next »

[LaureDM]

Hey everyone, excited to start my first DevLog here!

I'm currently working on Botany Manor, a project I've been working on in my free time. As a child I loved the Tomb Raider games and especially their manor levels. For a long time I wished to play a game that is just about exploring a beautiful fancy manor, so I decided to make it.

I work as a programmer, and this project is a great way for me to improve at tech-art and design stuff.
It's coming along nicely and currently polishing up a demo that I'd be happy to share out soon.
I've been posting progress of this game on https://twitter.com/Laure_DeMey previously, if you'd like to see more WIP screenshots.

A bit more info about the project:

Botany Manor



Elevator pitch

Botany Manor is a first person puzzle game where you play as a retired botanist, who is trying to cultivate her collection of mysterious seeds inside her grand manor house.

Premise

Botany Manor is a first person puzzle game about a retired botanist called Arabella, set in Victorian England. She was one the few female scientists of her time, and most of her days were spent traveling to faraway places, researching plants and collecting seeds.

In the game you play as Arabella during her later life, right after she moves back into her home, Botany Manor. You’re tasked with figuring out what each plant requires in order to grow, by exploring past research and other clues spread out all over the house. The more plants you grow, the more you unravel Arabella's past.

Gameplay



The main goal of the game is to cultivate all the seeds you can find in the house. The plants are fantasy so their growth requirements can be fantastical too, like colour of light or music. You pot seeds in the shed and afterwards find the right environment for your plant to grow. Sometimes it will require a bit of work to prepare and adapt the environment to suit the needs of the plant.
Because of that, exploring and progressing through the manor is a big part of the game as well.

The botanist



When exploring the manor, sometimes you can stumble on items that are meaningful to Arabella. They can trigger a memory flashback where you learn more about the life of Arabella, or discover more clues to grow seeds in the present.

Next steps

As I mentioned, I'm currently trying to polish up a demo with a few plants puzzles and one memory flashback.
Hopefully I'll find some time to write up a few posts around level design and tech art I've made. I also want to focus on preparing a steam page!
In terms of what's next on the game, I will probably start experimenting with a better skybox and clouds. Currently just using a hdrp skybox and it's not stylised enough to match the rest of the visuals.

Thanks for reading, and I would love to know your thoughts and feedback!
Follow me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/Laure_DeMey

[oahda]

Oh, I love it! It looks beautiful, and I really like the premise too. I totally see what you're saying about the feeling of the manor in Tomb Raider, and that's basically all I've ever played of that game. Looking forward to seeing more!

[Schrompf]

I really like the setup of peacefully unravel the back story via exploration. Plus some farming sim. I'm sold. And it's beautiful, it really doesn't look like Programmer's Art. Great work!

[vdapps]

Nice, looks definitely interesting, I like this "tranquility" setup, and really original idea. I can't recall if I played ever as old granny? From planting I just recall Subnautica, but this game was quite stressful for me.

[LaureDM]

Oh, I love it! It looks beautiful, and I really like the premise too. I totally see what you're saying about the feeling of the manor in Tomb Raider, and that's basically all I've ever played of that game. Looking forward to seeing more!

Thanks a lot! Definitely trying to preserve the tomb Raider Manor feel.

I really like the setup of peacefully unravel the back story via exploration. Plus some farming sim. I'm sold. And it's beautiful, it really doesn't look like Programmer's Art. Great work!

Thanks, there is some more detail required here and there in terms of interior, but shaders I'm quite happy with so far

Nice, looks definitely interesting, I like this "tranquility" setup, and really original idea. I can't recall if I played ever as old granny? From planting I just recall Subnautica, but this game was quite stressful for me.

Yeah Subnautica was great, but definitely trying to not make it as stressful! The botanist will be an older lady, but in Victorian age that meant 'in her fifties', so she wouldn't come across as a proper granny if that makes sense  Would love a granny game though :D

[Thaumaturge]

There is some very lovely art here--those first two screenshots in particular are rather pretty, between stained glass and lighting and decor. Furthermore, the premise seems interestingly different.

If I may ask, you mention Tomb Raider as an influence--will there then be traversal aspects to the gameplay? Or does that influence apply specifically to the setting, and not to the gameplay?

[LaureDM]

There is some very lovely art here--those first two screenshots in particular are rather pretty, between stained glass and lighting and decor. Furthermore, the premise seems interestingly different.

If I may ask, you mention Tomb Raider as an influence--will there then be traversal aspects to the gameplay? Or does that influence apply specifically to the setting, and not to the gameplay?

