We were finally able to port our Japanese learning app Ohayou! Beginner’s Japanese to iPhone and iPad. If you’ve been waiting to play it on a non-Nintendo system, wait no more! Click the link below to be taken to the download store link!
All Ohayou! related updates will no longer be applied to the Nintendo Wii U app, but instead to iPhone and all future platforms.
It has been an eventful year for us at Finger Gun Games. We have a second game out that has been proving quite the success, and people are enjoying the experience of learning Japanese with Ohayou! Beginner’s Japanese. Next Friday is the Nintendo Switch event, which will reveal more details about it, and hopefully some news for us smaller devs. The sooner we get access to dev kits, the better. We’ll be porting Stone Shire and Ohayou! to the Switch. I’m very interested in the performance aspects. If its CPU ends up being good enough, we can effectively have the water flowing aspects turned back on. There’s some other optimizations I want to make to expand the world size, too. I’m pretty excited. Once those things are solved for Stone Shire, I can then focus on adding actual challenges to the game, like monsters and survival.
The next thing on our list is to figure out what our next project will be. We’ve been brainstorming a lot of good ideas, so we’re not yet ready to commit to one just yet. When we do, however, we’ll make sure everyone knows.
Today, I introduce you to the Patch Notes for the upcoming patch of the game 1.1. Its release date will be announced soon, which we’re looking for to be early March.
There are now lit and dark areas. Light from the sky does not go into covered areas, creating shadows and thus dark covered areas, like underground. In order to light dark areas, the new Torch item has been added for creation. When walking around with a torch, a small area will be constantly lit around you. You can place the torch on a wall or the ground, and it will light up the surrounding terrain.
Water blocks have been added into the game. Water blocks function similar to how they do in Minecraft. You can pick them up in the new Bottle item, and then deposit them anywhere. They will flow out until a certain point. However, water that falls over cliffs will create waterfalls, increasing their lifetime. To remove it, just use the bottle to pick back up the water block that you placed. This only works on the origin water blocks, not flowing water. You can also create your own sources of water by having two adjacent origin blocks. The center of them will always be filled with a new origin block whenever you empty that single spot. So go out and create your own bodies of water!
For 1.0 save files: you can add water to your world by crafting a Bottle. Water will come automatically filled in it. This only applies to 1.0 save files. Normally, crafting a bottle gives you an empty bottle.
Want to be able to sit in your bed comfortably under the sheets while playing Stone Shire on your GamePad? Maybe some family member or friend is taking up the TV? You can now switch it so that the game plays only on the GamePad by going to the Option menu and switching Wii U GamePad View Mode on and off. The inventory screen will only be brought up now by hitting the Y button or tapping the graphic. Use the Y button to close it back.
You can now craft Wooden, Iron, Gold, or Diamond doors. They can only be set on the ground. To open and close them, target them and click the L or R buttons. Make sure there is not a pickaxe equipped in the appropriate hand, or it’ll attempt to break it down. The materials of the doors behave the same, so a wooden pickaxe will not be able to break down Iron, Gold, or Diamond doors, for example.
All three maps have undergone a new generation revamp. Grasslands gets taller and more trees, with bodies of water possible of being spawned. The tundra has better landscape generation with more trees and also bodies of water. The desert has been given a complete revamp, creating taller and more interesting terrain. Guajillo desert trees have been added, along with the occasional dead tree. Although bodies of water do not spawn in the desert, small water springs can, though they are a lot more scarce than in the Grasslands and Tundra maps.
The pickaxes have been given a visual update to make them more fitting for the general art style of the game.
Cave generation has been improved, leading to more interesting and narrow passageways.
Jumping has been fixed to be smoother and a lot more controllable. Should make jumping on ledges and specific platforms easier now. Moving speed has been slightly increased. You can now look straight up.
You can now custom name your save files, up to 12 characters. When you create a new save file and choose a map, it will ask you for a name, which you will enter using the GamePad keyboard. This only applies to new save files created after Patch 1.1 is applied.
You are now able to use the Pro Controller or the Classic Controller in substitution of the GamePad. Simply plug them in (make sure they occupy the first player slot). The GamePad still must be used for inventory management. Sounds like a good use for the GamePad cradle!
– New music has been added. For some of the tracks, you can listen to them here: Felix Arifin SoundCloud
– View distance has been increased.
– Invert controls have been fixed for North America version. They are already fixed in the Europe release.
– The game will also be released in Germany and Australia during the Europe release.
Progress Report 1.1: The Grasslands map has been updated with grass and bigger trees to supply more wood for our lumberjacks out there.
As for when the update will come, I’m fast working to get it done by Christmas, which would mean its release date will hopefully be in January. Please wait a little bit longer.
In recent news, Minecraft is coming to the Wii U next week. I’m well aware of what it can mean for the game, but in a surprising turn of events, the game only uses the GamePad for Off-TV play and not for inventory management? That was pretty shocking, considering the crafting system would be superb with use of the touch screen interface. That’s why we implemented it in Stone Shire first and foremost. It’s a shame to see that Minecraft didn’t put in such an important feature. I’m sure everyone, including me, are disappointed about it. I enjoy Minecraft, and am glad to see it coming to the system, nevertheless.
I suppose it’s okay on the missed feature. Just another thing to make us distinct from Minecraft.
The next progress report is that of something we weren’t able to get into the game until now: doors. They come in flavors of wood, iron, gold, and diamond.
