New Release -- December 10th, 2015

[Raul]

See Known Issues, More Information and Post Release Updates at the end of this post. Last updates released on December 28th, 3:30PM.

Hi There,

We just released a new version of the game with the following new features and bug fixes: EN ESPAÑOL AQUI

1. 28 Holiday Decorations: Released a week ago, 5 as gifts, 14 at top of the Holiday category in the store, 6 at the bottom and 4 Winter items close to the bottom in the Winter category.

2. 25 New Levels: 27 new items in the Buildings, Other, Motion, Farming, Furniture and Fun categories in the Store.

3. Last 4 expansions for Farm 28: See prices below:

34x34 - 14500000000 coins or 30 FarmCash
36x36 - 15000000000 coins or 30 FarmCash
38x38 - 15500000000 coins or 30 FarmCash
40x40 - 16000000000 coins or 30 FarmCash

4. Improvements to the 'Show Work Info' in the 'Show Names' window: The available work shown will now depend on the currently selected tool. For example if you had the Plower selected when you clicked the Show Names->Show Work Info, then the numbers shown will be the amount of fields ready to plow on each farm, if you have the Seeder selected, the info shown will be the amount of plow fields on each farm, if you have the Harvest-Plant combine, the info shown will be the amount of fields ready to harvest, ready to plow and plow fields combined. Same for the fish, tree and flower tools.

If you did not have any tool selected, then the behavior will be the same as before, it will be a summary of all the work available on each of your farms.

The Refresh Time for the Show Work Info button has also been decreased from 20 mins to 10 mins, the same Refresh Time that was used in the Market Window.

5. 16 x 16 Crop Tools: Harvester, Plower and Harvest-Plow Combine are now available in 16 x 16 mode, this will allow you to perform farming operations over 256 fields at a time.

The Seeder 16 x 16 and the Harvest-Plant Combine 16 x 16 will be released on the next release.

6. Performance Optimizations and Improvements released today:

- When you are fishing for others as an employee, if you accidentally click on the grass the avatar tele-transport itself instead of walk.
- When posting Facilities to your friends, if you did that from certain facilities like the Courthouse Supplies Factory, Courthouse and a few others, then your friends were experiencing an Expired message when trying to work your facilities.
- More optimizations for the Seeder and Harvest-Plant combine, especially when working overloaded farms.
- When using the "Flower Sprinkler" (brown) or the "Water Can" there is no more dark square to highlight the flowers needing watering, this was making the game too slow, instead, the "Water Can" now works with the Eye, for example if the Eye is closed everything that's not an unwatered flower is hidden.
- Removed the "Saving..." message that was appearing randomly when fishing for others.
- Some products in the help windows were shown as if they can be stocked in the facilities in which they are made.

7. Performance Optimizations and Improvements released during the past 3 weeks:

- Farm Loading optimizations, farms should in general load up to 25% faster. This is assuming that most of your game items are cached by your browser. A note on this, clearing your browser cache should be done only when necessary, for example, when Farmtown doesn't load correctly or extreme cases like that, usually it is not needed, and the downside is that every time you clear your browser cache you have to reload all the items to your computer which takes time, especially on slower connections, and every time you visit farms with items that are not cached you will have to wait extra time. Clearing memcache is fine and doesn't have any downsides, memcache is cleared automatically after 3 hours of inactivity.

- Better progress indicators, you will now see a more uniform progress indicator as your items are being downloaded and as your farm is being rendered for display.
- When planting using the Combine Harvest-Plant, you can change seeds by opening the store directly, you do not need to perform the extra step of re-selecting your combine again on your toolbox.
- Flags for Bahamas, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are now showing correctly.
- There is now one more line in the chat history, for a total of 6 lines.
- When working as a Super Neighbour, we removed the "Would you like to go home?" confirmation message when you click on the Home icon.
- When clicking the blue disk on top to save changes, we replaced the confirmation message by a non intrusive fading message.
- Buying trees from the store now works like buying flowers, you can keep buying the same tree repeatedly without re-opening the store or using the Buy Multiple option in the item menu
- Removed the "Freeze/Unfreeze while Farming" avatar menu option, it's now defaulted to 'Freeze while Farming' to all players to increase performance.
- More speed optimizations for crop tools, transplanter and multiplanter.
- We removed the Black "Loading ..." box that appeared when you start harvesting as an employee. Please report if you are still seeing this box.

