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[zede05]

Will the demo come out for PS4? And will this game have minigames like a Casino, Darts, Pool, Music minigames like in Steambot Chronicles and much more

Well, this upcoming public build (alpha 0.1) is Windows only...maybe Mac as well. I don't think Sony will let us put up such an early build on the PSN anyway. We do have the game running on a PS4 devkit already, although some shaders are broken. We plan to have a lot of minigames, so far we have fishing, darts, and ranching. Will be adding a lot more as we go. Maybe even a newspaper photographer minigame. 

Here are a couple of WIP minigame screens:

[thunderlight10]

Will the demo come out for PS4? And will this game have minigames like a Casino, Darts, Pool, Music minigames like in Steambot Chronicles and much more

Well, this upcoming public build (alpha 0.1) is Windows only...maybe Mac as well. I don't think Sony will let us put up such an early build on the PSN anyway. We do have the game running on a PS4 devkit already, although some shaders are broken. We plan to have a lot of minigames, so far we have fishing, darts, and ranching. Will be adding a lot more as we go. Maybe even a newspaper photographer minigame. 

Here are a couple of WIP minigame screens:




This is cool I cant wait for this game! Hopefully you can put a upcoming public build on PSN in the future!

[thunderlight10]

Will the demo come out for PS4? And will this game have minigames like a Casino, Darts, Pool, Music minigames like in Steambot Chronicles and much more

Well, this upcoming public build (alpha 0.1) is Windows only...maybe Mac as well. I don't think Sony will let us put up such an early build on the PSN anyway. We do have the game running on a PS4 devkit already, although some shaders are broken. We plan to have a lot of minigames, so far we have fishing, darts, and ranching. Will be adding a lot more as we go. Maybe even a newspaper photographer minigame. 

Here are a couple of WIP minigame screens:

Also do you think you guys can contact 505 games to make a retail physical version of My Time at Portia they did it for Stardew Valley!

[SiENcE]

I love the pastel colors!

Also the Artworks look great. Warm and friendly. Very nice work so far!

[zede05]

Also do you think you guys can contact 505 games to make a retail physical version of My Time at Portia they did it for Stardew Valley!

We'll look into that, but first thing is still making a fun game first. 505 have contacted us about porting Planet Explorers to consoles before, but that's an impossible task. 

I love the pastel colors!

Also the Artworks look great. Warm and friendly. Very nice work so far!

Thanks! When we first started this project, we spent a long time discussing what we wanted for this world art-wise. We were aiming for a  style acceptable to most players around the world. We figured that a pastel-ish and somewhat medium level saturation was the best fit for the art design that we came up with. The hard part was implementing all the textures and shaders and such so that the game can look close to the concept art. In the end, at least in my opinion, the key is actually fog. We have something like 4 fog layers in the game, all affected by the weather, and all with their own curves so that we can fine tune each to their specific color at a specific time. It really makes the world assets come together, more than I expected anyway.

Here are some NPC character designs, we were just finalizing them the other day, lots of NPCs in this game, will eventually cut some if the frame rate can't keep up :

[LeRan]

The world is set in a post-apocalypse setting, or something like 1000 years after the event. Humans are few and relics from the past are everywhere. The player is trying to start a new life in a town on the edge of civilization called Portia. He/she will start a workshop and build things with relics from the past. We want to really enrich the world with other NPCs that have their unique behaviors. We also kept some voxel digging gameplayer leftover from Planet Explorers for the dungeons.

When we started this project, we wanted to make something like Animal Crossing mixed with Dark Cloud 2 mixed with Steambot Chronicles, since the release of Stardew Valley, probably add that in as well.(...)

This is almost exactly what I wanted to do myself, before scaling down my ambitions and thus the project a few hundred times. Kudos ! I'm looking forward for your game, I hope that you do something great ! If I can ask, how many people are working in the team, and are you all full-time professionals?

As everybody says, the graphism is awesome. But I understand your concern about streaming things in and out. Are you implying that Unity can't manage LOD object swaps properly? By the way, do you have an idea of how many vertice there are in one regular tree of yours, when it's at full level of detail?

[thunderlight10]

Also do you think you guys can contact 505 games to make a retail physical version of My Time at Portia they did it for Stardew Valley!

We'll look into that, but first thing is still making a fun game first. 505 have contacted us about porting Planet Explorers to consoles before, but that's an impossible task. 

I love the pastel colors!

Also the Artworks look great. Warm and friendly. Very nice work so far!

