Hello all, we have a lot to talk about today. Nothing bad, lots of concepts. This has been a very conceptual month if you will. Before that though Ill start with the concrete stuff. To be honest, a lot of this month was spent pondering and planning rather than coding. The first part of the month did see a few things get done however. So as far as things added, there was work on the item quality system to work out a few kinks as well as assign quality to fish that you catch. In addition, the cooking UI was finished up. I believe all I really had left to do at the start of the month was finish up fish filleting. Its more precise than what is in the live version. Fish give one of two types of fillet and those fillets have quality levels. On top of that different fish give different amounts of fillets. You can also tell what you are filleting, because for some reason I dont think you can in the live version. Aside from that there was a fairly large backend change to object hierarchy to accommodate certain placed objects. The reason that came up is because the carpenter mallet got added in so you can actually pick up the things that you place. The reason the carpenter mallet finally got added in was because I also coded the entirety of the irrigation system at the start of the month. That probably doesnt sound like much but its one of those systems that is a lot more complex than it probably seems. It has to do with placing and picking up pipes, water sources, updating pipe flows, etc. It starts to get into recursive algorithms and things to keep it efficient. In any case, I wont bore you with the math, it is now done and works. A few details with the irrigation system though. First, I did some considering and decided that you wont get irrigation right away in the game. In the live version you just sort of have the option from the start. This was because irrigation wasnt planned originally so rather than make it a reward I just dropped it in. Problem is if you have it right away it just sort of overshadows the watering can upgrades. So, it will be something you get a bit later in the game this time around. Aside from that, Ive changed how irrigation works. Originally, I was intending for it to be the same as before where you connect it to a water source in the world. However, two things happened. One, water changed a bit, and two, Im not sure if the farm will have a water source on it yet. It probably will but Im toying with some ideas. I also dont like the idea of being tied to a static bit of water on the map, it sort of forces all players to build similar layouts if the want irrigation. Instead, youll now unlock a small one tile building that acts as a water source so you can effectively irrigate anywhere. This was intended to be a later upgrade in the old system but I decided to just move the whole system back further in progression and give it all at once. However, that said, Ive also added an upgrade for irrigation pipes that will unlock a bit later than the pipes themselves. Ill leave that one a mystery but Im sure if you think on it you can figure out what it might be. So that was the actual programming work done. I also added in more sprites which is more of an ongoing project to transfer things over, but thats mostly busy work. As I said at the start, most of my time was spent pondering. Well, pondering and using excel, who doesnt love a good spreadsheet after all. So, what did I have the joy of making spreadsheets about? In a word, combat. If youve been reading these for a while you probably remember me mentioning combat more than a few times. You might also remember me saying that its gone through like five iterations at this point. Ill try to put all that into some concise detail and explain where Im at. To keep it somewhat simple the older combat systems were much too complicated. I want combat to be a system that feels like more than an afterthought. Because of this the systems I was designing tended to be on the complex side. There were a couple of iterations, a deck builder like Slay the Spire, something that played like a round based card game, a turn based battle system themed around auto battling and using abilities to give yourself stat buffs throughout the battle, etc. I dont think these were bad ideas but they all shared the same issues they just manifested at different points in the design. Those issues were, simply put, too complicated, and too long, as in battles would take forever. Designing combat for Verdant Village has basically been a constant attempt to make something interesting, but also keep it simple and short. As Im sure most would agree no one wants to be locked into a random battle that takes 10 minutes to finish. Fights should be, get in, get out, excluding boss encounters where I think its a bit more reasonable to have a long form fight. So, with all that said I spent a good chunk of the month trying to think something up and fine tune it. I believe Ive accomplished that. Keeping the fights short will just be a matter of tuning numbers. Keeping fights simple but interesting is something thats harder to gauge, but I think this hits a descent balance for this type of game. Im leaning towards the simple side as Im guessing no one is coming to this game for dark souls tier combat difficulty. So, what is the combat? A turn based battle system, okay thats it next topic. No, I of course will explain (maybe even overexplain). In terms of appearance, it would be easiest to imagine an old 2d final fantasy game. Your character and familiar on one side, the enemies on the other. The combat is turn based as stated before, turn order will always be you then the enemy. Having different speeds and turn rates was considered, but it ended up being just another complication that got trimmed. Speed is instead bundled into other aspects of each enemy. Speaking of turns, what you are probably imagining is taking your turn, picking attack, or a spell, or an item, etc. This is where the complexity comes in. Unlike old JRPGs you will only have your character and your familiar (well get to them eventually). Those old RPGs worked because a lot of it was about building a party of compatible classes and using them together to overcome various situations. Since you are just one person Ive instead decided that you are the party. To explain, first, in a turn you dont take just one action. You effectively have a set amount of AP (action points) per turn. Every action you take in a turn uses AP, so in any given turn you can compile several actions together. Once set, all the actions will play out at once and that is your turn. Now one of the things I wanted to avoid was menus. If youve played an old JRPG you might remember that some characters (usually mages with lots of spells) had entire lists of abilities to pick from. I dont want people to have to dig through menus to find the spell they need. As I said at the start, fast and (relatively) simple is the goal. As I said before the player is the party. The way this works is that the player has access to six classes. Each class has 5 abilities. At any given time in a turn you can set two classes to active, meaning during any turn you only have access to 10 abilities which will all be displayed on the screen, no menus involved. Classes have been specifically made to be extremely niche. They basically all serve one particular purpose so keeping them straight should be easy enough. For instance, one class is focused on dealing damage. Another is defensive, another one buffs the player, etc. If youve ever played final fantasy 13 (maligned as it is) I looked at the paradigm system of that game when designing this one. To summarize, the player can take multiple actions per turn. You will have 10 actions available at any time, 5 apiece from 2 active classes. You can swap classes freely and as often as you like and each class has a distinct theme so they are easy to tell apart. But wait, theres more! Enemies will be fairly simple in design. They will all have some sort of basic attack and then probably 1 (maybe 2) unique abilities they can use. Enemies are encountered in groups of up to 3 so some mixes of enemies will be harder than others. There is one thing about enemies that is worth mentioning however, its just a little added interaction to complicate battles a bit. While buffs and debuffs exist certain enemies will also have what Im currently calling a status. A status is a buff inherent to the enemy. These are very strong, but the key is that the player can counter them. Countering a status will negate it for the rest of the fight. The player has specific abilities that counter specific statuses, in fact an entire class is dedicated to it. As I said, the combat isnt going to be wildly complex. Im just hoping this will offer up some choice for the player in terms of target prioritization. Now, finally, the familiar. From a gameplay perspective the familiar exists because going 3 on 1 can get a bit hard to balance in terms of health and damage output. You end up with weird situations where without a lot of on-the-fly adjustments enemies might either just destroy you or be useless. There are other ways around that sort of thing, but I thought this was an interesting solution. For those unfamiliar with uhfamiliars, a familiar in fantasy settings is usually something like a helper spirit for a magic user. In a lot of settings they take on an animal form like a crow or a cat for instance. In this situation your familiar is just that, and it helps you in battle. Familiars cannot be attacked so theres no managing its hp. They have AP, and can take multiple actions per turn albeit fewer than the player. The familiar is meant for two purposes really. The first is elemental advantage. Some enemies will have an inherent element. Elements work similar to something like Pokemon. Water beats fire, fire beats nature, etc. There are six in total and they all have an advantage and disadvantage against another element. While your character has classes that determine your actions your familiar will always be channeling a single element. This element determines the type of damage it deals as well gives it a specific bit of utility. Elements can be swapped at will similar to the player swapping classes. Unlike the player classes the familiar only has 3 actions for each elemental form making it simpler to manage. These abilities also follow a pattern for each element. Each one effectively has a damage, utility, and counter ability. As mentioned earlier familiars have two main purposes. The other purpose is that each elemental form has one of the three actions dedicated to a specific enemy status counter. So your familiar will be the only thing that can remove some enemy statuses, which means swapping to the appropriate element will be needed for both optimal damage and status control. And that is the combat system, at least briefly put. There are a few odds and ends that will also exist like the use of items by the player or being able to escape a fight etc. Also, there is a whole external system to grow more powerful. I havent finalized the actual progression yet but I may tie it to items and your farm rather than just an xp number. Im guessing that all of this probably sounds like a lot. To put some of this in perspective youll likely be selecting only a few actions per round, maybe 3 or 4 by the time you have a larger AP pool. And Im looking to have it so that enemies, if fought with reasonable skill, will die in 3 or 4 turns. So ideally a normal fight shouldnt really last more than 12 or so turns at most unless you are just in an area where you are out of your league. That said the leveling system is also being tuned so that you will effectively end up stronger than anything you fight. So, bar bosses, which will probably scale differently you will (with enough combat) get to a point where you can quickly mow down enemies. Hopefully that doesnt sound like too much. Id be curious to hear any feedback. I think this is probably hard to visualize from just text, but like I said at the start the goal is quick fights, not too complicated, and not too hard. As a final note I should also mention that animations are planned to be quick so you dont get bogged down in visuals that youve seen 100 times. Basically, the opposite of, oh, I dont know, Sephiroth in the original FF7 is a good example. Fun fact, Sephiroth, the final boss of FF7 has a move called supernova where you have to watch a literal 2 minute cutscene of him shooting a comet through several planets in the solar system, and then into the sun which then explodes and hits your party (somehow an exploding sun does not simply wipe you out of existence). Anyway, this combat system will be the opposite of that in terms of animation work. Okay, onto the last topic, this is a long devlog already, but Ive been talking about dialogue and lore a bit in the past so I wanted to address it just a bit. Perhaps its just because not much coding happened this month, but I partially want to justify the time spent on writing. I guess Id specifically like to address the standard Im trying to hold to for each character. To preface, and I think Ive talked about this before, Ive never played a game similar to this where I said these characters are interesting. In my experience characters always basically come across as cardboard cutouts or walking, talking, shop windows. A certain amount of this is obviously just personal preference. My takeaway has basically always been that there just isnt enough writing to make them interesting and the writing that is there is very (in my opinion at least) boilerplate. I dont like to throw shade at other games as making a game is hard work and getting any sort of finished product out is tough and honestly something to be celebrated. All that said, I think this is a gapping flaw in design. These games have long playtimes and the people you meet in them should be interesting. I guess in terms of importance I put characters at about the same level as I would for a normal RPG like Bauldurs Gate or Dragon Age. The stories arent going to be as epic in scale of course but the people you meet should be interesting at the very least. I did some research on this as Ive never really critically analyzed these games I just played them. I looked at Harvest Moon FoMT, My Time at Portia, and Stardew Valley all games Ive personally played through. I watched videos of effectively the heart event system for characters in each game. Harvest Moon is very basic but I chalk that up to it being a GBA game, there probably wasnt much space for huge dialogue threads. Portia certainly seemed to have the lengthiest system and some interesting mechanics like dates. In case you are familiar with the game I watched all of the events with Emily. Im working under the assumption that the characters of each of these games are probably at parity when it comes to character design and dialogue. Perhaps Emily was a bad example, but I think the best way I can put it is it felt lacking in personality. It seemed like you go through the entire buildup, but you never really learn much about the character outside of shes a farmer, she has a grandma with memory problems, and there is a vegetable growing competition that she wants to win. None of these are bad backdrop ideas for relationship building plotlines. The problem I remember is I came out the other end of the cutscenes feeling like I didnt know the character, rather just their profession. I couldnt attribute personality traits to her aside from generically nice. Stardew seemed to have the same issue. I watched through the events with Leah as Id romanced her while playing, but couldnt remember anything outside of shes an artist. After watching all the scenes again I came away with the opinion that there wasnt really much else there. Spoilers on Stardew I guess? If you romance her most of the scenes involve talking about art, and her not being able to pay the bills with said art. There was a cute scene with getting fruit from a tree as I recall and another where you can punch her ex in the face because hes a stalker. All in all, as with Portia, by the time it got all the way to marrying her I was left with the same conclusion that the character seems to be generically nice and is an artist. Again, perhaps I picked the wrong person and the others are more interesting. The general issue I found is that the focus is too much on what the character does for a living rather than them as a person. Ironically, the game with the least going on (Harvest Moon) had the character with the most personality. I watched the cutscenes for romancing Ann because she was the first on the alphabetical list (as you can tell this was very scientific). In any case, over the like 4 minimal cutscenes you actually get insight into her personality. Shes a barmaid and seems happy in that job. She gets embarrassed when romantic topics come up, she thinks her dad is overbearing when it comes to her getting married, she likes to eat, she sings to herself, shes tidy, and she can have a temper if she gets flustered. She seems to follow tropes you would see in anime and Im not saying shes the best written character ever, but there is at least something there. If you ask me to describe her personality I can list what I just did whereas with the others I wouldnt have anything to say other than their profession and that they are nice. So, at this point Im probably running the risk of making people who like these games angry, for the record I like these games too. As I said before I dont like to criticize. Its easy to sit on the side and point at something you dont like when you arent the one doing the work to make it. I bring all this up just to preface, yes, the last like 5 paragraphs were preface. I really go on forever dont I? I should take up youtube video essays or something. In any case, all this is to say this is what I want to avoid. I want people to come away from this game remembering characters or thinking they are interesting, maybe have that story stick with you for a time. The thing I wanted to bring up originally was a comparison I did. When I watched the Stardew cutscenes with Leah I copied down all the dialogue lines including player responses. The word count for everything together was around 600 words. To be clear, more words does not mean better writing. That said, 600 words to go from acquaintances to marriage is a lot of ground to cover in very few words. There is an argument to be made that a game has more ways to convey narrative than words as it is a visual and audial medium. In this case Id say neither of those elements did a significant amount of heavy lifting to compensate. The first character Im writing is planned out at this point. I wrote the first event this month between other things and the word count for the first conversation is around 800 words. I say this not to brag or anything, like I said, word count doesnt equal better. I bring this up because if you remember prior to me babbling for a full page I said I wanted to justify the time Im spending on writing. I hope these counts and some of my long winded explanation put into perspective the detail that Ill be attempting to add to characters. I believe the first character has 7 events if you will. They will likely vary in length, but if you generally extrapolate, 800 words multiplied by 7, is 5,600 words. That said, each character tale is probably going to be about this length. However, the thing is, thats just the tale. Every character will have one, and this could be considered just getting to be good friends with a character, these stories arent romantically inclined. For characters you can romance theyll have an additional set of events focusing on an actual relationship that builds to marriage. So there is even more dialogue. Since this devlog is already just going forever Ill also briefly mention topics. In addition to tales there was planned to be a topic system where you can bring up various things with NPCs and have a short but unique conversation. This has been altered slightly because the original plan would have resulted in an insane amount of writing and a mess of programming. At this point the plan is that during the main tale or romance plots various things might get mentioned by the character. If you want you can go back afterwards and ask them about whatever relevant topic came up and have a short conversation to go a bit more in depth on that specific topic. All this is to say there is a lot of writing that will need to happen and characters arent as simple as just dropping in an NPC and slapping on a few lines of dialogue. Now, if you are thinking to yourself hes never going to write that much I should also mention that Ive written a few books in my life all sitting at about 160k words so I promise I am more than capable of writing a lot. As a final disclaimer, I dont want to come across like Im some great novelist. Its a hobby of mine, I enjoy it, but I didnt go to college for it, or train in any real way. While I think I can do an alright job I just wanted to clarify that Im not some amazing author or something. I cant promise some fantastically written story but I want to try and make characters feel like real people that players want to actually talk to and see the story of. The unfortunate downside of that is that it will take time to write all this. I want to put forth the best game I can. I unfortunately picked the type of game that has 18 bazillion aspects to it so theres a lot to do. In any case I hope this sounds like something you would find interesting to have in a game like this. I personally think of it as less of a nice to have and more of a requirement. I think thats it for this month. This devlog is like the length of a chapter in a book for whatever thats worth. I talked about a lot here, but a lot of this month was getting things in order rather than coding. Usually ruminating leads me to talking a lot. I think December will shift back towards programming though. Dialogue writing will continue to grind slowly. Combat needs to be sorted and planned some more, but I would think the systems will start to be setup next month. Thank you all for bearing with me during this long process. I hope that at the end of this long tunnel there is a game you all find worth the wait. If you have read this far you are a true champion. If you live in the states happy belated Thanksgiving, I hope you found something on the Steam sale to play. And, since I wont be writing another of these until the end of the year, Merry Christmas if you celebrate, or happy Hannukah, Quanza, Festivus or whatever you might choose to celebrate in December.

