Avatar Farm Online v1.8 update released!

The latest update for Avatar Farm Online has been approved and is available for download!

It features the following changes and additions:

  • New features
    • Added a total of 6 new crops and 4 new trees
    • Added new themed items for Avatar Tennis
  • Bugfixes:
    • Fixed crash when two players moved a tree or animal at the same time.
    • Fixed country flags being mirrored on one side

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WaaghMan July 22nd, 2013 News 21 Comments

Avatar Farm Online v1.8 submitted for certification

A new update to Avatar Farm Online has been submitted for certification. It features the following improvements:

  • New features
    • Added a total of 6 new crops and 4 new trees
    • Added new themed items for Avatar Tennis
  • Bugfixes:
    • Fixed crash when two players moved a tree or animal at the same time.
    • Fixed country flags being mirrored on one side

 

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WaaghMan July 5th, 2013 News 5 Comments

Avatar Farm Online 1.7 update submitted for certification!

It features the following changes:

  • New features:
    • New kick/ban feature:
      • The host can now kick or ban players from the player list (Back button while playing).
      • Ban list is shared among all your farms.
      • The player list shows also people that recently left the farm, so you can ban them even if they quit right away.
      • There’s a button to lift all bans.
  • Gameplay changes:
    • Buildings can now be moved over space they are currently using.
  • Bugfixes:
    • Fixed player level not getting past 100.
    • Ignored timezone in time calculations. Note: Your farms might experience a time adjustment of a few hours right after the update.

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WaaghMan April 16th, 2013 News Comments Off on Avatar Farm Online 1.7 update submitted for certification!

Dev diary: April 12th

Hey guys, some updates on our current projects, and new screenshots!

We’ve continued development on our next project, codename SoulStone (until we find a better name!)

The goal of this project is to emulate the fun of dungeon exploring board games, such as Heroquest, Descent, etc. to a PC game, focusing on exploration and combat over character customization or complex inventory management that other games usually feature.

All these with nifty 3D graphics, aiming to look like you were playing an actual board game with miniatures!

Think of a mix between Final Fantasy Tactics, FTL and Diablo, and you might be close to what we want to achieve :).

As for our progress so far, we’ve more or less finished the first enemy, a small Ghoul. These ghouls will be equipped with an assorment of weapons, but they will be mostly harmless and easy to kill.


Ghoul2

Ghoul

We’ve also put together a room editor that will help us creating interesting layouts featuring different combat situations, traps, etc. It’s still on an early phase, but here is a sample of what we can do with it:

EditorWIP-20130412-1

EditorWIP-20130412-2

EditorWIP-20130412-3

EditorWIP-20130412-4

As for other projects:

  • We’ve spent some time trying to add Split Screen support to White Noise Online, but sadly we’ve decided to discard it, the feature proved to be way more troubling than expected (specially the sound), and taking too much from the horror experience. We’ll submit an update next week with small bugfixes though. After that, we’ll start work on a new scenario.
  • We’ve received  a few bug reports for Avatar Farm Online, but we’ve not been able to reproduce them yet, so not sure of when we’ll be able to submit an update.

 

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WaaghMan April 12th, 2013 News 6 Comments

Avatar Farm Online v1.6 update released!

A new update is available for Avatar Farm Online. It features the following changes and additions:

  • New features:
    • New exclusive pets, themed on other Milkstone Studios games
    • Added an option in settings to run by default.
    • New item category: Fishing ponds, with 9 different ponds.
    • 2 New ground decorations
  • Gameplay changes:
    • Farm rank is now calculated by adding player level, farm level and wonder levels.
    • Increased player level cap to 200 (Farms still have a level 100 cap)
  • Bugfixes:
    • Fixed minor vote text issues in the leaderboards.

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WaaghMan March 25th, 2013 News 5 Comments

Avatar Farm Online 1.5 update released!

The latest update for Avatar Farm Online, 1.5, has been approved and should be available for download soon. You will be prompted to update next time you start the game.

It features the following changes and additions:

  • New Farm Items
    • White Noise Online exclusive items (monster statue, arcade machine)
    • New wonder (Manor), not as hard to get as the Toy Castle or the Hamburger.
  • New features
    • Now you can like other people’s farms in the pause menu. The number of likes will be shown on the leaderboards and the farm list.
  • Improvements
    • Reduced number of files by 50% approx., the game should take a lot less time to load on some consoles.
    • Improved a bit performance of tree and building shadows
    • Now tractors can’t be refilled until they are at less than 33% capacity. This is done to avoid accidental refills and griefing.
    • Added a new permission level: Plant. This permission level allows to plant crops and plow over gathered land, and spend money in a limited way (feed animals, refill tractors…), but not place trees/buildings/animals. Please recheck your permission settings as they may have changed.
  • Bugfixes
    • Fixed incorrect Lemon tree icon
    • Fixed Critical Error crash when creating a farm
    • Some changes to the P2P score sharing system, trying to get rid of the freeze issue (yet again…)
    • Added extra checking that should remove glitched scores from the leaderboards
    • Cleared all leaderboard data (they will regenerate again after some days).

