only had one shot at it? We figured, and still do figure, that there's only so much of the promised scope we can cut. It's the design spiral and all that. Sunk cost etc. The point being we're already close to the finish line and right now we're entering polish in a big way.

Game dev is ideally a 5 stage process.

1) You make the tools to make the game
2) You add in mechanics
3) You test mechanics until they function properly (this lasts the longest normally)
4) You put meat on the bones
5) You polish everything.

We've been in stage 3 for the longest time and we entirely skipped stage 1, which has prolonged stage 3 enormously.

okay thank you for the thorough response.

 

[ejmuerte]

if this game reaches 10 yrs+ but still in early access form both steam and patreon, i am not suprised.

Judge, people on steam can be very impatiently to wait on whats next content release and fixing bugs those people who will post their bug errors on your forums.

can you really handle the pressure on forums like these? and if people are starting to get mad on your game and started posted on different websites like on 4chan, Reddit or any other forum websites because you better work on those contents and mainly focus on them or else more backlash from your "team hard work effort", even if you have a stable income doesn't mean you can slack off a finished 1 major/minor part work in the game.

and if you think that steam is a safe haven for milking money machine in an early access game because its not, people make reviews on how you update your game content and people will start make suspicions on how is your team doing your "hardwork effort" especially when you have previous controversy.

because you have STEPPED the MOST EXPLOSIVE LANDMINE in the game market because STEAM is a FKING SHITSTORM i mean it creates a lot even MORE controversies, stories from steam internet like the Digital Homicide dev team for example, and not just that more people on steam will warn new users on reviews, if u dare make bot accounts forcibly making positive reviews you'll get backlash, if u dare ban a user for reasonable critic review you'll get backlash and expose.

but it looks like you ready for it.... i hope.... xD

you know...

quote and quote "stories from the internet NEVER forgets because it STAYS on the internet"

EDIT: 1 more thing if you ABANDON/CANCEL your game both patreon and steam, people will never forget on what have you done.

 

[Judge Heath]

We plan on treating steam not as a method of raising revenue, but of raising awareness. If anything steam is going to cause some cannibalization of our patronage to a certain extent.

We also plan on only putting up bug free builds (which we've had a few of those historically speaking), to avoid that issue entirely.

We see steam EA as a method of advertising the existence of the game more than anything else. Monstergirl Island saw an increase of something like 2-500% hits in viewership or something, let alone patronage, when they made a steam port.

I hope that helps explain our reasoning behind going to steam.

 

[dusty stu]

"Talk to Minerva at the port"
I must be a fucking neanderthal, because I have no idea how to do this. Halp!

 

[N3rfus1]

"Talk to Minerva at the port"
I must be a fucking neanderthal, because I have no idea how to do this. Halp!

You know when you begin the game and you talk to Jubelle and that very tall bird lady? Yeah go there and talk to her.

 

[Redanon]

Alright Heath let me ask you a couple of things.

First off why did it take 3 years for you and the team to learn the dungeon wasn't going to work? This is 3 years of wasted effort not to mention you have 0 workable dungeons because of this and a ton of wasted time for the programmers having to fix bugs for something that won't even be usable anymore. This should have been fixed a year ago this is incompetence to the fullest degree especially for a so called group of "veterans".

Second why is S-Purple reworking character art? This is another problem that breeding season had where S would redraw character art and it would need to be re animated several times over. He's wasting time considering he had to hire another artist for tile assests because your group is so far behind. Having over a 100 characters is not a selling point, Undertale and Indivisible both are indie games with less and have better characters.

The game is as someone said before "a mile wide and an inch deep" there is a bunch of features but little depth to them. For starters the RPG style combat lacks any thought its just atk and heal no planning nothing, farming lacks compared to dedicated farming games, breeding is great but you guys still refuse to acknowledge it in game. All these features ended up bloating the game the exact opposite way of BS.

