Trying to figure out what paths do in my farming game
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- Опубліковано 27 сер 2023
- Devlog video about "Homegrown", a casual farming game I'm creating using my own engine. Trying out some path related features this week!
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#devlog #Homegrown - Ігри
For the path dirtiness I would suggest that all paths get dirty equally fast, but the cleaning is a lot faster on tile paths than on dirt paths. Thats more realistic and should have the same effect on the gameplay :)
@ThinMatrix I would suggest the same thing, but in reverse 😄
The way it is currently and with your suggestion, the tile path is objectively the best path to use, since it has the higher speed bonus AND is cleaner. The only thing that could make players use the dirt path is, if they prefer the visuals, but at least for me, that is never going to be the case. So choosing between the paths is more of a fake decision, since a lot of players will always opt for the objectively more effective gameplay version.
If the dirt path is faster to clean but the tile path provides the better bonuses, there actually is value to using both in different situations. I think that is also justifyable, since dirt that has been trampled on a lot, is also quite hard to get off a tile with just a broom.
As for the visuals, maybe the same meshes that are used for the digging particles could work. Might be worth a try to scatter them across the paths in a scaled down version and form small heaps.
Looking forward to the next video, best of luck.
The tile path is gonna be more expensive so the player has to use it on the most important plants only
Dirt path should get dirtier slower than the stone path, and its cleaning speed should be slower as well
@@cloob1811 I was about to suggest this lol. Also, (partly in response to @omarhassan2124), maybe there should be a third,
more expensive path that is the best of both worlds.
Maybe dirt paths grow over with grass more quickly and you have to repair them in order for them to remain useful
For dirty paths, I thought that besides dirt, they could also become overgrown. Dirt paths growing grass patches, and the tiles having weeds/grass poking up from in between the tiles. Might be an alternative graphic to just adding dirt. Although, the broom would have to be changed to something like a weewacker or something I guess.
@@DevGamerBeard That is an understandable point of view. I imagine that it could easily be rectified with a toggle option. Of course, I imagine that disabling maintinence, would result in less benefits. After all, when it comes to gardening and farming, to truly flourish, tool, garden and enviormental maintinence is an unfortunate reality.
@@Zeandico If you ever feel the need to add a toggle to a game mechanic you're designing then it needs rethinking. This is a game, why have "unfortunate realities" in it!
@@TMinusRecords Because games come with goals, challanges and adverseties?
@@TMinusRecords Because some people really enjoy it. The best games have toggle mechanics for everything and a massive menu to make changes, and allow modding to change them even more. There is no such thing as a game that suits all people out the box. I am a professional gardener I like the sound of having to weed paths because I don't find gardening a bore. It's all tasks like that otherwise you could just use 3D garden design software to create a perfect garden with no problems.
@@Zeandico Therein lies the game
Maybe you could add pests such as caterpillars which only spread to stuff in the same bed, unless they pupate and become butterflies and then they will lay their eggs onto other beds. Also you could add wild animals which roam around and eat pests and maybe some of them will be more likely to use paths. Just a thought.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Pests could also have a maximum spread of say 5 or 10 tiles. This way not only it's beneficial to separate crops by a path to stop the spread of weed, but also alternate the type of crops to control pest infestations.
This would encourage players to use more of the map. Maybe decors could have effects for specific range like a row of trees helping block spread of pest, water well have a bonus on watering, etc...
Pest propagation could also be chance based, you could have it so they spread more through beds, less over paths, and neutrally through grass.
^^ animals using paths is an interesting idea!
The same particles that come up when you place something in your bed should be "lying around" on the pathway. maybe thats a good alternative to your "dirty texture"
That's a nice idea, I might have to try something like that. I hadn't really considered having 3D meshes for the dirt, but that could work quite well! Thanks!
@@ThinMatrix I think instead of dirtiness you could do "condition". Higher level paths have better toughness so they lower in condition less often. On every tile type it could show small cracks on medium condition, and bigger cracks with some grass coming trough them the lower condition goes.
and dirt should acumulate in path cracks and to the sides, not in the path's center line where it is walked often...