[ 2024-11-30 21:27:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

I never know how to start these. Maybe I need to develop some sort of greeting like Hello Villagers or something. That sounds weird, probably not going to do that. On the plus side this odd tangent has served as a way to start this devlog, so at least one problem has been solved. This month was one of those only one thing got worked on all month months. Suffice to say cooking is a fairly involved system. On top of that I was sick for a week which really didnt help matters. To start I should say that cooking is (basically) done. I have quite literally one final detail to write into the system to display some icons which Ill be taking care of after this. So, Im going to go ahead and call it done. Going into cooking I figured this was going to be fairly simple. After all its really just a couple of menus that search for ingredients and let you combine them into food. Realistically, its a lot more than that. One of the big things was actually data. I kept a good deal of the recipes in the current game but some were added, others were modified, and some got deleted. That said there was still an extensive amount of data entry to do. The final count of recipes is 155 plus 16 ingredient recipes but I dont really count those. Simply put, lots of data. Once the data was setup the actual UI had to be put together. Much as it pains me to post unfinished art youll have to bear with the image. Just bear in mind that everything you see is temporary. I promise there wont just be a giant number (in this case a zero) to indicate oven heat when the UI is done.
If youve played the game you are probably familiar with the UI. For the most part the changes mostly come from item quality, the oven, and the fish filleting process. To start, item quality. I believe Ive mentioned it before, but some items are going to gain a quality level in the game. If youve played Stardew Valley or Graveyard keeper its equivalent to items having bronze, silver, and gold stars. These quality levels arent attached to every item. The plan is to basically keep quality tied to items that you create, like food. Also, some materials that go into various recipes, for instance crops, or fish will also have quality. As you can probably guess in the case of cooking the quality of your ingredients dictates the quality of the final product. This was the first UI system Ive had to make that takes quality into account so there was some work to standup the UI systems. Now that the code has been made it can be reused for other systems thankfully. To accommodate all of this the cooking UI shows as much data as possible when selecting a recipe. Once selected you can see the ingredients that are required for the recipe in the top right. These ingredients are shown to you per their quality. Selecting the buttons to the left and right of each item allows you to cycle the quality of the item and see how much you have of each item. As you adjust the quality of ingredients youll be able to see how likely you are to get a particular quality of product. If you dont hit an exact threshold you basically get a percentage chance of getting the next quality level. Below the ingredients you can add items to generate heat in the oven that youll need for cooking. Recipes are listed on the left. They are separated into categories and sorted alphabetically to hopefully make them a bit easier to search. Recipe categories are selected on the left side of the recipe menu via the line of buttons. The oven UI is the next bit that is worth showing. The old oven UI operated on a set of slots you had for cooking. Ive decided to get rid of this slot system. You can instead cook as many things as you want at the same time. Below is again a temporary UI but it gets the basic point across.
When you cook something it will be added to this list within the oven. In terms of game time 1 in game minute is 1 real life second. Once an item is done cooking you can retrieve it and add it to your inventory, simple as that. Last is filleting fish. I didnt bother uploading an image as it basically looks the same as the oven. To explain, youll have a similar looking list of all the fish you have in your inventory or chests. These entries are separated by breed of fish as well as by quality. So, if you have a bunch of bronze and silver bluegill youll have two listings to select from. The quality of a fish directly correlates to the quality of the fillet you get from it. Bronze fish gives bronze fillet, so on and so forth. In addition to this, different fish give a different number of fillets as well as different types which is all shown to you in the UI. To explain types I made two types of fillets for this version, normal and prime. The main difference is just that certain recipes use certain fillet types. I thought it might be a nice touch just to add some differentiation to fish that you catch without making things too complex. Speaking of types of items, the other large change that came to recipes is meat. If youve played the current version of the game then youll know there are several different kinds of meat. All specifically named like pork, chicken, venison, rabbit, etc. I decided this was cumbersome. There are a lot of types and it ends up with each having just a few specific use cases. The other obvious problem with meat is things like chicken, beef, and pork obviously come from farm animals. While I suppose I could build in the option to slaughter your farm animals for meat it hasnt ever really sat well with me. I mean I know its a common thing on farms, but these kinds of games always felt a little too light hearted for that. Barring that option the only way to get these kinds of meat was to buy them which I didnt really like. The new plan is to tie hunting into cooking a lot more. In the current version hunting is basically off in its own world. All the meat you get from it cant be used in recipes outside of a few outlying cases. In this new version meat has been simplified down to two types, which basically comes down to red and white. While you can just buy meat from stores like before hunted animals will now also drop this meat and will serve as the primary way to get it without having to pay for it. I suppose if people really thought that slaughtering farm animals was an interesting mechanic I could add it in at a later date as well. In any case that should cover cooking for the most part. Most of the work came from data entry and setting up item quality UI interactions. As stated near the start, bar a small addition, the system is done, at least until I get the art assets which will involve a tiny bit of legwork to rearrange some assets. Which leaves me with whats next. To be honest, I still dont really know what system to work on. The goal is to get this new version into a playable state sooner rather than later. However, Im debating on what to call a playable state. The only thing I really know for sure is that I want combat to exist in the game before I go live with it. Alchemy might be another thats sort of core and ties into a lot of things. Hunting is probably worth putting in as well given its new ties to cooking. So while I might focus on one of those there is an equal chance that I take this next month to focus on odds and ends along with building the world a bit. There are a lot of systems that are effectively done but sprites or animations are missing or data needs to be entered. For the most part Ive been operating in a style of building out systems but not necessarily putting in every piece of data that the system uses. A lot of this was because most systems tie into other systems so adding all the details for a system was impossible until all the parts were in place. At this point though a lot of framework is in place. So I may go back and clean up loose ends in various places. Aside from that there is world design. I think Ive mentioned before that the world is going to have something of a revamp. In a lot of ways, the main point is to condense the setting somewhat. I dont plan to take areas out but some are entirely too big. The hope is to take the world and (as I said) condense it so that there is less walking and more doing whatever you want to do. All this is to say this next month might end up being a random assortment of things rather than a more concerted effort, time will tell I suppose. Regardless, Ill be back next month to share progress. I hope everyone is having a good fall. Happy Halloween if you celebrate that. Ive eaten more than my share of candy this month so Im doing my part. Thanks as always for your patience, hopefully Ill have something interesting to report at the end of November.

[ 2024-11-01 01:33:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

It looks like its time for another devlog. This month I feel like a lot was accomplished. The tasks were a little more on the backend rather than new systems, but when you see what they are I would guess youll agree that they are necessary. To start at the beginning, last month the dialogue system was implemented. While it was basically done I did have a few things to clean up at the start of this month. So, the first bit of time was spent fixing up a few UI issues, patching several bugs, and adding a little more functionality to the system. All of this was pretty minor and only took a few days, but I think the system in general has turned out nicely. Next was the bit that took up the most of my time this month. I believe Ive mentioned it before, but up until now there has been no save system for the new version of the game. As a consequence, there was also no load system obviously. This system has now been fully implemented. Im not sure if its worth getting into specifics here. I mean its basically what you would expect. Save the game. Load the game. Truly something the video game industry has never seen before. Aside from the fact that you can save/load there are a few details though. First setting up this system involved setting up the entire load game UI screen, so that is also done. In the background of this project several pieces had to be reconfigured slightly to make saving/loading efficient and keep save files small. At the moment, on my machine at least, saving is instant and loading only takes a few seconds. This time might grow slightly because as more systems are added more things need to be recorded or read from a save file. But I dont predict any real increases to load times. The other thing which may or may not be news is how you save. I honestly cant quite remember if the live version of the game allows you to save anywhere. I think it might have been something I was working on, but realized that too much of the game was dependent on you saving at your bed. In any case, the game will still save at midnight. However now you can save at any time in any place via a button in the settings menu. I know this was requested by several people in the past and I agree that it nice to be able to save when you want. The idea of only having the game save at midnight started way back with Harvest Moon. Im not sure why that trend is still carried over in some games, even this one. Presumably Harvest Moon only did it due to some technical limitation. Realistically, there isnt any real reason to not allow people to save when they want in a game like this. The only other reasoning I can think of is to keep people from save scumming. For those unfamiliar with the term, that basically means to save right before you do something and if you mess up or want a different outcome you just quickly load the save. Sort of like quick saving constantly in Skyrim. That said, this isnt really a high stakes kind of game. If people want to do that I dont really see a problem. Anyway, the last thing to mention with saving is patching. While a patching system isnt in place yet the save system has been designed in such a way that when I do go to add it the process should be fairly straight forward. For those unfamiliar with the term, patching is the process to update the game. This is mostly important for when I start doing regular updates again. People usually dont like to have to start a new save each time a patch comes out. This system would allow you to transfer your save forward when the game updates. I did it in the previous version although there were more than a few issues during that process. That was partially due to the engine and partially due to my code and experience with such a system. Knowing what I know now I think it should be easier to tackle. Moving on, because Ive talked about saving more than probably anyone wanted, we come to sleep, the most exciting system. I added the entire sleep system this month. It functions the same as it does in the live version. You can sleep for up to 24 hours straight. Sleeping will restore your stamina and health, although health restores at a slower rate. The button to automatically sleep until your stamina is maxed is also still an option. Most of the changes to sleep happened under the hood. A lot of it has to do with how the game actually runs at this point. To be brief, the old version of the game basically functioned as one giant level. The entire world was effectively partially loaded in at all times. An area would only fully load its assets when you entered that specific part of the world. This is a fairly common tactic in video games that is used to keep the required processing power for the game to a minimum. The important part of this distinction is that in the old version the world and all its important assets like NPCs crops, processing buildings (like apiaries or fisheries) were always loaded into the world. Without going into a ton of detail (that I partially wrote and then deleted to save you all from boredom) the new version of the game does not operate as one giant level. Each time you enter an area you are specifically in that area and nothing else is loaded. This can be done because everything is tied to higher level data structures rather than objects within the game world which are subject to loading in and out depending on if you are in the same area as them. All this is to say, things are much better now and sleeping which speeds up time, benefits greatly from these changes. In addition, time functions a bit differently in the new code and It makes it much easier to manipulate things that depend on time, such as sleep. I know that was a lot of technobabble but the TLDR is you can sleep, and from a backend perspective it functions much more nicely than it did in the previous version. If youll remember way back before I started droning on about sleep, I said that making the sleep system took up, most of my time, but not all of it. Im not particularly far yet, but I have started developing the cooking system. It will certainly be finished in October. For now, there are just a few basics in place for the UI and Ive moved on to messing with recipe data. Which does bring me to recipes. As I mentioned in the past, Im going to change how you get them. Specifically, there wont be any quests where you get a recipe as a reward. I think I mentioned this in the previous months devlog but in short I felt it wasnt a particularly rewarding, uhreward. Instead, there will be a separate system dedicated to learning recipes so those who want to focus on cooking can really do that and others can ignore it if they want. That said, maybe you wont want to ignore cooking because Im planning to change some things a bit. To start, the actual process of cooking will likely remain the same. I might modify a few things but it will still involve having ingredients and the required heat to cook something. What Im looking to modify is mostly what the various pieces of food do. I think what I want to do is focus food more on stamina gain. In the past recipes gave all sorts of things. Anything you ate would regenerate stamina and health but some things would give you buffs as well. The issue with this in my mind is that it encroaches on alchemy as a system. From a design perspective if I had to pick something to give, lets say, darkness resistance and my options where a plate of spaghetti or a shadeward potion I think I would pick the potion. It just makes more sense to have odd effects come from alchemical items rather than food. This means food needs a bit of a rework in terms of what it does. My current plan, as stated before, is to focus on stamina. However, I think Id like to add a bit more nuance. Food will obviously give you flat stamina. In addition, Ill likely do things like stamina regeneration over time, or maybe reduced stamina usage on tools. All that is well trodden though. What I think I want to try is I guess basically a well fed buff. Effectively this would allow you to eat and gain stamina over the normal limit. As long as you have more than the normal limit you would gain a buff. Maybe it makes your tools stronger, or you move faster, or something along those lines. This buff could also have tiers to some extent where the benefits gets larger the more well fed you are. The hope is that something like this would allow food to have a unique place in the games systems. Then alchemy would take over things having to do more with combat buffs. Its all still in the beginning stages so things are subject to change but I think the idea is reasonable at least. On top of this there are new recipes being added and some are being changed. My goal is to try and make it so that every ingredient has a few uses. For instance, cranberries have no recipes associated with them in the live game. Ive added a few in the new version to take advantage of them. I think thats mostly it for cooking. There is just one more thing to briefly mention as I was thinking about it. I said forever ago that I was going to adjust the mines. Instead of 100 random floors there was going to be just a few but they would be much larger and more like a mini dungeon that players would have to navigate and then fight a boss to reach the next floor. I still want to do this and while these areas will still having small areas to mine I was considering some things and I think Im going to modify this a bit. What Im currently thinking is to have the dungeon floors but between them you unlock basically just a big mining area with that levels ores. This way once you get through the dungeon area you can just take the minecart back to a normal mining area instead of having to search the dungeon for ore veins. Its a minor tweak but it popped into my head a week ago so I wanted to mention it. I think thats it for now. Ill be back in a month as usual. Im sorry there were no screenshots this time. The sleep and save system didnt seem worth screenshotting as they both basically look the same. When cooking is finished Ill probably grab screencaps of that. Im admittedly not sure what comes after cooking. I havent thought about it too much but Im sure Ill figure it out soon. Thanks as always for your patience and reading this far.

[ 2024-09-30 19:34:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just like that August is over. I say that a lot, but I really feel it this time. This month was hampered slightly by other events. To be brief, I attended a wedding in Europe which meant I lost about 10 days of work. And since that person is potentially reading this right now, I should clarify that I dont regret my decision to attend at all, however it did mean a little less got done game wise. So, lets jump into it because despite the loss of time there are a few updates to give. I believe at the end of the last update I mentioned that the dialogue system would be next in line. Im happy to report that, bar a bit of UI tuning, that system is complete. This is another situation where that sounds like very little, but its actually a fair bit of progress. Before we get to whats new though I should preface with the old. If youve played the current version of the game youve probably talked to an NPC within it. I mean I really hope youve talked to at least one person. Even if you havent though youve seen the intro cutscene so you should be familiar with the dialogue system to a degree. The dialogue system was created pretty early on in development and suffers from (like many other things) a lack of forward planning. At the time I made it I didnt quite realize just how much was going to be steeped on top of the system. This resulted in a lot of bits being tacked on as time went on. So below is a basic image of the old system.
It serves its purpose although you might notice right off the bat that the clock is still visible which clutters the UI. Aside from that the major visual difference youll see is the large blank slot on the left side of the screen. This is used for buttons to navigate any menus within the dialogue system, except for when it isnt. Below here youll see an image of a quest.
As mentioned above there are two buttons on the left one to show the list of quests, another to exit the conversation. Then, because I guess I was feeling experimental that day, you can also click on the text Beginner Carpentry to start the related quest. To my knowledge this is the only system in the game that requires you to click on text like it is a button. If youve been reading these dev logs for the last few months youve likely heard me talk about UI consistency and the lack there of in this game. This was one of the major things I wanted to address in this system. Not to mention there would have eventually been a Topics button to navigate another set of choices. And the fact that the way you leave the UI is through a button that says Exit rather than the usual red X button. Before we get into all that there are a few other things to mention however. As I said briefly the old dialogue system was made pretty early on and as systems were added in (quests, cutscenes, tale conversations) more and more was tacked onto the system, straining it greatly. For instance, at the start of this I mentioned that if youve watched the opening cutscenes you are familiar with the dialogue system. Thats sort of true. It looks the same, but in reality there are two separate dialogue engines in the current game. The first handles regular conversations and then a second one had to be concocted specifically for cutscenes because the original was too convoluted to be applied in a cutscene. I dont think I need to explain how bad that is in terms of design. Another instance of bad design was related to the blacksmith. If youve ever upgraded a tool in the current version of the game you might remember that the blacksmith says a line of dialogue when you start an upgrade. He also has a unique line of dialogue when an upgrade is in progress and a specific line when the job is done and you pick up your tool. This is a simple interaction, but because of how the dialogue engine was written the whole thing effectively had to be uniquely dealt with. Whenever you start a conversation in the game it checks to ensure the conversation isnt one of those three specific blacksmith lines. If it is one of those lines the game basically shoves the entire dialogue system aside and has a hard coded set of instructions to handle the interaction. TLDR, not well made. Aside from this there were smaller issues. As mentioned, things like quests werent originally considered so weird UI elements like the text buttons were made. There was originally a rumor system that was scrapped early on, but remnants still remain in the system. There were other conditions that dictated character dialogue which were dropped. Things like characters having multiple portraits for different emotions and switching through them during conversation wasnt originally intended. And while tales would get that functionality regular dialogue never got it due to complications. Speaking of tales, those were an idea that spawned much later. Tales for reference are the longer more character driven conversations that each character will have. A simple comparison would be the heart event conversations from Stardew Valley if you are familiar. Tales also involved player responses, another thing that wasnt planned on. Despite what you might think I dont bring all this up to simply expose my own missteps. I hope that pointing these things out in some way helps people to understand why I decided to reconstruct this game from the ground up. Also, on the off chance that any other game developers are reading this I hope it serves as a cautionary tale. Plan your games out kids, take it from someone whose game plan was basically, eh, how complicated can it really be?. So, Ive spoken on whats wrong with the current system, which is basically everything. So what has changed? Well, from a visual perspective not a ton although there are some noticeable differences. Most of the work is behind the scenes to make the system far more robust in general. So here is a simple image of dialogue to start.
As you can see, not a ton changed aside from the lack of button space on the left. Also the clock isnt just weirdly still hanging in the background. One other minor change you might notice is the arrow in the bottom right. It will shift up and down slightly and basically just indicates that the line of dialogue is complete and can be advanced. For those unaware dialogue types itself out character by character instead of just appearing all at once. So onto other things, below an example of the new conversation menu.
The flow is a bit harder to understand with just still images. To explain, the player will initiate conversation with an NPC. Doing so results in a simple line of dialogue like you saw two images ago. Once you reach then end of that text youll be shown the resulting menu you see above. This allows you to pick further conversations via topics or quests. The visuals likely speak for themselves, but at a basic level this UI is meant to be more inline with other UI in the game. Clicking any button will launch you into the respective topic or quest. Topics and quests are indicated by a specific icon, and as before quests will change their icon based on it being new, in progress, or ready to turn in. Finally, we have a response menu that youll see below.
This is where youll have to excuse the UI a bit. As mentioned near the start some adjustments to how it looks and button size still need to be done. This response menu allows the player to do things like accept quests or, in most cases, choose a response during a conversation. So that is dialogue in a nutshell. To keep it brief all the things mentioned above have been addressed behind the scenes. There is now one unified dialogue system for in game and cutscene events. The UI is more inline with the game. There are allowances to alter portraits in dialogue, and you can pick dialogue responses in conversation. Aside from that the dialogue system in general is implemented. Everything you have seen is working as intended. So you can talk to NPCs, accept, decline, and turn in quests. You can also start topics and pick responses within them. The only thing that hasnt been done, which is likely next is that there is no visual way to track quests at the moment. The quest log is likely my next project. However, this should just be a mostly simple matter of visualizing data. Aside from dialogue there is one other thing to address from this month. That would be quests. If youve played Verdant Village for any length of time youve probably done some quests. In general these are basically just tasks to fetch particular items for NPCs. Quests usually unlock something for you, furniture schematics, new systems like archeology or alchemy, or sometimes new areas. And so we come to the point of interest, recipes, specifically of the cooking variety. Cooking is sort of an oddball system. However, to put it simply, I personally find that getting a recipe isnt that great of a reward. Cooking is such an optional thing in these games that I think there are large swaths of players (myself included usually) who never cook anything. Having quests, honestly a large number of quests, give a recipe as a reward I think feels bad. As such Ive decided to basically take these quests out. Instead, a new system will be put in place related to an NPC. Effectively this system will be you bringing him ingredients and that will reward you with the recipe and the cooked item. Ultimately, I think this will trim a lot of fat from the quest system and hopefully make quests more enticing. That said, I know thats a large chunk of quest content. I dont think Ive said too much about it, but I wanted to note here that there is something that will be added to supplement quests. I never got around to adding it in the current version, but Ive always referred to this system as secrets. These secrets dont involved dialogue with NPCs, but are effectively little quests you can find naturally in the world. Unlike actual quests they dont involve collecting items on a list but rather solving puzzles (sometimes by bringing the right item) but generally they are a little more interesting than just a quest checklist to fill. Hopefully that inspires a bit of hope in that regard. I dont like to just take things out. In this case Id say cooking quests are just being altered a bit instead of disappearing entirely, but I know it might not seem that way to everyone. Anyway, I think thats everything, thank you all for your patience and interest, it really does mean a lot to me. I will have more updates at the end of the month as usual.

