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Old Oct 30 2020, 10:16 PM
Raul Raul is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 09 2009
Posts: 192
Default New Release -- October 30th, 2020

See Known Issues, More Information and Post Release Updates at the end of this post. Last update released on November 11th, 2:40AM.

Hi There,

We just released a new update with the following features and bug fixes: En Espaņol AQUI

1. 12 Thanksgiving decorations: 8 at the top of the Thanksgiving category at the store and 4 at the bottom.

2. Last 5 expansions for Farm 42:

Upgrade Farm 42x42 - 50500000000 or 40 FarmCash
Upgrade Farm 44x44 - 51000000000 or 40 FarmCash
Upgrade Farm 46x46 - 51500000000 or 40 FarmCash
Upgrade Farm 48x48 - 52000000000 or 40 FarmCash
Upgrade Farm 50x50 - 52500000000 or 40 FarmCash

3. Other improvements released in the past 2 weeks:

a) Hide / Show all user interface elements while farming. After selecting a farming tool in full screen mode, there will be another dark brown eye icon on the bottom right to hide all game interface elements and provide you with more space when farming, this will include the main panel and all top icons. To show them back just click on the dark brown eye icon again.

b) Implemented changes to be in compliance with a new Facebook policy to access profile pictures

c) Coop quests now shows facebook name instead of avatar name. Ships in my seaport now always shows facebook names correctly even when those people are not your neighbours.

4. Turbo Metal Mill (FC): This is a new facility that produces 3 times more metal sheets than the current Metal Mill. This works similar to the Red Windmill and the Stone Windmill facilities, the Stone Windmill has 3 times more output than the Red Windmill.

Note: This facility and the regular Metal Mill can be placed on the same farm and both be producing at the same time.

5. Flavored Popcorn Factory (FC): Produces Flavored Popcorn.

Classic Popcorn
Caramel Popcorn
White Cheddar Popcorn
Kettle Corn
Zebra Popcorn
Peanut Butter Caramel Popcorn
Cinnamon Sugar Popcorn
Spicy Cheddar Popcorn

New Products from other Facilities: Lecithin in the Food Ingredients Factory and White Chocolate in the Chocolate Factory.

6. Swiss Restaurant (Coins): Produces Swiss Food.

Potato Pancakes
Raclette Cheese
Cheese Fondue
Muesli
Zurich Sliced Veal
Swiss Alpine Macaroni
Saffron Risotto
Carac Tart

7. Gourmet Popcorn Shop (FC): Provides Gourmet Popcorn Retail Services and can be stocked with products from the Flavored Popcorn Factory.

8. Taste of Switzerland (Coins): Provides Switzerland Cultural Exchange and Food Tasting Services and can be stocked with products from the Swiss Restaurant.

9. Helping the Migration Team: Continued helping the migration team in the conversion of the game from Flash to HTML5, in the next few days we will post more details on the status of the migration.

Enjoy!

--Raul

Post Release Updates - October 31st, 2:10PM

- BugFix: The Turbo Metal Mill was not workable by others.

Post Release Updates - October 31st, 3:45PM

- Migration Update:

About 2 years ago, July 2017, the migration team started the conversion of the game from Flash to HTML5. The project was by all standards fairly big, we had about 150,000 lines of flash code and more than 6,000 graphics that had to be converted to the new platform.

Our first approach was a manual approach and we spent several months on it but later realized that we will never going to catch up on time, especially since the main team had to continue releasing new features.

The second approach, which is what we are currently doing, was to create the tools to automate the migration process as much as possible. We finished those tools a few months ago and the initial tests were really encouraging.

The conversion of all graphic items to the new format went according to plan, just minor issues that were fixed relatively quickly.

However, the conversion of the flash code to the new programming language was not as smooth, there were lot of areas where the automatic translation did not work out of the box, and that was fine, it was expected in a big project like this, what we did not expect was that fixing some of those areas would actually be time consuming and error prone, it required more profound changes to implement on the new programming language what we had done in flash.

At this point, we are expecting to release the HTML5 version of the game by the end of the year, however, it will be a restricted version, it should include at least all farming tools and main facility functionality, hopefully more than that but it's difficult to know at this point exactly which functionality will be included. However, we think we have cleared the major hurdles already and we are moving fast, we should have the bulk of the functionality of the game migrated and tested in 1 or 2 months after the first version.

We are also planning by the end of November to give access to moderators and other long time players to test the restricted version of the game.

The good news is that the game will definitely be a better game, the graphics in the farm will look better and the farm will display and operate faster. Also, moving forward we are planning to enable access to the game from browsers in tablets as well.

We will provide another update in the next release.

Post Release Updates - November 11th, 2:40AM

- Released 12 Thanksgiving decorations.

Known Issues:

- None.

Last edited by Raul; Nov 11 2020 at 01:50 AM.