@@Gludek Adding moss and weeds to the mix could be interesting too to display the condition- weeds sprouting on dirt paths and moss spreading across tile paths
@Chridy nah, I suggested cracks because it can be implemented without textures, moss would be confusing without different textures for grass and moss. And putting weeds on the path while it is blocking weeds from spreading between beds is counterintuitive, I suggested grass sprouting to signify it being closer to normal terrain rather than tile in its effectiveness
I like that bonus system. Makes it so that better tools allow for larger fields, making progression more visible too.
For the dirt visuals, I’d say you want little blobs of dirt as simple hemispherical-esque 3D objects, either in the middle or along the edge. That would fit in with your art style
He could use the models that he has for weeding.
I thought of blobs of dirt too for visuals, also described as mud
A path connection idea would be to create aqueduct paths that when connecting a well and a bed it could keep the bed watered or if that's too OP you could make it keep any crops withing 3 tiles of the aqueduct watered which would also ensentivise small beds in the late game when you have better tools that could handle a large bed in one go. This could also give you a reason to add small bridges to your farm as well.
that would be called "irrigation". would be interesting if the amount flowing through it was important so you dont overwater your crops, or need to flood the bed to grow rice.
I have some suggestions:
* one would be that maybe some plants have some specific placement requirements such as: (vaguely similar with Farlanders buildings).
+ for example maybe cauliflower gets better quality if it has some shade (like a tall plant like corn) (that seems to actually true)
+ or maybe some plants need more space, so if adjacent tile are empty they get a boost in growth
+ some species influence each other spicy peppers will make regular ones spicy if they are close when they pollinate (you decide if that's a good or a bad thing)
+ maybe tiles adjacent to grass have a higher chance of being infested with weed
+ and then you can make up some imaginary rules like: some plants like to grow in a row, some of them maybe work well together, other might not
* another one would be that the effect of plots connected by paths to specific object might get a greater effect if they are closer (similar to Cities Skylines utilities services)
* if you would like to make the player use different path type for different purposes you can make the path types have upsides and downsides (maybe the upside of the dirt path is that it never gets dirty, because it also makes some sense, and the the player might think more if they want to upgrade the path for further benefits at the cost of more labor, that being the cleaning of it)
In my opinion these changes would add a lot of optional complexity to the game for people that like puzzles and want to optimize.
I want to expand on idea 6 because that sounds interesting actually.
- Different plants could have different "shape" requirements - line, square, round, etc.
- If planted in a bed that isn't the correct shape, they may struggle to pollinate and grow, whilst getting a boost if they are in a bed of the correct shape.
- If the bed is the right shape but the seeds aren't planted in the right shape (e.g. filling out 3 squares of a square bed), the plants don't get the bonus but maybe don't get the debuff as they're partly correct?
Your idea 3 is also interesting. Plants could require X number of spaces around their bed to be empty to be able to grow properly and paths would be a clear way to do this. in addition, some plants might spread and turn adjacent or nearby spaces into bed plots with their seed already planted, or replace whatever plant is already there with their own (I'm imagining something like that Japanese weed that spreads really fast). This spreading can then be slowed by dirt paths and stopped by tile paths
Love the positive bonus versus negative effect when determining paths. One thing I wouldn't forget is the intrinsic desire players have to make things pretty. Like an organize farm
Edit: this was already in the video.
One thing I picked up from a garden center was that sometimes concrete paths are used to separate beds/soil to prevent unwanted weeds growing between them, which could introduce a pro/con system of having weeds affect some plants more than others, and if the player had one massive bed it would punish them by the weed rapidly spreading uncontrollably where as paths could have contained it resulting in less weedkiller needed and less crop lost losing profits
This is a really good point! Weed spreading of fungus or gnats!
Hi @ThinMatrix how is your health now? Hope u r doing well ❤️🩹
For the bed bonuses. Maybe you could have some kind of counter/ visual cue that shows that you're about to get one of them. For example a circle which fills when all the plants in the bed are watered which then explodes when you have reached the bonus
Ooh yeah, nice idea!
Oi, so my idea for the implementation of path would be to make diseases, weeds and insects spread more quickly the further the middle of the bed is from the closest path.
For example, if you have a 2x2 bed, every plot is touching a path, which makes it easy to care for. a 5x5 bed has a plot which is 2 plots away from the closest path, which means, it's not as easy to be taken care of, so diseases spread more quickly. The better the quality of the path, the fewer insects cross it, which in turns means, fewer insects per bed thus slower sprad of diseases.