[ 2024-09-01 00:44:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tomorrow is the start of August so lets jump right in. This is one of those months where a lot happened, but it was condensed into just a few systems so on paper it feels a bit sparse. As usual, Ive basically been continuing with the reimplementation of various systems in the game. I was also trying to do some research into future systems and tuning up things where I thought it was needed. So, lets start at the beginning. Last month I had most of the end of day recap in place. As a quick explanation when the clock hits midnight the game will pause for a moment and show you a variety of information about the day that just passed. You can check the previous post for details, but its generally things like money earned from shipping, animal and crop statuses, etc. The start of this month was spent finishing up this system, or at least finishing it to the point that it can be done. At least one addition is guaranteed and others may be tackled if they seem worth it. As with last time youll have to ignore some of the art as it is currently temporary. The first section that was added was the player stat section. There was no old equivalent to this so all I have to show is this version. Basically, the page will display how much xp you gained for various tools and professions as well as how far away you are from your next level.
The idea with this is sort of two-fold. First its nice to be able to just get a quick look to see how close you are to leveling up. Aside from that I find it can be nice in games like this to be shown small goals you can work towards. These games tend to be pretty open, letting the player pursue whatever they want. While I obviously dont want to railroad anyone I think its sometimes nice to be shown something you can work towards if you need a direction to work in. The other thing about player stats that you might have noticed me mention before is professions. If youve played the current version of the game you are probably familiar with perks. For those who arent, there are currently two things you can earn to improve your character. Tool skills, which you get by using your tools, and perks. Tool skills effectively just reduce the amount of stamina taken when using a tool. Perks are more interesting in that they augment certain parts of the game. Things like gaining more resources from alchemy, a chance to cook double of something, instantly breaking rocks when mining, getting more honey from apiaries, etc. When I was implementing the player stats section in the recap I looked back through these. Im trying to give each system a once over as I put it in to make sure its up to par. My determination on perks was that the idea was alright, but the implementation was sort of scattered. Several of them were odd, some unexciting, and most importantly there were many systems that had no perks associated with them at all. I decided that something of an overhaul was needed. So the perk system will be replaced with professions. The goal is to categorize things a bit better and give more of a sense of progression within a particular activity. Each profession has 5 levels with each level unlocking something or giving a benefit of some sort. Im attempting to avoid spoilers here so Ill give farming as an example. Without stating too much youll unlock fertilizers, a new type of thing to farm, upgrades, and automation throughout the five levels. I dont want to oversell this however. Some things you will unlock are slightly changed versions of some of the old perks. That said most of this is new and builds off the changes that are happening to systems in this new version. In total there are 17 professions each with 5 levels so 85 unlocks (opposed to the 44 perks in the current version). Basically, if there is something you can do in the game its probably a profession. Examples would be Smith, Farmer, Rancher, Alchemist, etc. There are a few in there you might not expect as a couple of new systems are in and some things were expanded and I felt a profession was needed. I should state that none of this is implemented yet. It is entirely planned out however much of it relies on interconnecting systems. Because of that it serves to get a base version of the system in and then build onto it afterwards. That is it for that section. A lot of stuff happened but there is obviously still more to do. Now, after that massive tangent, we can move on to the second page that got added to the recap. This again has no counterpart in the current game but the recap will now display your current shipments. Again, UI isnt finalized, but you should get the idea from the image below. This should serve as an easy reminder for what is ready to pick up and what isnt.
Now, if the recap shows shipping objects you can probably figure out the next system that got added. Shipping is now back in the game. This probably doesnt sound like a ton, but shipping is basically a huge database and UI task. So, while it might look like a simple screen there is a lot going on under the hood that made it a somewhat arduous task. Since the current version of the game has shipping Ill start with pictures. Old Version
New Version
As with the other UI changes Ive been talking about, the idea is to bring things in line and homogenize the UI. The old UI is very button focused, something that can be annoying for controller players cause theres just so much moving around through menus. Instead, much like the other UI, sliders have been put in. In addition to that I wanted to try and simplify this UI a bit. The old version is icon overload because you can see the required resources for every item that is visible. The new version only displays the required resources when you click on one of the items you can order. Theres a slight change in the button UI for each orderable item to indicate if you have the resources or not as well so you wont need to click on a button just to see if you have what you need. In addition, once you do select an object you can see what is needed to order it. The required resources are listed along with how much of that resource you have. How much of a resource you have will appear in red or green depending on if you have enough. Hopefully all of this combined will show you what you need at a glance. Also, item icons can be hovered to see the name incase you dont recognize it. That is shipping in a nutshell. Of course if you can order items you also need to be able to receive them. This is also implemented and has been changed in terms of looks to something that I think is a bit more functional. Again, well start with pictures. Old Version
New Version
The old version effectively acted like a chest that you could only take items out of. Anything you ordered would eventually appear there and you could grab it. This had a few problems, the most obvious probably being that you could run out of space. Probably unlikely, but it could happen. The other issue was that it just didnt look very nice. On top of this the idea to show how long it would be until your item arrived wasnt thought of until later. Because of that a UI was sort of just stapled onto the side. Its pretty basic and looks about as tacked on as it actually is. The new version is more straight forward and combines all the info into a neater package. Basically, anything you order will appear in the list. The list can be scrolled and has infinite space so no problems can arise there. The gauge that you see on each item indicates how many days it will take for your item to arrive. As stated before, there are some obvious pieces of UI that need to go in. Once those pieces get cleaned up I think it will look fairly nice though. If nothing else I think it is functionally a lot better than it used to be. The last thing is something that Im still working on although it is coming along quickly which is good. Especially considered how much of a nightmare the old code was. The system currently being made is the dialogue system. That probably doesnt need to be explained, but basically anything involving talking to an NPC, giving a response, picking topics, starting quests, etc. Currently you can walk up to an NPC talk to them and go through the conversation to the end. Nothing fancy, but like I said the old code was nightmarish compared to what currently exists. Its all organized much better and everything is a lot cleaner. The old dialogue system ended up being stitched together in many ways because the scope of what it needed to do grew as the game was developed. Since I know what is required from the outset this should be done a lot better. The other things that got done this month were smaller. Some code was optimized between larger things. Lore for the world is still being written, so much lore. Ive gotten to the point where the timeline is basically in place for larger world events so bar small things Im basically on to detailing local lore. As I think Ive mentioned before there is going to be something akin to a main story for this game. You can entirely ignore it ala Skyrim, but it involves a few hundred years of history in the region so some lore is required. Lastly the battle system went through some more considerations. It has been fluctuating here and there and will likely continue to until I start development on it. Its too easy to change things when there is no code to prevent me from doing so. Still, I think the small changes and tweaks being made to it are a net positive. A system like that has the potential to really ruin or make a game so I want to do the best I can with it. Alright, I think thats it. As usual Ive probably written too much based on the length of this doc. Thank you all for reading, Ill have another update in a month as usual.

[ 2024-08-01 01:46:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Weve reached the end of the month again and so as usual I have an update on whats been going on with Verdant Village. For the first time in a while I feel like Ive actually made progress. If youve been reading these dev logs you probably know Ive been working on custom house interiors for a while. This month was the first time since I finished that system. So, I actually have a list of things that got done, which always feels better than just saying youve done work on one huge system. Best to start at the beginning though. So, in order I first cleaned up the tool tip logic just a bit. There are a number of systems that are in place but might be missing a minor piece of code to polish it. I tend to program large swaths of a system and then make some notes before doing a second pass a little later to spruce things up. I find its better to give a system a little bit of time to breathe. Doing so lets me look at it with fresh eyes so Im more likely to find things to polish up. As for the tool tip logic it wasnt much, just a simple subsystem so that the tool tip will never appear off the edge of the screen. Simply put, if you hover something that makes a tool tip close to the right edge of the screen the tool tip will appear to the left of your mouse and vice versa. Then apply that logic to the top and bottom of the screen too. Next, was something far more important. When I got sidetracked on making custom house layouts I was actually going to start making the construction UI. Now that Im finally done with custom housing, I moved back to the construction UI. For starters, below is a screenshot of the old UI.
Now below this is an example of the new UI.
Sprite work on the new stuff is still in flux a bit. Anything you see could be tweaked, but the general layout is set. I think the best way to explain the changes is streamlining. The current live version of the game has a lot of buttons. I think I decided this because I play these sorts of games on mouse and keyboard (which based on what I seem to hear from others means Im weird, but I already knew that). So when making UI I tailored it towards that sort of control scheme. The problem is, since the game will support controllers too, menus like this are really inconvenient. Having to navigate across even just four options is honestly not great and some UI is even worse than that. There are some pieces of UI like the inventory where streamlining might not be possible for a controller, but the problem should be alleviated where possible. Even ignoring the controller issue the old UI wasnt terribly great in my opinion anyway. In general, there are too many buttons and, in my opinion, too much text. This might sound strange but UI design should (I believe) always be concerned about new players. When you are familiar with a game you can connect the dots most times. Its when you are new that readability is most important. In the case of the old construction UI basically everything violates this, some bits more so than others. To start, the buttons at the bottom to navigate the UI arent clear. The left and right arrows I would say are the only passable thing, although still a little unclear. The X button to close out the menu can probably also be understood, but it runs the risk of causing confusion because the live version of the game just throws UI close buttons in random places a lot of the time, so you cant be sure what it does. A simple example of this concept is that in Windows the close button for a window is always in the top right. Youll always know where to look for it and what it does. That kind of consistency is extremely important. Finally, the check button next to the X suffers from not having a clear purpose. Again, you can probably deduce what it does, but its left to interpretation. The next issue is the text that displays what you need for construction. Theres too much text, and while everyone knows what wood, gold, stone, etc are, players may not know how to identify it in game. In game all items are icons, not text. Therefore, a purchase that requires these items should show the items, not a word describing the item. In addition, the old UI only indicates when you have enough of the item with a green check. It doesnt indicate when you dont have enough of the material or gold. This leaves ambiguity which should really be avoided in every UI. Finally, the buttons on the right. Not only do these add to the button count, but it also isnt clear what each one does. The worst case being the difference between upgrading buildings and building new buildings. These buttons create two separate lists which unintentionally hides away options from players. Someone may just not notice the buttons and completely miss all the extra options. Now, the new UI I think addresses most of, if not all, of these concerns. The name of the shop has been added which, while not that important, gives a bit of context for what you are looking at. Instead of having navigation at the bottom there is a simple list of options with a slider. This not only shows more options at once but also simplifies viewing and selecting. Instead of an ambiguous checkbox for starting construction there is a button clearly telling you what you are clicking on. The X button is also in the top right, which is where it will be on all UIs. The buttons on the right of the UI have also been done away with. Upgrades are listed among the buildings getting rid of the need for two separate lists. Moving and deleting buildings has been condensed into one mode and therefore one button modify buildings which simplifies the process. Lastly the required items for the building are displayed using the sprite rather than text. The amounts of each tint red or green based on if you have what you need to construct the building. The time to build is also given its own cost entry so that the detail doesnt get lost in a paragraph of description text. Finally, something that cant be seen in the screenshot is that if you hover any item sprite youll get a tool tip telling you what it is, so even if you havent seen the resource before you can at least get an idea of what you are looking for. Im sure it could still be done better, Im hardly a game design expert, but I think this is a marked improvement over what was there before. This sort of make over is what can be expected for all the UI in the game. I dont want to just remake what was already there in a new engine, that would be a waste of time when so much could be improved. But enough about the construction UI. On top of all the changes all the code has been put in place to make it function appropriately so we are done there. The next thing to address was the actual buildings themselves. Id already made coops and barns work because Id implemented livestock a while back. Obviously, you cant have animals without a place to put them. However, the other buildings hadnt been setup. So I made wells and silk farms function. That still leaves fisheries and stables, but both are being put on hold for different reasons. The fishery UI needs to be completely altered, looking at the old UI I think I might have been in a fever dream when I okayed it. For stables the plan currently is to massively overhaul how horses work including things like stats, multiple horses, etc. So I didnt want to jump into that before I was ready to tackle the whole thing. During the process of setting up silk farms I had to account for them changing how they look during different seasons. This is in the live version of the game but it was really more of a tacked on feature because the engine was restrictive and I hadnt setup buildings in a way to easily change their sprite during season change. This system is now actually appropriately implemented which means things like snow on the roofs of buildings in winter and other such things. Finally, we come to shipping. This was the last thing I worked on this month and am still working on. Although thats a bit deceptive because shipping really covers, selling items, ordering items, receiving items, and technically mail since its in the same UI. As expected, working on one system quickly spiraled into multiple systems. To start, you can now sell items via the shipping chest. It functions in the same way a regular chest does but at the end of the day all the items in it will be sold. This is all in place and working. Of course this led me to what I call the End of Day Recap screen. Part of selling your things is that the game will tell you what you sold at the end of the day and how much you made. So as with every other system I took a look at what I already had. In the live version of the game you get a simple screen that breaks items up into categories, which I dont think are ever explained to the player. I forget the reasoning for this but I think it was something to do with displaying too many items on screen that led to that implementation. In any case, very basic, and honestly not that insightful unless you remembered what you put in the chest and could reason out what category it would fall under. Even still youd be left with a lump sum of profit and not really know what sold for a lot and what didnt. Now, fair warning, the below screenshots are very much work in progress. The logic is all working, but the art will be changed in time. My artist is currently busy making furniture sprites, oh so many furniture sprites, but Ill eventually get her onto this. The important thing is the functionality.
This screen in the recap will show you each item you sold, along with how many of it and how much money each item stack sold for. There will also be a total at the bottom but I didnt get around to it quite yet. However, that isnt all. I did some thinking (as Im prone to doing) and decided that this recap could really be a lot more useful. To tangent slightly, one of the bigger deviations in this game from other harvest moon type games is that you dont have to sleep. You can just keep going through midnight if you want. As I recall theres literally a perk called insomniac for staying awake 7 days straight. When I made the decision to make the game this way I didnt really think about how it might change things. Im not going to take this away and force players to sleep every night but changes need to be made to support this concept. To put it simply forcing a player to sleep each night effectively forces a routine. Every day the player is going to start and end in the same spot. This, combined with repetitive daily tasks, creates an environment where it makes sense to have a list of things that you do each day. Good examples would be, watering crops, feeding animals, etc. Because a basic routine is so ideal most players have one. Because you have one it keeps you fairly tuned into everything going on. However, if you arent forced to sleep each night the game can tick over to midnight and you could be on floor 37 of the mines looking for 5 more iron ore cause Sven is too lazy to provide materials for tool upgrades himself. Suddenly youre in a completely different situation. A new day has started, you have things you need to do but you are in a strange starting situation. The idea of this new recap is to give you a gauge of where things are at and help you get a snapshot of everything so you can plan a little bit more at that moment and formulate a plan for the day if you need to. So, the recap now has tabs. The first being profits from shipping, as discussed above. The second is crops. Shown below, as I said above none of the sprite work is final.
The crops tab will show you the current status of every crop you have planted. How much water does it have, and how long till it is fully grown. This way you know if youve missed watering something, or maybe you need to run back to harvest. This may get more in depth if other things are added to crops as well. There are things like fertilizer and growth powders. If I decide to add more stats to crops you can expect them to be shown here. Next is a far more complicated one, animals.
As you may remember, animals got a lot of changes. Mostly, they were made far more complicated as a way to combat them being basically just an easy infinite money source. They produce goods of varying quality based on their happiness. Happiness is dictated by what they eat, if they have a pasture, grooming, immunity, diseases, etc. While all these things can be seen in a coop or barn you can now see them in the recap. The big green gauges are fairly self-explanatory, just an indicator of where that stat is. You might also notice the little green and red circles next to each icon. These indicate other bits of information such as, is the animal fully grown or not, what tier of pasture can they access if any, are they pregnant, do they have a disease, what food did they eat last, etc. I understand that this is a lot of stuff to keep up with so Im hoping this will serve as a simply way to condense all the info and make it a bit more digestible. There is one final tab at the moment which is player stats. I dont think this is exactly needed but I thought it would be a nice little page of information to see how you progressed that day. The plan is that it will track progress in tool proficiencies, perks, challenges, etc. Similar to what you see with crops and animals youll have indicators of how much XP or progress you gained in each particular thing that day. Again, probably not needed but I think it might help if a player is looking for a direction they can look at their stats and maybe see that they are close to getting a perk or stat increase and then focus on it. I think it might also be a good idea to expand on this sort of thing in the player pause menu as well. Basically have this information available to the player anytime they pause and obviously have it update in real time. This way if you have a ton of stuff to keep track of you can sort of check your work as you do it. I feel like with all the systems it could get overwhelming if you choose to dabble in a lot of stuff and having a way to track it will help. Okay. I think thats it. I went on for a while here but I like to explain the choices Im making here. Any feedback is obviously appreciated. Things I think are good ideas can obviously turn out to be poor ones as clearly evidenced by things like the old construction UI. One other minor thing that I dont think will be a big deal but I thought it worth mentioning. Im still writing lore for the world on the weekends, or dear so much lore, so much lore that is probably irrelevant to a farming game lol. Im thinking of using this world as a setting for games in the future so it wouldnt all be wasted, but thats beside the point. I just wanted to mention that some characters may be getting reworked a bit to fit into the lore. As the world gets fleshed out Im finding that the characters will need to be altered a bit to match. I dont think any of the characters that exist are particularly well characterized at the moment but I thought Id make a broad statement saying that they are all subject to change. Realistically I see this as a good thing. The whole point of making lore was to make the world feel more natural. If Im feeling characters need to be changed that means there is lore that can color each of them in a more interesting way. So just a heads up there. Im not exactly sure what this month holds. Ill be finishing the recap, and then shipping first. After that Im not sure what Ill turn to next. There is plenty to do of course, it might be NPCs or it may be something more mundane like setting up saving and loading. Time will tell. Anyway if you made it all the way down here thanks for reading and sticking with me through this very long process. I hope you all are having a good summer, Ill be back in a month to ramble on about other game design things.