Going into the games writing who wrote this? The writing feels like a nintendo game rated "E" for everyone this is a porn game no matter how you spin it. There are no swears in game the last time i played it which seems weird for something intended for adults. I remember you stating that at some point you were looking to include smut writing, but obviously a lie.

I highly doubt the game is coming out next year especially since you are still so far behind between the remaining dungeons that need to be drawn, the cities still need to be finished, story elements, and game balancing this game is at least 2 years away from being done and im sure you're here to put out fires before they start.

 

[MonsterV]

Alright Heath let me ask you a couple of things.

First off why did it take 3 years for you and the team to learn the dungeon wasn't going to work? This is 3 years of wasted effort not to mention you have 0 workable dungeons because of this and a ton of wasted time for the programmers having to fix bugs for something that won't even be usable anymore. This should have been fixed a year ago this is incompetence to the fullest degree especially for a so called group of "veterans".

Second why is S-Purple reworking character art? This is another problem that breeding season had where S would redraw character art and it would need to be re animated several times over. He's wasting time considering he had to hire another artist for tile assests because your group is so far behind. Having over a 100 characters is not a selling point, Undertale and Indivisible both are indie games with less and have better characters.

The game is as someone said before "a mile wide and an inch deep" there is a bunch of features but little depth to them. For starters the RPG style combat lacks any thought its just atk and heal no planning nothing, farming lacks compared to dedicated farming games, breeding is great but you guys still refuse to acknowledge it in game. All these features ended up bloating the game the exact opposite way of BS.

Going into the games writing who wrote this? The writing feels like a nintendo game rated "E" for everyone this is a porn game no matter how you spin it. There are no swears in game the last time i played it which seems weird for something intended for adults. I remember you stating that at some point you were looking to include smut writing, but obviously a lie.

I highly doubt the game is coming out next year especially since you are still so far behind between the remaining dungeons that need to be drawn, the cities still need to be finished, story elements, and game balancing this game is at least 2 years away from being done and im sure you're here to put out fires before they start.

His intention here is to properly "educate" US because of SO many disinformation going around... meaning debunk easy questions and spun other events as us just not understanding their work and slander/trolling while ignoring the harder questions and direct questioning

 

[Judge Heath]

Alright Heath let me ask you a couple of things.

First off why did it take 3 years for you and the team to learn the dungeon wasn't going to work? This is 3 years of wasted effort not to mention you have 0 workable dungeons because of this and a ton of wasted time for the programmers having to fix bugs for something that won't even be usable anymore. This should have been fixed a year ago this is incompetence to the fullest degree especially for a so called group of "veterans".

Because we've spent less than maybe 100 hours total on dungeons in terms of programming according to Kodex. The vast majority of work in the game has gone into the farming, breeding, traits, inventory, time, pathing, and combat systems. For reference, 166.6666666 paid hours per month (8 hours, every 5 days, making 40 hours a week, and then a little extra to bring the pay cap up to $3000.00 USD per person) per person. Dungeons represent an area that has -always- been very glossed over in terms of work put into them because 90% of the coding work on them has been Kodex making bounding boxes I believe.

Kodex should be making an account soon to answer any programming questions.

Ursa has been the one working on combat, and working on it exclusively.

Second why is S-Purple reworking character art? This is another problem that breeding season had where S would redraw character art and it would need to be re animated several times over. He's wasting time considering he had to hire another artist for tile assests because your group is so far behind. Having over a 100 characters is not a selling point, Undertale and Indivisible both are indie games with less and have better characters.

Actually most of his work is on the tile rework himself, while Atnas is still on standby for assisting with touchups, the primary tile reworks and dungeon redesigns (which should be public on our patreon by now) are all Spurple.

To answer your actual question though. Both me and Dieselbrain sit down with Spurple any time he wants to redesign a character from scratch and have him break down to us what is wrong with it and what has to change. Then we work with him on whether or not it simply needs to be touched up, which has happened with several characters. In many cases what happens is that he uses his unpaid free time to work on them on the side (he tends to work anywhere between 12 and 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, no, nobody on the team is happy with this but short of flying to Israel and babysitting him there's not much we can do), and then he's 90% done he uses a few paid hours to finish it up.