The punishment gets worse, the bigger the bed is. Obviously you can still care for the bed by hand, but it's jsut easier to build some paths.
In Stardew Valley is it way to easy to just turn your whole farm into one single bed for the best seasonal crop and make craploads of money. Always bothered me, because there was no point to make the farm at least a little bit realistic.
Thanks for the suggestion, that makes a lot of sense. Nice idea!
In Sun Haven, which is one of my favorite farm sims, there are perks you can unlock that allow you to walk faster on your paths so you can get around the farm faster. I'm pretty sure paths served a similar function in Ooblets. I think paths should also be weed/random spawn proof. Plus some people just like paths because they are aesthetically pleasing. So they don't necessarily have to have a function, people will decorate with them regardless, but it is a nice feature when they do serve a function.
That transition at 15:15 was clean! Nice job! This looks like a fun game with a lot of new fresh ideas for the genre.
There was one at about 10:52 too.
Is it rude that it was a stand-out moment in the whole video for me?
I was just about to comment this haha
How about a trampling effect when you move into a bed to work it? Could cause some damage to plants or unwanted soil compression. Bigger beds would lead to more trampling. Just like in real life.
Have the whole Equilinox gang come bobbing by at random intervals
always get that rush of happiness when i see a thinmatrix upload!
Yup. Same 😀
like littlewood, maybe you could have a town hall that gives you a score on how pretty your farm is (based on organization and variety) and gives you rewards for a higher score. along those same lines, it'd be nice to have more tools and items to decorate your farm with
Im in the middle of watching but when you were showing the diferent beds 2 ideas popped into my mind.
idea 1 offtopic - that blue bed looks like water... fish farm?!
idea 2 on topic - maybe you could put different fertilizer per bed that gives you different properties. like more % for multiple yeld of potatos, or exta fast grow for pumpinks..
For the dirty paths, it would maybe a good idea to have geometry show it. Maybe have some kind of dirt piles that show next to the beds would better to demonstrate the "hard access" to those paths.
It could be mixed in with some weeds to, that you need to remove to move freely as well. Idk just an idea, hope it helps
Thanks for the suggestion! I think you're right, that representing the dirt with 3D geometry might be the way to go. Thanks!
for the tiles or a gravel path you could have weeds growing on the path represent the dirt@@ThinMatrix
Connecting to the pathways and having the plots completely surrounded could also connect to the water well and have an additional water length bonus for that maybe.
You could have workers working for you that will use paths to walk around
It's a common suggestion but it's just a bit outside the scope of what I plan to implement for this game (and it's giving me flashbacks to the city-builder just thinking about it!) That's not to say there will never be any AI people in the game, maybe it's something I would eventually add after release, but it definitely wouldn't be a core part of the gameplay. The game is very much designed around you doing the farming yourself, rather than assigning it to be done by AI workers.
had a similar idea. But instead of many workers, it would only be one gardener for example. So basically you would give your gardener commands on what to do, and the pathways help him to get to those tasks faster. You could then add on similar effects like growth speed bonuses and so on for different types and grids of pathways. For example 10% more fertility if surrounded with gravel path, 5% more movement speed of your gardener when having a certain amount of rock way tiles. Speaking of amounts of certain path types: you could also add some bonuses for certain amounts as passive global bonuses. Say you got 20 tiles of dirt ways you gain something, or you have 30 tiles of another type which gives you another bonus permanently.
Also you could add moles, dandelions and stuff, that would gradually damage and eventually destroy tiles, which would delete bonuses so you gotta keep the pathways intact.
Note: I didn't watch the video fully :D
Anyway it would be nice to have some live in the game. Maybe some birds, or animals outside of the playable area. @@ThinMatrix
I came here to say this as well. I realize it's a big shift but I think workers would open a lot of different gameplay functionality: - queuing tasks like harvesting a big plot and then see them run over on the paths to harvest, - transporting harvested crops to storage, - individual character traits like tool upgrades, laziness stats, etc - background tasks when nothing is queued like cleaning the paths, making compost, etc
I think animals instead of workers would be great. Like a goat that eats weeds or dogs and cats that eat bugs wich would harm the plants or protect the plants from birds
I love the idea of kinda meshing a city builder game with a farming game. It’s so neat
Your videos are always entertaining and insightful. Thank you for showing us the development process of your game!
