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[pmarincak]

Harvest Crossing A Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing-inspired game!

This is a little side project I'm working on in my free time to better learn how to pixel art, and animate. I really love Harvest Moon (AWL & FoMT in particular) and the depth Animal Crossing has in it's town, customization, and character interactions.

I hope you enjoy the ride with me as I figure out how to art!  

Technical Things:

• Game Engine: GameMaker Studio 2
• Art Programs: Aesprite, Pyxel Edit, Photoshop

[pmarincak]

Devlog #0 - 02/09/17

I'm going to start off this devlog by reposting some the screens I made earlier this month on Twitter SO! In order:

First image I made that I was intending to just be a pixel art practice session. Except I have a ridiculous amount of notes for a Harvest Moon game and the mockup was nice. I also needed a new sanity project. Thus, here we are.



I got the tool usage/watering mechanic hooked up first.



I spent some time figuring out how to make a scene manager for GameMaker and being able to push and pop scenes and retain them. Then I figured out how to make a transition manager. I also figured out how to make a rough autotile set in aesprite/pyxel edit (though it's fairly basic).



I was wondering how portable my shader code from Gataela would be. Answer: I copied and pasted and boom. I also figured out how particles worked in GMS2. It's fairly easy, which is nice! And I'm glad the shader stuff persists when dealing with room transitions.



The empty grass and dirt was a bit lonely so I made some quick tiles for a house, roof and fence. The fence autotile was a lot harder to make than I thought. 



At this point I had only been working on this project on an off for 2.5 weeks and my sister was the only one I could talk to about it. So I made her a little cat character. Cie the cat, who makes puns. A lot.



The lack of actual vegetation like trees and shrubs was bothering me so I tried to make a tree. But I didn't get too far before aesprite corrupted my file and all I had left was this test png I made. RIP pink tree I'll remake you better.

All of this is <1 month worth of work-ish. Programming-wise I have quite a few things done like:

• Screen transitions
• Screen/Room/Scene manager
• Date/Time/Calendar system
• Tool usage and swapping
• Inventory System
• Weather System
• Watering, Plowing, Planting, Crop Growing stuff
• Localization works
• Night shader
• Dialogue works w/ NPCs
• Probably more stuff

So far it's been nice to work on a project that is less technically and more artistically challenging. Though figuring out how GameMaker works with some of this stuff has been awfully confusing. (*cough*Screen Manager*cough*) I hope I have more to share soon

[rj]

oh no its cute

[PsycheMac]

This is looking good. It seems to me that you have some inconsistency in the image sizes and therefore their pixel sizes are different. For example, the tiles on your roof have a much smaller pixel size than the lone bricks on the walls. Id suggest trying to unify their sizes to have a cohesive pixel size throughout your sprites.

[whistlerat]

This is so cute it hurts. Will be following!

How much are you planning on innovating from the two genres? They already share so much that it's a super natural combination - the idea of being part of an AC-esque town full of other HM-esque farmers is just rad - but are you planning on a straightforward marrying of the two games or something more?

[pmarincak]

oh no its cute

Thank you! 

This is looking good. It seems to me that you have some inconsistency in the image sizes and therefore their pixel sizes are different. For example, the tiles on your roof have a much smaller pixel size than the lone bricks on the walls. Id suggest trying to unify their sizes to have a cohesive pixel size throughout your sprites.

Thank you The reason for the bricks being like that is I accidentally made that sheet at 32x32 instead of 64x64 like the roof tiles =A= I'll update it sooner or later, since I just wanted something quick.

This is so cute it hurts. Will be following!

How much are you planning on innovating from the two genres? They already share so much that it's a super natural combination - the idea of being part of an AC-esque town full of other HM-esque farmers is just rad - but are you planning on a straightforward marrying of the two games or something more?

Thanks

Right now I think I'm going to be taking bits and pieces of the two games to make something that clearly is inspired by both of the games (though the HM aspect will obviously stand out more).

