Flock Around news & patch notes

Hello Birders! We've been hard at work on a new region map (we'll have more info soon!), but ahead of that we have a new update for you all. By popular demand, the American Woodcock (along with a few other birds) dances its way into Goose Lake!

Patch 1.0.47

NEW BIRDS

• 5 new birds have found their way into Goose Lake!

• We've got: Black Chinned Hummingbird, Golden Eagle, Mourning Dove, Pileated Woodpecker, and the vagrant (but requested so often it would be silly NOT to include...) American Woodcock.

• (spoiler on the last bird in the list): American Woodcock has a special animation for walking along the ground

Utility Upgrades

• There is now a new upgrade category called "Utility"

• There is now a Utility Upgrade that increases your hotbar capacity, up to 9 total slots!

• We also moved the Scrapbook Pages to Utility.

• This means you no longer need to max out Scrapbook Pages to get the Camera Upgrades achievement.

Fixes

• Fixed layering bug in which shiny birds draw in front of thickets

• Fix water shader foam (Thanks Green Fox!).

• Re-enabled occlusion culling, which got disabled by accident. (Should not happen in the future)

• Fixed navigation bug on Steam Deck that caused the settings menu to have a flickering tooltip and be un-navigable.

• Fixed scrolling bug in inventory while using controller

• Fixed texture mapping on some seed bags (icon should be more visible in shop/inventory)

• Fixed occlusion culling bug at the end of the pier in Marsh.

Experimental Changes

• Enabled Physics Interpolation, this should make the game feel smoother at very high framerates

• We no longer use Steam Voice Chat, we now record your mic directly into the game. This SHOULD fix a microphone issues seen by a good chunk of players... hopefully.

• We also have a gain slider now directly in-game to increase your microphone input volume.

Misc Changes

• Increased max framerate to 240 (apparently some monitors go that high!)

• Moved buttons in the settings to the bottom of the panel (ie: Delete Old Photos is no longer at the very top)

• Added a button in settings that behaves like getlogs command to streamline bug reports.

• Added a button in settings that behaves like opensavedata command for the same reason

• "Points of Interest" tab now has an index page.

• Raised the price of Scrapbook Pages Upgrade

Hello Birders! Today we have another patch that includes a variety of quality of life features, requested tweaks, and more bug fixes! We just wanted to give everyone a heads up that things might slow down a bit until mid-June, as now that the game is in a stable state for the vast majoirty of players, the team is going to take some much needed time off. We'll still be monitoring the server and steam discussion forums, but don't expect us to reply with the speed we have been the last few weeks. Patch 1.0.31 Major Feature: Warp Totems!

• Each biome's shop now has a new section. Currently the only item in each section is a Warp Totem that will teleport you to that biome.

Major Feature: Shiny Bell!

• This item can only be bought in the Snow Biome. It's a consumable item that spawns a Shiny Bird instantly! Shiny hunters rejoice!

Fixes

• Pressing the Guidebook key while Identify Birds Upgrade is active will open the page for that bird only while that bird is targeted by the camera (was persisted longer than that)

• Seeds now float in the water

• Water birds no longer get stuck while doing their eating animation

• Camera and Binoculars are no longer affected by your FOV.

• Items no longer make a UI click noise when left clicking.

• Fixed obscure UI bugs in game session window, namely: kicking 2 players consecutively works.

• Fixed bug where "Is There Fall Damage" achievement was obtained by getting snagged in world geometry.

UX Changes

• Cosmetics Menu buttons are no longer animated and instead use static thumbnails. Technically a visual downgrade but should prevent the cosmetics menu from crashing on some computers.

• Seed Bag thumbnails are rotated towards the camera.

• Seed Bag designs are updated to be more visually distinct.

• Beige Seeds are now Blue Seeds (functionality unchanged, just making them easier to tell apart)

• Whistle thumbnails are more centered

• Whistles now show up in the guidebook for each bird page.

• Latin name in the guidebook is now italics (I had to write a shader for this because our font doesn't have an italics variant, I hope you appreciate my hard work)

• Selecting a photo to be swapped out now shows the current photo as the first photo in the camera roll.