The game is as someone said before "a mile wide and an inch deep" there is a bunch of features but little depth to them. For starters the RPG style combat lacks any thought its just atk and heal no planning nothing, farming lacks compared to dedicated farming games, breeding is great but you guys still refuse to acknowledge it in game. All these features ended up bloating the game the exact opposite way of BS.

Because when you build a game you get the features functioning and THEN add depth. We want to have all the features in before we start really messing around with expanding them and giving them greater depth. If you try to do both then you inevitably end up fucking up hardcore and having twice the number of bugs you have to fix, or obscuring the bugs entirely. So better to build a skeleton THEN lay down the meat and muscle on the bones, rather than trying to do both at once.

Going into the games writing who wrote this? The writing feels like a nintendo game rated "E" for everyone this is a porn game no matter how you spin it. There are no swears in game the last time i played it which seems weird for something intended for adults. I remember you stating that at some point you were looking to include smut writing, but obviously a lie.

Several different people overtime. And 'looking to' does not mean 'absolutely will'. It's still on the agenda but at this rate will probably be added as a free update paradox style along one of the DLCs we'll be making after the full release of the game. There'll be more smutty writing when the actual romance sequences go down obviously, and the intent for what we were 'looking' to add was more like 'The Argonian Maid' only fully explicit, books you could pick up in the game. They still might make it into the final release but it's by no means garunteed, nor has it ever been.

I highly doubt the game is coming out next year especially since you are still so far behind between the remaining dungeons that need to be drawn, the cities still need to be finished, story elements, and game balancing this game is at least 2 years away from being done and im sure you're here to put out fires before they start.

If we are we are. I hope you're wrong but I can't garuntee that you aren't. I've sure as fuck been wrong before in our timeline and goals, I was the one who set our original 2 year dead line and boy howdy did I screw up -that- prediction.

His intention here is to properly "educate" US because of SO many disinformation going around... meaning debunk easy questions and spun other events as us just not understanding their work and slander/trolling while ignoring the harder questions and direct questioning

Did you actually read the post that I cited as getting me to actually subject myself to this? Did you actually read my response to it? It's back on page 91 if you need a refresher on what people were saying about our income levels and patronage. You can be snide all you like but there was some blatant bullshit being spread around here.

But please, ask me the 'hard' questions if you like. So far I've been answering all of the ones thrown at me, and you're welcome to throw more.

 

[KodexKommander]

First off why did it take 3 years for you and the team to learn the dungeon wasn't going to work? This is 3 years of wasted effort not to mention you have 0 workable dungeons because of this and a ton of wasted time for the programmers having to fix bugs for something that won't even be usable anymore. This should have been fixed a year ago this is incompetence to the fullest degree especially for a so called group of "veterans".

I looked through the amount of time that the programmers spent on dungeon code itself. It was about 100 hours, given the 40 hour work week we spent roughly 2 and 1/4 weeks on it.

The game is as someone said before "a mile wide and an inch deep" there is a bunch of features but little depth to them.

If you could provide more feedback on what you think is wrong. I understand that something can "lack depth", but I would like to know what exactly you think lacks depth and any suggestions you may have. I read all feedback and try to apply it as well as having 1000s of hours in farming games to try and improve the aspects of the game I work on.

farming lacks compared to dedicated farming games, breeding is great but you guys still refuse to acknowledge it in game.

Could you elaborate on your thoughts? Knowing what the exactly the issues are help a lot, because I can design a way to improve them, if you want to provide feedback and suggestions of how a mechanic or feature should work like please let us know. I read every single piece of feedback given.

I highly doubt the game is coming out next year especially since you are still so far behind between the remaining dungeons that need to be drawn, the cities still need to be finished, story elements, and game balancing this game is at least 2 years away from being done and im sure you're here to put out fires before they start.

