June Development Update
June has been a busy month with development starting on some of the last remaining areas of gameplay that will add a substantial amount of content to Nestables.
Development Progress
Breeding Mechanics and Tea
Quite a while ago, we covered the basics of the breeding Mechanics in Nestables. If you need a refresher, check out our Medium article on it:
Getting the breeding mechanics right for Nestables is really critical. The next beta will have a significant focus on this so that we get the balance right. We would rather have too few Nestables than too many Nestables. At this stage, not much has changed in the breeding process from our original plan.
Players will be able to breed two Nestables together to create a baby Nestable that reflects visual characteristics and traits from their parents. Each Nestable can breed a maximum of three times each. They can breed with the same partner for those three times.
Successful breeding will depend upon achieving several different factors:
- Happiness of the Cube — Happiness levels must be above 90 for 24 hours
- Size of the Nest — Minimum Nest size requirement to house more than one Cube based on the number of base blocks / sections researched and unlocked
- Two week cool down between breeding
- Other factors — One of which we can announce today!
This month, we can announce, an additional gameplay element for breeding. With the introduction of the AI system for each Nestable, we are able to put in place a unique aspect to the courting system. While the AI won’t give each Nestable a different personality at the moment (as we think this could have some pretty large impacts in other areas such as resale value) they will have individual tastes for tea.
Tea might seem like an odd thing for Nestables to like but we think it is a perfect fit for the game! This will be an entirely area of gameplay where users will be able to make their own tea. To court another Nestable, you must work out what type of tea the other Nestable likes to drink.
There will be a variety of different teas implemented for the beta including:
- Green Tea
- Black Tea
- White Tea
- Herbal Tea — Use of plants such as chamomile, peppermint, rooibos, lavender, ginger etc
You will prepare the tea at the tea station, where you will use the base tea leaves and perform a variety of different activities to alter the tea leaf as required. The order you do this and the time you take will determine the type of tea you end up with.
You will be able to dry, steam and oxidise the tea leaves. For actions like drying, you will need to stop the process when desired. This is what the markers in the UI are for below.
You will then give these teas to the other Nestable to try. If the Nestable likes the tea gifted to it, then the courting process has begun!
With this in mind, development work began this month on the breeding system. The results are very cute!
This UI will be updated at a later date to something much prettier! This UI does give you an idea of the details that will be presented to the user when they want to breed two Nestables.
So far, trait and characteristic mixing is implemented with Nestables now growing from about 50% to full size over their childhood period (eyes and ears are slightly out of proportion compared to adults).
Currently, baby behavior is the same as grown Nestables. Next month, this will change as we limit what baby Nestables can do and they become much more demanding!
One question that has been frequently asked is how it will be decided what traits the baby Nestable ends up having.
Determining the traits needs to have a random aspect to it yet still be reliable enough to give players some idea of what they will get. To do this, we are taking the principles of 6 sided dice to calculate chance.
For the first trait, we roll one die for both Nestables. The Nestable with the higher roll passes on it’s trait to the baby Nestable. The same process is repeated for the second trait. If the rolls are equal they are repeated until one is greater than the other. After the traits are decided, another roll is made for each trait to determine if the trait level remains the same, is increased or is decreased. A 1 rolled decreases the trait strength by 1, 2–5 has no effect, 6 increases the trait strength by 1.
We have also decided to do something a little cooler for our Founder’s Nestables that have the Productivity Master trait. If both parents have this special trait and each roll a perfect 6, the trait will be passed onto the baby Nestable.
ONE QUESTION for the community. If two Nestables breed, (one Nestable belongs to you and another with a friend) which Nest does the baby Nestable belong to? Let us know in the comments below or on our Telegram!
Interior System
Potentially one of the more exciting areas of gameplay that we haven’t talked about is the interior system. One of the main aims of Nestables has always been to allow for the maximum amount of customisation and personalisation for your Nest and Nestable. We can’t wait to see what people will create with the building editor, now you will also be able to design the interior. Players will allocate a purpose for each building:
- Home (One Nestable per home)
- Nursery (For looking after the baby Nestables)
- Workshop (For crafting items like furniture)
- Decoration
For this development update, we will take a look at the interior system for homes. Each home will start with one room. Players will be able to decorate and customise many different aspects of the rooms appearance.
Users will be able to increase the number of rooms inside their home, expanding them how they like. Adding additional rooms will cost money, with the cost based on the size of the room and how many you have.
There are a variety of different furniture sets which we have already made for the game. These include:
- Country
- Medieval
- A basic default theme (to be used for the tutorials)
- Bohemian
- Modern
What type of furniture and decorations would you like to see? We want to know!
We hope that this will be a really engagement gameplay element. When visiting other player’s Nests, you will be able to go in and check out their homes, so make sure they look tidy!