• Swapping out a photo will now append that photo to your camera roll.

• Adjusting an audio slider now plays a sound on the relevant audio bus so you can gauge how loud it is.

• Changed the Shiny Spawn Sound... again!

• Adjusted some colors in Develop-o-tron UI

Misc Changes

• Replaced the "Missing Image" that shows up if a photo is not available.

• redevelopallphotos debug command no longer runs the develop cutscene (so you don't need to page through all 1000 photos or whatever)

• Camera shutter sound is now audible to all players (ie: you can now hear when other players are taking a photo)

• Add diagnostic telemetry when Steam fails to initialize and when a loading screen sits for too long.

• You can now access the cosmetics menu from the Outhouse by pressing the interact button.

• Changed ordering of Camera upgrades so Scrapbook Pages are last on the list.

Also! The whole dev team was interviewed on DevDive, where we talk about games that inspire and Flock Around's development cycle.

Hey Birders,

We have fixed the duplicate-host bug that a lot of you have been seeing. We've decided to package the fix with a bunch of other tweaks that we had in the hopper. Hope you enjoy!

1.0.28

Small Features

• Proactive Save Backups: The game now makes rotating backups of your save data, so if you lose power or something while the game is mid-save, you should still have a backup to fallback on.

• Retroactive Save Backups: There is now a debug command redevelopallphotos that will read every photo you've ever taken and instantly runs it through the develop-o-tron. This will recover a good chunk of lost save data, it won't re-buy your upgrades or re-assemble your scrapbook, but it should return your stars and money you've earned.

• Clicking the button to ban a Player now has a confirmation dialogue

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug involving "duplicate hosts"

• Whistles are now affected by "SFX Volume" (was considered a "Bird SFX" before)

UX Changes

• "Highlight Lifers" upgrade works a little differently, any bird with zero photos in your guidebook is considered a Lifer (Lifer Bonus is still issued to the first photo that contains that bird, even if it's in the background)

• "Show Completed Poses" upgrade changes the color of a square if it's 3-starred, just so you can tell at a glance what poses aren't 3-starred.

• Develop-o-tron shows you the previous stars for all poses, not just the pose you're currently looking at.

• Fixed jitter in develop cutscene

• Bird names are now linebroken on dashes and other non-whitespace characters (makes bird names legible in pt-BR on Steam Deck, and probably other languages too)

Hey Birders, we have a new patch that adds a lot of fixes, stability improvements, and a much-needed moderation tool. We're going to be doing more bug-bashing in the near future.

1.0.27

Major Feature: Banning

• You can now "Ban" players from your lobby, preventing them from being able to rejoin.

• When you ban a player, they will not be allowed to join any lobby you host ever again.

• You can unban them manually in the developer console with banlist (to list IDs of all banned players) and unban (using the ID from the first command). I don't expect you'll want to unban people often so this is high friction on purpose.

Level Changes

• Birds should no longer perch on top of bushes that have other bushes stacked on top of them

• There is now a Dock in the marsh

Minor Features

• Lobby Code Only lobbies will now show up in the Join Game menu if your friend is the host.

• Fully replaced the profanity filter.

• Scrapbook upgrades are cheaper and don't scale as dramatically (it should now be easier to get the camera upgrade achievement)

• Birds will sometimes face forward/backwards while eating

• When scoped into the Camera or Binoculars, the zoom buttons are now hinted in the bottom right corner

• You will now be warped to the outhouses when if you fall out of the world.

• There is now a Reduced Motion setting that turns off some UI motion effects. Namely: Develop-O-Tron UI becomes much more static, and shimmer on new photos goes away.

• There is now a Brightness setting that will change the gamma of the 3D graphics (does not affect UI).

Bird Changes

• Added more detail to Crow and Raven wings

Bug Fixes

• Removed stray collider in the middle of the lake

• If you fail to connect to a lobby, you should get sent back to the title screen more often (previously you'd just hang in the loading screen)

• The Waterfall sound is now affected by the SFX Volume slider

Happy Friday birders! We've got a MASSIVE Friday Update for you! Flock Around Version 1.0.21

In this update we've added Public Lobbies, Text Chat, and FIVE NEW BIRDS!!

