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[Ninety]

I really like those weather icons! Honestly they are my favorite part of the graphics so far. I think it's because they're just so...iconic. Hehe. But also clean, nice mix of colors in an almost abstract way.

Thank you! I spent a lot of time trying to get them right. They're still not quite done yet - also, further down the line I may see if I can get them animated properly, as was the original plan.

The icons are gorgeous! However as for the lighting, I must say I loved the previous lighting! It complimented the pixel art so well. I would hope you may still reconsider changing back to the old lighting style!

Thanks. While I think we've basically settled on a direction for the lighting we may revisit it at some point. We both liked the "pixelly" style of the original lighting but found it was really distracting with all the banding and overlapping going on; it makes the scene really hard to "read". It's especially noticeable since there's lots of little lights and the time of day is also changing.

[JobLeonard]

You might want to check out this lighting tutorial for the pico8 (!) fantasy console

https://hackernoon.com/pico-8-lighting-part-1-thin-dark-line-8ea15d21fed7
https://hackernoon.com/lighting-by-hand-2-stitching-lines-together-24edc9f819bf
https://hackernoon.com/lighting-by-hand-3-breath-of-life-7a775617697e
https://hackernoon.com/lighting-by-hand-4-into-the-shadows-a92bc8bc6d97
http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=28785

Especially part 3 of the article might be of use to you: he solves the banding issue you talked about by introducing dithering, with a bit of free flickering on top. Might work to your advantage too!

[Ninety]

Thanks a lot for the links, I had a look and it's an interesting read. Really amazing what people manage to get out of pico8. There's also a lot of conceptual stuff that could easily be applied to other, non pico8 games.

For a lower resolution game I'd 100% be behind the hard-edge lighting style, it's been used to great effect elsewhere. However for Homestead, having seen both options, I'm not totally sold, to be honest.

Lighting isn't priority right now as we're trying to lock down some key features (like building!), but I'll see about revisiting other options at some point in the future. Thanks everyone for your feedback.

[JobLeonard]

Well, that's what might make the dithering option appealing: it gets rid of the hard-edge aspect, while keeping things "pixelly"

[Lukan Spellweaver]

​The game's not dead!
I have some surprises in store for you guys in the near future, but for now here's a list of some new stuff!

• Some npcs
• New Tutorial system(not finished)
• New art
• New menu system

And some more stuff.
The new newsfeed system should keep you up to date when I forget to update some places!

Download: https://spellweavergames.com/downloads/homestead/Homestead-9.1.17.zip
 

[JobLeonard]

What systems? I'm on Linux

[Lukan Spellweaver]

Ahh, the current release only has Windows at the moment!
We are working on other exports, and they should be out soon*.

Doot Doot

https://spellweavergames.com/downloads/homestead/
Now has a Linux build option

Also, there's a bit of an issue with the game's scaling, but it's easy to fix!
If you don't want to wait until the next update, you can even fix it yourself!

Just go to C:/Users/<YourName>/AppData/Local/Homestead
Then open the options.homestead file in notepad.
Edit the scale value to be 2 instead of 3, and it should be all good.

[Lukan Spellweaver]

Hello, homesteadians! I've not been posting in the more open threads for Homestead lately because I've been working on something big and wanted to make sure it was ready before I revealed it! I have a whole bunch of planned updates for the game, starting VERY soon, starting with the new engine that runs HS.

Up to a few months ago, Homestead was being built on less than optimal programming knowledge. It had a lot of spaghetti code and things that I wasn't even sure how they worked. So, starting last November-ish, I began a rework of the underlying code. Everything, from the menus to the crops has been rewritten to work nicer and faster.
The new engine is going to be released withing the next few days, and has all of the finished features from the old build. Things it doesn't have currently are building mechanics, farm layout editing, mining, and the modding system. These things are going to be introduced in their entirety later down the line. I have a roadmap for updates, and all of them are focused on finishing these features and more.
The engine update has the core mechanics of the base game, which doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind that I condensed 3 years of work into 3 months! A lot of effort has gone into this, and more is going in as we go forward.

Sorry for the radio silence, I'll try to keep everybody in the loop from here on!
#HomesteadNotDead 

[JobLeonard]

Technical debt can become a crushing weight if you don't get rid of it regularly. Did you manage to make things more modular and easy to build on?

[Lukan Spellweaver]

Oh absolutely!
That was a key factor of doing this.
Almost everything in the game is a modular component now.
Menus, npcs, crops, it's all super easy to edit and debug now!

