I’m slightly early this month cause of the weekend, but here we are. Things didn’t go as expected this month. Not in a bad way, but I wasn’t really expecting to work on what I did. I think in the last update I talked about maybe moving towards combat. I nixed that decision pretty quick, but we’ll go in order.
The month started with finishing up livestock. That ended up taking longer than expected honestly, about half the month if I recall. That was effectively the system that just kept on giving. Every time I thought I was done there was another thing to add.
The majority of what I needed to do was replicate what had already been done across all other animals. At the start of the month basically only chickens functioned. Since then I’ve added in ducks, geese, cows, goats, sheep, and pigs. On top of these there are 1 to 2 forms for each type of animal which I won’t spoil. So they needed the unique aspects of their functionality made too. Along with this there was the entire effort of making the barn as prior to this month only the coop existed. The barn is mostly the same, but has a few unique differences like animals giving live birth rather than having eggs that hatch. Also little player interactions things like being able to milk a cow or shear a sheep.
Lastly, the UI for animals had to be setup which was its own system in general. There are a few small things that weren’t added, but they rely on other systems that don’t exist yet. For instance, naming a newly born animal isn’t set up. They are just given a default name at the moment. The actual implementation of this system is pretty simple though and will be added once the surrounding system goes in.
So, animals are done. Which makes me incredibly happy because it took forever. The last update I put out I said I might move to combat. Problem with that is that the UI isn’t quite there yet. While I could do it with temporary UI it would just end up taking more time when I have to go back and update it to the proper UI.
Because of this combat was out. While I was trying to determine what to tackle next I decided to update some of the existing UI. I’d been working with a few old UI assets as I was starting on this remake but I’ve since gotten updated versions. I took the time to apply these new assets which involved a bit of adjustment to each other them as sizes were slightly different.
This brought me to the construction UI, which is where the remainder of the month went. For those unaware when you want to construct a building like a barn you go and talk to an NPC and a unique UI shows up to let you select a building to construct.
When testing the animal systems I effectively had made a dummy event to trigger the building process to get around the lack of a UI. I did this because at the time I didn’t have the new building UI yet. I have it now.
However, while scoping some things for this UI I went to see how many buildings could be constructed for some data I needed to populate. This got me thinking, which is usually a bad thing, and a precursor to more work. Specifically, I thought about the upgrades to your house. In the current version of the game there are a couple of quests that serve as house upgrades. The quests are basically just you supplying the resources for the upgrade. I’m not sure why I decided on this in the past instead of just having an upgrade option in the construction UI.
As you can probably guess I changed this. The house upgrades will now be done via the construction UI. However, there is more to this. My specific thought was about how every player will end up with the same floor plan, which feels like a waste. In a game that’s basically about living on and improving your land it seems like you should have more say in what your house looks like.
So I said, ‘screw it, why not’, as I sometimes do, and started making a new system. It isn’t quite done yet but the framework is mostly there and far enough along that I don’t think I’m going to revert back on this idea so I feel okay mentioning it. In the new version of the game you won’t have specific upgrades, outside of a basement, and maybe an attic (haven’t decided on the attic yet). Those two things will be a set room. As for the main floor you will be able to design the layout to your specifications.
I’m not 100% on limitations yet, like if I’ll give a cap to the number of rooms you can have. I think it won’t be needed as the total size of the house interior is still set in stone. As it stands you will go to Simeon, likely pay some sort of flat price for a room and then you’ll be shown your house interior. I’m trying to make the system as simple as possible. At the moment you basically just paint floor tiles with your mouse (or controller) and the code is smart enough to form the walls around those tiles.
Along with this you’ll also be able to go back and modify or delete rooms when you want. The only stipulation there is that you may have to manually remove the furniture from a room before you can delete it, but I have an idea on how that may be avoided, we’ll see.
The other thing to mention is that while I can’t guarantee it. It’s likely possible, but I haven’t attempted it yet so I can’t say. I’d like to extend this sort of system out to the farm exterior as well. So when you start the game you can either just take the standard layout or you can craft your own. Like I said, no guarantees on that but I figure it would be a cool thing to add. Probably have some sort of feature to allow for exporting the layout as well so people could share if they wanted.
So yeah, that sort of took over my time as I had to iterate on the system a few times to get it to where I wanted it. Once I finish it I’ll likely go back to what I was supposed to be doing and put in the construction UI.
But wait, there’s more. I hope you read that sentence deadpan because that’s how I thought it for some reason when typing it. I also enjoy writing in my spare time. Which may make you ask, ‘cool, but why do I care?’. Well, I’ve switched my priorities a bit. I was working on world building for a book on the weekends but decided to put it aside for the moment. I should probably mention that I barely get anything done on the weekends, most all the work for this game happens on weeknights.
In any case, I put a pause on the book and have instead started directing my attention to doing all the writing for this game instead. This isn’t too important but I thought it might be worth mentioning. If you’ve been following these update logs for a while you may be familiar with my, lets say indifferent, attitude towards the dialogue in most of these games. Or rather the amount and depth of it.
My personal experience is that I’ve never cared about an NPC in any of these games. Maybe that’s a personal problem but generally I feel that there just isn’t enough there for me to get invested. The worlds are usually pretty simple, the characters are generally also pretty simple. Now, I’m not trying to write Bauldur’s Gate 3 or something, but I think there is some sort of middle ground that can be hit where you can tell some compelling stories and have a bit more depth. Of course all this hinges on my writing ability.
In my experience the first step to making compelling stories is to have an interesting world, so I’ve started doing that. There is a site called WorldAnvil which I happen to subscribe to. If you like to write, or maybe DM for DnD or find yourself in need of a resource to track a world you are designing it’s a pretty neat tool.
I’d been using it for my personal project but I’ve started detailing a world for Verdant Village on there which I’ll be able to work from. It isn’t going to be some sort of Tolkien level world building, but I’d like to have a firm world laid out that I can then use to influence the character writing and events. I actually already have a fair amount of things laid out in a word doc and am currently transferring and expanding it.
The real important thing about this process is that it spaces out the writing. It should keep me from burning out which is what I wanted to avoid. If I had to write all the dialogue and story for everything in the game all at once I’d likely lose my mind. This will let me tackle it at a steady pace. The plan is to full write out one character at a time once I get the world in place.
All that said, I do actually have a picture today. It’s a rarity I know. I don’t tend to think that pictures are worth the time it would take to grab and put them in but maybe I should make more of an effort. In any case, below is a world map for the game. Or rather continent map I guess. The world hasn’t been fully charted yet in the lore so this is what people know as the world. Another tip, if again you are into DMing or writing yourself. The map was made with a program called Wonderdraft, pretty easy to use and you can make some cool stuff.
Anyway, I’ve gone on enough here for the month I think. Big things are in process, as usual. I’ll be back in another month for another update.