Do You Have A Receipt?

[Please note: this is an Andy's Imagination post, purely my own thoughts and will likely not appear in game]

Let's be honest, sometimes we get given things that are... just not us.

Argyll socks. A home knitted jumper with something on the front that could either be a rearing horse, a velociraptor or a cast member of Saw V. The Greatest Hits of Barry Manilow played on nose flute and bagpipe.

We smile, we nod and then we send a neutral family member on a mission to secretly find out where they bought it so we can trade it off in the morning.

Well, that's what were finding a lot in the game right now, up to date players who try to help neighbours who are struggling end up with items they don't need, Players who are struggling or trying to complete old missions find themselves getting gifts they can't use until some time in the future.

Here's some Lavender, batteries not included and the stores don't open for a week.

So, what can be done? Step up one of the most maligned characters on the homestead...

Yes, Jacques, dear Jacques. Trading post manager, priest and all round pain in the posterior.

So, my little French Canadian friend, I think it's time for you to work...

Here's the premise, we get a mission thread, could be to do with gifting and trading, might not be but it does involve Jacques.

At the end of that, just as recent mission threads have given us Hank, Ted and Doc having actions, this one will use and abuse Jacques and his trading post. Once the missions are complete, he gains a new menu item "Gift Exchange".

This takes you to his gift exchange screen where the magic happens. With the first option selected, every gift you receive and send back to neighbours works as normal. If a neighbour sends you Baby Carrots and you click to receive and send it back, you get Baby Carrots, and they get Baby Carrots.

But, what if you DON'T want them? Well, then you pick one of the other options on the gift exchange screen. Options that are picked by the game looking through your open missions and seeing what you need. So if you've got a muddy animal on your stead, it'll show Lavender  if you've got the recent Companions build stage open that requires a drop from Yellow Essence Labs, they'll be there too.

So, say you want that elusive Lavender  you simply tick that option and go collect your gifts from the envelope as usual, everything your neighbours have sent, you send back one of those, as normal.

BUT, then, when you close the envelope, up pops Jacques to tell you everything you accepted has now been exchanged for Lavender!

So your neighbours get what they want, you get what you want, Zynga get the same amount of social clicks on gifting, everyone goes home happy!

And because you can switch the system on and off at will as many times as you want if there's stuff in your envelope you DO want, you can set it to Off, and you can even change it during collecting so half your gifts could be Lavender and half could be something else.

Then finally, gifting might become 100% useful for everyone, and not a race to see who can request what they need first...

Building on Buildings...

[Please note: this is an Andy's Imagination post, purely my own thoughts and will likely not appear in game]

Recently space has become a hot topic. We know soon an Animal Hospital Upgrade is coming so those with various special animals coming out their ears will find more space, and also at least one land expansion.

But what about building storage?

Personally I think one of my highlights in 2012 was the invention of the Building Storage Building, or "Streets"  to give them their in house name.

Not only did they open up space but they were all wonderfully designed, I still think the Ranch is one of my favourite buildings for it's look and just the frontiersyness of it, if I had a Frontier town, the Ranch might be the one building I looked at first and thought... yup, I want THAT!

Still love it!

But, since they were brought out, we've seen more buildings that could, perhaps should go inside them. So this is my idea... We have a new mission thread for building storage, but NOT a new building.

Let's be honest, the ones we've got are nice enough but sooner or later we'll end up with something that doesn't work as well, as a design on a Frontier town.

So, instead of having a five mission thread with a building attached, make it a SIX mission thread with SIX buildings attached...

Each mission is the thread is do a couple homestead tasks... and expand on one of our building storage buildings.

The Ranch to now hold our Prize Animal buildings, Show Pen and the Combine Harvester. The Civic Centre to hold our Fire Station and Wagon. The Holiday Hall, expanded to hold the Snowball Fort. The Works to hold our Glassworks and Leatherworks. The Stately Estate can take the Quilting Station and Hanks Climbing Wall. The Emporium expanded to hold the Barter Office and the Bakery...

...I'm sure there's more we could slot in various places, that's just off the top of my head. The only thing I know is tricky is buildings with characters attached like the Shaman Lodge, the Barbecue or the Habitat.

So each building just gets a single new 6 item build, an upgrade to it's current level, and that adds more buildings in the same way as each previous upgrade during each buildings' own thread opened up more space...