[ 2024-06-30 21:38:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, I cant believe its already June. In retrospect I suppose I thought my May would be fairly quiet, but it really turned out to be anything but that. I should probably expect that sort of thing at this point in my life, but somehow, Im still being surprised that things come up and take up time. As mentioned above I had a few things happen that slowed my work a bit, however I did still get things done. Namely the interior design portion of things. I really cant express how glad I am that its done. I dont like to get stuck working on systems for long stretches of time. I dont really mind it from a working perspective, but it just makes progress seem so slow when you look back and realize youve been working on the same system for weeks. So, what is the interior design system I hear you ask. The short answer is that its the system that allows you to modify your house layout in game. Incase some preface is needed, in games of this genre (that Im aware of at least) youll generally get a house at the start of the game which is usually something like a one room shack. Over the course of the game, youll usually upgrade your home and effectively make the interior larger. Generally, this expansion comes in the form of static upgrades to the interior layout. The important take away is that each player will end up with the same floorplan after buying all the upgrades. What spawned this idea was that I thought it seemed like a missed opportunity in this kind of game. Assuming you arent min/maxing many players I think have fun with decorating their house and setting it up how they like. This system just takes that process one step further and allows you to setup the rooms and walls as you please. To put it briefly the floorplan of your house is now entirely modular down to the individual tiles. You can have as many or as few rooms as you like. You can also make them each whatever shape you want. This entire process replaces the previous system which was just static upgrades which added rooms on. However, I think Im likely going to keep the cellar as an option which will just be a static room. There might also be an attic upgrade you can get which will be the same type of thing. As for the main floor you build these rooms in the same way you would construct other buildings on your farm. Youll talk to the carpenter, pay a fee, and then be brought to a screen what you can draw in the room as you please. The only stipulation I havent decided on yet is if Ill make new rooms cost resources based on the size you make them. This seems like the proper way to go I think. Probably a static gold cost but then a varying amount of wood, stone, etc based on the size of the room. In addition to creating rooms you can freely modify and delete them once they are created so if you change your mind, want to renovate, add more doors, etc that option is also available. I said I would try to show off something from the system when it was done so I do have a few screenshots. I started to make a gif to show the process of making a room but it takes so long to do the gif was too massive. Im admittedly not the most creative person when it comes to designing floorplans but the point is really just to show that you can setup your house however you want. You will have to excuse the lack of furniture and the pixilation. Zooming out in the engine to show the entire room at once is currently a bit weird and smushes stuff together but I think the general point comes across.

Because I do feel bad about not being able to really show everything all at once with interior design here are a few mockups from my artist as well for furniture and decorations she is working on. You can expect that once everything is said and done youll have something more like this rather than a bunch of empty rooms.

Aside from this system, which took most of the month (again, so happy its done now) I have gotten a bit of time to work with other things. Ive built most of the construction UI at this point which will allow you to both use this system and actually place things like coops and barns. Looking at the UI has made me think that a bit of a color scheme change might be in order, but that would be a minor art fix if it happens. Once that UI is in place Im going to get shipping implemented which I dont think should be too hard although I do want to make some graphical changes to the UI. Once that system is in place Im going to get furniture setup. To clarify, furniture placement is already 99% in place. The only things that are missing are all the items and sprites and a couple of stipulations for specific furniture types. Adding sprites is tedious, but not difficult. The stipulations should also be pretty simple once a general algorithm is made. Once furniture is working Ill have to jump back to the interior design system a bit to make it properly handle furniture in situations where you would delete a room or modify it in such a way that furniture placement becomes invalid. This should also be a mostly simple process as Ive set up the system to account for furniture already. I just, ironically, dont have any in game furniture to place outside of chests. As you can probably tell, many things start to intertwine in games like this. I try my best to make one system at a time, but things like this pop up on occasion where you have to put something on hold while you figure out another system. The further in I get the less it happens, but this is a particularly egregious case. I dont have much else to say at this point. Combat sprites are steadily moving forward in the background. Most of the enemy sprites are made with just a few modifications required for some of them. I dont usually post those because it feels like the sort of thing that should be discovered in game but heres an example of one. This creature is still in progress and is admittedly pulled from D&D but I always thought they were a cool enemy. I think most of the other ones are a bit more original though.
With any luck now that Im past interior design things should speed up a little bit. That system was very labor intensive just in terms of all the things to code. Most systems in the game are much more light to program. Hopefully Ill have a bit more to talk about next month as with any luck June will be more dedicated to working on smaller systems. Im also tentatively hopeful that this version might go onto steam soonish. This is a very non-committal statement but a lot of the basic systems are starting to come together. At this point you can farm, fish, chop trees, mine (although the mines dont exist yet), build buildings, and raise animals. On top of that most of the general functionality of the world is in place. Things like day/night cycle, seasons, inventory management, shops, and some other stuff Im probably not thinking of are in. All that said there are still things missing. In order for the game to be a game Id have to design the world, which is actually a lot easier than it sounds. I also still need to add a few systems. Furniture and shipping as mentioned above, NPCs and dialogue, quests, basic skill levels, and you know a way to save and load your game. Thing is none of those are particularly complex to add. Its not like this will go live next week or something, but this hopefully gives a bit of insight into where I feel Im at. A lot of the complex stuff has been done at this point, theres still tons to do but most of it isnt I guess hard to make. In any case, Ill cut this off here. I have plenty of game related work to do today anyway. Thanks for taking the time to read, and, as always, for your patience. Ill be back with more updates at the end of June.

[ 2024-06-01 18:40:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

It is already the end of April, which is rather alarming. I feel like the month just disappeared but thats nothing new. I was hoping things would be a bit different by the time we reached the end of the month, but it is what it is. As such this will probably be a shorter update. As you might remember from the last update there is a change happening to the player house interior. For a brief refresher, in most games (that I know of) like this you can upgrade your house to expand the interior. Generally speaking, this means another room is added onto the layout, or perhaps an existing one is made larger. The point being that every player ends up with the same house layout. I thought this was something of a missed opportunity so I took it upon myself to try something different. What me of the past didnt account for was just how complicated this would end up being. I tend to convince myself that complex systems wont be too hard to code, its admittedly a fault of mine. I was hoping that Id be done, well, before the month was out, or at the very least by the end of the month. As you can probably guess by reading this, that didnt happen. However, I am close. I expect maybe another week will be needed to get everything finalized. As some of the details were a bit up in the air during the last update Ill explain a bit of how this works. Instead of getting quests to upgrade your house like in the current version youll instead have an option to construct a room via the same shop you would use to build a coop or barn. When you choose to build a room youll be taken to your house interior and expected to cobble together a layout for said room. This layout is constructed by basically painting floor tiles with your mouse or controller. As you paint tiles the walls and ceilings adjust accordingly. This process is capable of creating a room of any shape and size as long as all the floor tiles you place down are connected. There is only one stipulation at the moment involving the placement of interior columns close to the top of the room. Im going to go back and see if this can be adjusted though. Once you lay out the floorplan for the room you move to the next step which is placing doors on the walls of your room. You can place as many or as few as you want. Although you do have to place at least one becausewell, I mean, you have to have a way in. After doors are placed, you finalize the room and are done. There will be a period of time where the carpenter will build the room out and then you can use it like any other. As far as pricing goes, I havent decided on a static price or one that varies based on the size of the room. Since you could technically just make one massive room the size of the whole house it seems like it might be a better option to make the price vary to keep balance intact. Each room will be capable of having its own wallpaper and floor tile pattern. There will also be an option to modify any existing room which functions the same way creating a room does. While I havent coded it yet this should be able to account for furniture existing in the room. I have an outline for this that I believe should work. I think Ill likely add a step to room modification as well that allows you to move existing furniture so you can just do everything at once if you want. I think this is going to end up branching into coding furniture a bit as well. The ability to place down furniture already exists in the game but it was done basically as a way to allow placing a chest so I could test that. There is likely some extra stuff that needs to be addressed to complete the system. For instance stipulations to let you place things on walls or on top of tables. Thats sort of the direction things have been going this month. Im really hoping that Im correct and Ill get the rest of this sorted over the next week so I can move on. Theres plenty to do and I hate to just get stuck in on a single feature. At the same time, I suppose its quality over quantity. I was going to attach a short video showing the system off a bit, but I think Ill probably wait until next month. The house interior is still in testing mode meaning Id have to stage a lot of stuff just to show things. Better to just wait until the system is complete I think. Aside from that there has been some formulating on a few other topics. The one that has seen real growth however is the lore. I believe I mentioned last time that I would be taking weekends to write world lore for the game. For those unaware I work on programming the game Monday through Thursday. My weekends are always pretty scattershot in terms of how much time I have. Since it was hard to get any meaningful amount of time dedicated to coding on the weekends I thought it would be better to handle writing during that time instead. I can report that things are going well. Im really not sure how much of this lore will be used but I think its helpful regardless. I wont claim to be a great author but I think even if you arent going to directly reference all of your lore just having it can inform characters in the world and help to make them feel more complete. I believe Ive said before that I never really cared about the characters or worlds in these types of games. Im hoping to avoid that with this game. Hence why there is also something akin to a main story. You wont be forced to interact with it in any way, but it will be there if you want to pursue it. I guess its sort of like Skyrim. You can do the main quest if you want, or you can just do whatever you want. Im hoping between this and everything else that the world will be a bit more gripping. As for what was actually written, lots of kingdom lore honestly, along with some of the larger events in history. There are 5-6 separate nations depending on how you look at them each has their own lore, practices, themes, history, wars, etc. Ive been thinking that whenever I finally finish this game I might just keep making games in this universe. Sort of just setup this base world and use it for different projects. Anyway, my only other thought was if I should be sharing any of this lore. I dont know that it would make sense in these posts. I could always start up another monthly post more dedicated to just dropping lore bits. I have no idea if anyone would find that remotely interesting, just an idle thought I had. That aside Im also not sure if it would be good to just drop lore like that instead of working it into the game for people to just discover naturally. One of the things mentioned a long time ago by a player was that it would be interesting to be able to interact with things in the world like bookshelves to get bits of lore. I do plan to add that feature so there should be plenty of places to insert lore. So several things to think about, but thats hardly new for me. For the moment, I think Ill cut things off there. Im sorry that there isnt much to share. The custom house layout system turned out to be quite the undertaking. With any luck Ill knock the rest of it out in short order and I can move on to other things for May. Thank you as always for your patience, hopefully a month from now Ill have a variety of things to talk about.

[ 2024-05-01 01:27:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

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

[ 2024-03-30 05:02:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

As usual its time for another dev log. I did a bit of looking and actually it has been a year since I announced I would be remaking the game in a new engine. I didnt think that I made the announcement at the end of February 2023 but apparently, I did. Looking through a few of the subsequent logs though it seems I didnt really start coding until May. So, its sort of been a year, sort of not. Im happy with the progress so far, but obviously I wish things were going faster. However outside of giving up sleep I dont think there is any additional time left in my days. The progress of the game is sort of hard to judge, but I think I have more done than it feels like. It just seems strange because the world doesnt exist at the moment. Its just a few test rooms where I just implement systems. I remember when the old version of the game was like that and once I actually built the in game world it felt much more complete. This month in particular was dedicated to animals, and basically wholly animals. Im close to done at this point, but not quite there. The remaining work should be pretty low effort though. For a quick summary of what was done Ill make a short list of the notable stuff below.

• Animals now naturally catch disease under certain conditions
• Chicken coops have a new internal structure that collects eggs
• Fowl now spawn feathers that you can collect
• An entire system to make pastures work is now in place (This is so much more complicated than this one sentence implies)
• Animals can now actually die and that is managed properly
• Animals can be hatched or born depending on what type of animal it is
• A new animal status screen has been made to display animal stats as there is now more to track with animals
• Because there are multiple things that affect an animals happiness each day a system has been made to record what effects them and how much they are effected
• Animals can be sold
• Animals can be relocated from one building to another
• Animals now appear outside or inside depending on pasture settings for the building
• Added the ability to trash items
• Fixed a few bugs

