Hey everyone! 💚
April was a big month on multiple fronts! A major overhaul of how time works in the game, quality-of-life improvements from your demo feedback, and a lot of progress on Act 3!
This was the most significant change of the month, and one that directly came from demo feedback. Many of you found the time periods too restrictive, only being able to tend to the goats in the morning, or only crafting once in the afternoon felt limiting and sometimes frustrating.
We agreed, and we rebuilt the system from scratch!
Time now passes in real time, at a rate of one in-game minute per second, from 7am to 7pm. After that, the game enters an open-ended evening mode, giving you time to chat with villagers and wind down before sleeping without any time pressure (Stardew Valley players know the 2am rush!)
In practice, this means you're no longer locked into specific activities at specific times of day. You can tend to the goats whenever you like, and craft multiple times throughout the day (as long as your wellbeing gauge allows it).
To give you more control, we also added time speed buttons so you can adjust how fast the day moves.
Benches now let you choose exactly how much time you want to skip (on top of restoring your wellbeing gauge) which makes it easy to jump ahead to the evening when you're ready.
It was a significant technical undertaking! References to the old time periods were scattered throughout the codebase, dialogues, and tutorials. We had to change and double check everything, but the result is well worth it!
Another frequently requested change from demo players: item names are now displayed in the inventory and in Benno's shop! A small addition, but it makes navigating resources a lot more intuitive.
On the visual side, we spent a good chunk of the month sculpting the cliffs, which up until now were a bit flat and lacked depth.
Before and after! Yes we pushed the colors a bit too
We also implemented a new shader to bring them to life: it works with vertex colors, modulating the light of the rock texture. In addition to our previous shader drawing fine lines along the edges of the geometry, the difference is quite striking!
Vertex colors in Blender vs final result in game
We reached a big internal milestone this month: a near-complete implementation of Act 3 in placeholder form, with stand-in assets and dialogue files in place across the whole act!
A screenshot of our custom dialog editor
A few highlights of what's taking shape:
Thanks to the newly founded planks provided by Sebastian, you’ll be able to provide Peter with enough materials to build beehives!
Doing so will increase your bond with Peter, but also you’ll be able to collect honey, which will feed into new crafting options down the line.
His fossil collection (which you find through the mushroom digging mini-game) is also coming together nicely! Still a work in progress, we intend to add a proper progression mechanic to it 📈
We also started preparing Agnes' sprite to place her in the world alongside Sebastian, starting with meshes and a skeleton in Blender to work out her different poses.
And on the environment side, we started modeling the observatory and its wind turbine, where players will eventually meet Joanna, our new Act 3 character!
That's it for April! The game is really starting to come together, and we're looking forward to sharing more as Act 3 fills in.
If you haven't tried the demo yet, it's free! And a wishlist or a review goes a long way for a small team like ours. 💚
See you in May!
Meli & Bloo