Glad to see that you finally switched from Eclipse to IntelliJ! Also I hope you implement day/night cycles and seasons or at least weather in the game! That would make the negative buffs on the paths make more sense. Also the paths could get dirty by weeds growing on them (and that could affect beds attached to them) or by weed from one bed that could spread over a dirt-path to another bed.
I really like the idea of having bonus effects based on the pathways. However, I can imagine that it limits the player into using a specific path for the boost while another one would look better on the farm (or generally, maybe stop you from implementing more unique pathway textures like wooden boards etc.)
the dirt on the paths could be represented as little twigs, leaves or pebble. i also had the idea of sweeping the dirt from the tiles you want to clean onto the neighboring tiles in one specific direction and piling up a large heap. this heap could be used for composting
I think weeds could be a primary motivator for surrounding a bed with paths - if weeds spread from outside across your grass (diagetically or otherwise), they'd be less likely to cross the boundary if there's a plant-free area in the way. It would also make sense that stone paths do this better and the effect is lessened as they get dirty
A somewhat simple use for paths: What if certain actions like watering placing compost have to be within a certain range of a path that is connected to your house. This mimics the real life phenomenon where if a plot of land gets too big you can't reach all of it without walking through it and trampling the crops. This gives both a use for paths and limits the size of plots!
That was my first thought too (and I talked about something very similar to this at 4:55 in the video where tools gets slower and slower the further from a path they are) but I worried about this being too negative and restrictive to the player (I discussed this a bit at that part in the video). But it's something I'm still considering; maybe I'll end up going with that.
I like this idea. Simple and on theme.
Weeds is also “negative”.
The combo bonus is so smarttt. Good job on coming up w it
When the player starts doing an action on a bed, it would be cool to have an outline around the bed that acts like a progress bar, filling up the closer you get to finishing the full bed in one go, or removes the outline when the combo is interrupted
Really starting to come along now! Good job!
Thank you!
I really liked your solution for smaller beds! Before you mentioned the path speed boost thing, I was thinking that maybe the watering "bonus" is that you can continue watering quicker each time. So kinda like a multiplier that gets quicker for each bed. That way the watering process is a little more interesting and strategic. This could work for harvesting, compost, etc too.
I could imagine it would be interesting if Dirt Paths won't get dirty at all (I guess it also makes sense like this) and some higher tier paths might get dirty at different rates. Maybe some paths have the same buffs but different dirtiness rates or something like that. This will really make the player think which path to choose and might even be a reason to keep specific beds surrounded by lower tier paths even in the lategame, so they don't get dirty as quickly
this exactly
Exactly my idea, too
Your videos are always so good. It’s fun to see you cooking with the veggies you grew. Thank you! I really love your buffs idea.
Really love the progress you keep making this game! It's looking incredible!
You could add an automatic sprinkler powered by a cable, so when you have enough money, you could buy one and it will water automatically your terrain !
I'm planning on adding sprinklers at some point :)
For the path if you want to keep the same style as the rest of the game, it might make sense to have weeds grow out of them.
Also, man, can you share the recipe you used for the food at 15:30? It looks amazing
Here's the recipe I used: ua-cam.com/video/EtpwOvjCNEI/v-deo.html
@@ThinMatrix Thanks!
Always look forward to these! Always showing us the path forward with our own projects :)
Definitely some good ideas for the implementation of the paths! Great work!
Random comment: Im graduating tomorrow!!! (College)
🎉🎉🎉
First!
You're cheater😱
Wow.. how?
Lovely transition at 10:51. I love these dev blogs. They have come a long way since the begining! Keep it up
love your devlogs. keep going
Your videos are so soothing, thank you for doing what you do!
man, i'm developing a game and i'm struggling a lot with game design! Seen you taking those decisions make me admire you even more! Just someone that already developed games knows how hard it's to take these type of decisions and you find out a very good solution for your problem!
You are awesome!
Great video !
Each episodes I get more insights on how hard it is to find the balance for a game to be fun, rewarding, not that much punishing... and each episodes you seem to find keys to make it better !
Don't know if it would fit the vision but might be interesting to introduce a robot or a pet that you could buy which would help you automate certain tasks in game. Then you would also have a reason to have paths for the robot to move around and not get stuck in the grass.