Thanks! To answer your question; most of the game will be spent exploring the house, planting seeds and interacting with items. So I think the Tomb Raider reference purely refers to the setting of walking around a grand manor with grounds. However in a few 'memory flashbacks' you will see a glimpse of Arabella's expeditions, like the bamboo forest screenshot I posted. Those memory gameplay bits will also be focussed on botany though. Think of research, cooking with herbs, mushroom foraging, ... Hope that answered your question! 

[JobLeonard]

This looks great, and the world needs more "peaceful" games

[LaureDM]

This looks great, and the world needs more "peaceful" games

Thank you! Agreed, especially these days

[ambo100]

I love the aesthetics and the gameplay is intriguing too.

As someone who spent two years studying horticulture in college to move on to graphic design and developing video games in Unity this suites me so well so I look forward to seeing more from this project!

[TwistingYarn]

I love the art and gameplay premise! Excited to see more!

[LaureDM]

Hello everyone!

Thanks for all the nice and encouraging comments, it means a lot!

I've been taking a bit of a break of project-related creative work, as I needed a bit of a rest from thinking about design.

Something that was on my list for a while, was a tool to help creating the manor and make level design quicker and easier.
Currently I model all the walls and shapes in Blender, which makes it tedious to iterate on new designs or ideas for the manor layout.

What I wanted was a some automatic generation of walls depending on input, and something that is easy to change in editor without messing up lightmaps or creating wall gaps.

I decided to go with the following approach:

• Create a floorplan texture that is colour coded with information.
• Read the texture in Unity
• Create walls, floors, ceilings, doors and windows depending on the colour of the pixel
• Be able to move/edit those generated rooms and walls easily, and bake it back to a texture

Currently I've got the first steps working with basic shapes and floorplans. The mesh that is generated is ready to be lightmapped as well.







Next I want to focus on less basic shapes (for example an L shaped room) and create a few different floorplans with my tool. Using existing manor floorplans of old English manors would be a great way to stresstest, and that way I can walk around in them :D
The baking back to a texture is a final step I haven't put much thought in.

Let me know what you think or if you have any ideas for the tool!

[oahda]

Welcome back!

That's a very nice and elegant way of dealing with it, looking forward to seeing what you make with it!

[vdapps]

Handy! Good to have such effectivity boost. In fact, I was thinking about something similar for my project. Coding layout of map to image in some pixel art editor (I use very simple app Pixelformer).

[Thaumaturge]

That looks like a neat editor in the making, I do think! ^_^

Thanks! To answer your question; most of the game will be spent exploring the house, planting seeds and interacting with items. So I think the Tomb Raider reference purely refers to the setting of walking around a grand manor with grounds. However in a few 'memory flashbacks' you will see a glimpse of Arabella's expeditions, like the bamboo forest screenshot I posted. Those memory gameplay bits will also be focussed on botany though. Think of research, cooking with herbs, mushroom foraging, ... Hope that answered your question! 

Somehow I missed this answer! Sorry about that, and fair enough to it! Even without traversal, this sounds like an interesting premise. ^_^

[ambo100]

Something that was on my list for a while, was a tool to help creating the manor and make level design quicker and easier.
Currently I model all the walls and shapes in Blender, which makes it tedious to iterate on new designs or ideas for the manor layout.

What I wanted was a some automatic generation of walls depending on input, and something that is easy to change in editor without messing up lightmaps or creating wall gaps.

This sounds like a really cool idea, I am not sure how I would go about making something like that but one alternative I can think of would be to use a vector graphic to design the level. It really depends on how quickly you need to be able to iterate the design and if you just need something to quickly block out the levels.

Using Adobe Illustrator I would plot the walls using a black stroke with no fill. You can adjust the thickness of the stroke for denser walls. When you’re happy with the design you can ‘expand’ all the shapes (converting strokes to fill), then you may need to use the ‘unite’ operation in the pathfinder window if you want one solid piece of geometry.

In Blender you can import this flat SVG floor plan and manually extrude on the Y axis the geometry to give the walls height, it might also be possible to extrude using the solidify modifier but I haven’t used Blender in a while so can’t remember. Also In believe you may need to enable a default add-on in Blender to support SVG imports but that may have changed.

The workflow may be slower than something that’s an extension of the Unity editor, but there are a few advantages I can imagine: geometry like the walls can be scaled easily, curved walls are a bit easier to design, it’s generally easier to move points around.

I wouldn’t be sure how to build windows or other features though, you could have a separate layer and perhaps texture that layer differently but I’m not sure it’s ideal. Also I Imagine this would only be useful for blocking out the level as there would be a lot of excessive geometry.