Major Feature: Public Lobbies

• When you select Join Game you will now see ALL public lobbies.

• Your friends' lobbies will be bubbled to the top and highlighted in green.

• When hosting a lobby, you can select "Lobby Code Only" and it will not show up in the public lobbies list.

Major Feature: Text Chat

• You can now press the "Text Chat" keybind (defaults to T) to start typing a message.

• When certain gameplay events happen (shiny spawns, biome unlocked, player joins/leaves), a message will be logged in the chat.

• We have a basic profanity filter (just because you'll be playing in public lobbies and we wanted something). We're using a list of words we found online so if there's a bad word you think we should add or remove, let us know!

Major Feature: New Birds!

• We have (almost) one bird per biome, we skipped Marsh because Marsh already has more birds than any other biome.

• You will keep any existing achievements you have, but if you don't have them yet, you'll have to play a little more!

Minor Feature: Individual Biome Progression

• When creating a lobby, you can now select biome progression to be "Individual" which means the gates can only be opened when the person with the fewest stars has enough.

• This is intended for players who are already have a few hundred stars want to play with their friends who just started. This way you're not unlocking their biomes "too early" and can give them the chance to experience the progression the way we intended.

• You can still go back to the old progression system, now called "Shared Progression."

Bird Changes

• Made all Hummingbird frame sizing a bit more forgiving.

Level Changes

• Fixed line of sight on various objects

• Plugged a few holes allowing you to escape the map

• Fixed that darn rock embankment collider that people keep snagging on.

Misc

• Adjusted import settings on the Evening Grosbeaks (both male and female), this might fix folks that were seeing them as mangled sprites?

• Updated the GodotSteam plugin, various steam integration should be improved... maybe

• We're now using the Steam Relay system to coordinate multiplayer sessions (this doesn't really mean anything to you haha)

• The host can now kick players out of their session

Bug Fixes

• Unlocking Biomes is now only saved to the host's save data. (previously it depended on who physically opened the gate)

1.0.14

Level Fixes

• Fixed some rock colliders, again (shakes fist!)

• The cave to Snow no longer has holes that peek out into the sky box

• One of the Snow Point of Interests is no longer culled by Detail Distance

• There is no longer a gap between Marsh and the main Lake water.

Birds Changes

• Birds should land on your head more often! As of late they've been doing it basically never.

• Changed alpha blending settings on birds (this will get rid of the black outline that birds have, maybe fixing some graphical bugs on macOS)

• Fixed necks on back-facing poses of Swans, Bufflehead, and Hooded Merganser

Misc

• Adjusted French translation on "Bushtit"

• Fixed some typos

• Identify birds no longer lowers framerate while holding the camera (still might lower framerate while scoped because the game is doing more work to figure out what birds are on screen). This is similar to the binocular update last patch.

• The Remember Scope Level setting is now split in two: Remember Scope Level (Camera) and Remember Scope Level (Binoculars)

Hey Birders, we've got yet another patch that should bring even more stability to your play sessions!

Patch 1.0.13

Bird Changes

• Adjusted Common Grackle sprite.

• Common Loon no longer waddles on the shore, it was pointed out to us that Loons only take off from water and this is easiest way to represent that in our game.

• Graphical adjustments to various bird necks in back-facing poses.

• Adjust center-point for Front/Back facing poses of the Trumpeter and Mute Swans (was lower on the body, now it's more centered near the neck).

• Similar adjustment made to the Canada Goose.

Level Changes

• A LOT of fixes to Goose Lake to prevent players from getting stuck.

• Fixed some wall that were not blocking the camera's line of sight, allowing you to take pictures of a wall and get credit for the bird on the other side.

• Fixed some weird perch points that caused birds to appear to perch in mid-air.

Other Stuff

• When a Shiny spawns you now hear the sound that used to play in the demo (pitched down Kalimba). We'd like to revisit this sound effect, but the common sentiment I saw was "I prefer the old one" so... old one it is! (the shiny shimmer sound is unchanged for the time being though)

• Using the Highlight Birds upgrade no longer affects performance while just holding the binoculars (still may affect performance while scoped, because the highlight is doing a lot of extra work, we're just not wasting that work when you're not even scoped)

• Added some new diagnostic debug commands.