Paths remind me of Oxtgen Not Included doors as an idea. They are not usefull themselves, but they help form rooms, which provide different specialty bonuses ( ie a kitchen cooks food faster, than just a station in the middle of nowhere ). Feel like that would fit into the whole farm fantasy ( having separate rooms for crops, having yield or growth rate bonuses from rooms, similar to fertilizer ?)
Having a bonus for having only compatible crops in the same bed, or even debuffs for crops that don't play nice together (where a fast growing crop crowds out a slower growing plant) would be interesting
The 3 sisters (corn, beans and squash/pumpkin) were grown together by native Americans because they have a beneficial relationship to each other. Monocropping has the advantage you only need 1 type of fertilizer etc, but tends to wear out the soil faster, requiring more fertilizer etc. Adding this kind of pro and con system for combining crops in a bed would be really interesting
Nice video @ThinMatrix ! The Combo system is very nice. About the path, i like the idea of the bonuses... I would just make it in a way that the bonus of the house would be applied for only "20" blocks of distance, just like its easier to carry things to your house when you are near it (then you get a bonus for speedy if your bed is near your house) or your water can have more water if that bed that is near the well... I think this would be a nice way to make the player think about where to place the crops and itens in the world.
Your solutions are really clever and in my opinion match perfectly with the game direction. A trick you could use for the combo system is adding sound cues that some games use, increasing pitch when the combo is going and reset when the combo breaks. The house connection buff is a nice addition to reward the player for matching effectivess with pretty design. Can't wait for the final game, will be so relaxing and fun to play!
Another awesome update! I think the game is coming along great! I liked how this video was a bit more "higglely figglely" (or however you'd spell that lol). It was cool to see your thinking process and trying different ideas! Your videos have been a big reason why i started my own devlog channel, thank you!
As you were thinking of ideas around connecting objects to beds, I was thinking of a annual village award for attractive landscaping that gets you a small boost or bonus (maybe some prestige that increases the amount you can sell your crops for)
this looks great! excited for the ui update!
Very cool ideas for the paths and beds!
I'm amazed by the simple to grasp but gameplay enhancing systems! Well done
coming along very well, good luck!
Thanks!
Thank you! Good to see you think twice your moves. I wish this kind of process in every business.
I love your idea with the speed buffs, makes me really image to walk from the house to the beds. Also an idea to mix up the interactions: maybe you could try something like a speed capped dragging mechanic for the broom. I imagine being able to drag the broom to clean but not just as fast as I can move the mouse so it would feel a bit like painting.
Nice work! I really like the gui!
I like the dirty path texture and the system behind it! Nice work!
I love your videos! You are my inspiration for starting game development.
So inspiring
I really like the idea of the weeds infecting a bed. Maybe you could have some mechanic where the weeds do actually spread between beds, but by having paths in between, the spread of the weeds is slowed. Tile paths slow the spread of weeds most effectively etc.
Also like the dirtiness. As a lot of people have commented already I think, the quicker cleaning on tiles makes sense. In the case of the visuals, I think having little dark dirt particles instead of a smooth texture would fit better with the arts type already achieved. Similar to the particles that briefly appear when working a bed.
Hope I can help!
I love the dimensions of maintenance this is adding! Proper cosy game stuff
Love the path ideas incl. the dirt malus. It sounds really fun.
You could make the paths get overgrown rather than just dirty, so they could have vines or grass grow onto them. Maybe the paths could risk overgrowing away entirely, and thats why they have to be cleaned
This art style is so relaxing, I'll be definitely checking this game when you release it!
For the dirty path visuals: check in 14:53, see those little dirt pieces flying
scatter some of them on the paths, and for visual cue for the player on which lvl of dirt the path is, set like 3 lvl (or what you like) and add something like this to the dirt path:
lvl 1 - dirt pieces
lvl 2 - more dirt and leaves
lvl 3 - dirt leaves and a stick
add a blur effect for transitioning also
and so on
hope I've helped you, and keep up with the awesome work =D
Those are all great solutions you found.
Great update! Really enjoying following your progress.
For a negative of paths you could have weeds spreading along the paths. Stone paths spread slower than dirt paths, but the weeds take longer / are harder to dig out of the stone paths. This could work well with the dirty paths mechanic.