So basically, everything revolving around animals was done this month. Ive also setup the Silo UI. The last things to do are make silos distribute food, which is easy, and then these things need to be replicated across all animals. At the moment, chickens are the only things that work. That may sound like a huge deal but all animals function off the same parent object. So basically, I have to copy and paste code and then make a few minor changes to the specifics on each one. This is all pretty simple and shouldnt take more than a few days I would think, if that. I dont like that animals have taken as long as they have to setup, but looking back I guess it makes sense. I believe Ive mentioned this before but most systems in this game are fairly simple, mine a rock, make a potion, cook an item, etc. All these things dont involve much in terms of system design. These types of games are often the combination of a lot of very small systems rather than a few large ones. Animals are more of a cascading problem though. Before you can even have an animal, you need a building for them. This is in and of itself a giant system to build, move, upgrade, and destroy buildings, not to mention handling all the internals of each. That was what took up most of January if I recall. Then once you actually have a building for animals you have to be able to buy them, name them, store all the relevant data, handle feeding, disease, grooming, health, happiness, product creation, pastures, selling them, transferring them, aging, player interactions, etc, etc. So, it makes some sense that it took a while, I just dont like it when the end of the month comes and it feels like I did one thing. Pastures were the biggest difficulty of this month. They were probably the system that took the most time to make. Effectively a system was needed that calculated where you put the building and (without lagging the game) found all the tiles that surrounded that building to form that pasture. Then store that data in a usable way and allow for on the fly adjustments if a player changes the pasture layout. All that said, Im happy with how it turned out. Its far more stable and compact than the system that exists in the live version of the game. The only other real change to mention is the structure in the coop that holds eggs. Anyone playing the live game will know that eggs just sort of drop on the ground and you pick them up. I didnt really like this. Feathers make a bit more sense as fowl would just drop feathers on the ground in real life (I think). Im not a farmer but I believe chickens lay eggs in their nests, not just randomly on the floor. With the amount of tasks you have to do for animal care increasing I thought this might be a nice little addition to make daily chores a little easier. Most of the other things that I mentioned were fairly self-explanatory. As mentioned before, I have just a few things to clean up with animals, most of which is just replication for more animals. Then of course I have to decide what to do next. This is something Im a bit unsure of. A lot of the UI for the game is currently in flux as Im having a lot of it redone to make it more consistent. Since I dont have all the sprites finalized setting up UI is, well, not entirely pointless, but it is sort of annoying. Anything I setup without the finalized UI will likely require me to go back later and adjust a bit. It isnt hard to do but its just an extra step when I could just wait to have the sprites and then do it right the first time. This is a bit problematic because a lot of systems rely on UI. At the moment Im debating between building out the world, or maybe getting some of combat in place. Im hesitant to do too much world building as there are also sprites being made for the overworld and I think it would be better to do that work when I have all of the assets at my disposal. However, I could start laying out zones in basic ways with temporary sprites and notes. Ive likely mentioned this before, but I do want to put out versions of this game again prior to a 1.0. I think getting that feedback helps immensely so I dont want to just make this entire thing in a vacuum and then let it loose. Ive got a sort of unofficial list of things I want in the game before I put anything out onto Steam though. Combat is on that list because its something entirely different from the other systems and I want to make sure its enjoyable. I think it will likely be implemented sort of piecemeal along with the mines. While there is combat related stuff outside the mines they sort of serve as a more traditionally leveled area where it gets more difficult as you go deeper. So likely in one of the first uploads of this new version youll maybe be able to go down 2 levels or so (remember there are only 10 very large hand crafted floors instead of 100+ random ones). Ill likely also add some sort of level cap that Ill raise as more mine floors get added. This way I can focus on balancing combat in smaller chunks rather than trying to get the whole range of combat right at once. Aside from balancing I have a general goal of complete systems. Im trying to make it so that anything a player would see in the game is done. A good example of what I want to avoid is the health bar in the current game. In the live version you have health, food and potions can give you more health, there are buffs for combat too. Despite all of this there is no combat and not even a way to lose health. Thats jarring. Maybe not to someone who has been playing for a while or is watching the development but someone coming in would likely just find it confusing. The other obvious example of an incomplete system is NPC dialogue. In the current version NPCs have the bare minimum dialogue. Id like to write everything for a character all at once to keep them consistent in tone. The one caveat here is that while I might write everything all at once, some of the dialogue for each character will be dependent on other things in the game happening. So, while it will be done it may not be accessible right away. The general rule of thumb though is to have things be as complete as possible when they go into the live version. Id like to avoid uploading a version of the game and having to say hey, theres this part of the game that makes no sense right now because I havent implemented the other system that feeds into it. To bring this all back to topic, adding combat is necessary to avoid that issue. I think thats mostly it for now. I feel like this was more of a ramble than a dev log. Unfortunately, there isnt much to articulate about animals unless I start going deep into code talk. I figure this stuff is a bit more surface level, but its probably more informative about what is going on with development. The other option is me explaining the use of recursive functions to trace the tiles that make up a pasture and compiling them into an array of structs that can be easily referenced for calculations. Seeing as that sentence was boring even to me, I have my doubts about it keeping other peoples interest. So, thank you all for your patience. As time goes on Ill hopefully have more definite info on when you can expect an actual upload of this version of the game. I think I said this a long time ago but what I might do is upload it as an opt in beta so people can try it if they want but retain access to what currently exists. Ive also said this before but just as a reminder, if you own the game now youll own the new version too, no repurchase required. Alright, Im going to go finish animal systems. I hope you all enjoyed February 29th, it only comes around every 4 years after all. Ill have more updates in a month.

[ 2024-03-01 02:27:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, it feels like its a been a bit since a wrote one of these, but I suppose its just that a lot has happened. As usual its the end of the month so its time I regale you all with whats been going on with Verdant Village. To be completely honest, Im looking forward to February because January turned out to be rather busy with some stuff getting in the way of development. Thankfully, February looks a lot more boring, which means more time to get stuff done. So, as I sort of just mentioned less got accomplished this month than I would have liked. The holidays sort of ran over into the first week of the year. I was then out of town for work for a week, and what would a going out of town be if I didnt catch some sort of cold afterwards for like a half week. Anyway, Im not here to make excuses (although I sort of just did), but I wanted to give a bit of perspective as this wasnt exactly a normal month. Still, I did get some stuff done. As I remember it, the last update I was getting started on raising livestock. For those that may have forgotten livestock are also getting an overhaul. The last update will explain in more thoroughly but the TLDR is that animals now have a few factors to their care like grooming, types of feed, pastures, and disease. These all feed into an overall happiness level which determines what an animal produces each day. It should also be mentioned that originally there were plans for monster attacks, which you would have to essentially upkeep a magical ward to prevent. If you let this ward fail animals would potentially be attacked, even inside their respective buildings. I got some feedback on this last time and as a result it has been dropped. I thought about ways to maybe modify it. Most people seemed to be okay with the idea of attacks happening if animals were caught outside, just not when they were inside. Problem with that is that there isnt really anything to keep an animal from going back inside at the end of the day. Even in games like Stardew it really only happens if the pathing for the animal is messed up or you purposely block them. Adding a system where you have to manually bring animals inside would also be pretty tedious I think. Given that you arent forced to go to sleep ever this would end up just being a different version of something that forces you back to your house at night. I suppose it could be done and then you could later automate something that brings animals inside for you but that seems, how do I put it. Like a needless complication, I guess. Because effectively a system would have been made at that point where having to do it manually would be annoying, so most likely players would just wait to get the automation element before letting animals out and basically just skip the whole thing. Hopefully Im making sense here. The point is that for the moment at least, there is no risk of attack, animals will just go outside and inside without issue, on their own. Changes could always be made in the future though. Alright, Im nearly a page into this and I havent discussed anything Ive done yet. For a quick overview Im just going to drop in my internal list of things I did this month. I used to keep these when I was still updating the live version so I had a list of what had been done since the last patch. This is just what I did this month instead.

• Fixed several UI bugs
• Finished transitions allowing players to place animals into buildings
• Setup code around displaying what animals exist in what buildings
• Setup failsafes during animal purchase to prevent purchase when you have no space or building in general for an animal
• Made clock UI and hotbar shift to the opposite side of the screen when needed
• Created a system to handle collisions in the world via a tilemap
• Animals spawn and move around inside their respective buildings
• Setup system to place animal feed
• Animals now eat each day
• Animals grow from child to adult
• Animals can be fed treats once per day
• Added quality for specific items in the game, currently just crops and animal products however this might expand out later
• Fixed a bug that was persistent through the three chest organization buttons
• Animals now contract, spread, and self heal disease over time

Some of that is more self-explanatory, others a bit more vague, and others make a lot of work sound like very little work honestly. A good example of that is the system to handle collisions via tilemap. This is extremely important but I just hadnt gotten around to it. To explain briefly, most objects in the world have their own collision built in. For instance, a tree, the players house, etc. However, there are other elements like cliff faces or bodies of water where because they are tilemaps rather than objects they dont have a collision paired with them. This means there needs to effectively be an invisible layer placed over the map that acts as the collision mask. That is what was created. Very boring, also very important. I dont want to make this post a mile long and over explain things but there is one more thing from that list that I want to touch on, because its a fairly large change. You might have noticed near the end I mentioned that specific items now have quality levels. If youve played Stardew, or maybe Graveyard Keeper youll be familiar with these. For those unacquainted lets say you get a chicken egg in game. It is no longer just an egg, it will have a quality attached, in the case of Verdant Village, bronze, silver, gold, or adamantium. This quality level at the moment simply dictates value. Items have a base selling value; a higher quality gives a multiplier to that value. For instance, a silver quality might make it worth 1.5x the normal value. I hadnt planned on doing this, but I found that I couldnt think of a better alternative for livestock. As mentioned before livestock have a happiness level that is dictated by several other factors. This happiness level determines what the animal produces each day. In my outline prior it had much more variance. There was no quality so instead higher happiness would alter things such as, having a higher chance to spawn the product at all (yes in that version you could just have an animal not produce when it should have). It could also make animals produce products faster, for instance sheep could grow their wool in less time. Or in some cases you could get situations were instead of getting one chicken egg per day you would get two. I still like some of these ideas, however there are a lot of problems with it. The first and probably most important being inconsistency. Having a chance to be taking care of your animals and still just not get any products one day because of random chance would feel terrible. Aside from this there was a logistical issue with lowering the time it takes to spawn a product. Sheep for example might take 5 days to grow their wool at low happiness but only 3 days at a high level. While I could do some math behind the scenes and make the numbers work it would lead to inconsistency. The player doesnt really have an idea of when the sheep will finish growing its wool as the happiness level might fluctuate meaning the wool grows at a different rate each day. This means it could be 3 days, could be 7 days, but its hard to tell without meticulously checking the animals stats each day to know what happened. All this is to say that the old method was fairly vague and I think a little too convoluted for its own good. Adding quality to the items allows for something much simpler where the better the happiness value, the higher the item tier. Simple one to one values. In the case of something like sheep where it will take multiple days to get one item Ill use an aggregate of the happiness during the growth time to determine the quality of the resulting item. As I said, I think thats one of the larger changes that has come out of this. I think the reasoning is sound however. Of course while thinking this I of course considered other items as well. Currently crops have gotten the same treatment. I think they can support the same sort of structure and it feels odd to only have quality on animal products. Crops will gain quality based on fertilizer or alchemic items you put on them. More may be done to affect that in the future but for now thats all it is. I did have a brief thought about adding quality levels to seeds so you could effectively breed better seeds but Im not sure how complex I want to get. At some point complexity becomes annoying, so well see. Of course, I may add this on to other things as well. I actually made a note of systems that it might make sense to add quality to. Specifically, alchemy, brewing, cooking, jewelcrafting, and tailoring. That is entirely up in the air at the moment however. I suppose just dont be too surprised if you see the system bleed into those. Hunting and fishing could also potentially see it although Im not sure how quality would be determined outside of some sort of skill level or a luck variable. Anyway, Ive talked enough I think. This is already long by my standards. Its funny, I never feel I have much to talk about and then I exposit for about two and a half pages. As I said at the start, Im expecting February to far better in terms of productivity. Ive got some animal stuff to finish up still. Im staring down pastures which will likely be the toughest part. Aside from that currently you can only buy chickens so I have to extrapolate all this code to all the other animals, but thats mostly just copy paste with some minor edits. After that Im between doing the shipping system, which I was going to do before livestock but I needed the updated UI (which I just got), or moving into dialogue. Ill likely decide when I get to it. Youll hear from me again in a month. I hope you all had a good start to the year, and if youve made it this far, thanks for reading.

[ 2024-02-01 02:39:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

To start things off, happy new year! Its been quite a year for myself, and Verdant Village in general. Ive said it before, but I cant say I was expecting to be in the process of remaking this game at this time. A lot of the framework for the game has been laid since I started in a new engine earlier this year. Were getting fairly close to the point where the more complex systems are in place and hopefully after that development will speed up a bit. Now, as for what happened this month, I regret to say it wasnt much. December is always sort of a weird month just because of the holidays. This year was busier than usual for me, and I also had the pleasure of being sick for a bit. I did make some progress on ranching, but admittedly this month was a bit of a wash. That said January should be far more normal, and I can return to getting things done. While I didnt get around to that much this month there are two major things that did happen, more so in planning than execution. The first is ranching. Its the system that Im working on at the moment and while in the process of setting things up I was taking a look at the actual gameplay systems and determined that I didnt think much of them. For anyone who hasnt gotten to ranching yet in game Ill explain. In its current state ranching is very simple, basically you just feed your animals each day and they will give you a product as a result. If you fail to feed them for too long, they starve. Thats basically it. There are some other minor things like automatic feeding, a pasture system, and a few animal variations like pink and brown cows as well. All of this is alright as a base, but while I was considering ranching, I came to the conclusion that its sort of lackluster. Something Ive tried to avoid in this game is systems that are nothing more than a button press. I prefer for there to be some nuance to everything so that this doesnt just become a chore simulator. This is harder to do with some things, but ranching has plenty of opportunities for complexity. Ive never raised livestock in person, but Im guessing it requires more effort than just giving your animals food every day. So, in that spirit, there will be something of an overhaul coming. In short, there will be more aspects to taking care of animals. Specifically, I currently have several systems planned, health, hunger, sickness, cleanliness, pastures, and wards. Each of these is pretty simple but Ill explain. Health is exactly what it sounds like, every animal will now have an HP value. An animal at full health is happier. Health can be affected by things like sickness or monster attacks. Hunger is obviously how hungry an animal is. Feeding an animal each day will ward this off. However, there will be a few tiers of feed which have other effects. Treats will also be something you can feed animals. These dont actually fill up an animal but can boost their happiness and HP to help them recover if needed. Sickness means, as you likely guessed, that animals can get sick. There are a few different types of sickness, that cause damage and even death if they arent treated. Disease can also spread if it isnt taken care of. Cleanliness is just a simple system where youll have to wash or groom your livestock every few days. Pastures are sort of multipurpose but ultimately a pasture serves to make livestock happier. A larger pasture will make the livestock in it happier. Last is wards. This is related to monster attacks. Monsters can attack your animals each night and wards will keep your animals safe. They have a duration that they last so theyll need to be replaced. In general, they serve to reduce the frequency and severity of monster attacks. All of these things play into happiness. In other games like this, happiness tends to be something you build up over time. For instance, if you feed your animal each day and pet it the animal will like you more. This is usually a cumulative system meaning that once your animal is happy, youd have to really just stop paying attention to it for its levels to drop. Generally speaking, I dont like this as I think it sort of lowers the stakes for consistent care. The plan for this system is that happiness will be a value that is determined each day based on the status of the animal. This happiness value will determine what you get from the animal. There are several tiers of happiness, the higher the tier, the better your rewards. It should also be mentioned that these systems are meant to play off of and affect each other. For instance, not cleaning your animals lowers their immunity which makes them more likely to get sick. Letting animals into a pasture can make them happier, but theyll get dirty more quickly. Being in a pasture will also provide the animal with food so you dont need to feed them, but pasture feeding isnt going to be as good as high-quality feed. Aside from all these things all animals will have at least one to two transformations that you can change them into by feeding them certain special items. There are a few other things as well, but they arent worth really getting into. The hope is that with all these things raising livestock will be a bit more interactive rather than just a mindless task. Now, if youll remember I said I had two major things to talk about. Last month I believe I mentioned that changes would be coming to the mines. The first is that its going to be closer to town. The world is getting a general makeover and one issue is that the mines are really far away. So no more winding mountain trails, or at least not as much of one. Thats a pretty minor detail though. Much like ranching Ive been contemplating the mining system for the game. Now, the act of mining itself is going to stay the same. The thing I decided to focus on was the mine itself. For those who havent played, or seen the mines, it is basically the same as other games of this genre. You enter and descend through around 100 floors. Each time you enter a new floor it randomly generates the layout to add some level of uniqueness to the area. The mines also generate a few different things like stamina drainers, keysprites, treasure chests, seams, lighting, buffs, etc. The point of this was to vary the mining experience a bit each time you went in and give the player a bit of something to encounter. General combat encounters were also (and still are) planned for the mines. Looking at the mines I sort of came to a conclusion about the whole setup that I didnt really like. To put it bluntly, its sort of redundant and its stretching a fairly thin gameplay mechanic across a large swath of game. Along with this the random things you can find in the mines combined with the random layouts means that rewards are sort of just laying around. The older I get, and the more games I play, the more Ive come to the conclusion that random generation is something that really should be used sparingly and in the correct circumstances rather than a replacement for level design. I had thought the mines would be good for this, but I think that was incorrect. Looking at the mines as they are right now, I see it as basically having 100 very subpar levels. The poor quality is offset by the quantity. So, the new plan is to rectify this. Currently my idea is that there will be 10 levels to the mines. Unlike the current mine levels these will be far larger. Instead of random layouts they will each be handcrafted. There will be a boss enemy at the end of each level to keep people from simply rushing to the lowest floor. The biome will change every two levels and what minerals and gems you find on each floor will change. The mines will be designed cyclically so that the end of the level winds back around to the start. This way when you want to come back via the elevator you wont have to traverse the entire level again. There will likely be other ways to hop around the level as well. Probably the most important part however is that each level will be treated like something of a dungeon. There will be plenty of ore to mine that is scattered about however your progress through the level will be gated by smaller puzzles, locked doors, or combat encounters. Once youve reached the end of the level and defeated the boss it will unlock what Id refer to as a mining room. This would be a large area full of rocks you can mine so once youve completed the level you can come back and mine in a more traditional setting without having to run through a maze just to find mining nodes. Thats the general idea. To be clear, I used the term dungeon earlier which makes me think of Zelda. To be clear, this would not be something as extensive as that. Theres already enough going on without adding a Zelda clone to this game. Id be curious to know what people think of this, so if you have an opinion feel free to share it. My personal perspective is that I would rather have 10 well-made levels instead of 100 forgettable ones. Doing something like this would also allow me to use the mines for other things potentially since there would be a static layout that I could tie to other things in the game. Anyway, this post is already very long so Ill wrap it up. I have plenty of work in front of me which Im eager to start. I do apologize for not getting a ton done this month. Im keenly aware that people have already paid for this game and are potentially waiting for me to get on with it. Granted, I dont think there are people waiting with bated breath on this new version. However, call me old fashioned, I dont like to keep people waiting, especially when Ive already taken money from them. Ill hopefully have more to report next month. As for now, I hope you all enjoy your new years celebrations and start off 2024 on the right foot.