Hello birders!

Thank you so much for making this such an awesome launch. Thank you for your bug reports, steam reviews, and kind words ❤️

Yesterday and this morning we have put out two hotfixes that address the majority of issues that have come up for some players (thankfully these seem to be only affecting a small group of players, but we want to make sure everyone has the best experience possible!)

Flock Around Version 1.0.7 and 1.0.8

• We upgraded our internal engine. This should fix that darn Black Screen bug that some people have been seeing

• Enabled Occlusion Culling on many more surfaces, for some folks this should lead to a dramatic improvement in framerate.

• Reduced the Shiny Alert sound volume (we will look into more changes to this sound in the future)

• Adjusted Shiny spawn rates

Bug Fixes

• Changing render scaling should no longer break... everything (previously: identified incorrect birds in photos, misaligned nameplates, misaligned binocular highlights, probably some other stuff too)

• Moving between biomes no longer flickers you out of reality (aka: moved some occluder boundaries)

• Birds are more likely to perch on your head

• Some terrain adjustments

• Some textures are less crunchy

Please continue to let us know about issues you are experiencing by joining our Discord so we can get more date to diagnose the problems! We'll keep the patches coming, and hopefully some new birds will fly into Goose Lake soon! Also our friend (and the composer for Peglin) Crashtroid made this absolute BANGER to celebrate the game's launch. https://crashtroid.bandcamp.com/track/flock-around-as-if-it-was-peglin-ft-sienna-blumstengel

Hello Birders!

We are thrilled to finally get Flock Around into your hands!

Goose Lake is now yours to explore!

• Unlock 6 biomes

• Find 60 birds

• Upgrade your gear

• Buy whistles and birdseed

• Put on an outfit

• Find points of interest

Gather your friends and go birding together!

In the next few weeks we plan to add:

• More birds

• New items

• Text Chat

• Quest system

• The ability to show photos to friends in game

• Quality of life improvements

Beyond that, we are getting started on the next region map which will have new biomes and many new birds!

Thank you all for supporting Flock Around, we’ll see you at the lake!

Secret Plan Games

Hey birders! We've got another Demo Update. This is a small-ish update that's mostly just refinements and fixes.

Major Features:

• We made a bunch of changes to how ratings work... again.

  • Each bird now has custom tuning that determine it's "size" and "center" and various other parameters. 3 star photos on Canada Goose In Flight and a Soaring Osprey should be more consistent now.

  • Your Guidebook should maintain it's existing ratings.

Minor Features

• 3rd Person Mode is now bound to F5 (no longer needs a console command!), can be rebound in the settings

• "Birds Identifier" Upgrade no longer requires the bird to be alone in frame, it now picks the bird that is biggest and most centered. It's also just more generous in general so you see it activate more often.

• There is now a volume slider for just bird SFX (this includes whistles). So you can mute the whole game except for the birds.

Fixes

• Fixed alignment on a bunch of bird sprites

• Buying all of the Film upgrades no longer makes the upgrade screen un-navigable on controller.

• Reset Keybinds no longer clears all of your keybinds (only affected first-time players).

0.9.2 Patch Notes

Happy Steam Next Fest everyone! We are excited to bring you another demo update!

Major Features

• Added 5 new birds!! Bringing the demo's total to 25!

• Changed the way the Develop-o-tron gives stars. Getting 3 stars is now much harder (but hopefully more satisfying!)

• The old system was designed before we had camera upgrades, now that you can upgrade your zoom, the Develop-o-tron has higher standards.

• We value your feedback, if it's too hard/too easy, let us know!

Minor Features

• The Tutorial Area now looks a lot nicer.

• Added more Shops around the map so they're easier to access.

• Photo Detail Popup (the thing that opens when you click Details on the camera roll) is now animated

Fixes

• If you took a picture of 2+ of the same bird species in one photo, develop-o-tron would always say "1 of same species" instead of "2" or "3" or however many birds there were.