For the large beds problem I thought you could fully limit some tools. As if you couldn't harvest that deep into a bed without spoiling some plants. Or it wasn't possible to reach the watering can that far.
Finally, given that planting different crops together like tomato and basil is good in the real world, it might make sense to benefit certain crops being planted together 😊
Nice work as always! Think your idea for paths and their place in the game seems interesting, hopefully it's the right path! ;D
I also think cleaning them is an extra mechanic which just looks like it'll be satisfying and fun to do, maybe you can upgrade the broom to a pressure washer or something to make cleaning faster!
Also that transition at 15:17 was spectacular :D
very inspiring, love it!
Just discovered your channel and loving the content! 👍. As for the path dirt - maybe you could have the grass start to encroach and take over the path, eventually destroying it
For when the tile paths get dirty you could try make the dirt only be visible within the grooves. And maybe the normal dirt patches are still on top just a lot less visible, would be kinda realistic.
Or maybe that would be a benefit of the tile path, that the dirt is collected by the grooves for the most part, then eventually get full.
This is probably overengineering it but I would love to see the grooves get filled haha, I feel like the contrast would look good
7:16 That's really clever, it's arcadey, rewarding, a bit of a minigame and also has deeper implications for farm planning!
One thing I thought of when you talked about the weeds spreading in a bed was having paths give a certain protection from weeds to the bed tiles next to them, and entirely surrounded beds get a bonus to all tiles. You mentioned something similar so Idk if you already thought about this though
Your setup looks sooo cozy. I'd love to sit there and write code :3
Maybe, one good ideia is to have specific (and random) spots in your farm that can benefit most from specific types of crops. I think this is a way of giving choices for the player when creating paths. Imagine that growing carrots in a specific region on the map (a better soil for it) give you a boost and more quality carrots, so the player can choose to create a path to that spot to place a carrot seed bed there or just put them closer to the other beds he already own cause he don't want to spent more resource or other reason. I think this is something that can make the farm look more like the ones you build yourself in the videos, with some longer paths leading to a specif crop and some smaller ones with more density and diversity.
Lots of really good ideas in this video!
I really like the idea of the invasive weeds. They'd be a mild irritance in smaller garden beds, and an absolute show stopper for "minmaxed gardens". (You could even make the vicious invasive weeds slightly more likely the bigger a garden bed is.)
I also like the combo system, although it might be sensible to make it so a garden bed has to be a minimum size before it's eligible. If you don't, then players might just make 1x1 gardens to instantly reap the rewards of a combo.
The meals you cook always look so fantastic and tasty!
I've been watching your videos for a while and I enjoy your content. The like the idea of paths and I have three suggestions as paths for you:
- aqueduct: transports water to a bed automatically, but the source has a capacity and water requirement for a bed is proportional to it's size (e.g. the reservoir (which you have to buy) can provide up to 50 litres with a 10l/hour refill rate and each tile requires 1 liter; if you make the bed too big, it could dry in time)
- conveyor belt: for moving compost around or the crop to silos or warehouses
- bridges: this requires being able to build paths on top of each other, but you can make a beautiful rose garden with a splendid arch bridge :)
Keep up the good work!!!
Love this series, thank you so much for sharing your work
Really excited to see where the path connection feature goes. I know the obelisk was a test but some fun garden decorations could include scarecrows, bird baths, or lawn gnomes. Maybe bird baths increase the chance of “pollination” nearby? Pollination would play a shiny particle effect on a plant and age it up slightly. Or maybe they spawn purely aesthetic birds?
Great video as always!
To add a reason to the paths which is a similar suggestion others - It would be nice to see "farmers" use the paths but who are not controlled, as its clear its not apart of your current scope and nor should it be as a "click-type" game.
A farmer with a wheelbarrow and his/her dog patrol along the paths (while performing "working" animations like weeding/brushing) and are the ones that "discover" the weeds and/or invading rodents (farmers see weeds, dog sees the rodents).
They have a limited visual range so beds cant be too big, otherwise the farmer/dog etc cant see into the deepest parts of the bed.
Improved paths allow the farmer to patrol longer/faster with his/her wheelbarrow. Farm dogs and improved wheelbarrows could be bought from the local shop.
I think a big thing that will make this game fun to play, as it seems to be chill 'chore-simulation' game a-la Animal Crossing, is to add game-juice to all the activities like cleaning, weeding and harvesting that could get tedious, especially as the farm scales up in size.