So for example... Mission One:

Feed 50 non-rideable horses
Collect 10 Horsefeed (drops from Oats)
Expand the Ranch (a single build stage)

Yes, it would be a big mission thread, but if that was the ONLY thing we had that week, I think the rewards outweigh the length, just like the expansion missions are hard, but worth it for the extra land.

From the other angle Zynga still get what they need, requests, interaction and social stuff.

Course, I don't know how easy it would be to do... but hey, that's why it's my imagination, I can do ANYTHING in my imagination... ;) *flies off like Superman to save a damsel in distress from 42 small but extremely annoying dragons of every colour but the ONE she wants...*

If You Build it...

...They will get rather excited.

[Please note: this is an Andy's Imagination post, purely my own thoughts and will likely not appear in game]

Folks, it's been a while since I got my imagination out in public, so I decided it would be an interesting way to start the year.

So, with that in mind, along with an idea I had earlier, I thought I would introduce you to the Red Dog Construction Company!

This band of intrepid jobbing builders are renowned among the Frontier and so in demand their services only come up now and again, and their list of employment conditions are around a mile long...

First up they'd insist on a palatial and well constructed Red Dog Construction Company office... because they like to make other people do some building before they do.

This will be a long building to make but, like the Expansion missions which are long but rewarding, this one might just perk you up.

So, once the building is up and the long mission thread is done, what happens next?

Well, you hire the builders of course...

This is my thoughts on the age old arguments of buildings taking too long and there being far more coins than anyone knows what to do with, eventually you can only melt down so much for statues of Fanny.

See, the Red Dog Construction Company bring their own resources, and they work QUICK... but, on the other hand, they're also expensive, but all they care about is cold hard coins.

So, once the RDCC Office is up, you click it, select the option to "build..." and get this screen...

Yes, it's a list of all your unfinished buildings and a COIN price to finish the current stage of the build. The price could be linked to how much you have left to get , so the more items you've collected yourself, the cheaper the purchase price.

Once you've bought your upgrade the RDCC are FAST and will get the building done instantly... although choose wisely, you only get one each time...

As I said earlier, the RDCC are much in demand and once they've finished a building project they have to travel on so will be unavailable for a while, but never fear, in somewhere between a fortnight and a month they'll be back and ready to go again!

On the player side we get to clear some old buildings where people don't need the stuff any more, and dump some coinage.

On Zynga's side they get happier players with one less thing to worry about, and by setting reasonable prices and with a longish timer it shouldn't impact the gameplay that much or adversely affect what Z get from it, remember we can't wipe out requesting and the other social aspects, we need to compromise...

I guess imagining fictional building companies and dog logos in day-glo waistcoats might be abnormal... it's just what the game does to you...

Clickety, Click...

[Please note: this is an Andy's Imagination post, purely my own thoughts and will likely not appear in game]

OK, let's start by stating two pretty certain facts.

1) We could do with more clicks.

2) It doesn't look like we'll simply be given them.

So, what could be done? Get my imagination out for a compromise of course! I've thought of three ways we could see this clicks issue change that are... Zynga style ideas.

The Building Version

I know, I know. We've got a Pavlovian reaction to the word building these days, be it for space reasons (although it's rare to find a really tight space issue these days of storage and expansions) or just for building issues.

But let's be sensible, not only do we know it's a favourite of Zynga, it's also not so bad if we're building it with a view to a good outcome, like we did with the Irrigation Station. A convoluted build, sure, but with the excellent end product of something that makes a difference to our gameplay.

One building, and when completed we get 50 extra clicks per day.

I think we'd ALL agree a manual build would be far better than a Horseshoe Purchase, yes?

The Boost Version

Option two is inspired by the Clock Tower, a building with a good boost that affects gameplay.

As we don't use the Bulletin Board for the Favours any more, it can be re-purposed. After all, people post wants and needs on a bulletin board, not just requests for help...

From the Board we craft a boost that, once a day, resets our clicks. Used your 50? Just click the Board, select "Click Reset" and bam, 50 more clicks to use on the wall.

Make the boost craftable from something on the homestead and a request, either DR or wall, and we're paying 2/3 clicks or sends to get 50, pay small, get big, and with the chance to stock up.

The Mission Version

The simplest of all options. Clicks and requests are basically mail, right? So, we have a mission thread where we use new technology, including the railroad, to streamline the Frontier Mail Service.