• Obviously I'm going to have farming, but there won't be any animal husbandry (ie. barn, coop, etc.) because you are an animal and so are your neighbours and that's weird.
• I'm probably going to integrate things like bee keeping or fisheries or clothes making to replace that. Not sure what yet.
• I'm thinking of integrating some aspects from Magical Melody like there are specific plots of land some animals will move in to at different points in the game and they can come and go if your relationship is bad.
• I don't think the whole town will be full of farmers, but I would like a rival system like MM or some of the newer games.
• Something I would like to keep from AC is the feeling of taking your time to do things. Lately in HM games it's all about making money and getting married as fast as you can.
• Definitely going to have collecting bugs and fish
• You'll be able to date/marry villagers. The stork will deliver your child
• The days will probably be a bit slower than modern HM games so you'll have more time to catch bugs and fish and so on.
• I really want to keep the attention to detail that AC has. Things like you can make a snow man and if it's head is too small or it's body it will scold you lol
• Not sure how much town customization there will be just yet, but I at least would like to give you the freedom to customize your character, house and farm.

That's some of the goals I have for this game off the top of my head, though I'm not sure if that answered your question

[whistlerat]

It does, thank you! Your approach sounds really good. I'm particularly on board with the idea of slower-paced days. As much as I've enjoyed Stardew Valley, for instance, I do feel the 'rush' to complete everything necessary in a day (crop watering/harvesting/planting/selling, animal tending/harvesting/selling, fence fixing) before any of the non-essential daily stuff (mining, fishing, farm layout changes, foraging, villager interaction, etc). Maybe longer but fewer days in a month will hit a nice balance, to reduce the repetitiveness (because I love gardening but watering the same crops everyday is just busywork when there's too little variation or actual interesting decisions to make) and increase the amount of time available for the player to do other things they enjoy doing without either neglecting the busywork or feeling like they're squeezing it all in the limited time available. AC was always really nice for this since the days matched real life, if you wanted to spent a real-life hour just chilling and fishing then you totally could

[Josh Bossie]

Looking good. As a developer of an Animal Crossing-like myself I strongly believe we need more indie cracks at the bat, 'cause clearly Nintendo is dropping the ball.

Very cute

[Pixelologist]

You should try making the crop leaves a different hue of green than the grass, I think. Right now I can't really tell where the two separate at first glance.

[pmarincak]

Devlog #1 - 04/09/17

Thanks a lot for all the interest so far everyone!

I had a dream last night about doing UI for this game so with a little spare time I decided to figure out some widget stuff. I already created a basic widget class with support for highlighting and such in the last month, so I was looking today to make something a little more... useful? Although I have a fair amount of functionality I have like no way to display it right now.

So I spent some time figuring out a good way to come up with designs. Hopefully this method will be useful for someone.

GMS2 doesn't have a widget editor like UE4 does (and I believe Unity) so you have to do everything in code. I'm fine with doing things like that since I already do that for a bunch of other things, but like- man, a widget editor is so nice.

Since I'm going to be using rooms as my menu screens, I decided to plan out my UI there too, but I realized later this can be used for anything.

I created a "WidgetPlanner" room, then planned out my positioning for designing a quick relationship bar with it set to a position of 0,0.

I already created a box and button widget so I dragged those objects in, set their size, previewed it in game, and converted it to code. Which was pretty easy with this popup window:

Much easier than messing around with it in a code-only view.

TL;DR: Plan out your widgets in a room at position 0,0. Then convert that into code. Saves number headache.

[jctwood]

That is such a clever idea! Thanks for the tip, game is looking really wonderful too!

[pmarincak]

Devlog #2 - 14/09/17

Been working on other things for Gataela so I haven't done too much. I've been trying to make some crops but I'm really bad at natural-like sprites so for the mean time I've decided to make super basic tiles to get the idea of how I want things to look.