[ 2023-12-30 17:19:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Im a day late here which Im going to blame on, uh, holidays, lets go with that. Totally not me losing track of time. In any case, big systems were the name of the game this month. That and sprites, lots and lots of sprites. For systems, they may not sound complicated, but both are rather involved. The first is actually something that is new to this version of the game, hybridizers. They have to do specifically with crops and flowers. In the current version of the game there are what I would consider to be a lot of crops. If you play what is live they are all simply available from the general store from the start. There isnt anything inherently wrong with this, but I thought it might be a bit overwhelming to a new player. Aside from that, farming doesnt really have much progression. I suppose putting in irrigation is really the only progression, outside of just scaling up how much you grow. There are a few other things to address that progression issue, but hybridizers are meant to help with this a bit. At the start of the game youll have far fewer crops available to. Three for each season unless something changes. However, one of the opening quests will be to use hybridizers. In short how these work is that you plant two different crops and a hybridizer in between them. Once both crops are fully grown they will potentially spawn a new crop where the hybridizer is. Each crop outside the original three you start with has a specific combination that is needed to spawn it. So you can slowly gain all the crops as you figure out the combinations. Also, because no one would want to go through this process forever, once you get the new crops youll be able to turn in around 5 or so to Lylah and then she will start selling the requisite seeds. This same process is being done with flowers as well. This along with a few additions to automate some of farming in the later stages I think will help make players feel like theyve made progress as they play. Farming aside, the other system Ive been working on is livestock, which is actually like eight systems hiding under one name. While I say livestock Im basically just now getting to making that. I tend to make systems in the same order a player would experience them. So, before you can have livestock you have to have a building to put them in. This was the odyssey I went on this month. The UI for buying a building isnt in place yet because, well, in a word, sprites. We will get to that later, but for now I just have a button that initiates the building process. So first we had to make a system to allow you to scroll the view without the player on the screen. Then allow for the creation of a building with stipulations like you cant build it on top of a tree, or in the water because structural integrity is important kids. Once that was done, I decided to just go the whole nine yards and add in the ability to move, remove, and upgrade a building as well. So ignoring a few minor things like Simeon actually showing up to build the structure each day, and linking it all to a simple GUI, the framework for building is done. After that I had to build out the transition system that moves you from room to room in the game. Fun fact if you didnt know already, all of the coop and barn interiors are the same room. In short, everything inside a building that houses livestock is loaded dynamically. To explain, normally when you move to a room everything (generally speaking) in it has been setup by me during development. Every tree, building, chair, path, etc I put in place. Because rooms are static in this way I can just setup an invisible object at the edge of a screen that when the player touches it the game takes you to the corresponding room. For livestock buildings you can technically have as many as you can fit onto your land. Who am I to say you shouldnt make your fortune through nothing but chickens. Since I dont know how many chicken coops you crazy people are going to make I have to allow for any number, which means creating static transitions to the interiors is out. So instead of building out an innumerable amount of coop interiors I just build one. When you enter a coop you always enter the same room, but the transition that occurs when you enter has a few pieces of data tied to it, specifically the tier of coop you are entering, how much feed is there, and the data versions of all your livestock. From all this data it populates everything when you enter. This is where Im at currently. At this point it should be smooth sailing for a while until I get to the nightmare that will be pastures. Building out animal functionality is fairly simple it just involves a lot of iteration for the most part. Pastures will likely be a tough cookie to crack, but I have several working ideas of what to do so Im not worried. The last thing I worked on this month was sprites. For those unfamiliar with game development sprites are not little forest creatures. Its just the term used for the images you see in game. Let me tell you, theres a lot of them in this game. In the previous version Id been adding them as I got them for the most part. Now I face the annoyance of needing to transfer what already exists (and the new ones coming in) to the new engine. So instead of adding them all at once (and going insane) Im splitting out some time to add them bit by bit. I mention this mostly because it means the time I have to write code is down a bit while I add these in. This also does link up with what I mentioned before about GUIs. If you recall I mentioned that constructing buildings doesnt have a GUI at the moment. If you have played the game however youll know that one exists, so what gives? What gives is improvement. Im not quite sure how obvious it is from a players perspective. Id guess that some people likely notice and others dont. At the risk of enlightening people to the blunders of the current game, if you look at the various pieces of UI they are only tangentially similar to each other. A lot of them have similar theming but the details are different. Generally, it is considered good form to have all your UI match in terms of appearance and functionality. When I was making what currently exists I had an idea to make each bit of UI sort of unique to what you are doing. For instance, the alchemy UI looks like a tome. The fermentation UI has a different look. The forge is made of molten stone, so on and so forth. I dont think this is a terrible idea, but I think it wasnt implemented well. In general, I feel that the inconsistency isnt worth it. It may seem like a minor thing, but having to parse a different UI every time you open a new interface isnt ideal. So, the reason there is no building UI yet is because it is being redone. Pretty much every UI will probably have some sort of alteration made, whether its a function or visual change, or just an overhaul. Currently were in the process of making a guide to make of this by so we can keep things consistent across the board but once its done UI will be added back into the game in a more significant way. I think thats it for this month. I was going to talk about changes to the mines, which are planned to be pretty extensive, and in my opinion pretty cool, but Im just about at two pages here and I like to keep these relatively short so I think Ill hold off until next month. I suppose the next time I post it will be 2024 or just about 2024. Since I wont have another chance to say it happy holidays and I wish you all a good 2024! Hopefully your 2023 was pretty good too. I can honestly say I wasnt expecting to be doing what Im doing now when 2023 started, but Im still glad that I am. While starting over was far from ideal I think the game will be far better for it. On that note, Im off to squeeze in what work I can between the holidays.

[ 2023-12-02 01:11:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, thanks for checking out this devlog. Lets jump right in, its been an interesting month full of things I dont usually do as much. This months work was more planning than work if I had to classify it. To start out, I did do a few things to the actual code of the game. Chests can now be picked up, so they are back to functioning as they do in the live version of the game. Aside from that I rebuilt a minor system to keep UI behaving correctly, specifically it ensures that you cant click a button in the same frame it is made. I also fixed an issue where moving diagonally was faster cause that was strange. Lastly, I rebuilt a system for in game messages. If you play the current game youve probably seen the small messages that appear from the top of the screen, that system has now been setup in the new engine. All of the things mentioned above were really just minor additions. The meat of work this month was, as I said at the start, planning. I wasnt expecting to do that, but realistically I probably should have expected it. Most of this planning revolved around the shipping chest, specifically the process of ordering items. For those who are maybe unfamiliar the shipping chest allows you to order objects, usually furniture. This involves paying a fee as well as supplying one to three items. All very simple, in fact making the actual system likely wont take very long at all. The issue was that the old version of the game essentially populated the database that this system worked from at runtime. In short what this means is that there isnt just a spreadsheet out there I can port into this version of the game. As a result I had to scrape the data manually, which wasnt too bad. The next part was where things sort of spiraled out of control and the reason this basically just turned into a planning month. Because of how the shipping chest and items work it is better to have everything related to it worked out when it is implemented. So the first step to that was to figure out what exactly the player can order from the shipping chest. This sounds like a simple question, but as I quickly found out, it ends up branching into several other systems, specifically quests, secrets, shops, and tangentially into any sub-system that requires a station to work from like sewing, hunting, or engineering (which is new and not in the current version of the game). So, the bulk of the work was setting in stone exactly what was a shop item and what was a catalog item. The game has several secret shops that operate on either gold or additional currency. The items in these shops are unique to them. I had to determine what I wanted to just be something you unlock via quest reward and order from the catalog or an item in a special shop. In addition to this I added a whole bunch of stuff. Partially to fill out some rewards and shops, but also because I felt what was there was a bit lacking. The furniture item list is currently sitting right around 390 items. 229 of those items are ordered through the catalog. All of this is to say that I spent a good chunk of time setting up the prices and item requirements of those 229 items in the catalog. That however, is not all. As I said earlier this sort of spilled out into other systems. Shops, secrets, and quests were mostly just a matter of re-arranging or setting exactly what would be available. Other systems involved a bit more investment. Mostly this was a lot of nailing down exactly how I wanted things to work. A simple example is archeology. In the current version its just a button in your inventory menu. Because of changes that are coming to the UI there is now a station that youll access for it instead. Engineering needed to have its projects sorted and ideas for what it can do for the player set. Engineering is basically the late game automation system for a few things. Tailoring, which is new, had to have its items and stations sorted out. Brewing is also seeing an overhaul which involved a few new things that needed to be set into place. Which is actually a good place to transition. Last word on the catalog, it is done. It was basically just a lot of data entry as well as setting rewards and requirements for a variety of systems. As for brewing, it will see some changes. In short Im trying to simplify it. Im still mulling over exact details, but the general idea is to make it a less intimidating system. First there are now a few degrees of separation. You can now make beer, wine, and liqueurs (flavored liquor). Beer is the easiest, youll just throw an item into a station and you get beer after time. Wine is a similar process but adds an element of aging, the longer you let it ferment the better the wine. Liqueurs are what will replace what currently exists. I still want to simplify it but allow for a bit of player decision as well. Instead of just tossing a bunch of stuff together like in the current version and sorting values this will be a more precise process. I am doing away with custom recipes; I like the idea but I think its daunting to a player. Also, the concept of custom items that are created on the fly in a game like this is a nightmare from a code perspective. Instead, how I currently have things is that there is a five-step process that you basically setup and let it run. I did some level of research into brewing and this is supposed to mimic that process. If anyone who actually makes alcohol is reading this I apologize because its an extremely simplified version of the real-world process. First, you pick a catalyst which determines what type of alcohol you get. You can make rum, whiskey, vodka, or gin. Next you pick a water purifier. There are basically a couple of items you can use that purify water to various degrees. Third you pick a heat source, again there are a few items that generate more or less heat. Fourth you pick a flavoring item. This is the largest group of items youll get to pick from. Basically, there is a big list but the items simplify down into one of 5 categories with some items being better than others. Finally, you determine how long you want to age it. All of these elements determine a specific item that you create. The better purifiers, heat, and aging you use the better the product. I figure between this, beer, and wine, players can pick how much they want to interact with the system (if at all). This seems better than being forced to learn a huge convoluted system that garners mixed results unless you really invest a lot of time in writing down combinations. Last thing that I wont swear to, but I did a bit of fiddling around and I think it would be possible. I know other games, specifically Stardew I guess, offer multiple farm layouts. I may follow suit on that, but I also did a bit of dabbling in a custom map creation tool this month and I think it would be possible. To explain it would allow players to go in and create a farm layout with a simple tile editor and then use it in game. Because of how it would be saved it should be easy to also allow players to basically share their layouts as well if they choose. Like I said I dont swear to it because it is still early days, but it seems feasible. And thats mostly it. There are a couple of things I didnt get around to but this is already pretty long and those things arent super important. Hopefully November will be more coding and less data entry. For my own sanity I hope so at least. As always, thanks to everyone for playing the game and giving feedback. Happy Halloween if you celebrate that sort of thing and Ill see you all in a month.

[ 2023-10-31 19:32:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

September has just about come and gone here. Ive been working on a variety of things with Verdant Village this month as Im slowly piecing the game back together. I feel like a lot of the framework is in place at this point. Theres still a lot missing, but I think Im making good progress. Once the framework is done its on to more of the details and little things. I generally find that those little details are usually easier and quicker to add because they are comparably small. A good example is adding perks and skill levels is important, but in terms of system design its a minor detail when compared to something like farming. As for what I actually did, it was a fair amount of jumping around. First, I finished up the shop UI as it wasnt fully in place. I added buyback for shops, which I believe was mentioned in the last post. Multi item buying has also been added in a more visible way than what is in the current game. Portrait animation and character dialogue was added to the shop. Basically, the character reacts when you buy and sell things. They have a few lines, and their portrait animates. One of the larger systems that needed to be designed was a particle system. There arent a ton of particles in this game but there might be more in this version, time will tell. Regardless I created a whole framework to create said particles and deal with them accordingly as using them incorrectly can cause memory leaks and such. The next thing I took on was another large-scale system, lighting. The game has had a clock running and simulated days, months, years, etc for a long time now, but there was no lighting to show time moving. So, I made up the day/night lighting system and got it working, along with allowances for things like light from your character, braziers, lanterns, etc. Currently it is getting very dark at night, much more than in the current version. Ill have to do some testing to see if I want to keep that, but as it stands nighttime might look a fair bit different. After that I had to make another modular system for passive item functionality. Its another system that is used sparingly but there are a few items that function passively from your hotbar. The most obvious examples are any item you can place in the world and the carpenters mallet. When you have a placeable item selected youll get an outline of the item that follows your cursor so you can place it. The carpenters mallet lets you hover an item with the mouse to select it and remove it. These sorts of interactions happen passively as long as you are hovering the item. So, a system has been developed to arrange all of that. Along with passive functionality Ive created the framework for placing objects in the world. So, you can place things down at this point. The only item like this in the game currently is the chest. The reason its the only item is because once I made it I created the entire chest UI. Which then involved rescoping inventory interactions to work in a setting where you are looking at an open chest. These interactions with the chest are all done at this point. This month was admittedly a little slow. My pace varies a bit depending on what I am tackling. For this month figuring out particles was part of that. The other major hinderance however was an internal engine change. For those that dont know Im using Game Maker for the remake. I almost picked Unity, given recent news I guess I lucked out there. In any case, Game Maker, like every engine, has a lot of built in variables and functions to make development easier. Specifically, they have a variable called room which would give you the index of the room the player was currently in. I was using this variable as basically a key to allow the player to move between rooms. Sometime this month, I forget when, they updated the engine and changed the value that this variable returned to something very different. So, a chunk of my time was spent rewriting the room transition code to use data that doesnt rely on that room variable. TL; DR, Game Maker made a change, I had to pivot on a fairly large system which took up some time. I think thats it for this month. Nothing terribly exciting but some decent progress nonetheless. Ill be back to report at the end of October as usual. Hope you all enjoy spooky season, its arguably my favorite time of year.

[ 2023-09-30 17:20:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, time for another update on the game. I think this will be a little shorter than others simply because of what Ive been doing this month. Less stuff to talk about as its been bigger projects. So really, aside from minor fixes and things really two things got done this month. They were both pretty large however. The first is fishing. Thats the system in its entirety. All the fish are in, they all have times and places they can be caught, all that. As anyone who has fished in the game knows the reason this took a little longer is because there is a whole minigame that needed to be programmed. Its nothing huge but still a bit of a time sink. One change to mention with catching fish is that in the current game each fish has a time of day it can be caught. This time of day specification has been dropped. Fish still appear in specific water types and seasons but the time of day was a bit too restrictive given how short days are. The main thing to mention with fishing is the minigame that Ive done some work to hopefully make it feel a little better. For those who havent fished you basically hook a fish and then get a small minigame at the bottom where you have to keep a slider over a fish that moves around. This minigame is still in place in this version. The changes have been made to the feel of it all. In the old version the slider was very, abrupt, for the lack of a better term. When you pressed or released a key to move the slider it would start and stop immediately. This is the sort of thing that feels sort of amateurish in my mind. Its a bit hard to explain honestly but if youve played a lot of games like I have you might know what Im talking about. It feels lacking in polish I guess. Like someone slapped in two lines of code, one to go right, one to go left and then that was it. By comparison the new system has more of an acceleration and deceleration on your slider. If you slam it into the side of the minigame space it will bounce off instead of just stopping. Little things like that. The fish that you are trying to catch also got a bit of an overhaul. Before fish basically had a difficulty level of 1 through 5 and they would move faster or slower based on that. Now the fish is given a profile of sorts that makes it dart, or move slow, or fast, etc. This makes each catch, hopefully, feel a little different. So thats fishing. Not a ton to say but it took a bit because I think there are about 150 fish in the game and they all had to be added in to databases and setup appropriately. The next thing, that Im still putting the finishing touches on is shopping. I dont know that I really need to explain what shopping is, basically just the act of buying things. As some of you may know there are a few different types of stores in Verdant Village that have different interfaces. The exchange shops, general shops, the blacksmith, etc. This is the basic shop. Although Im going to integrate the exchange shop into it as well in time. The important point to bring up here is the UI itself. I dont usually do this because I dont tend to show works in progress but I think in this case a picture is worth a thousand words. Below is a screenshot of the new shop, and below that is the old shop. Bear in mind that, like I said the new shop isnt quite finished yet, so its missing a few things as well as some finalized sprites.

