Sorry this update took a while! It was quite a big feature to implement, plus I had a fairly busy September outside of game dev. The next update shouldn't take so long!
How did you learn to make a game engine? I watched your tutorial but it’s hard to understand even when writing stuff down. I would like to learn but I don’t know how to start.
@@visualizerbx Hi! I can suggest you the following books -> Jason Gregory: Game Engine Architecture, Robert Nystrom: Game Programming Patterns. But I need to warn you, It requres to know at least one programming language well, because to write a game engine it requires advanced programming knowledge. I don't know what is your knowledge level, but if you are beginer I would not suggest you to start a game engine. Otherwise if you are on advanced level, you can try it, it is interesting and chalanging and you can learn a lot of them, so there is a lot learning potential. But if the game programming is your main goal, I would skip the game engine writing. It requires a lot of time (even for Thinmatrix it kept years till his engine be on this level) and as you noticed in the video Still his engine is leaking several feature. So be aware if you want to write a game engine or a game. If you wants to write a game I would suggest you to pick from the already existing game engines and write games with those. (Unity, Unreal, Godot are most popular nowadays) I hope I could help.
One thing that this game might benefit from would be seasons. having spring, summer, autumn, and winter affect the production and growth would be really cool to see. You could have greenhouses you can cover your crops with during harsh environments (for example, snow), and have heaters/heat lamps you can place and surrounding crops would benefit from it.
tbh I would make medals the only way to unlock some rare items in the game, this will make them a currency that's more attractive to work towards in my opinion.
I recently saw the results of a pumpkin growing competition, this is an awesome addition! Having not to refresh the game every 5 seconds to tweak ui elements is a great change for you too
I think it'd be really fun to only show the winners of the competition at the end of the day. You would only be allowed to enter a few minutes before that to build more suspense
About potential medal effects: * Silver medals could give a bonus on weight of the respective vegetable (i.e., helps to get gold) * Gold medals could give a probability bonus on getting more premium (i.e., helps to make more money) In this case you might think about adapting the effects of reputation
It will be cool to also add a trophy cup if you get all the medals of one tier and to add medals for achievements that you gain while just playing that could give some passives too
Just saw the competition animation part of the video, where it adds some suspense via the delay of competitors popping up after you, this is great but to add even more suspense my immediate gut idea was that after they are all on screen it should do some shaking of all the competitors and gradually get more and more until they all do some pop effect and then it shows the result. Or something like this.
Really nice update! I was thinking that maybe selling the medals is a little strange. I think maybe is more unique if you only get the medal the first time you won the competition and next you get money instead. Also, the Medal Display is really nice, maybe the medals could be display like in a red red cushion to add more contrast. I love your videos and the game is making really good progress!
Yeah shouldn't medals go straight onto the table, if the person hasn't yet received that medal? Like you'd always keep the first medal. Likewise, should they always sell if already collected? When would you ever want to keep a subsequent medal?
A big aspect of farming is working with and dealing with nature. Diseases, insects (beneficial and pest), other animals that eat crops or bugs, pollinators etc. Would love to see you try and implement things like that. You could give the paths more relevance by not allowing diseases to cross them. Or maybe make it so certain beneficial animals, like hedgehogs use those paths to hunt for slugs. Maybe give the player a tool like a net to catch bugs such as butterflies, grasshoppers etc and remove them off the property before they lay eggs on or eat the crops as well? Fences would also be useful for keeping out larger hungry creatures. Just a thought.
A pest system is already planned, that will be coming soon :) And there's already an invasive weeds system that works basically like disease: In poor conditions a special species of weeds can spawn which spread over a bed unless treated. They have a very negative effect on plants and may need weedkiller to completely remove. So it's like a disease system, but easier to show graphically.
For all the medals with green ribbons, I'd suggest coloring the two ribbons on each medal in a separate shade or even varying the ribbon shape for a clearer distinction. Great devlog as usual, I'm always excited to see your stuff pop up in my inbox!
The instant I saw the breadboards, I was like "This looks like some Ben Eater stuff!" I would love to properly build a breadboard computer, but I just don't really have the time for that considering the million other things I'm working on. Good luck getting everything working!
I see new ThinMatrix video, I click. Your videos are always inspirational and push me to stay motivated on my own game dev journey. Thanks, and keep it up!
I think generating seeds from produce that you grew would be a nice idea, especially when you increase the chance for good and premium products when you use good/premium produce to convert to seeds.
I would be really nice if the Medal display UI would match the ingame model of table and displayed medals. Then the player could place medals in any pattern that feels satisfying (and don't mess with OCD :D ) Also it would be nice bridge between 2D UI and 3D world and it would be pretty intuitive. Also, if you give player some "starter" award placed in random spot, it would be immediately seen that the 3D and 2D displays are matching and also it will will be most likely clear to the player that it can be reorganized, etc. Possibilities are endless. Anyway, great work, as a fellow programmer I always find your videos calming and relaxing. Keep up great work!
How about making your result in the competition affect the speed at which you sell at your stall on market day. It seems sensible that a competition winner would have more traffic at their stall and it would encourage the player to stockpile produce until they have a really good competition vegetable to magnify sales. An element of risk could be added if you had to choose the vegetables to go on the stall before entering the competition, might make wining feel more rewarding.
The comments are so inspiring. Viewers ideas are so genuine and will help to make the game more engaging. U gained a great fanbase, congrats. Keep up with making the game more engaging, I really loved the viewers suggestions!
I used to watch your OpenGL 3d game tutorials 10 years ago and you just popped up on my feed again. You taught me OpenGL and SDL all those years ago. Happy to see you're still at it much love!