As well as me commenting code so other members of the team know what does what.
I sent Ninety a source folder a while back, and his reaction was... Well, let's just say, he wondered how anything functioned at all, ever.
It was at the point that I did too, so bam new engine.

I'm making a lot of headway and hope to release very soon!

[Josh Bossie]

Sounds like things are good!

Yeah, tech debt can get nasty, especially for solo devs where "eh, it works" tends to trump doing things the right way.

[JobLeonard]

Especially if you're still learning what the right way is, and you don't have mentors to guide you (although that can also prevent you from falling into the trap of copying outdated approachs)

The engine update has the core mechanics of the base game, which doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind that I condensed 3 years of work into 3 months! A lot of effort has gone into this, and more is going in as we go forward.

Almost everything in the game is a modular component now.
Menus, npcs, crops, it's all super easy to edit and debug now!

BTW, from a JavaScript point of view, the changes in the last three years are like before and after the industrial revolution. Did you update to modern tools? (or do the licences of that get in the way of home-made games like this?)

I understand that you can't share all the fine details, but I'd still love to hear more about the technical details from a conceptual level at least! Who knows, you might even get free rubber duck debugging out of it

[Lukan Spellweaver]

Well, the game is being built in GameMaker Studio.
When I started it was on version 1.3, and a lot of new stuff had been introduced to the engine, and I haphazardly tried to take advantage of it without being very good at programming.
Over the years I've learned a lot and the game has been ported to GameMaker Studio 2 now, which has major performance boosts and other nifty tools for making development easier.

I found out last month that the old system I built the game on was actually riddled with memory leaks too, and those have all been resolved.
I should be posting the new base game later today, and then adding to it regularly from then on.

[gothicserpent]

Well, the game is being built in GameMaker Studio.

Always wondered what GameMaker was like! I personally used unreal after trying unity for a little while and feeling lost with all the coding.

Glad I went with Unreal, but still experiencing a few issues with netcode like slight lag issues - might have to fix that up in my code at some point.

[JobLeonard]

Well, the game is being built in GameMaker Studio.

Oh, I just read at some point that the final zip was HTML5 and assumed from there! I really should stop skim-reading...

I read the following motivational advice somewhere: don't worry about looking at old code and thinking it's bad, that just means you got better in the mean-time. This rings very true to me (and I think that applies to many other fields)

[Lukan Spellweaver]

The new engine is unleashed upon the world in this new Demo of Homestead!
Please do note some things though!
This only has the fully completed and working features from Legacy Build, so no building, mining, fishing is available yet.
These things are being worked on and will be reintroduced at a later date.

The game is currently undergoing a scope change internally, so some things are being changed as we get closer to release.
This isn't representative of the final release AT ALL!

Also, in my excitement to finally upload I forgot to add one thing to the tutorial.
You can open and close the inventory/pause screen with E.
Custom controls aren't available yet, sorry about that. Due to the new multi system release it is taking longer to implement than I would like.
Hotloading via the in game menu also isn't in yet, though it should be soon.

This release is just to let you all see that the game is still alive and well. Dip your toes into Homestead with it, and mess around on a farm.

My website has had some hefty bandwidth restrictions placed on it, so please head over to either itch.io or GameJolt to download!
ITCH.IO
GAMEJOLT

[Lukan Spellweaver]

Hello Homesteadians...
I have some sad news, Homestead is being shelved.
After years of hectic development, and some personal reflection, I have decided to stop development on the game.
Many considerations went into this, and I will use what I learned making it going forward.
The mechanics in it may be tossed into future projects, but the chance of it being finished are very slim.

I apoligise for this sudden murder of the project, but it just isn't going where I or Ninety wanted.
I greatly appreciate all of the support I've gotten over the years, Homestead only made it this far because of that!

So, I sadly say, goodbye Homesteadians.

[JobLeonard]

Sorry to hear it, but in a weird way I'm also kind of happy for you. It can be very hard to let go after working on something for a long time, to the point where you keep working on something for ages when you know that it isn't going where you want it. From personal experience I know the feeling of relief that comes after the initial sadness.

I'm sure both of you have learned a lot from this project and will put it to good use in your later projects, and I wish you best of luck with it!

[Ninety]

thanks, man. we'll try.

[Josh Bossie]

Thanks for keeping up updated. It's painful to kill a project, but it's way more merciful than letting it linger on when you don't have the passion for it

Hope you put up a devlog for your next project