So, the new shop. As you can see the inventory has been shrunk. This is a change that is happening across the game. In the original version all inventory item sprites were being stretched to 1.5x size. I did this because I was afraid things would be too small. The problem is that if I do that it takes up a huge amount of screen real estate, which is coming at a premium in many UIs in this game. So I shrunk the inventory down to its normal scale. As you can see there are still some minor adjustments to the stack sizes that need to be made to make stuff fit. As for the shop, its been changed to a slider layout. One of the things that I decided to tackle early in this was to homogenize the UIs and make them just better in general to navigate. One of the rules I have, that I think I should be able to follow, is no arrow buttons unless it is absolutely necessary. They can work but I think they look clumsy. They also take up way more space than a slider. Finally in controller setups they usually are clunky to use. Something else thats changed, that seems minor until you dont have it. Hovering animations. The one shown isnt a finalized version, but the code is in place. When you hover buttons in UIs they should react to show they can be used. All buttons will do this in this version. Most of the other stuff is self-explanatory. Your money and the name of the shop up top. Lylahs (the owner of the store) giant face staring at you. The area just below her will be used to display text. When you buy or sell things it will display little lines of dialogue from the character you are shopping with and the portrait will change. Its nothing important but it adds a bit of flavor. You might also have noticed the giant tabs on the left. The sprites arent complete but those will allow you to switch between the shop and the buyback system. I never did this in the current game because the system was so in place that adding it would have been a nightmare but I think its a good idea. In a game where items are everything having the ability to get an item back that you sold on accident is helpful. The system is planned to be shared between shops. So if you sell something at the general store and then go to another store you can still buy things back that you sold at the general store if that makes sense. It may not make a ton of sense in world, but convenience and all that. Last change that isnt visible but Im going to add in is some sort of button that allows you to buy in bulk. Probably x1, x5, and x10. The current game has a system like this, but its never mentioned. Fun fact, if you shift click an item in the store in the current game you can type in how many of that thing you want. This aims to get the same basic benefit but in a less clunky format. I think that mostly covers the store. I wont drone on forever about this but I hope it shows sort of what Im aiming to do. A chunk of this game is interacting with menus and I want to make that as smooth an experience as possible. The design principles you see in this shop should transfer to other UI menus as well which should in general make a far more cohesive experience for any player. Besides cohesion Im also on the lookout to add small graphical flourishes. For instance when you select and item in your inventory and drag it around it will now pulse slightly in size to make it stand out against other items. Little things like that tend to go a long way. And I think thats it for this month. It wasnt a slew of smaller activities this time around, but a lot of work got done. I find that in making larger systems I tend to make smaller things that I can then reuse later. For instance, I had to create sliders for the shop, but now the next time I need a slider I can just drop it in and the code is written so that it can be used in any situation with a few variable changes. Thats nothing ground breaking, but it just means that as time goes on and I continue to make little odds and ends each subsequent system will already have small parts done so making it will go faster. With that Ill take my leave, Ive got plenty to do. Thank you all for reading and your patience as always. Ill be back in a month to share more updates on the game.

[ 2023-09-01 00:56:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, it is, of course, time for an update on the progress of the game. Im staring at my clock and realizing we are already like 2/3rds of the way through the year which is wild to me. Im also realizing that I probably need to start writing down what I do as I do it so I have a better list to go from for these updates. As for what happened this month, a lot Id say. Scanning the previous update, it looks like I had just started trees the last time. You could chop them down and collect the wood. Apparently, I qualified that as half the battle which future me can now attest was incorrect. As with farming as it turns out trees are like one of the most complex things on the map. This is by virtue of them growing for the most part. Turns out things that are alive and change have a lot more to handle. So, at this point trees are done, or at least I cant think of anything I missed. Ill be doing a comprehensive comparison between this and the old version before it goes live just to make sure I didnt miss something. At this point you can plant trees, chop them down, they grow correctly, record themselves between rooms, change with the seasons, you can uproot the stumps, the ones in the wild grow back, fruit trees will bear fruit, you can shake trees to gather the fruit, and lastly you can tap trees to get sap and resin. As you can probably tell from that list being able to chop down trees was in fact, not half the battle. One change before moving off trees, tree taps. In the current version they are one time use. In this version they have been altered so that you stick them in a tree and they give the resources accordingly after a set number of days. The only reason this wasnt the case originally was because of how z ordering worked in the old engine. In short, it didnt really allow for this, at least not without ripping out a ton of other stuff. Other minor change, you now get resin and sap. You can also tap any non-fruit tree in any season besides winter, assuming its on your farm. This is basically less restrictive. While I wont divulge a ton right now maple sap is still used to make syrup. Resin is the change, and is a refining product used in a few other systems that Ill get to eventually. Alright so, now that Ive droned on about trees, what else? Tools can now be charged up. For those unaware tools like the watering can and hoe have upgraded versions that you can use to water/till multiple tiles at once. This is all working. Precision aim has been added again. Thats the system that lets you put your mouse close to your character and aim at the tile you want. A room transition system that isnt just me pressing an admin command to move rooms is done. Last, mining is in. Note that doesnt mean that the mines exist. Thats going to be a doozy. But the player character can mine nodes of rock in the world and collect appropriate resources. These nodes in the overworld also spawn and respawn appropriately each day and all that good stuff. Aside from that there were a variety of bug fixes applied to previous systems. For instance you could water a hole and turn it into a tilled tile. So lots of little stuff like that was fixed. As for what was done this month that about covers it, I think. Like I said I need to start writing down what I do. All the base tools in the game work at this point which was the goal from a while back. Next on my list is fishing just to knock that out. There are a few complications with that, but I dont expect it to be too much as its basically just a drop table and a minigame. After that Im currently looking at getting a shop system back in. The only other thing I wanted to mention was something Ive been rolling around in my mind for a bit. That thing is fermenting, or I guess basically brewing. I dont expect there to be too many drastic changes to the games systems. There are some rough edges Id like to smooth out but most things are planned to remain relatively the same. Ive been giving some thought to fermenting however and I think it will be very different. For those unaware the current system allows you to make custom drinks. You do this by adding whatever you want into the brew and matching complimenting flavors. What you add determines the buffs the brew gives when you drink it as well as the selling price. These buffs are enhanced based on the strength of the flavor composition. Its a system that I like in some respects however I think its far too complex and it steps on the toes of other systems. The buffs tend to step on cooking and alchemy and the volatile selling price can honestly step on just about every other product. The concept of custom-made items in a game like this is also something of a nightmare. Ive been kicking around a few ideas because Id like to retain some level of freedom that the system gives to allow you to make different brews. I think the current version gives a bit too much however and that complexity is self-defeating. I wont go into tons of detail here but Ive been debating things revolving around having a setup thats more than just a fermentation barrel. Instead, youd build more of a setup of multiple stations, or upgrades to one station that allow for more customization. What you can create would ultimately be based on what type of brewing setup you have and what ingredients you chose to add which would be a bit more restricted or specific to certain recipes or brewing station parts. The hope is that all this would still allow for some expression on the player end, but with a bit more guidance to help people actually use the system without getting lost. Its still pretty early days for it all in general but like I said this was just something I was kicking around this month. I like to mention these things incase there is some large unknown consensus of people who secretly love brewing the way it is. That should be it for now. There will be more to come next month of course. Thank you all for taking the time to read, and give feedback and all that. As always it is very appreciated.

[ 2023-07-31 16:22:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, time for another update on Verdant Villages development, or rather re-development at this point. Things are moving along smoothly I think. Similar to last month there is definitely still something of a learning curve with the engine. All in all however I think Im moving faster than I was. Which is pretty much all I can ask for. So, what actually happened this month? Well, let me tell you something. I just looked at the last dev log to see what Id accomplished last month as it all runs together for me. The last thing I mentioned was and I quote At the moment, you can really only till ground but everything else should follow quickly.. As is sometimes the case, I had no idea what I was talking about. Farming is complicated to say the least. I am happy to report that it is working in basically the same capacity as it is in the live version now. I think the only thing thats missing is a function for using growth powder to make crops grow, but that would truly be a single simple function. I say all this, quote and all, because I clearly forgot how complicated farming is. For a brief rundown, first you have to be able to till a tile of land, check. When I started this month, this was quite literally the only check. A tile then needs to be recorded so that it can be recreated when you leave and re-enter the area. For the object itself this involves creating the tile but then also setting up functions to display the tile correctly depending on how many tiles are surrounding it. Tiles also need to be able to adjust their appearance after they are created for when tiles around them appear or disappear. And need to be able to do this quickly to avoid stutter each time you till a tile. After that you need to be able to water a tile, which involves the watering, as well as the use of the watering can. Adding the watering can involves implementing an item that has limited uses and displaying the data properly. As well as adding water that you can actually fill the can up from. And after all that you need to be able to plant seeds, which need to be recorded similar to tiles so they can be recreated and manipulated properly. Then they need to have code to be able to grow, wither, become harvestable, regrow in the case the perennials, and abide by seasons. I didnt consider it when I started remaking farming, but its probably one of the most complicated systems in the game. Its not particularly hard to code, but theres just a ton of factors. Compare this to something like mining which is basically, hit rock, get item. So long story short, past me thought farming was simple but got to remember that its very complicated. Despite this, I did manage to tackle a few other things this month. First, the automatic pickup system works now. For those who have played the game thats when there are items on the ground and you walk over to them they will gravitate towards you and be collected automatically. This also displays a bit of UI on the left. This UI has also been coded to work with manually picking things up like when you harvest a crop. Its a smaller system but still something else out of the way. I also did a bit of refactoring on the inventory system to make it more efficient and scalable. And last I started on what I am still working on, trees. As with crops they are a complicated system mostly because they grow. Progress is going well however, you can chop them down and gather materials so thats about half the battle. The tough part was in animation, which Im happy to say theres been an improvement. If you played the current game youll likely notice that trees just sort of shift their angle and wobble when you hit them, even the roots move. It took a bit of doing but trees now animate in a different way that looks better in my opinion. Next on the list is to get trees finished which mostly involves having them grow and record their data properly. This is thankfully more simple than crops which abide by more factors. Trees sort of just grow and they dont have to correlate to a tilled tile. Since Ive already done this sort of thing once I think it actually wont take long this time around. But future me will be sure to quote current me if Im putting my foot in my mouth right now. So that is basically it for this month. Things are progressing nicely but theres still plenty to do. My general plan was to get all the basic tools working first. That sort of spun into all of farming. Similar to how the axe is spinning into setting up trees. The next and last tool is the pickaxe. As mentioned before though thats basically, hit rock, get item, so it should be easy. After that Im not sure what Ill move to next. A likely choice seems to be setting up some basic zones and getting shops working. Currently Im walking around in a giant green field with a puddle to fill up the watering can, a single tree, and the player house. So you know, that probably needs to change a bit. Anyway, as usual, thank you all for your patience and support. Seeing people thumbs these up and comment and stuff is always nice. Youll hear from me in a month with hopefully far more to report on.

[ 2023-06-30 00:52:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, more than a few things to talk about this time around, so strap in for the excitement of game development. This was basically the first month where I spent the majority of my time actually working on code. Some random things came up that needed to be done, but generally I was coding. Personally, I think the results are about what could have been expected given recent changes. While progress wasnt slow, Im certain still in the throes of learning a new engine. Generally, that means looking lots of things up and reading. Not a big deal but it does slow things down. As for what was actually done this month I can briefly list things. The player can move, the camera now functions correctly, time has been implemented (as in days pass in game), the inventory system is implemented and functioning, including the ability to manipulate items and stacks as well the description system when hovering items. The hotbar is working, and the shell of the system to allow the player to use tools is in place. This system is sort of built piecemeal, as I add tools in their functionality is added. The item database has also had its framework set and is being filled out. Lastly, the start of farming has been put into the game. At the moment, you can really only till ground but everything else should follow quickly. As I said before this month was sort of slow. There were two big issues that I came across, well, one issue, and one learning experience really. If you dont care for tech jargon maybe skip this and the next paragraph. In short, the issue was with the camera. Because of the nature of graphics and pixels there was basically an issue with sprites moving at subpixel positions, which is impossible. If you try to do this it results in some really bad looking jitter when you move around in game. This took a bit to figure out but the solution was ultimately pretty simple. In short, just, you know, dont do subpixel movements. The learning experience was just GUIs. Things like the inventory and hotbar and any GUI are created in a specific way in this engine. That method is basically different from how everything else works and very weird to tackle when you are unfamiliar with it. Sort of a different way of thinking I guess. Ultimately, the way this engine works these things is great, its just that learning it is sort of a jarring moment that took a while to get used to. All things considered I think, as Ive said before, the pace should only increase. There is obviously tons to do but I can tell Im getting more comfortable with the engine which will speed the process. Also, while a lot of this month was figuring out GUIs which involved new ways of doing lots of stuff many systems wont have that issue. A lot of basic logic from the old version will still hold up in the new one. So its not so much reinventing the wheel as it is making tweaks. Other stuff to discuss, just two things really. First is farming. Im obviously creating the system right now and I thought it might be good to touch base on some changes to see what people think. So, much of farming is the same really. The bigger changes are mostly how you get crops and how they function. At this point the plan is that only a few crops will be available to the player at the start during each season. There will be a new machine? Object? Thing? I guess machine, that you can get early on that lets you create hybrids of crops. So basically, you drop two seeds in, they make a new crop. Once made these seeds will become available for purchase in some way so you dont have to do this every time you want seeds. I hope this will add a little bit of progression to crops instead of just dumping like 12 crop types on the player at the start. Another thing that Im being more cognizant of is crops that grow in all seasons. I think most of these changes were already made in the old version but Ive added a few. Things like sugarcane, wheat, tea leaves, etc. Stuff that you primarily use in cooking will last all year. This means you can plant it in spring and it will stick around and regrow until winter. That said Ive also added winter wheat. Its the only crop you can grow in winter but if you really want to farm during that season you can. Oh and winter wheat just turns into normal wheat when you harvest it so it isnt like a separate crop. Compost is also being added as something of an alternative to growth powder. Effectively it will do the same thing making crops grow faster, but it opens your choices up a bit so you dont have to pursue alchemy if you want that. Aside from composting, milling seeds is more relevant. Youll have the option to turn most crops into multiple seeds of that crop so given some time you can duplicate your plants if you chose to instead of buying them. Another slight change is harvesting. At the moment crops basically give you one of that crop when you harvest. Ive been tinkering with the gold systems in an attempt to normalize item prices and such. One big issue is food. Because you can buy food that you can cook the price of the food you buy has to be more than you can sell it for, otherwise, infinite gold. However, many dishes use crops to make them. Crops sell for a lot by design because they have to make up for the seed cost. So basically, something has to give. There are a couple ways to go, but I figure when you harvest something in real life you almost always get more than 1 of the crop. So the solution at the moment, unless I have a sudden change of heart, will be to lower the value of crops but youll harvest multiples of them. One more tiny change is to irrigation. Currently an irrigation pipe takes up a whole tile. Im planning to change that so it goes between two tiles. I think this will look better and consume less space. Lastly, and probably most importantly, is the change to I guess, growth? As it stands right now, most crops in the game grow once, are harvested, and they are gone. While these crops will still exist Im changing some to another type of crop, aptly named perennials. These will be slightly more expensive, but will function in a similar manner to trees. You plant them once, they grow to maturity and then give a repeating yield. They go dormant in their off seasons, but effectively you can set out fields of these crops and have less maintenance at the start of seasons. The trade off is that land is in permanent use. I figure this will be a little something to mix up crops. Most of the point here is to just add some variety. Farming in real life is complicated. While I hardly want to make things realistic I figure this stuff adds a little more player choice to the system rather than just mindlessly planting swathes of the most profitable crop. The other thing to discuss is much shorter, and more a reflection of how I want to proceed. In the current game many things are half done. If youve been playing this game for any amount of time youve probably run into something where the plan is to finish it at some point in the future or a system is just missing entirely. Admittedly, in some cases like map areas not being available, this is somewhat unavoidable. In many others though I dont like the idea. Two examples of this are zones missing content, and NPCs. Every zone in the current game exists but is missing some key form of content, whether it be battles, secrets, characters, resources, whatever. NPCs have the same issue. They exist in a basic form. They have quests, although sometimes not all of them, and their basic dialogue. They are missing unique topics, storylines, cutscenes and romances. I want to change this. While there are certainly going to be minor things that I cant fully do without going down a rabbit hole, Id like to implement systems more fully this time around. The most apparent example is likely NPCs. When I add an NPC I plan to have everything regarding them written and implemented. There are a few caveats to that, mostly with some topics that you wont have a way to unlock yet. Regardless, I want to try and stick true to it as best I can. I think it will give a better impression to anyone playing the game instead of having half-finished systems everywhere. One thing to mention plainly here regarding NPCs specifically. Romance. Currently Id like to write it in and add it along with the NPC. Im going to see what happens with this particular system. I want to do it at the same time as a character is added but I wont deny that its a huge system. Simply writing everything and putting in scenes is a lot. Then you have to think about everything regarding how they act post marriage, children, etc. So I just wanted to be transparent on that particular part because if theres one thing Ive seen people request its romance. In any case I think thats all for now. Plenty to do, but hopefully there will be more progress in June than in May as thats the trend that should be happening. As usual, thanks for your patience and sticking with the game through this process.