- More consistency and optimizations for farming tools:
a) Remove progress bars from seeder, combines and plower
b) When plowing new fields on the grass there is no transparency and the real fields appears quickly
c) The operation of the harvester now works the same as the combines, plower and seeder, in the way that your mouse don't have to be on top of a ready to harvest item to harvest the next set of items
d) The operation of the chainsaw now works the same as the tree shaker and the flower harvester in the way that your mouse don't have to be on top of a ready to chop item to chop the next set of items
e) More optimizations when using the combines

- BugFix: When using the Multiplanters sometimes the recently planted items disappeared and appeared randomly.
- BugFix: When using the manure spreaders and sprinklers, sometimes an "[object]" message was shown instead of the correct message.
- BugFix: On full screen, all tool tips in main panel and tool box were showing in the wrong position.
- BugFix: When sending gifts to friends, an arrow was showing on top of the selected gifts even if it was not an animal.
- BugFix: Unable to unload a train due to no fuel available.
- BugFix: When using the sprinklers manually going farm to farm, sometimes the sprinkler got stuck and you were not able to change tools.
- BugFix: When selecting a gift to send to your friends, you can now use the "Proceed to Send" button at the bottom and the next screen will automatically scroll to the top.
- BugFix: When working as a Super Neighbour with the "design/allow selling with my coins" permission granted, the buy one/multiple options are now available again.
- BugFix: Clicking on the "Multi" button in Item Storage/Giftbox sometimes triggered the Single Use instead of the Multiplanter functionality.
- BugFix: When visiting strangers, the size of their farms were incorrect.

8. Korean Restaurant (FC): Produces Korean Food.

Kimchi
Ginseng Chicken Soup
Seafood Panckake
Bulgogi
Pork Belly Wrap
Bibimbap
Soft Tofu Stew
Korean Pancake

New products in other facilities: Sesame Oil in the Oil Factory.

9. Holiday Decors Factory (Coins): Produces holiday decorations.

Copper Flower Vase
Joy Decor
Love Decor
Santa Sock
Tree Decor
Tree Ornaments
Table Decor
Glass Bowl Decor

The Small Pine Tree is now a harvestable tree and produce Pine Cones.

10. Pediatric Clinic (FC): Provides Children Medical Care Services and can be stocked with products from the Pediatric Supplies Factory.

11. Holiday Shop (Coins): Provides Holiday Decorations Retail Services and can be stocked with products from the Holiday Decors Factory.

Enjoy!

--Raul

Note: For those who didn't get the update, on November 17th we increased the output of the Long Fish Train Car by 130% (more than double) and the output of the Long Animal Products Train Car by 27%.

Post-Release Updates - December 11th, 2:30AM

- Released the first 3 facilities.

Post-Release Updates - December 11th, 7:00PM

- When using the water can, if the Eye is closed the watered flowers will now disappear.
- When watering your neighbour flowers, the Eye is now appearing next to the Home icon.

Post-Release Updates - December 22nd, 6:00PM

These are all updates that are part of the next release:

- When working as an employee or Super neighbour your avatar will not move anymore as you farm, same as when you are working solo, however other users in the farm will see your avatar moving, so they have a better idea of which section of the farm you are working on.
- Before this release we had 6 zoom levels, from 1 (fully zommed out) to 6 (fully zoomed in). We just added another zoom level between 1 and 2 to make the jump less abrupt.
- After using the irrigator/water sprinkler we now show the feedback message as a floating text instead of the usual message box, so no extra click is required.
- After using the manure spreader we now show the feedback message as a floating text instead of the usual message box, so no extra click is required. However this change only applies to those who have the green manure spreader.
- When you mouse over your water items you will now see the Growth time as well even if you don't have any fishing tool selected.
- When fishing with the pole or boat, the small water circle animation or the net is now shown right where you clicked, not an inch below.
- Super neighbours and regular players invited to design together can now freeze and unfreeze flowers.
- Less bandwidth consumed while farming, which could have a positive impact on performance, specially for users with slower internet connections.
BugFix: There was an issue with the Eye that after using the water can, sprinkler and other tools, the worked items were not coming back to a visible state even after releasing the tool.
BugFix: Fixed the old bug of watering flowers and then not been able to harvest them right away unless the farm was reloaded.
BugFix: When finishing working a farm, after changing farms the XP and coins suddenly changed.
BugFix: Super neighbours with all permissions allowed for designing can't use the green hand when the employer has the green hand but the Super neighbour does not own one.

Post-Release Updates - December 23rd, 3:00AM

- Released the Korean Restaurant.

Post-Release Updates - December 28th, 3:30PM

BugFix: Farm Stats timeout issues
BugFix: The single tool Axe was consuming fuel
BugFix: Ordering by Level in the neighbour bar was not working for users with very high XP