Started with some ocean tiles since I wanted to try out GMS2's animated tile feature. I like how simple it is, so if I have more time I'll try to make something with more than two frames lol

I'll probably try doing some footsteps left in the sand as your walk/ puddles around feet when in the ocean too

[pmarincak]

It does, thank you! Your approach sounds really good. I'm particularly on board with the idea of slower-paced days. As much as I've enjoyed Stardew Valley, for instance, I do feel the 'rush' to complete everything necessary in a day (crop watering/harvesting/planting/selling, animal tending/harvesting/selling, fence fixing) before any of the non-essential daily stuff (mining, fishing, farm layout changes, foraging, villager interaction, etc). Maybe longer but fewer days in a month will hit a nice balance, to reduce the repetitiveness (because I love gardening but watering the same crops everyday is just busywork when there's too little variation or actual interesting decisions to make) and increase the amount of time available for the player to do other things they enjoy doing without either neglecting the busywork or feeling like they're squeezing it all in the limited time available. AC was always really nice for this since the days matched real life, if you wanted to spent a real-life hour just chilling and fishing then you totally could

Yeah that's certainly true. Something I missed from FoMT was the ability to "hire" someone to help you out on your farm. After a certain point it's tiring to water and harvest your stuff all the time. Stardew valley had the automated sprinkler system which was really nice, but yeah I find i spend a lot of time doing busy work and no time with the villagers at all.

Looking good. As a developer of an Animal Crossing-like myself I strongly believe we need more indie cracks at the bat, 'cause clearly Nintendo is dropping the ball.

Very cute

Thanks Good luck with yours!

You should try making the crop leaves a different hue of green than the grass, I think. Right now I can't really tell where the two separate at first glance.

Yeah I noticed this while trying to make the tree and crops. I'm also sort of linearting the top of the plant too with the highlight. Thank you

That is such a clever idea! Thanks for the tip, game is looking really wonderful too!

Thanks Glad it'll help!

[pmarincak]

Devlog #3 - 15/09/17

I was planning on not touching this much for the weekend but I REALLY wanted to figure out footsteps so uh, yeah. Footsteps.

I also took the time to make a quick "figure out what tile I'm on on what tilemap" function. Useful for only spawning the footsteps when on sand and also in the future for step SFX.

[Josh Bossie]

Hah! I really love the idea of doing footsteps before you even do sprite animations, but they are very cute so I think it was worth it

[pmarincak]

Devlog #4 - 16/09/17

More small stuff I worked on today when taking a break from Gataela. I wanted to replace my text display for the date and time to be something with, uh, images. I also added some water footsteps, although it's not really "ocean" footsteps as they are "puddle" footsteps.... Well I'll make proper ocean footsteps later.

I'm not too sure what to work on next, but it'll probably end up being art.

[pmarincak]

Hah! I really love the idea of doing footsteps before you even do sprite animations, but they are very cute so I think it was worth it

Haha thanks

I have a tendency to focus on getting things to functionally work before investing in art. It helps to make sure that I don't have to restructure everything later on when I want to add a new feature.

[pmarincak]

Devlog #5 - 17/09/17

Spent a little bit of time this morning making some wallpaper/flooring tiles and figuring out how that part of the house customization will work.

I'm not sure if I'll design houses like:

- Stardew Valley, where it's a single screen and you can assign the wallpaper/flooring according to the "room" you're in; or
- Animal Crossing, where each "room" has different screens and can be customized completely differently according to what you want

If anyone has any preferences feel free to chime in

[pmarincak]

Devlog #6 - 20/09/17

Did a little bit of art stuff, but wanted to figure out how to do interior lighting. I thought this would be very complicated but a couple surfaces and an overlay shader later here we are.

I also figured out the programming for "going to sleep", and made a confirm dialog for it, but I don't have a fade effect setup just yet, so I'll show that off at a later date

[Josh Bossie]

I like the per-room design philosophy that AC has. It allows each room to be its own little diorama with its own personality and function. Plus I would always use the basement as my "whatever" room where I chucked turnips and other things i didn't need

For my game I'm going with per-room, but rooms can also go beyond "8x8 square" or "16x16 square". For example, you can select a 'Kitchen' with obvious spots for appliances, a spot for a dining room set, and so on