Farm Town - New Release -- August 17th, 2010

[There are new updates and fixes for this release, see below]

Hey There,

We just released a new version of the game with the following features:

1. 15 new levels: About 50 new items in the Decoration and Buildings categories, all in coins.

2. Keep selected tool when changing farms: For most tools now, when you are using them and you change farms, the same tool will remain active, this will often save you having to move the tools between farms.

3. Sorting in store: There is a new sorting icon on the store window (Top Right) that will allow you to sort the items by Level, Name, Cost and Harvest Time.

4. New facility views: The Juice Factory, Sandwich Restaurant and Oil Factory now have non-cartonish views as well. As usual, you can use the 'Switch View' menu item on them to try the alternative view.

5. Flower Harvester Tool (FC): Allows you to harvest up to 32 flowers at a time, it works very similar to the treeshaker tool.

6. Big Bulldozer Tool (Coins): Allows you to delete 4 harvested or gone to waste fields at a time.

7. Manure Spreader (FC): Allows you to fertilize your farms. All fertilized crops (not trees) will produce 2 boxes instead of 1 when harvested. The main idea is that you use the manure from your pigs as an organic fertilizer for your farms to produce more crops.

-Manure Collection Process:
You need to have a Pigsty (now on the facility section on the Store) to collect the manure from your pigs. The collection process works the same as if you were harvesting animals, the difference is that in this case, the manure from the pigs is stored in your Manure Spreader tool. Each Pig produce 1 Manure Unit every 12 hours.

-Fertilization Process:
You need 50 manure units to fertilize a farm. To fertilize a farm, click on the Manure Spreader tool and select 'Fertilize Farm'. Once a farm is fertilized it will remain fertilized for the next 3 days.

All crops still growing (not ready to harvest) will be fertilized. All new crops planted while the farm is still fertilized will be fertilized also.

Once a crop is fertilized, it will produce 2 boxes instead of 1 when harvested, whether the farm is fertilized or not at the time of harvesting. If you hire others to harvest, you will get 2 Large boxes instead of one. Employees will get twice the amount of coins, and 2 boxes as well every time they receive an additional bonus box when harvesting.

-Additional Notes:
When you buy the Manure Spreader tool, it will come with 250 manure units inside for you to start fertilizing right away!

You can move the Manure Spreader to other farms and it will not lose the manure inside

To check how much time of fertilization is left on a farm or how much manure you have stored just hover the mouse over the Manure Spreader. Notice that each farm is fertilized separately so the fertilization intervals will most likely be different for each farm, however, your manure storage is the actual Manure Spreader, so you can collect manure on all farms but it all gets stored on the same Manure Spreader.

All fertilized crops will have a highlight around them, if you don't like that effect or how that looks, we will add an option soon on the Options window, so you can disable it

Updates and Fixes for this release:

- When a user is hired to plow, the red/green cursor is not shown anymore, a regular yellow squared highlight around the harvested/wasted field is shown instead. Soon we will do something similar for the users working on their own farms.

- The intensity of the highlight shown on the fertilized crops has been reduced a bit. If it's still too much for your eyes, you now have the option of remove it completely on the 'Options' window by clicking the tool icon on the top right, and un-checking the 'Highlight Fertilized Crops' option.

- The unlocked level numbers are now shown correctly on the store for items on levels > 100

- The 'Keep Active Tool' functionality now only works when you change between your own farms. So if you are working for others and go back to your farm, your tool goes back to the walking tool (Green Walking Man)

Still pending:

When you hire others and your crops are fertilized, sometime the flash interface is not updated appropiately with the right amout of boxes, your are not losing them, if you refresh they will be there, but the game is not getting updated accurately 100%, we are still researching this.

Enjoy!

Thanks

--Raul