As Heath has said before the features are the bulk of the work, story related content is much easier to add. Given a recent example adding the dialogue to Beck the little guy in the blue liner took roughly 15 minutes. While say the Job Board took 1-2 weeks.

Developers needs to make that game bug free.

We are working on this, I made changes to how we tackle bugs and making a build, currently the in-development build has about a full page of bug fixes and I haven't release a hotfix yet because I want to make sure we test it and make a greater effort to release bug-free builds. I understand how frusterating bugs are, I am mad at myself as much as you are mad at us for having bugs in the game.

Recipes for food shoud have automation when found and cooked.

Cooking will have automation with your monsters being able to cook in future versions of the game.

Exploring dungeons gives to little income

When the new dungeon system come into the game, the balance of them will be better and the content will be more fun.

 

[Phanatic]

If you could provide more feedback on what you think is wrong. I understand that something can "lack depth", but I would like to know what exactly you think lacks depth and any suggestions you may have. I read all feedback and try to apply it as well as having 1000s of hours in farming games to try and improve the aspects of the game I work on.

Could you elaborate on your thoughts? Knowing what the exactly the issues are help a lot, because I can design a way to improve them, if you want to provide feedback and suggestions of how a mechanic or feature should work like please let us know. I read every single piece of feedback given.

TBH there is no sense in "ellaborating", because all of the criticism and ideas end up in the same hole of "Well, to do that we will need $9000 more to be able to handle it".
There have been numeral times when I or other people would suggest something and all we end up was this answer with only amount of money varying from 9 to 20k more pro month.
With this kind of attitude its easier to just say "fuck it, they have their own vision, my voice doesnt even matter so why bother".

Spoiler: Personal opinion. Read on with a grain of salt

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[Judge Heath]

snip

on the points I can address
1) The 9/20k 'dump it in hole' is universally anything requiring us to add more HD sex scenes, which is by far one of the more common requests, and one we simply cannot grant. Raising variant monsters? Now we have to add in 1 variant per monster, two genders per variant (baring Crab and Chimera), and two scenes for each of those (One for Evan, one for Eve). That comes to adding just under 40 HD scenes right out of the gate. I promise you that we do take on suggestions and feedback provided they don't cross that line. We might not implement them, but they don't immediately get tossed out of hand.
2) On the usage of characters. We have a lot of things planned, we're just not implementing them yet because it makes it harder to get through content and test it. They're in the background for the moment, but they've all got various things from quests, to interactions planned.

 

[Redanon]

Okay in response to Heath and Kodex how much time is it going to take for create, implement, and test the remaining dungeons given the game is a year off from the release date?

It's not really necessary to tell us how S purple chooses to use his time working on the project. Well I guess the short of it is if the large amount of characters and their writing suffer it's due to S not listening which again sounds familiar to BS.

You have stated, noted, or at least alluded that these features are finished and now you can add the so called "meat" so when is the depth coming?

For Kodex the characters feel like they were made first without giving them proper roles in combat they lack synergy like in proper RPG's. For instance Ev is essentially useless compared to others their tool kit is awful and needs either an overhaul or a buff. There's no strategy in place, enemies have no weakness (ie pokemon rules for example fire being weak to water and such), they also don't have any difficulty to them other than the more of them there are the more damage you take its boring. There should be enemies that are weak to piercing attacks or those weak to projectiles etc.

Remove the fences on the farm having to go around them every time to farm is annoying, tool tips on farm actions would be great as I don't have any clue what each prompt does, lots of space of attending to every crop is difficult, there are tons of different crops which aren't needed its too much info to absorb and memorize to make for efficient use of the plots. This is again emphasized by the cooking aspect and its recipes it's just not needed. I can't offer much else because the game is not supposed to center around just farming so it can't be a great farming game due to having to revolve around breeding and combat.

For the writing this still doesn't answer my question as to why it isn't more mature, i'm not asking for them to swear like sailors but you have to admit just reading the dialogue alone would make you think of standard rpg games with of course no porn. Also the use of accents is terrible in game, you need to design characters that LOOK like they would talk like that not just make them say it and hope people will figure it out.

