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[TonyManfredonia]

Thank you very much! For audio I was thinking of having it be mostly environmental sounds, but potentially having ambient music break up the more redundant portions (such as when gardening, where the environmental sounds would be mostly unchanging). Or perhaps just have a rare chance for music to fade in and out during regular play.

That's an amazing idea. Very "Breath of the Wild-ian". Or even like other open-world games. I like the ambient approach a lot! The new watering mechanic also looks like fun

[Schrompf]

a) Watering: yes, please, make it click only. A hue change is very subtle. It would be a nice aid if I could just hover the mouse on a plant and it would display a (lore-friendly) message about its state. And then I could click and hold to water it.

b) Pest control: could be fun to click on things to make them go away. It could also be a nice option to plant certain plants in the same pot which drive away certain sort of bugs. Like in real nature. There could be an awful smelling flower always surrounded by green particle clouds that drives away most types of bugs, and you could plant one in every other pot except for the FancyFruitCactus whose fruits will taste awful when growing next to it.

[Devilkay]

is it the final graphic?

[GaryTheWizard]

That's an amazing idea. Very "Breath of the Wild-ian". Or even like other open-world games. I like the ambient approach a lot! The new watering mechanic also looks like fun

Thanks, glad you like it I'm really hoping it suits the game.

a) Watering: yes, please, make it click only. A hue change is very subtle. It would be a nice aid if I could just hover the mouse on a plant and it would display a (lore-friendly) message about its state. And then I could click and hold to water it.

b) Pest control: could be fun to click on things to make them go away. It could also be a nice option to plant certain plants in the same pot which drive away certain sort of bugs. Like in real nature. There could be an awful smelling flower always surrounded by green particle clouds that drives away most types of bugs, and you could plant one in every other pot except for the FancyFruitCactus whose fruits will taste awful when growing next to it.

Per a), yeah at this point I'm pretty sure I'm going to add some other kind of dryness indicator. When I get a chance I'll experiment with a few other options and see what works, but my goal is to make it obvious to the player how the plant is doing without directly stating it.

b) Good idea Arranging plants as a mechanic is definitely something I've had in mind for the game and that could be a real good use!

is it the final graphic?

I'd say the current look of the game is a good estimate for what the final graphics will be. But nothing is permanent.


This week and next are busy for me, but I did manage to get more of the gardening stuff done. A quick mention is that plants now dry out to a more believable brown/yellow color instead of just pure black.

(I swear I'll stop using this test plant soon.)

Another nice change is that bugs are no longer vibrating white cubes, but vibrating white/purple beetle/slug things. Other bug types will get added, but I think these come across pretty well visually. And now if a bug sits on a plant for too long, the plant will start taking direct damage in the form of big bug bites.

(Added just a few bite marks to test. I'll spread them out better when I update the more detailed plants.)

To get rid of a bug, just give it a click and it'll go flying.

(Flicking off bugs feels pretty good, though I still gotta dial it in more.)

Bonus: Magic bugs

(From before I changed the shader and was still working on bug placement.)

If I get some time this week, I'm working on one more visual for plant damage which I'm hoping will pull it all together.

[Mochnant]

I like the look.  Keep up the good work!

Have you considered having players find placeables when exploring, not just plants?  I'm thinking statues, urns, rocks, etc...

[peterh]

Looks very zen! 

[GaryTheWizard]

I like the look.  Keep up the good work!

Have you considered having players find placeables when exploring, not just plants?  I'm thinking statues, urns, rocks, etc...

Thanks for the feedback! I actually have considered littering the world with more than just plants, something to give the player more reason to explore. Then collecting statues and other items could factor into another addition I might make, decorating the gardening area.

Looks very zen!  

interested.

Thanks guys!  


So I finally did add that visual thing I mentioned last post, but it broke a _lot_ of stuff, so I spent most of my time rethinking systems. It all mostly works now.

That visual thing is a new wilting animation to help tie together the complete health of a plant. Before, if a plant was getting enough water, but the bugs weren't being removed, the plant would look mostly fine, though with a few bug bites. This change should really help indicate that you must tend to all aspects of the plant's health.

But like I said, adding animation broke a lot of stuff. Previously, I was using a mesh collider with the plant to handle a few things, primarily attaching bugs to the plant's surface. Animating the plant shut that plan down real quick, mostly cause updating a mesh collider with an animation seems like a terrible idea if I wanna keep running this game on my own hardware.

So I got rid of the mesh collider and replaced it with some primitives. One to give the entire plant bounds, and a few more dotted across the surface where bugs can spawn. These bug spawn primitives ended up working out really well. While I did like my previous implementation which basically allowed bugs to spawn anywhere on a plant, it was an issue if they spawned somewhere the player couldn't see. Now, not only do they animate with the plant, I can ensure they're visible and that they spawn around where bug bites appear. Though one downside is this now means I'll have to fine tune bug placement for each individual stage of a plant, which is more labor.


(The work was worth it, cause now if you don't take care of them, plants really start to look like sad messes. )

So there's still a few things to clean up, but I'm happy with where the planting and tending systems are currently. The big thing that's left is I wanna get a good pipeline for making new plantables (with the addition of the new animation requirements, there are a lot of steps to make new, multi-stage plants (why I let that test plant persist for one more devlog)). So I'll either work on that, or something completely unrelated cause I've been working on the planting system for too long.

[GaryTheWizard]

I'm back with a small(ish) update after a busy few weeks. Well, I say small cause I'm not showing off that much, but I did end up making quite a lot of quality of life improvements for developing the game.

Primarily, I got a decent pipeline together for working on new plants (modeling the plant stages, modeling bug bites, shrivel animations, steps for importing into the game, etc.).

And out of that work I got a new plant to show off, with animations, multiple growth stages, and a couple new additions to plant appearance. It's (supposed to be) a tulip!



Every stage has some bugbites modeled and an animation. On top of that, plants can now have unique colors (such as for flowers), as well as slightly random shading to help differentiate multiples of the same plant type. It's not much, but it makes a difference.



I'm still not super happy with my modeling and animation abilities. But now that I have a guide for putting these things together, I'm hoping to get a lot more practice.

Next I think I'm gonna take the plunge and update my whole codebase. Turns out when you write code while you're still learning, it can end up being a bit of a mess. So I'm gonna try to go through it all and be consistent with syntax and smart principles (though I'm sure I'm gonna wanna update the whole thing again in a few months, whatever).

Unfortunately, my professional work has picked up, so the updates are gonna be a bit more spaced out (like this one). But I don't see myself stopping work on this anytime soon.

[Schrompf]

Great to see you're making progress. Don't worry, the plant is looking tulip-y enough. And I wouldn't worry, because up to now I thought you'd be going for fantasy plants anyways.

[lululuprimal]

Very cool idea!  I really like relaxing games, my favorite aspect of Stardew Valley was the gardening, so this is ideal, will be keeping up with your progress!

[qwercus]

Oh my goodness this game speaks to me! In the summer, my job involves walking through the woods and recording plant species I encounter. So I love this! I don't know how realistic or detailed you're aiming to make this, but I can definitely offer ideas on plant species, plant forms, habitats, forest composition, geography, etc. I also make music if you're looking for a composer!

[Schrompf]

Any news? This project seems to be dead *sad gardener noises*