It's a five mission thread with each mission giving us an extra 10 clicks, so we get more and more help towards the missions the further we go through them and feel we're really achieving something.

A couple missions based around the Pony Express that are a mix of things including a nice amount of Homestead... say:

Mission: We need to make sure those horses for the Pony Express are the best we have!

Tend 30 Standard Adult Horses on your Homestead to find the fastest for the Express
Collect 4 Blacksmith Bonuses to get Perfect Horseshoes
Ask your friends for 10 Freshest Feed to give your horses energy!

Then a couple missions based around the Railroad to get mail cars up and running, maybe a couple of those mailbag poles that they used to use that trains picked up as they drove through...

And bam, at the end of the mission thread, 50 more clicks, 10 per mission.

I don't doubt they'd need to be tricky missions, but c'mon... wouldn't you be happy with some tricky missions if it was giving extra clicks?

---

Bottom Line, we need clicks, so maybe it's time to tell them we'd happily work for them instead of just being given them, after all, it's got to be a better reward than some more coins and a decoration, right?

Bess' Romances... where next?

We can be sure that whatever happens with Bess' uncertain love life it'll involve one thing...

Missions.

So, I decided to get my crystal balls out and do some prognostication at just what we might end up expecting in another of my Andy's Imagination series.

I'll take a look at the options she has, and try to imagine just what might come of each one...

The interest: Ahh, Ted. The newest option in the field and right now an odds-on favourite, if only because he's the latest trouser in the press. With a mutual love of animals and the wild there's certainly common ground there.

The missions: Surely the barn is no longer a good living place if they do decide to start dating and tie the knot, although for people who don't wan't ore birth missions 1'000 of each species of animal in your bedroom is likely (in fact, hopefully) a reliable method of contraception. Surely a log cabin would fit in with Ted's wild man lifestyle and environmental outlook.

Let's just hope Bess' doesn't have a trophy room of all the animals she blasted on the Pioneer Trail...

So, a new house, and of course, the first all-organic, environmentally friendly wedding.

Odds: 1/4

The interest: Good old Flintlock, the man of mystery. WHERE did he go when he left Bess holding the Horse? WHY did we build him an armoured car covered in spikes and weapons? WHAT happened to his wonky eye? WHO grooms his eyebrows? We may never know...

The missions: Flintlock returns like an Officer and a Gentleman, all white uniform and rousing soft rock guitar. Picking up Bess he carries her from the barn and onto the back of a horse where they ride off into the sunset... We just have to make sure it all happens right, so imagine a lot of crafting and various sneaky plans to keep all other love interests out the way.

Alternatively Flintlock reveals he's actually Albert Bickerthwaite, a shoe salesman from Boston and the entire thing has been an elaborate psychosis ruse to win the feet heart of the cowgirl he fell in love with when cobbling her boots. He returns the socks he stole during the fitting, although we do have a delicate mission to clean them thoroughly first.

Odds: 3/1

The interest: Hank, the man who refuses to let any pre-makeover pictures to ever see the light of day. He impresses single women with his ready grin, his DIY skills and a discount on all cucumbers.

The missions: Well, c'mon... first thing up is the breakup and divorce thread. With Fanny getting the house, the money, the General Store, custody of the children and the moral high ground this set of missions will be something of a doozy. Hank's only hope is to either build his own house or forever move to Beaver Valley with Bess... so it looks like we'll be building him a house.

An interesting graphical sidenote of this will be the new slap animation any time the Hank and Fanny NPCs are within 100 pixels of each other.

Odds: 10/1

The interest: The Forbidden Fanny, love of her life, torn from her by a closed community who refused to allow their free love, driving her to fake a series of "love" interests to try and conform to their narrow-minded "normality".

The missions: Fanny comes clean with Hank that their marriage is a sham, she was just scared of losing her job in the School, he's really just a brother to her. After a handful of missions Hank forgives her and they part amicably, Hank moves back into the general store and Bess moves into the house with Fanny. Hank surprises everyone by admitting his late "wife" before he travelled to our homestead was a transvestite called Geoff, was last seen in La Cage Au Folles nightclub with Jacques.

The final mission will involve having to get a second bridal dress form... If you thought a wedding with ONE Bridezilla was hard, you just wait.

Odds: 10/1

The interest: What can we say? Sometimes love isn't just two people...