In any case, the game is going great, I am astounded every dev log with how much progress the game is making and it looks gorgeous now with the art overhaul. I'm hoping it will be as fun to play as looks when it comes out. Excellent work so far :)
Excited about this game! 😄
Some ideas:
- Maybe tools have a “range” attribute, letting them only work within a certain amount of tiles from the path (similar to your idea of slowing down the tools, but more of a strict limit). That could also give incentive for tool upgrades, like being able to water tiles further away from the path. Maybe if you try to reach plants that are further away you have to step on/destroy plants. You could indicate this visually with footprints in the soil, leading from the path. (And dirty footprints on the path.)
- You could probably repurpose the path/graph logic for a watering system, similar to how city builders have water systems.
- Maybe paths simply provide aesthetic value? Like in the game “Townscaper”, maybe the end goal is not found in boosts and numbers..
I'm following your progress for a while now an this looks great, and it already has a lot more actual gameplay than all those crappy mobile farming games.
to the paths, may apply the buffs based on the cost/distance to the buff building an the degree of enclosednes(is this a word?), this would mean fully enclosed plots near the house whould have a good buff early on while plots further away need better paths to keep up
To make the dirty paths fit better with the artstyle, maybe represent the dirt as a bunch of strewn clumps/clod objects that slowly accumulate? Almost like what you have with the garden tiles after you place compost on them.
you could look into needing water paths for the plants, for example little streams splitting up the beds.
You could make a "player" that would plant and harvest but on on plots that are connected to a path, paths get dirty over time and break blocking you from sections of your farm and you have to clean them if there dirty or repair them if they break, you'd pretty much make a que system and the little player person would walk over and do what you told him, it'll slow down game play but gives paths more reason to be in the game and a main part of walking around, another idea is paths are optional, but if the player walk on the plot with a plant there's a chance it'll break giving even more incentive to have paths
Just like in e.g. City Skylines you need a road to build buildings next to, you could allow the player only to interact with tiles that are not too far from a path tile. Maybe different tile types or dirt decrease the reach, or some crops are easier to access than others. Seems realistic enough to me. That might also require you to clean paths because otherwise you might not be able to harvest a crop that you planted before, because the path became too dirty and inaccessible meanwhile.
I dont know if you intend to add a little farmer npc but im going with it since it was in your concept art. If paths connect a bed to the house then the farmer can access the bed or at least more easily (perhaps a slow tip toe animation). They wouldn’t be responsible for the main chores but would do little things like; adding an extra bit of growth juice, watering a plant here and there, or perhaps standing next to a weed, waving and making a “yoo hoo” sound to notify the player of something. Just as an occasional help and to give a bit of life. It would be cute to see them sweeping leaves, refilling a bird feeder, fishing at a dock, cloud watching, tripping over in mud etc.
I think i have started serios coding for my first time and i think it's at least partly because of this channel. So keep up making this videos, very inspirational :) In case someone wonders, Im trying to make some kind of erosion simulation for hightmaps, as a project to learn and become confident with the basics.
I was thinking a while ago about how you'd encourage spreading your farm over your entire land, instead of just building a crop factory as compact as possible. How about adding variable fertility or even tile classes that work better with different types of plants. That way your plant patches are spread out far and wide, and should build a more organic garden.
I was going to comment relating this to terrain placement in Roller Coaster Tycoon 1/2, but now all I can think about is how smooth that transition at 10:50 was 😍
someone has already said something similar but i think making the dirt paths not able to get dirty is an interesting idea: they give less of a boost but they don't require the maintenance. mostly because i think in the later game there is no reason to keep your dirt paths if you have the money to get the expensive ones, it feels more like a significant choice in the hands of the player, if that makes any sense.
i love watching all your devlogs, your thought process and brainstorming. keep up the good work ! :)
Fantastic! I love that you made it a reward rather than a punishment for having smaller flower beds.
As for path types, a stone irrigated path, you'd connect it to a well then every bed connected to the path is automatically watered? Could be fun to play around with
Perhaps have the dirt creep in from the sides of the path as a solid brown/mud covering it?
I think an interesting mechanic would be sprinklers and that could perhaps help with the keeping plot sizes small. Love these devlogs, as a web developer it’s always interesting seeing how game devs work