I always love the cozy vibes of your dev vlogs. Have you considered wonky fruits and vegetables? It seems like a good opportunity to make "normal" crops more interesting. At least here in Australia, wonky fruits, which have aesthetic blemishes but are otherwise perfectly fine, are often sold to juice companies.
I would absolutely love a video detailing a bunch of your favourite recipes. They're a nice segment in each devlog and I'd love to see a comprehensive video showcasing the amazing healthy meals you make!
this is a tenuous connection at best but i feel a deep compulsion to say that all this vegetable competition business makes me think back fondly on gromit's prize melon from curse of the wererabbit. delectable stuff
It's always a pet peeve of mine when a ui element has a curved container (like the 'you won' banner) but the text doesn't curve with it. This is absolutely the most important feature you need to add thank you Mr game development
The game loop is looking good ! For the competition result animation, I think a bar graph race could look more intuitive and playful. What I'm thinking is something like each opponent gets their vegetable displayed but the weight is marked as '???' initially. The player's vegetable would stay central with a bar going to the top of the graph's UI container with the weight already displayed. Then when the animation starts, all the opponent's bars raise at the same speed with even potentially a drum roll or raising tone SFX. When a bar reaches the weight of one of the participants, the raising animation stops momentarily and you could add some confetti particles on the participant's vegetable icon. As the bars get closer to the player's weight, they could slow down as to create some tension if the deciding margin was small. If the player won, then all bars stop before reaching the player's weight, but if they don't get 1st place then the graph would scale with the highest value as the remaining bars continue raising. This sort of animation would make the ranking feel a lot more intuitive since the height of the bar would directly correlate with the weight, instead of forcing to look at the numerical values or the color. It also makes close calls more exciting, generally giving a good sense for the scale of the difference between the participants which should help getting a feel for what kind of weight could win next time. Btw, don't know if that's already the plan, but you could adjust the difficulty of the competition over time by changing the range of weight from the other participants, so the player isn't required to player perfectly from the get go. Lastly, as I understand it the weight of a premium vegetable is random, but it would be great if the weight changed depending on how the health of the plant evolved over the lifetime of the crop : if it stayed at max health during the whole growth, it'll get a really good weight, whereas if it only got healthy at the very end of the growth cycle before getting harvested but was otherwise really low, the weight would be much lower.
I really like that bar graph idea, that would work really well! I'll see if I can do something like that. I am planning on varying the difficulty of the competition as you mentioned. As for the health, you already require basically perfect crop health to be in with a chance of getting a premium vegetable in the first place. So I don't have much wiggle-room there. And the health of the plant is already a pretty good indication of how it's been treated over its life-time - when the plant is unhappy (e.g. no water) its health drops slowly, but when it is totally satisfied the health mostly stays constant (it goes up a bit, but can't reverse serious damage to the plant). I am planning on adding special fertilizers that you can use to increase the chances of getting heavier veg, so that will have a similar effect of providing extra care to the plant to increase the weight of the crop.
Awesome update as usual! I have a couple thoughts that popped into my head while watching: 1) there's a lot of ways to make money, and a lot of ways to increase the efficiency of the money you make, which puts a lot of pressure on the systems that exist for buying stuff (ie. how cool is the stuff you can buy and how much stuff can you buy?) 2) to add to the suspense of the contests, the game could ask you to enter vegetables into the contest before you do any of the buying or selling on Market Day, and then you only get to see the results at the end of Market day. Essentially Market Day is broken into 3 stages: first, you're given the opportunity to enter veg into the contest. this is done blindly (though the player will get a feel for it over time). Second, you go about your normal business of buying and selling (ofc you can't sell veg that were entered into the contest), and this could be considered the time that veg are being judged. Third, when you are done buying and selling, you can "end the day" by viewing the results of the contest. you'd then have to wait for the next market day to do any more buying/selling. 3) having the contest only run once per "month" (every 4th market day). There a couple benefits to this: first, it adds even more suspense to it. second, it gives more time (or more random rolls of harvested veg) to get those premium, high-weight vegetables. You can then store them and enjoy the anticipation of having a really great contestant waiting. Third, because this cuts down on the opportunity to get the trophies (by 75%), you can make the likelihood of winning any one contest higher, which I think is more satisfying. your patience will be rewarded more often 4) there should be 3 tiers of trophy for each veg I think. all should have good bonuses (maybe just to their associated crop? ie. getting the bronze carrot trophy makes all carrots have a 25% increased chance to be premium, silver gives 50%, gold gives 100% - as an aside, I think this works because weight is unaffected and other veg are unaffected, so it's a substantial benefit, but it's not overpowered and doesn't snowball too hard). Love seeing your vids pop up in my feed! You're very inspiring to me 😁
Love the game concept! Some ideas to consider: Reputation system: First medal of each type gives max reputation Subsequent medals give less, but still add reputation Total reputation unlocks perks, for example: • 100 rep: 5% better selling prices • 250 rep: Another 5% price increase Worker mechanic: Hire 1 worker per 10 plants (numbers adjustable) Higher reputation allows hiring better workers Better workers produce higher quality crops Quality crops increase chances of winning competitions Note: All numbers and percentages are just suggestions - you'd balance them for your game.
Had to watch parts of it thousand times because you made me wanna work on my project so badly that I tried to do it in parallel but couldn't ^^. Great update and thanks for entertaining me for the last hour xD
I love your office. Amazing vibe with all the plants and the trees outside. Always kept mine clean, minimalistic and "techy".. imma go get some plants now😅
Perhaps it is too complex, but it would be very exciting if the weight of a vegetable is displayed as size while it grows - so that you can see which crops are going to be particularly valuable, and look forward to harvesting them. It'd be visually neat to see that one particular crop just increasing in scale over time as it grows, very intuitive. Great feature nonetheless, but I certainly believe this would make it feel even more alive!