The missions: Dealing with the twins is becoming just too much for the couple and we're sick of babysitting the little tykes, so Fanny and Hank hire Bess to be a live in Nanny. We spend 4 building stages moving Bess into the house and building her a Nanny-Flat, although after a few weeks of being in close confines the three of them come to an "arrangement" and Bess' nanny flat never seems to be very lived in...

The final set of missions involve hiring help for the General Store as Hank is finding himself feeling increasingly worn out these days.

Odds: 20/1

The interest: Bess gets completely sick of the whole romance thing and being the local talent for a string of new characters. She leaves the homestead and returns 2 months later as a nun, working in the chapel.

The missions: This will be a multi-thread set of missions, the first thread will be to help Bess find God (preferably not with a solvable Mae-style clue, "Request burning bushes from friends") and leave the homestead. 

Thread two is sending her various parcels and letters to keep her spirits up in the nunnery. 

Thread three is welcoming her back to the homestead and getting her all set up in the Chapel as a fully fledged member of the Holy Mothers of the Frontier Order. (Note, keep "collect 10 Chastity Belts" artwork family friendly, no razor edged blades or spikes.)

As an effect of these missions we will also need new talent and be introduced to Humble Bob's Niece, Not So Humble Tallulah.

Odds: 50/1

The interest: What? It's the wild west...

The missions: ███████████████  Censored ████████████████

Odds: 200/1

Bartering In A Parallel Universe

[Please note: this is an Andy's Imagination post, purely my own thoughts and will likely not appear in game]

It's been a couple months since my imagination got an airing... well, for gaming things anyway, but that's what happens when you find Movies4Men on your satellite TV... but that's off track, my gaming imagination hasn't had much of a run out but Zynga have done their best to change that by giving us something that automatically made my head go.

They gave us the Barter Depot. A building who's name is, at best, misleading and at worst an attempt to pretend we're not crafting, we're bartering. (No, we're crafting...)

I'm fairly sure most people will have been like me, when I saw the email title I got excited thinking of the possibilities, then I opened it and read what it was all about... and realised this wasn't bartering.

So... it got me thinking. If I had designed it, what would it have been? Thus here we are, the first Andy's Imagination post based on something already in game.

I think the first thing we can all stand up and agree here is, we're not bartering. We're crafting stuff. So how do we MAKE it bartering?

Simple, we do what this game was designed to do, we get social. We don't barter with some faceless entity, we barter by trading with our NEIGHBOURS.

Everyone remember this screen where we see wishlists? (A feature no-one gets around to using any more because nothing we need is giftable)

Well, we adapt it and move it into the game.

Say for example my Great Aunt Bathsheba wants a Spanish Coin, the rare item from the Debris Collection. She's given a few choices over what she can Barter for it (to stop one sided barter based cheating), say another rare collection item like a Bear Claw, 10 Ribbons or 10 Dinners (just as an example).

Well, Great Aunt Bathsheba has finished all the School Lessons so decides to trade away 10 Ribbons for the coin and, depending on what could be coded, either sends her Barter out to be viewed in her neighbours Barter Depots or it appears when neighbours visit her.

Then, when I, being the loving and doting great nephew that I am, either check my Barter Depot or visits her homestead I see this:

Ten Ribbons for one Spanish Coin... OK, I think, I'm a bit of a thicko and still have school lessons to go, but I do have a bundle of Spanish Coins, so I accept the Barter and click the button. I get credited 10 ribbons from Great Aunt Bathsheba's inventory, she gets credited a Spanish Coin from mine.

If you wanted to be REALLY cool you could set it that when Great Aunt Bathsheba logs in there's an arrow over her Barter Depot, and when she clicks that a Train rolls into the station and "delivers" her goods! But that might be asking a little much...

Obviously there would have to be some things set as limits.

Firstly what you can barter needs to have set rates so folks don't cheat the game trading 100 Spanish coins for a manure collection...

Secondly there would need to be a limit on the amount you could do, I reckon setting 3-5 Barters at a time would be pretty fair.

Finally it would have to only be collectible ONCE, so that Great Aunt Bathsheba doesn't end up losing 100 ribbons for 10 Spanish coins.

All of that I think is fair and possibly codeable... we could have brags to pop on our wall to say we've Bartered, we could have brags to pop on our wall to say we'd put up a barter, we could have badges for "Barter so and so amount of times" that could be posted on the wall, Zynga would get their marketing posts...

So there we go. That is how I would have designed a Barter building, not as another Crafting Workshop with a different name, but a real chance to go back to the Frontier and Barter with our neighbours.

