Very intriguing, and I'm always down for Earthbound styles. Following this one

The smoke is a nice touch on making the path appearance smooth.

I really like the amount of technical detail you put into these posts. I've done some work with Tiled and seeing what you do makes me optimistic about what can be accomplished using it. :D

Agreed. I love following this topic as gamer and developer.

[Village Monsters Dev Diary Digest (VMD3)]

It's the weekend, and that means another edition of the Village Monsters Dev Diary Digest (VMD3)

There is now less than a month to go until the version I'm working on releases for you all to play with. This'll mark the very first Alpha version that I make public, and I'm pretty excited about it.

September is shaping up to be quite the month, and it's not just the Alpha release; stay tuned for more information on that very soon

A Day at the Beach
Due to the nature of the game it's not often that I get to create a new area, so it was a real nice change of pace to work on one this week.

Introducing...the beach.

The beach is just a short walk away from the village - just head south from the gate and keep going until you reach the surf.

Though you or I would consider such a trip to be a nice day out, it seems that monsters haven't really taken to the human notion of spending the day in the sun and sand. Unless there's a special event going on you're likely to find the area to be largely empty.

Still, you'll probably enjoy the solitude. You can catch fish, work on your tan, and nosh on some whoopie pies in peace.

Ancient Ruins of Soon
Longtime followers of the game know that I often try to slip in as many 'meta' elements as I can. After all, this is a game in which the conceit is that the NPCs have taken it over and the digital barrier between our worlds is thinner than ever - I'm hoping it gives me some artistic liberty

Alongside beaches I added another new area to visit, though this one won't make it to the final game. It's called the Ancient Ruins of Soon, and it's an area you can visit to consult stone tablets on prophecy...

...in other words? You can view my plans on future features and changes from the game instead of going to my website or elsewhere.

I tried to split it up by category, so if you want to know what the future holds for hobbies or story or your house then you can view just that information.

Even More UI Changes
This marks the 2nd week in a row in which UI changes made it to the top of my priority list. Here's a sampling of what I worked on this time.

Notifications have been slightly resized and now rotate so that the newest is always displayed at the bottom

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Meeting villagers for the first time now produces a notification

The inventory now has context-sensitive prompts depending on the mode or item

Finally, I did an initial pass on an in-game version of the world map.

Ok, that'll do it for this week. Hope you're enjoying these dog days of summer, because I'm definitely not. I hate the heat. Autumn can't come fast enough!

Until next time

1.3 is wonderful. The main gameplay loop is still very grindy, but lots of cool stuff and it finally feels like the game they advertised

Do you know how to record them? Try a program like Gifcam. Then upload the GIF to Imgur or elsewhere, and link them!

A harder pokemon where monsters are replaced by demons is pretty neat. Kinda like the SMT games, though it seems demon training will be a bigger focus of your game?

Pretty rad

You can no longer accuse me of putting everything but the kitchen sink into Village Monsters

Oh wait what, he's still a doctor? I figured he quit that to become a farmer

I hope there's a 1 hour minigame where you have to wash your hands

Always down for cool looking voxel games. Following this

Been replaying this for a couple days now. It's cool. Still not much of a 'game', but it's a fantastic podcast game.

Hope 1.3 drops soon. I feel kinda weird playing it now when it could change (perhaps a lot?) in just a few days

Good luck, guys! I hope to back it very soon

Working on a new beach area this week. Here's me kicking a beach ball around as the sun is setting

Sorry to say this, but that Kickstarter has got to be one of the lowest effort ones I've seen

I dunno, man. Maybe I just don't 'get' what you're doing here, but I find it very confusing! Regardless, I do hope you find success, as the world needs more weirdness.

Cool concept. Typically these type of sim games are in an industry I don't really know or care about, but this feels right up my alley

That said, something about the UI being essentially a computer operating system is throwing me. When I think festival or event management, I don't picture something as clean or simple as you're showing.

anyway, just some random thoughts. Good luck!

[Pets]

It's the weekend, and that means another edition of the Village Monsters Dev Diary Digest (VMD3)!

Like last week I have a bit of housekeeping to do before diving in. Longtime followers know that I've tried several different ways to present progress updates, but none of them have really 'stuck'. However, it seems this weekly format has really been working for me.

As such, I went ahead and created an archive for every Dev Diary Digest I've posted since I started doing them. If you missed earlier editions, or if you just want to see how far I've come, then please do take a look!

http://warpdogs.com/developer-diaries/

Anyway, onto the update

Pets
I may have shared this anecdote before, but the road to pets was a serendipitous one

A few weeks ago I was working on debugging critter behavior, and for whatever reason I was testing it in the player's house. As I kept going in and out of the house it occurred to me how much I actually liked having a critter there - it was sort of like having a pet! Wouldn't it be cool if that was an actual feature?

This week I was able to prototype this idea:

Here's how it works: first, you gotta catch a critter. Then, walk up to an special item (currently a pet bowl) and select the pet you want to tame. You can only tame one at a time, so choose wisely

At first, all critters start out as "Wild", and they'll act much like they did before you caught them. Over time, if you feed them and treat them well they'll increasingly become tame and more affectionate.

Tamed critters will also continue to behave similarly to their wild versions, and they'll retain any unique attributes. For example, if you catch a Snowflake Elemental he'll make your entire house cold; good during the summer, but not so good if you have a lot of fish on display...

Hail / Thunderboomers
I always enjoy working on weather systems, so I took a detour to add a new weather type - Hail

I had to improve the weather system to handle the little hail pellets, and these improvements should help with any 'ground based' weather effects in the future...leaf piles in the fall, snowdrifts, rain puddles, and so on.

I then went ahead and added more sound effects to the various weather types. I also added a minor feature where weather sounds can still be heard indoors at a lower volume. It's surprisingly atmospheric, especially during thunderstorms!

UI Improvements (Map, Inventory, Notices)
Finally, though I generally don't like it, I also spent a great deal of time on UI work. I've never enjoyed UI work, not even at my last job where functionality was preferred over looks, but I'm actually pretty happy with how things shook out this time.

First, I added a map for the village to the Compendium. It's very basic and just lays the foundation for future maps:

I then added movement to various notifications. I like it a lot better than the notices just appearing suddenly.

Finally, I completely blew up and reworked the inventory. I actually did this some time ago, but I added an extra layer of polish and usability this week. It's unquestionably better than the old inventory, but that's not saying much - the old one was really bad!

Anyway, that's it from me. As usual I also added a lot of minor things, quality of life improvements, and bugfixes, but nothing I need to call out. Have a good week!

A couple weeks ago I was testing new critter behaviors, and on a whim I used the player’s house for testing. It was then it hit me - wouldn’t it be cool if you could ‘tame’ critters as pets?

Yesterday, I implemented that exact feature. Once you get the pet bowl (pictured here) you can tame any caught critter and attempt to domesticate them. Here’s a cute lil Coldsteel Hedgehog hanging out by the bed!

I'm not really understanding your pitch...do you perhaps have a video or something?

Working on a new weather effect for Village Monsters - hail storm - and for whatever reason I got a ton of feedback on it. I guess hail really resonates with people...? Uh, anyway.

Here's the 'final' look. Couldn't find a way to get them to bounce with GameMaker's particle system, so we'll have to settle for a crash landing

Been following you guys forever on Twitter, and forgot you had a topic here. Anywho, tag! I'll check out the demo later on tomorrow.

good farmer