• Bushtit now has 2 separate calls rather than one call with a long gap of silence in between (caused Bushtit Whistle to behave funny)

Hello Birders! We are excited to bring you another update ahead of Steam Next Fest! 0.8.11 Patch Notes Major Features

• The game is now localized to several languages: Spanish, French, German, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese

• We've got a TON of new sounds effects and ambient sounds

  • We're not done yet so a lot of this is still work-in-progress, we just wanted to show you what we have so far.

Minor Features

• There are now moving clouds in the sky

• Your hands no longer bob while jumping

• UI screens should only show the green box if you're using keyboard/controller UI navigation

• Bird scientific name shows up in the guidebook

• Bullock's Oriole is significantly quieter (guess who had their volume cranked up testing sound effects)

• Camera Scope Mode is set to "Toggle" by default on macOS (previous default made it impossible to take pictures on a touchpad)

• Clicking on the focused photo in the Camera Roll now opens the "details" view for that photo (previously closed the popup)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with guidebook not closing properly in multiplayer lobbies

• If a bird is actively leaving the level and you use a whistle, it spawns a new bird of that species (previously you had to wait for it to finish de-spawning)

Major Feature

• Really, there's just one major feature update: The game now has robust Gamepad Support! The game should be fully playable with a gamepad out of the box.

• In service of this, basically every UI screen in the game got some kind of rework or adjustment, too much to list!

• Button glyphs should correspond to the device you're using (eg: PlayStation controllers will see different button glyphs than a Steam Deck)

• You can now bind multiple inputs to the same Action (eg: ⁨Move Forward⁩ can be bound to both ⁨W⁩ and ⁨Left Thumbstick Up⁩).

• You should also be able to seamlessly switch between controller/mouse/keyboard at any time.

Breaking Changes:

• As a consequence of the above work, all of your existing keybinds have been reset. Sorry! It (probably) won't happen again!

• This is a huge sweeping change to the game and it's entirely possible we missed something. Please report bugs if you notice something weird in the UI.

• Also: if you have feedback on the default controller layout, please share your thoughts!

Minor Features & Tweaks

• There is now a setting for Binoculars/Camera to remember your scope setting (it used to not remember, then it always remembered, now it's a setting so everyone can be happy!)

• Paging through the guidebook now uses separate bindings than directional input (this prevents clashes with people using the left thumbstick to navigate around)

• Hover/click sounds have been slightly adjusted. They should also play more consistently (some buttons used to not make a sound when hovered)

• Look Sensitivity coefficient on thumbstick has been ajusted, you may need to adjust your sensitivity slider if you were playing on controller before

Fixes

• Woodpeckers should no longer perch underground to peck unseen tree trunks

• Fixed colliders on some trees, this should prevent "there was an attempt" ratings when a bird is clearly in view.

Hello Birders, We are excited to bring you a new update for the demo that adds a bunch of requested features and fixes! We will continue to improve the demo as we move towards the full release in March. Major Features:

• You now have a Hotbar of items, you start out with a Camera and a pair of Binoculars

• There is now a Supplies Shop next to the first Develop-o-tron

• At the Supplies Shop you can buy Seeds, different birds prefer different seeds, check out the Guidebook to know which bird likes which seeds.

• Also at the Supplies Shop you can buy Whistles to attract birds of specific species.

• You can also upgrade your Equipment (Camera and Binoculars) at the Supplies shop.

Minor Features:

• Camera (and Binoculars) remember their zoom level (if you zoom to 4X, unscope, re-scope, it goes back to 4X instead of 1.5X)

• Some birds (namely: Woodpeckers) will sometimes peck on tree trunks

• Some birds now hop around on the ground

Bug Fixes and Tweaks:

• Fix Line of Sight colliders for a bunch of things (you can no longer take a picture of a rock and get credit for the Trumpeter Swan completely out of view behind it)

• Update Varied Thrush sound (it was placeholder before)

• Shiny chime that emits from Shiny Birds is quieter

• Birds land on your head less often (still fairly often because it's a fun moment but like... less)

• Birds are no longer need to have their feet in frame for the picture to count (this means you now get credit for taking a picture of a bird on your head)

• Hitting Escape on a layered modal popup now closes the top-most layer and not all layers