Great video! The game is getting very good!! I think that a nice idea for the plant quality feature would be some kind of way for the player to create his own seeds. It could be very hard to do that sort of thing, but the reward would be better quality crops. Maybe the players can use a lot of different products to improve their "home made" seeds, so the seeds can grow in a separate way from a "common" one. Furthermore, it would add extra strategies for the player to put top quality crops among the ones that they already have in the traditional way of planting
Don't know if you considered it yet, but I for one would be very interested in seeing a more detailed video about the game design process too. It'd be awesome to see how you handle that part. Great video as always
Love the idea for the vegetable competition. One extension of that idea could be for plants to have attributes (health, size, colour, etc) which determine the star level of the plant. The plant can then be entered into the competition for cash prize using these attribute scores to determine the best plant, or you can forgo the competition and cross breed it with another plant of the same type to boost specific attribute values (one plant high in size and another high in colour could combine to make a larger, brighter offspring). Not sure if this would be a step too far in complexity though?
Thanks for the insights as always, really enjoy following the process! One thought about the quality star symbols: For accessibility it should probably have a different shape for the premium star in addition to the color change to be a bit easier to see.
For the vegetable competition you could add another layer to winning, if you win gold 3 or more times you could be rewarded with a statue that can be placed around the relevant crop for a growth boost?
THis is all looking great! Although everything still feels really static. Perhaps people moving around and little NPC animals walking around would help.
For medals how about they improve the chance of getting that vegetable type in the highest quality, bronze and silver medal increases the average weight slightly? That way the system could be scalable getting bronze / silver increases chance of heavier vegetables and gold increases likelihood of getting a rare veg all of which convert to more gold.
One more thought on the UI. When drawing the competition, you could show each competitor as a bar in a bar chart and animate the bars growing over time. So you'd see sort of a snail race between the bars which may add a bit more excitement then just having the numbers show up.
Firstly, I love this game it looks amazing and I am looking forward to buy it as soon as it comes out Second thing, you should add pumpkin growing contest it'll be perfect for this type of contest. You plant pumpkin it grows the better you take care of them they grow bigger and bigger they get harder to control it.
The medals look great! That being said, I think golden trophies could also be really cool. Perhaps they could serve another purpose so you can have both, but if I had a farm I'd love to have something like a golden tomato trophy. Having them each as separate placables also means you could display a relevant one near every crop.
You could concider having the oponents in the market be actual NPC. This could create somethimg like a "rivalry" between the player and a sense of purpose. Maybe the clients you will sell to in general could have some story or something. For example, maybe there could be a family that does not have that much money, or a 5 star restaurant that wants only the best u can offer, or a traveller that comes rarely but "always looks forward to what u have for him" I really like the sense of "story" something like that could provide Keep up the great work!
First time I got an 'early access' notification for a devlog on Patreon 😊 All those years paying off 🤣 Been hooked (and a Patreon) since the end of Socuwan/start of Equilinox; always looking forward to the new vids 😊
The medals are really lovely, however it would be awesome to have a 3D-style vegetable medal that could be seen on a table without having to be clicked to see UI. If someone already suggested this or on road map I'm sorry and I hope I didn't waste anyone time.
I love your videos and have been watching for a while now. I just wanted to mention that I think the animation for the tutorial would create a lot not anticipation if you could see during the animation what place you are. Maybe by sorting them as they come in (fly over them until it's at the place and then sort itself in). Anyway keep up the good work
Make it, so the user can sort the collectable medals on the display by dragging and dropping. When the table is created, let it generate a random "desired order". As soon as the user sets his medals in the correct order he gets a small bonus and the desired order is recalculated again. The user can try to guess the new order after cool down time.
Watched your video detailing how you got started. I want to learn how to make games too. I hope I can get a grasp on it. Learning to code won't be wonderful but the reward will be.
You should add some kind of automation, like a farmer that'll farm for you, and you can also add some kind of insects that will eat your crops, and you can buy a spray to prevent that from happening. Player will spray them manually or make an auto sprayer that you can place around your plants, to quickly remove all inscects but with higher price. Make a level system as well so player can only buy certain things on certain level to keep them engage. And in the future, maybe add some decoration, buldings, pathways, for all the npc's that is in your farm, so the after results the player can have a nice farm that they can share to the community.
Something really easy to add some suspense would be to add a time delay curve to reveal each opponent. For example, first reveal is almost instant, second comes up later and takes a bit more delay, all the way until the last one which delays the longest to build up a bit of suspense. Kind of like a cartoon show. I suppose that + synced audio would work wonders.
After placing medal in the table also you could boost something specific to that crop for example you could get more premium crops if you got that medal or something so you are like master on growing that crop
Hey man, I saw this game on steam that has a similar theme, playstyle, and even the art style of the game from yours. The game is called "Solar Punk", the only difference there is, is that this game is more like of a futuristic type and has a body to move around the game, basically its open world. I am actually waiting for your game as well as this one, it will release in 2025. I hope yours will come out as soon as possible because I can't wait to play it :)
Would be cool if collecting a medal and displaying it in the case would give you a buff for that particular crop, essentially making it easier to produce
I think it would be nice to be able to see the average health of plants in i lott, for example: holding ctrl while selecting a plant it will flood-fill select all connected plants of the same type or all in the same lott and show the averages across those plants
Looking awesome! How about you add plaque's showing the Farm name to the competition? Might add additional interest to the results page? It could be similar to the Theme/Sim games so you will get to know the local competition (in this case farms). You could give them funny/punny names, maybe you can customise your plaque and decorate with your rosettes? You could have a farm leaderboard etc! Hell whilst we're here taking inspiration from those management games how about the newspaper/headlines feature and have village hall newsletter announcing a new farm when you first open? Then a weekly one saying things like the upcoming events, weekly competitions- maybe even tips as to what to grow next via the horoscopes or weather?! Or maybe some headlines that might reveal intel on the competition: "'Couch Potato Co' has a bumper crop of potatoes for this week's competition!" hehe ...I'm getting carried away! Anyway, it looks fab, keep up the good work! 👏
I had a thought that potentially collecting medals could actually go towards the increase in money earnt from selling produce - like you mentioned at the end, reputation points, each successive medal in the same category could progressively give you decreasing amount of extra reputation points… but I thought that reputation points was a cracking idea!