So basically if the game gets delayed "oops sorry, but for real we're not milking the project" its easy for you to say since there's no accountability on you guys at all. The answer is simple just stop supporting the game we're not obligated to right? but BS had the same problem nothing was being done and it still got an absurd amount of cash where as cloud meadow slow progress just enough to show people you are working on the game.

Finally how about a road map where the game is headed and when to expect major updates to the game such as story, combat, or new quests. At the very least this gives us proof if you guys keep missing due dates and this helps you keep on track what should be done and by when that way you can show everyone you have the end goal properly planned rather than that vague progress bar that gets filled in god knows when or at all if you can remember to update it.

 

[KodexKommander]

Remove the fences on the farm having to go around them every time to farm is annoying

The Fences' colliders are very over-sized right now and need to be made more precise.

Tool tips on farm actions would be great as I don't have any clue what each prompt does

Added to my task list, and that will be added.

lots of space of attending to every crop is difficult, there are tons of different crops which aren't needed its too much info to absorb and memorize to make for efficient use of the plots.

We are going to be adding a tutorial week and an in-game codex to help you remember these things.

This is again emphasized by the cooking aspect and its recipes it's just not needed.

When you feed your monsters cooked food it raises their stats. Food can be consumed to gain energy. Eating food or giving to companions gives a buff that lasts for the entire day.(Was bugged and not working before, but the next build will have it fixed.)

characters feel like they were made first without giving them proper roles in combat

We are still in the procress of reworking some of the companions which will give them more depth, I believe Yonten has gotten his new kit, some UI might not be fully implmented. Not many enemies are implmented into the game at the moment and the ones who are are not completely done.

There should be enemies that are weak to piercing attacks or those weak to projectiles etc.

Will bring up the discussion to the team and see what we can do about adding more depth to the enemies you fight.

For instance Ev is essentially useless compared to others their tool kit is awful and needs either an overhaul or a buff.

Ev has 3 different abilities they can choose from in each slot.

Finally how about a road map where the game is headed and when to expect major updates to the game such as story

I will bring it up with the team. Currently I am working on a pretty big bug fix build. Story wise you will get soon with the first tutorial week we are adding. Which will have more interactions with various characters.

Okay in response to Heath and Kodex how much time is it going to take for create, implement, and test the remaining dungeons given the game is a year off from the release date?

Given how long it takes to add static locations and code related to them I believe that it wouldn't take that long, and as I get the systems in place after doing the first 3 floors, it should get faster. I presonally do not like given time estimations

You have stated, noted, or at least alluded that these features are finished and now you can add the so called "meat" so when is the depth coming?

The farm refactor is only missing about 6 features left, all the art for them is done. For the depth part what parts of the game do you think are lacking depth(Besides combat, since you covered that one) and why? I know you would perfer an answer rather than question. Like are you asking about how for manumission we will be adding monster want ads or how we will be adding different forms of crafting, palette swaps, or using raw resources gathered in dungeons instead of a cheap amount of korona to build something?

 

[Judge Heath]

Okay in response to Heath and Kodex how much time is it going to take for create, implement, and test the remaining dungeons given the game is a year off from the release date?

It's not really necessary to tell us how S purple chooses to use his time working on the project. Well I guess the short of it is if the large amount of characters and their writing suffer it's due to S not listening which again sounds familiar to BS.

Sorry, then I was probably not making myself clear. It's not a case of Spurple not listening to us, we decide as a team when some things need more stuff done. We decided, as a team, that we'll benefit more from having all the characters with VN images, including generics, than we would from other things. Other things got cut to make room for this (For example we stopped giving each character their own little name plaque, and instead we're using a generic one, which saves a lot of time given how fiddly we had to be with them to make the name plaques legible while looking unique, they often took about half the time it took to make the actual character VN image because we had to go over them over and over again, we also shut down the $100.00 patron tier because we couldn't afford to keep that tier all things considered, and we generally had 4-5 people a month for that, even if most of them never submitted characters to us on the discord).