Gaming on a Diet

[Please note: this is an Andy's Imagination post, purely my own thoughts and will likely not appear in game]

Folks, my brain has been on the work again... This is another one of those posts where I show unbelievable arrogance and suggest I might know better than the company behind some of the world's most popular games... go figure. (Hey, might as well live up the stereotype some folks have of me!)

Today's idea isn't a building, or a feature or a little tweak, it's actually something a little more excessive.

Today's idea is Frontierville on a diet, it is...

Yep, Lite.

We know that Frontierville/Pioneer Trail is an intensive game these days. Many issues can be traced back to PC performance, especially memory.

So why not have another option for those with slower PCs or who want a quick fix in a half hour lunch break?

The differences between the main game and the Lite one are fairly significant but mostly cosmetic... The two modes will use the SAME server so your info will be the same across both, you can play one then go play the other and find your game exactly how you left it...

1) Expansions - Lite has no expansions, no Trail, no Hollow, no Ghost Town. It is PURELY for playing the homestead. That's a price folks have to pay and they can still play them via the main game. All extraneous code is hoovered out.

2) Animations - All assets are simple, unanimated image files, no animal movement, no little building tweaks. Instead of larger Flash files everything is just a small, web-optimised PNG image file. This speeds loading time and play time.

3) Avatars - OK, this one is a doozy but bear with me. We lose the people. No spouse, no kids, no NPCs so Granny, Doc, Bess etc all go away. If you need to talk to them you click their relevant building.

And... here's where the mind is bent, no avatar. You click, something gets done, it's that simple. The avatar is graphical bling. Neighbours could be a simple icon you click and the work gets done, the family could be choosable options so you can still do spouse/child specific mission requirements... but no more avatars on screen in Lite.

4) Doobers - The Doobers (the items that pop when you tend/harvest etc) all go out the window. They're a good graphical show off feature but honestly, who is THAT bothered? When it works fine, folks ignore it. When it works BADLY... then it becomes a source of huge frustration as it slows the game down and you're chased around the screen by doobers as you try to get anything done.

In Lite stuff just gets credited, it just happens.

5) Popups - OK, I've gone into great length about this before, and frankly we ALL know how helpful this would be. No Jack telling us what we already know, no popup asking us to send largely pointless gifts to friends, no automatic giftbox... when we load up it just goes into game and we get to play the game without interruption, and much smoother.

6) Menus - Menus will be simplified, Collections are especially optimised with smaller images, possibly even NO images. Again, doesn't look as pretty but some folks would rather drive an old Ford that does 40 MPH instead of a Ferrari that's limited to 5 MPH.

Mission menu, gifting menu, building menus, all cropped down and simplified with smaller (and uglier, yes) graphics to speed loading.

Obviously this is going to be a balance, both for us and Zynga. Lite will be limited and less fun/less aesthetic. We get a quicker game but at a cost of limited gameplay, features and attractiveness.

Most people, if possible, would still play the bigger better XL version, but this Lite version would make it simpler to just nip in, tend some animals, make a request or two, plant a couple crops and be out again. Quick, simple and smooth.

Right now folks find it hard to play because the game is trying to be so good.

Perhaps it's time to give another possibility, to admit that this won't look so pretty, that it won't be as complete... but what it WILL be is working for those on slow internet connections or with less powerful computers.

No point having a pretty game if folks don't get to play it.

A Bit Of A Tree-t

[Please note: this is an Andy's Imagination post, purely my own thoughts and will likely not appear in game, lol]

I'll get something out the way first... This involves a building. I know, I know, I hate them too but if it's a building for a reason not just a building for the sake of it, I can live with it... and hopefully this idea is something folks might like.

I'm suggesting building an Arborist's Workshop, a tree surgeon.

We know that Pioneer times had arborists, after all we've already met Johnny Appleseed in the Frontier Heroes missions, so why not give one a home on your frontier and get some advantages from it?

This is my thinking of it, I'd be interested in other folks impressions.

Once the Arborist's Workshop is completed and a certain amount of missions finished the workshop begins to work for lumber trees the same as the Irrigation Station does for crops. The skill of the Arborist allows the lumber trees on your homestead to grow 20% faster, bringing them up to full size quicker.

The Workshop also has a daily bonus that drops Spring Water to use on the limited edition trees AND can, on occasion, drop a new "Lumber Boost" that can be used to instantly boost any lumber tree up a stage in it's development.