You could introduce more interesting interaction with competitions, if you could win in different nominations, e.g.: 1st by weight (the heavier your product, the better chances), 2nd by beauty (totally random, presented to the player as audience voting), 3rd by taste (increased chance depending on variety of used fertilizers and health of the crop), 4th by quantity (putting at stake as many premium products as you can at once and praying competitors will not put more), 5th by historical consistency, e.g. winning multiple times in a row (or in a year)
I know this would add to the scope, but if the player collected all the medals, there would be no point for them to join the competition unless they wanna sell the medals. You can maybe also add stacking of the same medals then when a threshold is met, the specific medals will combine to be a better medal thus giving better bonuses
Thanks for the suggestion! That's an interesting idea, I'll have to think about that. Selling the medal though is still quite beneficial on its own though, as it sells for more than the vegetable would have sold for. Plus you get the extra item rewards.
I think the reputation part should be a much more important feature. Like, over-relying on fertilizer and pesticides reduces reputation. Maybe also able to get different labels like “organic” or “pesticide free” which improve your reputation. But then of course, you have more pests and its harder to grow stuff
PUMPKIN! pumpkins would be cool. The competition feature just made me think of those big ol' pumpkins people grow. Also, it would be cool if the size of the meshes scaled with their weight when you harvest them
Maybe the medals could be used as a way for increasing the chance you get like "outside orders" which you could accept but they have a deadline. This way due to deadline it also makes you want to have even more efficient ways of producing, but you get rewarded for finishing in time. Also like in Turmoil you could add a second shop, this way the prices can fluctuate and it makes you plan a bit more.
I have an idea for medals! Maybe medals should automatically be sent to the medal table and cannot be sold, instead the competition gives you a reward directly to compensate. Then the medals on the table would stack, like you could get more than one per vegetable, which would give diminishing returns, but would still be interesting, like 1 zuccini medal -> 2%, 2 medals -> 3% etc. So you still have an incentive to get more medal, and you get the reward anyway, but it would push you to try and get one of each because the reward would be better!
That's what I tried first but I didn't really like how it looked. I think maybe because the existing icons show 3D vegetables that have shading. I thought a flat look for the icons would work better to go on the medals, so I then tried it with the super-simple icons drawn icons and much preferred how it looked.
With the medals, it would be a nice feature if they could increase some stats or values of your farm or crops. Sort of like a leveling system where you have more chances of producing better crops.
It might be neat if the medals reset/decay in effect after a certain amount of time (seasonally? annually?) so that the player has more reason to diversify their crops regularly. You could adjust the bonus to be more curved upward as the medals accumulate so that the end of the seasons have a relatively high bonus, but the bonuses don't last very long (until they have the tools to grow premium produce quicker). This would also build in rewards for upgrading farm size, as you increase the likelihood of getting premium produce in a shorter amount of time.
Sorry this update took a while! It was quite a big feature to implement, plus I had a fairly busy September outside of game dev. The next update shouldn't take so long!
I was put that hot reload suggestion, but its your work / honor about the implementation. :)
How did you learn to make a game engine? I watched your tutorial but it’s hard to understand even when writing stuff down. I would like to learn but I don’t know how to start.
@@visualizerbx Hi! I can suggest you the following books -> Jason Gregory: Game Engine Architecture, Robert Nystrom: Game Programming Patterns. But I need to warn you, It requres to know at least one programming language well, because to write a game engine it requires advanced programming knowledge. I don't know what is your knowledge level, but if you are beginer I would not suggest you to start a game engine. Otherwise if you are on advanced level, you can try it, it is interesting and chalanging and you can learn a lot of them, so there is a lot learning potential. But if the game programming is your main goal, I would skip the game engine writing. It requires a lot of time (even for Thinmatrix it kept years till his engine be on this level) and as you noticed in the video Still his engine is leaking several feature. So be aware if you want to write a game engine or a game. If you wants to write a game I would suggest you to pick from the already existing game engines and write games with those. (Unity, Unreal, Godot are most popular nowadays) I hope I could help.
You never need to apologize for living life :)
@@visualizerbx Jason Gregory: Game Engine Architecture and Robert Nystrom: Game Programming Patterns
One thing that this game might benefit from would be seasons. having spring, summer, autumn, and winter affect the production and growth would be really cool to see. You could have greenhouses you can cover your crops with during harsh environments (for example, snow), and have heaters/heat lamps you can place and surrounding crops would benefit from it.
I was about to say it
Also certain crops could be only grown in summer/winter
This!
It sounds exciting to play❤ nice idea
i kinda loved the idea, amazing
tbh I would make medals the only way to unlock some rare items in the game, this will make them a currency that's more attractive to work towards in my opinion.
I recently saw the results of a pumpkin growing competition, this is an awesome addition!
