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We're taking a look at some of the latest rumors about the island expansion in Animal Crossing New Horizons that are being talked about thanks to the recent data mine.
We are now about one week into the latest update bringing Animal Crossing New Horizons up to version 1.10. The update that released at the end of April pretty much focused around adding three months worth of holidays such as May Day and International Museum Day, as well as several mini seasonal events that are typically celebrated with limited time items available from the Nook Stop for a short period of time.
This update wasn't as significant as some of the previous updates we've seen in the past, but does give us an idea of how Nintendo plans to handle future events by refreshing them and adding new items and things like that. Anyway the update itself didn't really add any new features or address any of the other content such as quality of life adjustments, but thanks to the latest data mine does actually show Nintendo are actively working on new things behind the scenes.
Thanks to the hard work of data miners, certain keywords and parameters in the game's code have been uncovered for things like Fence Customization and Museum Upgrades amongst other things, but another adjustment made to the game's code in version 1.10 has led to rumors of Island Expansions or some sort of upgrade to the beach.
The keyword mSouthShoreBaseline has had its value significantly increased in the latest version compared to versions 1.9, and previous. Now the mSouthShoreBaseline is something to do with the area accessible south of the island and link to the outdoor camera parameters to stop the camera at a particular distance keeping you or what you can see within a certain boundary. Now thanks to this adjustment and the value being significantly increased, this has led many to believe some kind of island expansion is being worked on and rumors that something like extended land or extended beach may be possible along the south shore of the New Horizons island in a future update. Another rumor surrounding this finding suggests that some extra space south of the island is being made to prepare for something new to be added in its place, some suggest this could be a second smaller island or a larger area that makes use of swimming and diving further out to sea.
Now whilst these are all really clever suggestions and honestly quite exciting to talk about, it may be nothing more than Nintendo testing a few things behind the scenes. Thanks to some dedicated Animal Crossing fans and data miners, the adjustment made to the south shore baselines has been given some context and it seems that this particular adjustment isn't relative to the main island, at least for now. It turns out that the outdoor camera parameters are used in several instances such as on the New Horizons island, or a mystery island tour for example which obviously all use different values given the areas surrounding them differ in size and in the instance where this adjustment to the southshore line was increased and adjusted as part of some camera settings that are likely only used for testing, rather than for the area of the main island itself.
Furthermore, it turns out that the mSouthShoreBaseline value for the main New Horizons island has always been set to this higher value. Basically the value has only changed in the settings that are likely used for testing and now matches the value already set for the island if that makes sense. And if this is true suggest nothing is being adjusted to make space for anything on the island at the moment, either that or Nintendo are getting even better at covering up what they're working on. Of course, this doesn't mean island expansions won't be a thing in the future, we can all agree that it'll be very much welcomed. But at least for now the rumors about this feature coming in a future update doesn't seem to carry any weight, unlike the keywords seen for the fence customization for example.