Thanks! When we first started this project, we spent a long time discussing what we wanted for this world art-wise. We were aiming for a  style acceptable to most players around the world. We figured that a pastel-ish and somewhat medium level saturation was the best fit for the art design that we came up with. The hard part was implementing all the textures and shaders and such so that the game can look close to the concept art. In the end, at least in my opinion, the key is actually fog. We have something like 4 fog layers in the game, all affected by the weather, and all with their own curves so that we can fine tune each to their specific color at a specific time. It really makes the world assets come together, more than I expected anyway.

Here are some NPC character designs, we were just finalizing them the other day, lots of NPCs in this game, will eventually cut some if the frame rate can't keep up :

Thanks I hope 505 games can do it it would be nice to see this game in retail stores!

[zede05]

It's been a real fast two weeks, I've been busy writing the script. And holy cow there are a lot of NPCs in this game, and they all say different things at different times depending on the situation, so there's a lot to write. I think I won't be done until the end of the year. 

We finally settled on the the gameplay though, it's all about reaching the balance between how the player makes money and how he/she spends it. The player will need to want to spend the money to get tools that can make them more money. Sounds easy, but we spend the better part of the last three months tweaking this. But this came with a cost, for this to work in our game, and continuously work for up to 100 hours, we'll be needing a lot of items, probably 400+. Plus the areas I highlighted on the last page will need to contain unique items, quests, and enemies. Not what our artists wanted to hear.

We're also progressing on the NPC relationship front. In the game, the player can go on dates with most NPCs (no kids, married, or old). During the date, the player can select from an action tree and branch off from there. If the player has a good relationship with the NPCS, they might give extra missions, branch storylines, or freebies. Basically, we want the relationship system somewhat tied into the economy system. But this is still a work in progress. Some screens:









Alpha 0.1 should be out in public this week, it'll have around 5 hours of gameplay. I'm not sure if this is the right way to market a simulation rpg, but it did work for Planet Explorers, so...

[zede05]

I've been working on the weather the last two days, we've added in rain, cloudy, and overcast. Due to the way our grass is designed (it's directx grass), its shadows are completely dependent on the weather, so we have the grass shadow strength on a curve in our weather system, and it's tweaked by hand for every hour of the day. Now there are at least 4 types of days in 4 different seasons, so I'm going to have to tweak 16 different grass curves. Fun times.

[thunderlight10]

I've been working on the weather the last two days, we've added in rain, cloudy, and overcast. Due to the way our grass is designed (it's directx grass), its shadows are completely dependent on the weather, so we have the grass shadow strength on a curve in our weather system, and it's tweaked by hand for every hour of the day. Now there are at least 4 types of days in 4 different seasons, so I'm going to have to tweak 16 different grass curves. Fun times.

This is awesome!

[bacon]

This looks so charming!!

[thunderlight10]

Does this game also have Zelda and Minecraft elements?

[thunderlight10]

And can you swim in the game and sleep in hotels or inns or both and stuff? Also can you show me a pic with a new different character?

[thunderlight10]

And one more thing are you guys going to update Planet Explorers some people say the game is buggy not sure if that is true or not did you guys learn from Planet Explorers? Will this game be more polished?

[zede05]

Does this game also have Zelda and Minecraft elements?

Well, sorta-kinda-not really? We didn't really think of these games when designing our game, but this game does let you figure out ways to get to new areas for adventuring. Also, there is a dungeon that's just smooth voxels where you can dig for resources.

And can you swim in the game and sleep in hotels or inns or both and stuff? Also can you show me a pic with a new different character?

No swimming for now, since we need to use water to lock some of the areas. It's a balancing issue. Same thing for hotel and apartments, we thought about having the player start out in an apartment before, and you have to work your way up to the house, but this left the first few hours of gameplay rather unfulfilling. Players get the most momentum from working on their own stuff, so if it's just a rented apartment, it doesn't have that ownership. People would rather have a small house and work up to a mansion.

As for character, this is the only player model we have that's not broken right now. We'll be adding in the rest slowly over the next few month. I'll post a screen of the female model later.

And one more thing are you guys going to update Planet Explorers some people say the game is buggy not sure if that is true or not did you guys learn from Planet Explorers? Will this game be more polished?

That game is buggy on the online side of it, since we didn't really design the game to be multiplayer until everyone wanted it. A voxel game with a world (1500mX18kmX18km of smooth voxels) and editor like PE's, it's really hard to get online right even if we had that in mind when we designed the game structure, much less a patch on. We are still patching PE here and there, but there's not much we can do about some of the issues unless we rewrite the entire game code. This game doesn't have that issue as we're not using smooth voxels in the open world and we're not doing online, that's like 99% of PE's problems.

Did we learn anything from PE, heck yes. I think after PE, our first reaction was recognizing how good games need to have a really amazing team behind it, and to become such an amazing team, you need to continue to do challenging stuff. This game will have a lot less bugs, a lot more polish, a lot more focus on design balance, and just a smoother user experience in general.