Having not to refresh the game every 5 seconds to tweak ui elements is a great change for you too
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I think it'd be really fun to only show the winners of the competition at the end of the day. You would only be allowed to enter a few minutes before that to build more suspense
Ooh! Yeah, just one competition per day with the winner announced “overnight” or something of the sort. That would be amazing!
+1 for the Ben Eater shoutout; he's amazing at explaining the concepts as well.
James Sharman is very cool to watch if you're into progression videos. Huge amount of videos can be found on his channel.
Why eating Bens tho?
About potential medal effects:
* Silver medals could give a bonus on weight of the respective vegetable (i.e., helps to get gold)
* Gold medals could give a probability bonus on getting more premium (i.e., helps to make more money)
In this case you might think about adapting the effects of reputation
It will be cool to also add a trophy cup if you get all the medals of one tier and to add medals for achievements that you gain while just playing that could give some passives too
Just saw the competition animation part of the video, where it adds some suspense via the delay of competitors popping up after you, this is great but to add even more suspense my immediate gut idea was that after they are all on screen it should do some shaking of all the competitors and gradually get more and more until they all do some pop effect and then it shows the result. Or something like this.
Really nice update! I was thinking that maybe selling the medals is a little strange. I think maybe is more unique if you only get the medal the first time you won the competition and next you get money instead. Also, the Medal Display is really nice, maybe the medals could be display like in a red red cushion to add more contrast. I love your videos and the game is making really good progress!
Yeah shouldn't medals go straight onto the table, if the person hasn't yet received that medal? Like you'd always keep the first medal.
Likewise, should they always sell if already collected? When would you ever want to keep a subsequent medal?
A big aspect of farming is working with and dealing with nature. Diseases, insects (beneficial and pest), other animals that eat crops or bugs, pollinators etc. Would love to see you try and implement things like that. You could give the paths more relevance by not allowing diseases to cross them. Or maybe make it so certain beneficial animals, like hedgehogs use those paths to hunt for slugs. Maybe give the player a tool like a net to catch bugs such as butterflies, grasshoppers etc and remove them off the property before they lay eggs on or eat the crops as well? Fences would also be useful for keeping out larger hungry creatures. Just a thought.
A pest system is already planned, that will be coming soon :) And there's already an invasive weeds system that works basically like disease: In poor conditions a special species of weeds can spawn which spread over a bed unless treated. They have a very negative effect on plants and may need weedkiller to completely remove. So it's like a disease system, but easier to show graphically.
For all the medals with green ribbons, I'd suggest coloring the two ribbons on each medal in a separate shade or even varying the ribbon shape for a clearer distinction. Great devlog as usual, I'm always excited to see your stuff pop up in my inbox!
The instant I saw the breadboards, I was like "This looks like some Ben Eater stuff!" I would love to properly build a breadboard computer, but I just don't really have the time for that considering the million other things I'm working on. Good luck getting everything working!
I see new ThinMatrix video, I click.
Your videos are always inspirational and push me to stay motivated on my own game dev journey. Thanks, and keep it up!
I think generating seeds from produce that you grew would be a nice idea, especially when you increase the chance for good and premium products when you use good/premium produce to convert to seeds.
Cool idea!
My wife suggests that you introduce a new lower quality vegetable if it is badly looked after that you can only throw away into the compost.
I would be really nice if the Medal display UI would match the ingame model of table and displayed medals. Then the player could place medals in any pattern that feels satisfying (and don't mess with OCD :D ) Also it would be nice bridge between 2D UI and 3D world and it would be pretty intuitive.
Also, if you give player some "starter" award placed in random spot, it would be immediately seen that the 3D and 2D displays are matching and also it will will be most likely clear to the player that it can be reorganized, etc. Possibilities are endless.
Anyway, great work, as a fellow programmer I always find your videos calming and relaxing. Keep up great work!
How about making your result in the competition affect the speed at which you sell at your stall on market day. It seems sensible that a competition winner would have more traffic at their stall and it would encourage the player to stockpile produce until they have a really good competition vegetable to magnify sales.
An element of risk could be added if you had to choose the vegetables to go on the stall before entering the competition, might make wining feel more rewarding.
That's a really interesting idea, thanks! I'll definitely consider implementing something along those lines.
The comments are so inspiring. Viewers ideas are so genuine and will help to make the game more engaging. U gained a great fanbase, congrats. Keep up with making the game more engaging, I really loved the viewers suggestions!
I used to watch your OpenGL 3d game tutorials 10 years ago and you just popped up on my feed again. You taught me OpenGL and SDL all those years ago. Happy to see you're still at it much love!
I always love the cozy vibes of your dev vlogs. Have you considered wonky fruits and vegetables? It seems like a good opportunity to make "normal" crops more interesting. At least here in Australia, wonky fruits, which have aesthetic blemishes but are otherwise perfectly fine, are often sold to juice companies.
I would absolutely love a video detailing a bunch of your favourite recipes. They're a nice segment in each devlog and I'd love to see a comprehensive video showcasing the amazing healthy meals you make!
Great to see the work going into the game and also so cool to see your electronics work, so cool to see!
Really cozy stuff in game and irl too! You have such a wonderful working space. Good job man!
this is a tenuous connection at best but i feel a deep compulsion to say that all this vegetable competition business makes me think back fondly on gromit's prize melon from curse of the wererabbit. delectable stuff
Wow, you threw me for a loop with your 'new' hobby. I'd love to see the finished product once you get there; it's already looking pretty interesting.
It's always a pet peeve of mine when a ui element has a curved container (like the 'you won' banner) but the text doesn't curve with it. This is absolutely the most important feature you need to add thank you Mr game development
He’s been working on his farming game so much, actual crops have started to grow in his house.