Finally, the Workshop has it's own collection that can be traded in for a FULLY GROWN lumber tree, Oak or Pine. They can make it rare, they can make it ungiftable just to crack down on exploits, but just a collection that'll help out when we really, REALLY need a tree!

Obviously fully grown trees cost horseshoes so they're going to be loathe to give them out willy nilly, but I don't think via a rare collection will be too unbalancing... (After all, who the heck spends HS on trees?!)

I think with the chance of fully grown trees, quicker growing trees, lumber boosts AND spring water... if it's a nice small footprint (little wooden shed?) I wonder if folks would be happy to build it?

I'd be very interested in your thoughts here or on our Facebook Page.

Andy Goes To Town...

[Please note this is an Andy Imagination post. I do not have ANY information about future plans etc, this is all in my head]

I've been having a little think about our homesteads, partly from seeing shots etc from the Halloween Ghost Town.

Something sprung into my head that would do two things that I'd quite like. Open up a chunk of homestead and allow me some more design flair.

It's no secret I love to design my homestead, in fact I've always been a fan of urban planning type games. Sim City, Zeus, Emperor etc, etc. City builder games.

By now my homestead design is becoming more limited with the amount of new buildings etc we're getting. It means everything is becoming very utilitarian, all business, no pleasure. And SO... here's my Andy's Imagination Idea for October.

A separate "Town" map.

We've seen the precedent, the greenhouse and the Trail both take us to separate maps that allow us to do different things, so why not have a second area for "Town" leaving our original areas as the Homestead.

The thinking is simple. The Homestead would be our "Farm" (I know, I know, folks hate the Farmville reference but that's what it is.) It'll have crops, farm buildings such as the barn, rodeo etc. It would be where we grow crops, tend our animals, it'll be where we and our families LIVE.

The Town area would be for the town buildings, Saloon, Inn, Church, Shops etc. It would be where we go to shop, to use amenities, to have a little drink...

So Homestead to work and live, Town to use buildings and shop.

The town wouldn't need to be very big, in fact it would only have to be, at most, the size of our very first homestead, only about 65% or so of a fully expanded homestead at the moment.

It would clear all the room off the Homestead that "Town" buildings take up, and let us explore our design flair. As well as being able to design our Homestead we could have a lot of fun designing "Town". It would be a much more logical place for statues, flowers, all those random decorations we've picked up.

We could design a main street, a school district with a playground, a church area with a proper design... Personally the increasingly tight surroundings of the homestead make me less interested in playing, tell me I have a 20-25-a-side Town area to design and I'd be as happy as Larry on nitrous oxide.

The other great thing it would bring is realism. Back in the Pioneer days you'd often not get a big town attached to a farm, they'd be split, at least partly. We're pioneers after all, not town planners, so why not let us have our pioneer homestead, all farming and self sufficiency AND a town to go to for fun etc.

In one fell swoop it would (well, for me at least) make the game better and stop folks worrying so much about homestead space, simply by moving stuff to a Town it would open a heck of a lot of that up.

I don't for a minute expect it to happen, but as with most Andy Imagination posts... I'd really LIKE it to...

Giving Everyone a Work Ethic...

One of the most divisive issues in Frontierville (I'm ignoring Canning, let's just agree it's not actually that big a deal?) is the existence of NPC's, Non Player Characters.

By that I mean Bess, Fanny, Hank etc, all the "townspeople" who stand by their business or home and can be interacted with.

For everyone who likes having them around there's someone who complains they're in the way or cluttering up the place. However, one thing that came to the fore when I was researching this (I do actually do a bit of research for some of these posts, for the hedonism post I asked my neighbour's cat, she said "meow" which is cat for "you're so right!") was that folks are better disposed towards the "active" NPC, Bess, than the passive ones (always best to have someone who's active not passive...) and if the other NPCs DID something... Perhaps they'd be happy with them being there.

And so, I got thinking. What could the NPCs all have as a "Daily Bonus" to make folks better inclined to have them on their homesteads? Cue Andy's Imagination....

Bess - Exempt, she's already a worker... Her hire command is brilliant, although a word of warning if you haven't found out yet... it DOESN'T count towards mission totals if you use her.