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WaaghMan March 4th, 2013 News 6 Comments

Dev diary: March 4th

Hey guys, how are you doing? Some time has passed since the last update, so here is what we’re doing lately:

  • We’ve received some feedback since White Noise Online was updated, and we’re currently working on the first update for the game.
    • We’ve fixed the “black screen” issue, but until the update is released, there’s a workaround posted here
    • Also fixed the crash that can occur when unlocking bonus content codes.
    • Added a how to play section with some tips and skill explanations.
    • We’ve been working on 4 new unlockable (by picking up tapes) characters, with new models (not just reskins). Some of them are “very special” characters, some are more common. There’s still some work left to finish them, I’d say we’re around 60% progress.
    • We’ve also started work on a whole new level for the game. Can’t tell for sure if this scenario will be included in the first update, or if it will be postponed for the next one, since we’ll have to thoroughly test it to make sure it’s balanced, etc.
    • If you have any suggestion to get a better game, don’t hesitate to put them in the comments section! 🙂
  • Last week we submitted the V1.5 update for Avatar Farm Online, and the approval process it’s almost finished! I’ll show the full details once it’s approved, but it adds some bugfixes and gameplay improvements, and a new wonder, the Manor.

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WaaghMan March 4th, 2013 News 22 Comments

Dev Diary: February 19th 2013

Hello people, good news today!

  • After spending last week testing and polishing things, we’ve finally submitted White Noise Online for certification! With luck it will be approved soon enough to release it this Friday, but we can’t guarantee it.
  • We’ve received a few reports on some issues for White Noise (the original) and Avatar Farm Online, so we’ll now spend some doing our best to fix them.

 

Here is the final version of the game box art too, check it out!

Boxart

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WaaghMan February 19th, 2013 News 15 Comments

Dev Diary: February 13th 2013

Hello, here’s the update on our current projects:

  • Avatar Farm Online update was released last Friday, and looks like most important issues were fixed with it. Some issues remain though, we’ve been reported the following three:
    • The game can freeze while playing offline or in the main menu, if P2P score sharing is enabled (which is by default). As some of you may know, this is an issue some of our games have been suffering for years, and we’re constantly trying to fix it without having found yet the exact cause or a workaround. We’re still trying to pinpoint it, and mostly sure it’s related with a framework issue, but can’t guarantee anything.
    • We’ve been reported that the game freezes when joining a game having selected “None” in the “My pets” section. We haven’t looked into the issue yet, so can’t tell if it’s for real or not yet.
    • Although some of the incorrect leaderboard data was removed, there are still some incorrect entries in the leaderboard. We’re not yet sure if the issue that generated it is still present, we’ll wait some time and see if more of this data appears or not. Once we’ve made sure that the issue is fixed, we’ll just force a regeneration of the leaderboard to clean it up.
  • We’re currently focused on finishing White Noise Online.
    • We’ve finished almost 100% of the menu interface and gameplay elements, with only minor things remaining. We’re going to do thorough gameplay tests to ensure the game is fun and playable.
    • We’ve found the new maps are currently a bit harder than the original one: They have more surface and it’s harder to determine where you are, and where to go, so we’ll probably have to put additional landmarks and signs to help players to get a small idea of where they are looking at. Disorientation is part of the core gameplay, but not to the point you end up moving in circles all the time.
    • We’ve also finished all the skins for unlockable characters, each one with its own perks and bio. There’s currently a total of 12 characters, but we intend to add more in future updates if  people show interest.

 

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WaaghMan February 13th, 2013 News 10 Comments

Avatar Farm Online v1.45 update released!

The long awaited update to Avatar Farm Online has been released, fixing most bugs reported on the last weeks.

This update has the following changes:

  • Bugfixes:
    • Fixed other players crashing when a player that never entered the “My pets” section joins the game.
    • Fixed heavy fps slowdown when a player with a pet selected joins a game.
    • Fixed incorrect button layout shown in the How to play to sell/recycle items.
    • Fixed rare crash ( ArgumentOutOfRangeException – WorkToolTile )
    • Prevented rare crash ( NullReferenceException – PlayerStartWork ) (couldn’t find the root cause, but it will be ignored).
    • Prevented incorrect scores from showing on the leaderboard (couldn’t find the root cause, but they will be discarded).
    • Ensured data is saved when autosaving (A small pause can be noticed now on certain consoles). Should help with the farm lost issue.
    • Found and prevented a farm list glitch when using more than one storage device or user profiles in the same session.
    • The game performs better when a storage device is pulled while playing.
    • Fixed Warmblood horse harvest money.
  • Gameplay changes:
    • Increased accumulation building (stands, carts…) capacity to 5 times the base amount (instead of 3).
    • Improved accumulation building selection logic (now the building that’s nearest to get a complete batch is selected).
    • The amount of accumulated items in a building is shown even when you can already sell them.

You should be notified next time you start the game, but you can download the game from here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Avatar-Farm-Online/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550c37

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WaaghMan February 9th, 2013 News 3 Comments