The game loop is looking good !
For the competition result animation, I think a bar graph race could look more intuitive and playful.
What I'm thinking is something like each opponent gets their vegetable displayed but the weight is marked as '???' initially.
The player's vegetable would stay central with a bar going to the top of the graph's UI container with the weight already displayed.
Then when the animation starts, all the opponent's bars raise at the same speed with even potentially a drum roll or raising tone SFX.
When a bar reaches the weight of one of the participants, the raising animation stops momentarily and you could add some confetti particles on the participant's vegetable icon.
As the bars get closer to the player's weight, they could slow down as to create some tension if the deciding margin was small.
If the player won, then all bars stop before reaching the player's weight, but if they don't get 1st place then the graph would scale with the highest value as the remaining bars continue raising.
This sort of animation would make the ranking feel a lot more intuitive since the height of the bar would directly correlate with the weight, instead of forcing to look at the numerical values or the color. It also makes close calls more exciting, generally giving a good sense for the scale of the difference between the participants which should help getting a feel for what kind of weight could win next time.
Btw, don't know if that's already the plan, but you could adjust the difficulty of the competition over time by changing the range of weight from the other participants, so the player isn't required to player perfectly from the get go.
Lastly, as I understand it the weight of a premium vegetable is random, but it would be great if the weight changed depending on how the health of the plant evolved over the lifetime of the crop : if it stayed at max health during the whole growth, it'll get a really good weight, whereas if it only got healthy at the very end of the growth cycle before getting harvested but was otherwise really low, the weight would be much lower.
I really like that bar graph idea, that would work really well! I'll see if I can do something like that.
I am planning on varying the difficulty of the competition as you mentioned.
As for the health, you already require basically perfect crop health to be in with a chance of getting a premium vegetable in the first place. So I don't have much wiggle-room there. And the health of the plant is already a pretty good indication of how it's been treated over its life-time - when the plant is unhappy (e.g. no water) its health drops slowly, but when it is totally satisfied the health mostly stays constant (it goes up a bit, but can't reverse serious damage to the plant).
I am planning on adding special fertilizers that you can use to increase the chances of getting heavier veg, so that will have a similar effect of providing extra care to the plant to increase the weight of the crop.
I get so excited every time UA-cam tells me you have another devlog up!
Awesome update as usual! I have a couple thoughts that popped into my head while watching:
1) there's a lot of ways to make money, and a lot of ways to increase the efficiency of the money you make, which puts a lot of pressure on the systems that exist for buying stuff (ie. how cool is the stuff you can buy and how much stuff can you buy?)
2) to add to the suspense of the contests, the game could ask you to enter vegetables into the contest before you do any of the buying or selling on Market Day, and then you only get to see the results at the end of Market day. Essentially Market Day is broken into 3 stages: first, you're given the opportunity to enter veg into the contest. this is done blindly (though the player will get a feel for it over time). Second, you go about your normal business of buying and selling (ofc you can't sell veg that were entered into the contest), and this could be considered the time that veg are being judged. Third, when you are done buying and selling, you can "end the day" by viewing the results of the contest. you'd then have to wait for the next market day to do any more buying/selling.
3) having the contest only run once per "month" (every 4th market day). There a couple benefits to this: first, it adds even more suspense to it. second, it gives more time (or more random rolls of harvested veg) to get those premium, high-weight vegetables. You can then store them and enjoy the anticipation of having a really great contestant waiting. Third, because this cuts down on the opportunity to get the trophies (by 75%), you can make the likelihood of winning any one contest higher, which I think is more satisfying. your patience will be rewarded more often
4) there should be 3 tiers of trophy for each veg I think. all should have good bonuses (maybe just to their associated crop? ie. getting the bronze carrot trophy makes all carrots have a 25% increased chance to be premium, silver gives 50%, gold gives 100% - as an aside, I think this works because weight is unaffected and other veg are unaffected, so it's a substantial benefit, but it's not overpowered and doesn't snowball too hard).
Love seeing your vids pop up in my feed! You're very inspiring to me 😁
Love the game concept! Some ideas to consider:
Reputation system:
First medal of each type gives max reputation
Subsequent medals give less, but still add reputation
Total reputation unlocks perks, for example:
• 100 rep: 5% better selling prices
• 250 rep: Another 5% price increase
Worker mechanic:
Hire 1 worker per 10 plants (numbers adjustable)
Higher reputation allows hiring better workers
Better workers produce higher quality crops
Quality crops increase chances of winning competitions
Note: All numbers and percentages are just suggestions - you'd balance them for your game.
Had to watch parts of it thousand times because you made me wanna work on my project so badly that I tried to do it in parallel but couldn't ^^. Great update and thanks for entertaining me for the last hour xD
I love your office. Amazing vibe with all the plants and the trees outside.
Always kept mine clean, minimalistic and "techy".. imma go get some plants now😅
Great to see the progression is going well.
I thought you were making a Vegetable competition for the community. Like the best Vegetable mod is getting implemented in the real game
Not quite, but that's also a cool idea!
Been waiting a while for this one, thanks for sharing the journey with us!
Love the idea of the medals! :) I can feel my competitive tendencies coming to make me want to get them all! :D
your setup is beautiful and i'm so jealous.
Another amazing update! The UI is really come together! This looks like a finished game now. Great work!
I can't wait for the release of this game. Don't rush though, because I enjoy these videos 😊
Perhaps it is too complex, but it would be very exciting if the weight of a vegetable is displayed as size while it grows - so that you can see which crops are going to be particularly valuable, and look forward to harvesting them. It'd be visually neat to see that one particular crop just increasing in scale over time as it grows, very intuitive. Great feature nonetheless, but I certainly believe this would make it feel even more alive!