Fanny - OK, so Fanny is the teacher, seems pretty obvious what her bonus could be. I reckon that Fanny could work in the same way as a Horse Boost, we go talk to Fanny, she "teaches" us and for the next 20 or so tends we get double the usual XP for whatever it is we do.

Hank - I think, as Hank runs the General Store he could be used to fulfil a quest folks have made to us often. How about once a day you could visit Hank and buy a meal for coins from the store? Obviously have a sliding scale and not be too expensive but just once a day, the chance of buying for coins any meal you could buy for food (the HS only ones would obviously be exempt).

Doc Auburn - Three words. Full Energy Refill. He's the Doctor, he's surely got some restorative stuff to get you feeling perky again when you don't feel up (I think it's the blue diamond shaped tablets behind the chemist counter...)

Finkerton - Detectives don't just find missing people, they find missing things. Such as wishlist items or needed things for buildings... So once a day I think Finkerton could work the same as a care package. He goes off and tracks down something you've "lost" that'll help out.

Granny - With the general plot and personality of Granny this one was the easiest of the lot. Surely once a day Granny could get that shotgun out she loves wielding and act like a free Varmint Cannon! Click on Granny, select the varmint you want rid of and BANG... The old gal gets to use that bang-stick of hers for something useful instead of scaring the young-uns!

So anyway, that's just my idea of what they could do, I think it's both good for us as players and realistic (we have to remember the game limitations are there for a reason, buying meals for coins all the time or having an NPC shoot Horseshoes out simply isn't going to happen for the same reason cinemas don't have a bucket of free DVDs of the movie out the front).

It seems to be the NPCs are currently an underused resource...and one some folks aren't keen on. So perhaps his kills two birds with one... Granny.

It's an extra special reward for reading my post today... a brand new NPC! Yes, if you've managed to read all the way down here you've been rewarded with the limited edition "Invisible Esta" avatar. This admin-based NPC will sit invisibly just off your homestead and, once a day, can be clicked on to give a hint or answer to one game related question!

Lucky, lucky you!

Outfoxing the foxes with a new pet?

OK, my previous brainstorming idea seemed to go down OK so here's another one... (Dear Zynga, if this appears in game I want a creative position ;)) I'll say the same as I did the last time, this is hypothetical stuff streaming from my own brain, nothing that is planned or has even been hinted at to me or in public anywhere.

This is an idea that sprung from my brain just minutes ago while chatting to our upside down admin KT about the potential for new injured animals... so, how about this for something that would combine the injured animal mechanics with one of the most desired animals, add a piquant little mission thread and finish up with a little helper on our homesteads that does more than just be tended.

I'll try and talk you through it as it would work in game...

You're harvesting your chickens, geese or turkeys... up pops the message...

"A fox has appeared and tried to eat one of your fowls but... hang on, what's that? A dog has come from the forest and attacked the fox, driving it off. The fight seems to have hurt the poor thing though... looks like you'll need to nurse it back to health..."

In comes the now-known injured animal mechanic as you get your critter milk to nurse it back to health. However, once it's done it then kicks off a small series of missions...

Pioneer's Best Friend I - Housing the Dog: Your new pet needs somewhere to live if he's going to be helpful around the homestead...

Buy a Kennel in the market (small building, say the size of a chicken coop or even smaller)
Finish the Kennel
Craft a comforter

Pioneer's Best Friend II - Feed up the Dog: Your dog's going to need to get bulked up if he's going to be taking on varmints all day...

Have One Rump Steak
Collect 10 Dinner Bowls (Neighbour Request item)
Harvest 20 Wheat

Pioneer's Best Friend III - Train your Dog: It's time to get your dog out there takin' down those varmints, have some friends help train him into a lean, mean fox huntin' machine and make sure to pick yerself up a trophy!

Hire some dog trainers (5 neighbours, the same as the Barbershop staff or Trap Engineers)
Set your dog on one fox
Have one Fox Tail

At the start of this mission the Kennel would become active as a varmint trap. It'd work like a Groundhog trap and have a perimeter, only it'd radiate out in an arc from the front door so it wouldn't have to be placed in a silly central position, it could be slipped into a corner or against a fence. Once mission III is passed any fox that appeared in the radius would be automatically clobbered. Perhaps in base unarmed state the dog could be moved around the farm like any animal and tended for Collection Items (more on that later) coins, XP etc. Then when the kennel is "armed" the dog would move to be stood on guard outside it, there comes the tactical dilemma of using the dog as a fox trap, or a tendable animal. There would be a single dog limit.