My point is that what Spurple does on his own, unpaid time, is his business. As a team, we set goals and decisions, and he executes them as his primary priority, but in his free time he unwinds by doing character art, in the same way I play videogames or roleplay with my friends, or read books. That leads to an idea that he's not focusing on the parts of the game that he 'should be focusing on', when his paid hours are absolutely focused on the things we want him to focus on, and a good deal of his unpaid hours.

But if he is putting in more than 40 hours a week, it's not really my place to tell -anyone- on the team, as the production manager, what they put that unpaid labor time into. I can tell them it won't be going into the final game because we lack the support structure, but I can't tell them not to spend their unpaid time however they like. After all, it's not been paid for.

Anyone asking Spurple to do things with his free time above and beyond the 166.666666 hours he gets paid to work a month from our budget would be like me asking Dieselbrain to keep working on HD animations above and beyond those same hours.

How is me telling Spurple "Hey don't do that thing you do to relax because it's game related and you could be doing other game related things that don't relax you but it's unpaid" any different from me say, telling Dieselbrain "Hey, don't go read books or watch netflix, do more animations for us in the hours we're not paying you."

I can't ask you, or anyone, to agree with that stance, but I hope you at least understand it.

You have stated, noted, or at least alluded that these features are finished and now you can add the so called "meat" so when is the depth coming?

When the core systems are completely bug free. Design Work for them is done. Art for them is done. All that's left is coding in many cases.

For the writing this still doesn't answer my question as to why it isn't more mature, i'm not asking for them to swear like sailors but you have to admit just reading the dialogue alone would make you think of standard rpg games with of course no porn. Also the use of accents is terrible in game, you need to design characters that LOOK like they would talk like that not just make them say it and hope people will figure it out.

We'll take this onboard and work on the accents a bit. As to the kind of dialogue, I dunno man. I kinda get where you're coming from but I also think we're walking a fine line between that retro jrpg story vibe and the pornogame vibe and are still trying to find that sweet spot you know? There's a reason why we've been trying to focus on the opening areas a lot.

So basically if the game gets delayed "oops sorry, but for real we're not milking the project" its easy for you to say since there's no accountability on you guys at all. The answer is simple just stop supporting the game we're not obligated to right? but BS had the same problem nothing was being done and it still got an absurd amount of cash where as cloud meadow slow progress just enough to show people you are working on the game.

I mean... you're not wrong. But there's nothing we can do about that except ask folks to take it on faith. There's a reason I don't delete people's criticisms about Breeding Season unless they get personal or are actively harming patron enjoyment on either our twitter, our patreon, or on other social media we control. That's as much of a show of good faith as we can actually do.

Finally how about a road map where the game is headed and when to expect major updates to the game such as story, combat, or new quests. At the very least this gives us proof if you guys keep missing due dates and this helps you keep on track what should be done and by when that way you can show everyone you have the end goal properly planned rather than that vague progress bar that gets filled in god knows when or at all if you can remember to update it.

I can see about us setting up some kind of roadmap trello that covers features and implementation... I'll definitely give this some thought and at the very least we'll float to the team the idea of making public the Early Access Checklist of remaining features we made last week to keep us on target for that.

 

[ejmuerte]

the roadmap trello should have done implemented 3 years ago heath, but why now

 

[Joshua Monroe]

So I havent been paying much attention to this game for the last few months, are non-combat animations still being produced?

 

[Judge Heath]

the roadmap trello should have done implemented 3 years ago heath, but why now

Because the plan changed a lot over time?

So I havent been paying much attention to this game for the last few months, are non-combat animations still being produced?

Yes

 

[fedge3423]

Is this game playable and enjoyable yet? played it a year or so ago and there was pretty much nothing to do at all yet furries throwing their money at it
edit: looks like a no