I really like that idea! It wouldn't be too hard to implement either. Thanks :)
Really cool episode. Following you for a while now. I like how the game shakes better and better
Great video! The game is getting very good!!
I think that a nice idea for the plant quality feature would be some kind of way for the player to create his own seeds. It could be very hard to do that sort of thing, but the reward would be better quality crops. Maybe the players can use a lot of different products to improve their "home made" seeds, so the seeds can grow in a separate way from a "common" one. Furthermore, it would add extra strategies for the player to put top quality crops among the ones that they already have in the traditional way of planting
Interesting idea, thanks!
Don't know if you considered it yet, but I for one would be very interested in seeing a more detailed video about the game design process too. It'd be awesome to see how you handle that part. Great video as always
Love the idea for the vegetable competition. One extension of that idea could be for plants to have attributes (health, size, colour, etc) which determine the star level of the plant. The plant can then be entered into the competition for cash prize using these attribute scores to determine the best plant, or you can forgo the competition and cross breed it with another plant of the same type to boost specific attribute values (one plant high in size and another high in colour could combine to make a larger, brighter offspring). Not sure if this would be a step too far in complexity though?
I love this game, its so cozy, definitely gonna buy it, good job!
that desk setup is heavenly
Thanks for the insights as always, really enjoy following the process! One thought about the quality star symbols: For accessibility it should probably have a different shape for the premium star in addition to the color change to be a bit easier to see.
Good point, thanks!
For the vegetable competition you could add another layer to winning, if you win gold 3 or more times you could be rewarded with a statue that can be placed around the relevant crop for a growth boost?
THis is all looking great! Although everything still feels really static. Perhaps people moving around and little NPC animals walking around would help.
Thanks! I'll be working on the villagers soon, then they'll move around a bit :)
For medals how about they improve the chance of getting that vegetable type in the highest quality, bronze and silver medal increases the average weight slightly? That way the system could be scalable getting bronze / silver increases chance of heavier vegetables and gold increases likelihood of getting a rare veg all of which convert to more gold.
For weight, you could totally use a made up weight unit like PWU (plant weight units), otherwise I will forever imagine you’re growing 69lbs carrots
The only channel to which I have notifications enabled! I love this series.
One more thought on the UI. When drawing the competition, you could show each competitor as a bar in a bar chart and animate the bars growing over time. So you'd see sort of a snail race between the bars which may add a bit more excitement then just having the numbers show up.
Firstly, I love this game it looks amazing and I am looking forward to buy it as soon as it comes out
Second thing, you should add pumpkin growing contest it'll be perfect for this type of contest. You plant pumpkin it grows the better you take care of them they grow bigger and bigger they get harder to control it.
The medals look great! That being said, I think golden trophies could also be really cool. Perhaps they could serve another purpose so you can have both, but if I had a farm I'd love to have something like a golden tomato trophy. Having them each as separate placables also means you could display a relevant one near every crop.
You could concider having the oponents in the market be actual NPC. This could create somethimg like a "rivalry" between the player and a sense of purpose. Maybe the clients you will sell to in general could have some story or something.
For example, maybe there could be a family that does not have that much money, or a 5 star restaurant that wants only the best u can offer, or a traveller that comes rarely but "always looks forward to what u have for him"
I really like the sense of "story" something like that could provide
Keep up the great work!
First time I got an 'early access' notification for a devlog on Patreon 😊 All those years paying off 🤣 Been hooked (and a Patreon) since the end of Socuwan/start of Equilinox; always looking forward to the new vids 😊
This is a clever way of motivating players to earn achievements
This game is looking so nice, exited to see were it goes!
The medals are really lovely, however it would be awesome to have a 3D-style vegetable medal that could be seen on a table without having to be clicked to see UI. If someone already suggested this or on road map I'm sorry and I hope I didn't waste anyone time.
I love your videos and have been watching for a while now. I just wanted to mention that I think the animation for the tutorial would create a lot not anticipation if you could see during the animation what place you are. Maybe by sorting them as they come in (fly over them until it's at the place and then sort itself in). Anyway keep up the good work
Hey 😀. Nice to see you back. This game look pretty cool. Congratulations.
Love seeing something like this being built in Java. Seems to be the go to language for the community to hate on !
Make it, so the user can sort the collectable medals on the display by dragging and dropping. When the table is created, let it generate a random "desired order". As soon as the user sets his medals in the correct order he gets a small bonus and the desired order is recalculated again. The user can try to guess the new order after cool down time.
Watched your video detailing how you got started. I want to learn how to make games too. I hope I can get a grasp on it. Learning to code won't be wonderful but the reward will be.
You should add some kind of automation, like a farmer that'll farm for you, and you can also add some kind of insects that will eat your crops, and you can buy a spray to prevent that from happening. Player will spray them manually or make an auto sprayer that you can place around your plants, to quickly remove all inscects but with higher price. Make a level system as well so player can only buy certain things on certain level to keep them engage. And in the future, maybe add some decoration, buldings, pathways, for all the npc's that is in your farm, so the after results the player can have a nice farm that they can share to the community.
8:26 How about a little drum roll for the suspense, while the opponents fade in?
There will be! I was actually trying to find a sound effect for that but I haven't found any suitable ones yet.
Something really easy to add some suspense would be to add a time delay curve to reveal each opponent.
For example, first reveal is almost instant, second comes up later and takes a bit more delay, all the way until the last one which delays the longest to build up a bit of suspense. Kind of like a cartoon show. I suppose that + synced audio would work wonders.