[thunderlight10]

Does this game also have Zelda and Minecraft elements?

Well, sorta-kinda-not really? We didn't really think of these games when designing our game, but this game does let you figure out ways to get to new areas for adventuring. Also, there is a dungeon that's just smooth voxels where you can dig for resources.

And can you swim in the game and sleep in hotels or inns or both and stuff? Also can you show me a pic with a new different character?

No swimming for now, since we need to use water to lock some of the areas. It's a balancing issue. Same thing for hotel and apartments, we thought about having the player start out in an apartment before, and you have to work your way up to the house, but this left the first few hours of gameplay rather unfulfilling. Players get the most momentum from working on their own stuff, so if it's just a rented apartment, it doesn't have that ownership. People would rather have a small house and work up to a mansion.

As for character, this is the only player model we have that's not broken right now. We'll be adding in the rest slowly over the next few month. I'll post a screen of the female model later.

And one more thing are you guys going to update Planet Explorers some people say the game is buggy not sure if that is true or not did you guys learn from Planet Explorers? Will this game be more polished?

That game is buggy on the online side of it, since we didn't really design the game to be multiplayer until everyone wanted it. A voxel game with a world (1500mX18kmX18km of smooth voxels) and editor like PE's, it's really hard to get online right even if we had that in mind when we designed the game structure, much less a patch on. We are still patching PE here and there, but there's not much we can do about some of the issues unless we rewrite the entire game code. This game doesn't have that issue as we're not using smooth voxels in the open world and we're not doing online, that's like 99% of PE's problems.

Did we learn anything from PE, heck yes. I think after PE, our first reaction was recognizing how good games need to have a really amazing team behind it, and to become such an amazing team, you need to continue to do challenging stuff. This game will have a lot less bugs, a lot more polish, a lot more focus on design balance, and just a smoother user experience in general.

Alright thanks!

[thunderlight10]

Does this game also have Zelda and Minecraft elements?

Well, sorta-kinda-not really? We didn't really think of these games when designing our game, but this game does let you figure out ways to get to new areas for adventuring. Also, there is a dungeon that's just smooth voxels where you can dig for resources.

And can you swim in the game and sleep in hotels or inns or both and stuff? Also can you show me a pic with a new different character?

No swimming for now, since we need to use water to lock some of the areas. It's a balancing issue. Same thing for hotel and apartments, we thought about having the player start out in an apartment before, and you have to work your way up to the house, but this left the first few hours of gameplay rather unfulfilling. Players get the most momentum from working on their own stuff, so if it's just a rented apartment, it doesn't have that ownership. People would rather have a small house and work up to a mansion.

As for character, this is the only player model we have that's not broken right now. We'll be adding in the rest slowly over the next few month. I'll post a screen of the female model later.

And one more thing are you guys going to update Planet Explorers some people say the game is buggy not sure if that is true or not did you guys learn from Planet Explorers? Will this game be more polished?

That game is buggy on the online side of it, since we didn't really design the game to be multiplayer until everyone wanted it. A voxel game with a world (1500mX18kmX18km of smooth voxels) and editor like PE's, it's really hard to get online right even if we had that in mind when we designed the game structure, much less a patch on. We are still patching PE here and there, but there's not much we can do about some of the issues unless we rewrite the entire game code. This game doesn't have that issue as we're not using smooth voxels in the open world and we're not doing online, that's like 99% of PE's problems.

Did we learn anything from PE, heck yes. I think after PE, our first reaction was recognizing how good games need to have a really amazing team behind it, and to become such an amazing team, you need to continue to do challenging stuff. This game will have a lot less bugs, a lot more polish, a lot more focus on design balance, and just a smoother user experience in general.

So to reclarify you can have a mansion in this game? And you might have mentioned this but are there jobs in the game like working at a store or something?

[zede05]

There might be some jobs, but it's mostly you taking care of your own workshop/house/yard.

Here's the first trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8Cah3-m0g&feature=youtu.be

And here's the first alpha build! Here are a couple of links, a Steam link should be available in a couple of days:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/my-time-at-portia/downloads/portia-alpha-10

http://portia.pathea.net/download

I hope everyone try it and give us some feedback, much appreciated!

[DuskedSky]

That trailer was so beautiful, it almost made me tear up.

[zede05]

That trailer was so beautiful, it almost made me tear up.

Thanks!

The game alpha is now up on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/666140/My_Time_At_Portia/

Without Greenlight now, I'd suggest anyone trying to eventually be on Steam setup a preview page and have people add the game to the Wishlist.