Pioneer's Best Friend IV - Keeping those birds safe: Seems you've got yourself a good friend there, helping out on the homestead. Let him do your job and all your fowls can sleep a lot safer until they're ready to sell.

Catch 5 foxes
Trade in a Fox collection
Sell 30 Adult Chickens

There would be a Dog Collection that drops when he catches a fox or you tend him wish consists of:

Water Dish / Ball / Bath / Dog Biscuits / Dog Blanket

This maybe trades in for a dog-style decoration, a chicken boost or simply XP, coins etc.

So there we go, an injured animal that becomes a varmint trap with it's own Collection etc or could simply be used as a pet... we know the idea of a dog is very popular... as is new missions now and then for the "bored" folks ;)

If you've got this far then thank you for letting me indulge my weird brain activity on you, I've run out of invisible badgers so I'll be placing invisible gerbils on all your homesteads instead. Be careful where you walk...

Downloadable Content... a Glitch Solution

(DISCLAIMER: All information and ideas in this post are purely hypothetical, As far as I'm aware nothing like this is being planned and there's zero precedent in Zynga history so is unlikely, I'm just having a nerdy brainstorm)

One of the biggest changes recently, possibly ever, to the console gaming market has been the gentle assimilation of what was originally a PC gaming-only staple, hard drives.

From a quick 5 minute install or update to the 30-45 minutes it took me to install the latest Gran Turismo on my PS3, console gaming has taken a huge leap forward in severely cutting loading times and being less static, gone are the days of buying a game on a cartridge or disc and that was the finished product.

I recently bought Fallout: New Vegas, a pretty new game but already on it's second patch by the time I got it, upgrading game content and features.

Along with being able to patch the game it even allows quick and easy addition of new content, even paid items.

And so, this got me thinking. Surely downloadable content is in the future of web games as well? Not so much for the sake of additional content or patches as they're even easier to do in an online platform... but the much maligned area of loading times.

Elsewhere I've mentioned the problems Zynga have with server issues, especially in the case of chicken farmers etc. Loading all the assets the game requires to function takes time and bandwidth, hammering the Zynga servers hard and giving us some fairly slow loading at times, even major game crashes.

So, dear readers, a vision into a utopian future.

I boot up Frontierville and it loads, swiftly and cleanly. I play it for an hour or so with no glitches, errors or rollbacks and my progress is saved smoothly to the servers thanks to there being minimal server load and a strain on the bandwidth.

I visit some neighbours... each homestead loads quickly and easily on my screen, no matter how many items they have or how bad a chicken farmer they are.

When closing the game I do so with the confidence born of knowing my game status will be kept safe until the next time I visit and wont have been lost in a worrying server-burp along the way.

All this simple, clean and swift gameplay is thanks to one thing... A downloaded asset pack/software insert.

Just think if we could download a small piece of software that would contain the vital in game assets, the flash objects and images that are the in game representations of the animals, buildings, avatars, trees... even debris and varmints.

This would mean every time we loaded the game, rather than needing to download all the required assets and place them over an internet connection from already strained servers they'd simply be plucked from our hard drives at many times the speed of even the fastest cable broadband.

The read/write speed of an internal hard drive (or even an external USB drive) is vastly better suited to the transfer of lots of data than an internet connection.

Even if only a quarter or fans took up the option just think how much freer the servers would be, how much less data would need to fly over those lines... A quick update of the software every time new content is launched would surely be better than the constant drain of the assets being loaded every time we boot up the game?

I'm not talking about playing the game offline, it would never work, we need that connection to the server and to Facebook. Just speeding up the play by making most of the server/memory hungry items locally sourced rather than dragged from online.

The game could still look online if no local assets are found, so playing on a friends computer would still be easy to do, just a bit slower. (I KNOW nobody would play this on a work PC at all, that would just be wro... QUICK! change windows and look busy, here comes the boss!)

As I said at the start, this is very much a hypothetical situation.

Could it be done? I don't know.

Would it help? I THINK so... but maybe it wouldn't, I admit I'm a fallible nerd.

All I know is the idea struck me and I felt the desire to waffle about it. If you managed to read right through the end then congratulations. You get the reward of a very special mystery animal, an invisible badger. It'll sit just off the top edge of your homestead and you won't be able to see it or feed it but you'll know it's there.

Go look, I've put it there now, just for YOU.