After placing medal in the table also you could boost something specific to that crop for example you could get more premium crops if you got that medal or something so you are like master on growing that crop
Hey man, I saw this game on steam that has a similar theme, playstyle, and even the art style of the game from yours. The game is called "Solar Punk", the only difference there is, is that this game is more like of a futuristic type and has a body to move around the game, basically its open world. I am actually waiting for your game as well as this one, it will release in 2025. I hope yours will come out as soon as possible because I can't wait to play it :)
Would be cool if collecting a medal and displaying it in the case would give you a buff for that particular crop, essentially making it easier to produce
I can’t wait to play this. I love a good cozy game.
I think it would be nice to be able to see the average health of plants in i lott, for example: holding ctrl while selecting a plant it will flood-fill select all connected plants of the same type or all in the same lott and show the averages across those plants
Great Update, love the Medals!
Looking awesome! How about you add plaque's showing the Farm name to the competition? Might add additional interest to the results page? It could be similar to the Theme/Sim games so you will get to know the local competition (in this case farms). You could give them funny/punny names, maybe you can customise your plaque and decorate with your rosettes? You could have a farm leaderboard etc!
Hell whilst we're here taking inspiration from those management games how about the newspaper/headlines feature and have village hall newsletter announcing a new farm when you first open? Then a weekly one saying things like the upcoming events, weekly competitions- maybe even tips as to what to grow next via the horoscopes or weather?! Or maybe some headlines that might reveal intel on the competition: "'Couch Potato Co' has a bumper crop of potatoes for this week's competition!" hehe ...I'm getting carried away! Anyway, it looks fab, keep up the good work! 👏
I had a thought that potentially collecting medals could actually go towards the increase in money earnt from selling produce - like you mentioned at the end, reputation points, each successive medal in the same category could progressively give you decreasing amount of extra reputation points… but I thought that reputation points was a cracking idea!
I had this idea! Quick, look back at the old videos
I thought this was going to be a competition for the viewers to model their own vegetables for Homegrown :D
Just caught up on your videos after a unfortunately long hiatus, but love the progress I saw! And more to come!❤❤
You could introduce more interesting interaction with competitions, if you could win in different nominations, e.g.: 1st by weight (the heavier your product, the better chances), 2nd by beauty (totally random, presented to the player as audience voting), 3rd by taste (increased chance depending on variety of used fertilizers and health of the crop), 4th by quantity (putting at stake as many premium products as you can at once and praying competitors will not put more), 5th by historical consistency, e.g. winning multiple times in a row (or in a year)
I know this would add to the scope, but if the player collected all the medals, there would be no point for them to join the competition unless they wanna sell the medals. You can maybe also add stacking of the same medals then when a threshold is met, the specific medals will combine to be a better medal thus giving better bonuses
Thanks for the suggestion! That's an interesting idea, I'll have to think about that. Selling the medal though is still quite beneficial on its own though, as it sells for more than the vegetable would have sold for. Plus you get the extra item rewards.
I think the reputation part should be a much more important feature. Like, over-relying on fertilizer and pesticides reduces reputation. Maybe also able to get different labels like “organic” or “pesticide free” which improve your reputation. But then of course, you have more pests and its harder to grow stuff
Your office is stunning 🤙🏻
PUMPKIN! pumpkins would be cool. The competition feature just made me think of those big ol' pumpkins people grow. Also, it would be cool if the size of the meshes scaled with their weight when you harvest them
Maybe the medals could be used as a way for increasing the chance you get like "outside orders" which you could accept but they have a deadline. This way due to deadline it also makes you want to have even more efficient ways of producing, but you get rewarded for finishing in time.
Also like in Turmoil you could add a second shop, this way the prices can fluctuate and it makes you plan a bit more.
You are absolutely incredible.
I think some shaders that add some more contrast would be nice to make the game look less flat
On the "you win" banner popup animation, I would maybe add some overshoot to the scaling animation curve. ✨
I have an idea for medals!
Maybe medals should automatically be sent to the medal table and cannot be sold, instead the competition gives you a reward directly to compensate. Then the medals on the table would stack, like you could get more than one per vegetable, which would give diminishing returns, but would still be interesting, like 1 zuccini medal -> 2%, 2 medals -> 3% etc. So you still have an incentive to get more medal, and you get the reward anyway, but it would push you to try and get one of each because the reward would be better!
You could pay tickets into a raffle for items and money, each type of veg gives a certain amount of tickets
Love it!! 😊 Great Video
11:59 Wouldn't it be more effective to simply overlay the existing vegetable symbols instead of creating all the symbols percentage-wise?
That's what I tried first but I didn't really like how it looked. I think maybe because the existing icons show 3D vegetables that have shading. I thought a flat look for the icons would work better to go on the medals, so I then tried it with the super-simple icons drawn icons and much preferred how it looked.
I really enjoyed building the Eater computer too!
With the medals, it would be a nice feature if they could increase some stats or values of your farm or crops. Sort of like a leveling system where you have more chances of producing better crops.
you casually learned illustrator mid video, props to you lol
It might be neat if the medals reset/decay in effect after a certain amount of time (seasonally? annually?) so that the player has more reason to diversify their crops regularly. You could adjust the bonus to be more curved upward as the medals accumulate so that the end of the seasons have a relatively high bonus, but the bonuses don't last very long (until they have the tools to grow premium produce quicker). This would also build in rewards for upgrading farm size, as you increase the likelihood of getting premium produce in a shorter amount of time.
Tom Holland back with another upload. Love to see it
I think you should change the weight icon. It took me a while to realize that that's what it was. It looks like a shopping bag to me.
I'm so excited about this game
Oh no, the medals are adorable! :D