[ 2023-06-01 00:33:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

As usual, another month has passed me by and Im wondering where the time went. Regardless, Im due for a little dev post here to let you all know whats going on. Im afraid its not that exciting, but I guess thats to be expected for whats going on currently. I spent a large chunk of the month drawing up more plans. For the most part all of this is now in place. I still have details to figure out like pricing schemes of items and which secret goes where etc etc. While that stuff is important the broad strokes are all there at this point so thats good. Currently, Im splitting my time a bit. Ive started coding, but I still work on the little planning details in some capacity every day. Reason being, I can only look at excel spreadsheets so much each day before I start to lose my mind. As for development well its about what you would expect given that Im starting over. Currently the normal title menus are in place, you can start a new game and you can walk around, in an empty field, truly epic. In all seriousness however, that may sound basic but Im very happy with the progress. For reference what currently exists was created in about a week where Im only coding a few hours a day due to time constraints. So dont worry, it didnt take me a month to code walking. That would not bode well. I wont delve into the details but things are going well. I feel like Im picking up the new engine at a good rate, already its starting to feel familiar. As probably anyone will attest the toughest part of processes like this are learning the new software. While its certainly different Im finding it fairly easy to grasp which means progress should only speed up the more I use it. Only other thing I wanted to mention is another feature I was curious about. Currently its planned out so unless people tell me its a horrible idea it will end up in the game. The idea is relatively simple but I dont think its been done in games like this. Full disclosure, I havent played many games in this genre, so maybe Im wrong. Anyway, the idea is horse breeding/renting out? I dont know how to phrase that. You can breed horses and then basically rent them out to others who might need them. So for a basic example, there would be something like a posting for a horse that would pull a caravan and you could assign a horse you have to that task and then get paid when it completes that task after a few days. Thats sort of just the money making end of things. The other parts probably need another pass just to make sure they are what I want. The general idea is horses are treated similar to other livestock that you can own. Their maintenance might be a bit more intensive than just feeding them however. They will also have stats that are basically used to dictate their success at particular jobs. You can breed them for appearance as well as stats. Stats are also planned to play a minor role in gameplay. For instance, a horse that you ride that has a higher speed stat would move faster in the world. Stuff like that. Anyway, I happened upon the idea when looking at what else could be done and which systems were lacking in my mind. Horses always seemed like something that there should be more to. Im not a history expert and Im a bit too lazy to google but Im like 99% sure that there are ranches in the real world that exist (or used to exist) just to do this sort of stuff so I think its a good fit. It also lends itself as just another gameplay option to make money which is the general goal with systems in this game. You likely wont do them all in one playthrough, but it gives you options to focus on something different if you do multiple playthroughs. So thats about it for now. Progress is moving along at a steady pace. Hopefully May will be more fully about coding rather than splitting time. I still dont really know how long this will take. Ive mentioned before that I want to basically have a beta branch for this version of the game. That way people dont have to wait until everything is done to play it. Im not good with timeframes for this sort of thing but currently Im looking at maybe the end of summer. That may end up being horrible inaccurate but if the pace keeps up and I dont run into any huge issues I think it might be possible. Thanks again for your patience and I hope you all have fun playing the current version of the game, such as it is.

[ 2023-04-29 16:02:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

As usual time for an update on whats been going on with Verdant Village. The answer to that question is a bit complicated. Sort of something between a lot and not a lot depending on what you interpret as progress. Personally, Im very happy with everything. Im not much for extensive planning, but Im forcing the matter in this case as I should have done from the start. Real quickly though, for those out of the loop, it should be said that per the last update the game is going on a sort of hiatus while I remake it in a new engine. As mentioned before, if you already own the game you can play it for now and eventually youll get the new version for free. Theres a variety of reasons for remaking it but if you want the details you can check the previous post linked below. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1236900/view/3647390066644268292 So, this month has been a planning extravaganza. While the game isnt changing in massive ways I basically had nothing that really resembled a design doc for Verdant Village. At the beginning I had a word doc that was several pages that basically said (very useful) things like Alchemy will be a system that exists, with little to no details describing the system. This left me to work out the details when I made the system which resulted in many an issue. I now have not one, but several documents for the game. The main design doc is currently 46 pages long and I think its done, bar any minor changes to finalize things. Aside from this I have several other documents that are still works in progress detailing items, zones, secrets, rewards, quests, holidays, lore, events, etc. The design document is the most important one however. It basically lays out every system in the game as well as more generalized notes to adhere to during design. Theres lots of little things like focusing on a more consistent UI, adding flare to various elements of the game to make it generally feel better, and various modifications to systems that will hopefully relieve pain points as there are several things that I think are rough for new players and even experienced ones. Aside from that, like I said, every system is laid out in detail. Most things are remaining the same, however there are some changes that Im considering. As this is all still in the design phase its subject to change, but Id like to have it locked in by the time I begin coding in earnest. While I dont want to spoil everything, I am curious for external opinions. I think Im prone to complicating things in a game in the name of player progress, but I dont want to go overboard. Below are a few things I wanted to mention and see if anyone had an opinion on. These arent all the changes but they are a few of the larger ones. Decoration Buff (for lack of a better term): If anyone has played My Time In Portia I believe they have something similar. The idea being that by decorating your house and farm you get a buff. I havent determined what, but was considering something along the lines of additional stamina. Unlike Portia where certain objects give certain buffs this would be more of a score you get by adding objects in general so you can place what you want and still get the benefit. Automation: While I wont be specific on this, its a system Ive had on my mind for a long time. In terms of theming this would keep to the games current theme, so you wont be making industrial machinery. It would instead be something probably more based in magic. The idea would be to automate some, but not all, tasks. Things like auto gathering plants, automatically being given certain basic resources each day like stone, clay, or wood, and other such things. All of this would run on a power source that you would still have to supply so it isnt completely free. Hybrid Seeds: This is something fairly simple that I was considering. Looking at farming it sort of dead ends before it begins. There isnt really anything different about it at the end from when you start. Generally, you just have more crops and they are probably watered automatically for you. This idea is meant to change that a bit. Basically, the general store will sell a smaller variety of seeds. The player can then build a small structure on their farm that allows you to cross breed seeds to get new crops. These cross breeds are remembered and there would be ways to obtain seeds youve made after you have made them once so you dont need to cross breed them every time. In addition to this I wanted to add a few end game crops so you have something to strive for. Grand Market: This one is sort of big. As the name implies, its a big market. The general idea being that this something of a task generator, a system for making money, and one of the end game challenges if you want it. The general premise would be that you would gain access to this market at some point in the game. Every couple of days or so the market generates requests. These requests can be for any item in the game and are randomized. As well as it being any item the requests are timed. So basically you can take on jobs to create specific items and you get more money for doing this task than you would be just selling the item at a store. Also requests would be themed so some might be all about alchemy objects while others are all livestock products. As far as end game goes I would like make a set of very difficult perhaps even a year long requests for players to complete. Thats some of the new stuff that I wouldnt mind getting an opinion on. There are a few other things as well, along with tons of changes as mentioned but I dont think its stuff that needs to be brought up here. Another thing to mention is characters. I dont know that this really matters because I dont think there was a ton to go off of in the current game, but still I thought I should mention it. Im currently creating a database on characters. No characters are being dropped but some are changing a bit. Appearances may be altered and backstories might change for them. Like I said I dont think it really matters but I wanted to mention it as its currently what Im working on. There wasnt a ton to go on with the current iterations but I can say that the updated versions have many more details to work with which should result in more fleshed out personalities and stories. This sort of thing ties into writing. While the current version of the game has a setting that is sometimes eluded to it is pretty scattered and not terribly well made. I went back and drew up a legit lore document for the game world that solidifies what was already there. It also has plenty of extraneous details. I somehow doubt this worlds creation myth is really going to come up much in a farming game, but it exists now and will probably be hidden away somewhere in the game. All this is generally being done to hopefully enhance the world. The way I see it these are the types of games that players can spend tens if not hundreds of hours in. The world should be a character like anything else that brings you into the world. So while not all of it will be super relevant to your quaint little farming life it will hopefully serve to flesh out the world a bit. Alright, I think thats it. I apologize for the long post. Its a lot easier to write a lot when you are just talking about stuff you are going to do and not what code you actually wrote in a month. As much as Id like to have an ETA on the new version of the game I dont have one. The only thing I can say is that Steam allows for beta branches. What I will probably do at some point is have an opt in beta so if you want to play the new version you can while retaining access to the old version. Anyway, Im off to write more characters. Thanks for your patience and support. With any luck actual coding will begin in April and Ill have something of substance to report next month.

[ 2023-03-31 19:40:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

I'm not sure I have a good way to segway into this but big changes are coming. So big that I broke convention and didn't just name this "Insert name of month News Update". In fact, I dont know that they could get much bigger. To start with what has already been talked about prior. Thanks for the feedback recently on the map stuff. For those not in the know, I feel that the map is a bit too large for its own good. While I dont (and dont plan to) get rid of zones I do think some of them could use some trimming down and rearrangement. The currently plan is a widespread map recreation. Not everything will be touched and the general locations will likely remain the same but I think much of the map was created without much thought and before many ideas were implemented. Most of what I want to focus on is making it easier to navigate as well as adding more density to the world and the things you have in it. Less open space, more visual storytelling, and details to absorb as you move through the world. Also, more interactivity and integration of gameplay. So thats all the stuff that has already been talked about before so whats all this goodbye to Verdant Village stuff? Well, its more of a see you later I suppose. Anyone who has played the game, browsed the discussions, discord, or reported a bug may have heard me mention this. Verdant Village is currently made via an engine called Construct 3, originally Construct 2 before it got ported up. Supposedly the port up didnt cause issues, but sometimes I honestly wonder. Fair warning the next several paragraphs are reasoning for the changes. If you dont want to read several paragraphs of that I decided to put in a TLDR though. The point being, and Construct devs if you are somehow reading this, Im sorry, I dont think the engine works for PC. Ill try to summarize because I dont think most people care about the nitty gritty details of programming engines. Coding in the engine I think works fine, the issues stem almost fully from the export. Basically, Construct exports function through HTML, IE, a web browser. Since web code is generally understood by most machines this gives it a lot of versatility. That was their plan at least, I dont think its going too well however. Mainly because all consoles (Switch, Xbox, Playstation) all dropped HTML support last generation, meaning no game made in Construct will work on them. This limits where you can release to PC and phone. This is not terrible, or it wouldnt be if it didnt have its own issues. I cant speak for phones as Ive never tried them. I get the impression the engine has refocused onto the mobile market in recent years however. This leaves us with PC. To put things simply, in order to get a normal exe file that runs like a normal application on your desktop Construct takes that HTML export and wraps it with a shell program called NWjs. This gives the application the impression of being a normal application instead of something that opens in a browser window. On the surface this likely doesnt sound too terrible. It looks the same as a normal app so whats the issue? Therein lies the rub. As an aside it is annoying to not be able to port to console and that feels like a waste, especially the case of the switch. I mean we are far from that reality, but having the option is appealing for obvious reasons. More relevant to the current situation are a variety of issues. During various releases on Steam Ive had reports of the game not closing out entirely in Steam, hard crashes where the app closes itself, white screens (basically another hard crash), failure to integrate with Steam, black screen on launch, failure to start in any way whatsoever, and more. All this on top of the export process being a nightmare and having no way to really get these issues fixed culminates in a really bad user experience for some players. I admittedly dont know how widespread these issues are. Its easy for me as the dev to only see the issues that crop up as that is what gets reported. However, I find that, much like anyone programming something, I dont want these things to happen ever. And I know if I bought a game and it just crashed on boot I would, understandably, be upset. TLDR: Game is made in Construct 3. Construct 3 has many issues in my opinion that cause weird bugs and other issues. So thats the biggest part of the reasoning. The only other thing is that Ive been developing this game for several years now. While I really dont look forward to remaking it, I think it might be for the best. Something I believe Ive mentioned before publicly is that I did not plan this game out as I should have. As I joked with my friend recently I remember writing up about a 13 page word document that was terribly vague and chalking the design up to how hard can it be to make a farming game. I did plan out more as the game grew but it was always a bit more piecemeal with no firm document on what was supposed to happen or go into the game. For anyone who hasnt programmed a game before, thats a big no no. You dont want to do this because a game is complicated. Even if it is properly planned out it is complicated. Not knowing everything you can before you start tends to cause your code to be a mess. This is related because a few bugs that have been reported Im finding nearly impossible to find. Likely the only way to truly get rid of them would be to rip out the system and start fresh, which would in turn cause more problems. So while Im not super excited, I think this is honestly a fairly reasonable alternative for two reasons. The first is that I can clean up code. I have several more years of experience and have learned quite a bit in my time making this game, usually the hard way. If I start fresh, I can likely make everything better in just about every sense of the word. The second thing, and likely the more important one, is that I can do what I failed to the first time, plan. I have a good sense of what I want this game to be at this point. Much of it is already in place but I can go back and ensure that I have the details sorted, and develop everything in a more cohesive manner that should enhance the game in general. Similar to the map rework this is less of a time to make the whole thing again and more time to polish and make this the best it can be. As for engines Ive been fiddling with a few in recent weeks. I narrowed it down between Unity and Game Maker as choices eventually. It took a while but Ive landed on Game Maker as I think I like the IDE more and I feel it caters a bit better towards 2D games where Unity is more all purpose. For any who are wondering Game Maker also has a track record of games that have come to Steam and other platforms, Undertale, Hyperlight Drifter, Shovel Knight and Hotline Miami to name a few popular ones. I mention this only to say that unlike Construct I dont expect to have export issues that cause the game to just crash or not work on random computers. So, what does all this mean for you. Well, a lot, and also not much to be honest. As you are probably expecting the current game will stagnate for a bit. Attached with this update is a small patch that will hopefully address a few more issues that were brought up just to try and bring whats there to a more stable state. After this however I plan to let it sit. I will start the process of redeveloping the game as a sort of 2.0 version in Game Maker. I dont know exactly when Ill start uploading the new version. Ill probably wait until its at least comparable to what it is now before doing so. To answer a question that might be on your mind, no, you will not have to repurchase the game. Once the new version is ready, Ill just overwrite what is currently on Steam and youll have the new version. I apologize for all of this however. If you asked me about 4 months ago if I thought Id go in this direction I would have thought you were crazy. Its a conclusion that took me some time to come to but has been in my idle thoughts for at least a year now. For a long time I believed I could just push through the issues and fix them but I eventually realized it just wasnt meant to be. I feel sort of clich saying this but I want this game to be the best I can make it. Its 100% a passion project and I want to do it justice. This seems to be a painful, but necessary step to accomplish that. I do plan to continue posting updates on progress each month so I wont just go completely silent but to be honest I dont have a good idea of how long this will take. Once I get stuck in Ill probably get a better idea. I can essentially cheat off of the current version of the game so it shouldnt be nearly as intensive as making everything originally. Not to mention I wasted a ton of time in original development just learning and making systems that wouldnt come to fruition. With a proper plan in place none of that should be much of a problem. This is however where you all come in, if anyone is still reading this lol, Im sorry its so long. As I think Ive said in the past I dont expect much in the form of feedback, but the game is early access and I believe hearing the opinions of players is important to the creation process. While I cant promise anything, starting in a new engine does have many benefits. Most specifically, almost anything can be changed. So, if you have something you really want to see, or something you hate about the current game Id love to hear it as I can take all that into account when creating the new one. I already have a laundry list of modifications I want to add to make the overall experience smoother. From little things like making the cooking interface easier to read at a glance to big things like remaking the map and maybe sprucing up farming to have a bit more substance. Basically, everything is on the table at this point so feel free to let me know. I am going to say this one thing however, because Im sure it would come up. Multiplayer. Multiplayer is something Ive seen people request. While I think it would be cool, I have done some contemplating on the subject. As with planning Im trying to look ahead for potential roadblocks. Multiplayer would be cool but I think that the game is already really big, putting it in a new engine will surely have its own complications. Trying to implement multiplayer on top of that would likely result in huge issues. While I wish I could do it, I think I have to make the decision to forgo it. Anyway, thanks for reading, being patient, and generally awesome. I know this game isnt some massive internet hit but it makes me happy to have any player base that enjoys something (flaws and all) that Ive made. I hope that this signals the start of something even better that you all will get to enjoy. And as usual, below is a list of the changes for the new patch, they are fairly minimal as it feels like a waste to really go hard when the game isnt going to be developed in this engine anymore.

Verdant Village V0.4.8.5.2 Full Changelog

Bug Fixes

• Made some slight changes to pastures that should hopefully stabilize them
• All crops will once again patch (although this doesnt matter too much given that this is the last patch)
• Fixed an achievement to get 10 rabbits feet
• Fixed an achievement to tap a certain number of trees
• Fixed an achievement to gain a certain number of honeycomb
• Fixed Full Time Forager achievement
• Fixed achievement for getting 9k heat (if you are already over 9k just add more heat and it should give you the achievement)

[ 2023-02-28 02:30:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small hotfix incoming. I expected there would probably be a few issues despite testing the new pasture systems. Thankfully nothing was terribly out of line, but there was enough happening that I wanted to address it now rather than waiting for a normal patch cycle. Below are the details for whats been modified. These things have been tested with player save files so they should fix the issues, if you find you still run into problems let me know. Oh, and Ill probably address this again later, but thanks to everyone for your feedback on potential map changes in the future. Im still churning ideas in my head but the input helps a lot so thanks, I appreciate it.

Verdant Village Patch 0.4.8.5.1 Full Changelog

Bug Fixes

• Coop layout was modified slightly, I had accidently placed assets that covered up the chest in the building
• Pasture tiles (pink tiles) in certain situations would fail to delete themselves causing a host of issues
• Gates, specifically large gates, could cause problems with the pasture calculation process
• Fixed small visual inconsistency in winter cliff tileset
• Fixed small visual glitch in the woods area
• Fixed a glitch that could cause arrows that were fired when hunting to not collide with anything
• Fixed an issue where pigs would still find truffles in winter (with the pasture change pigs only find truffles if they can go outside, since animals dont go outside in winter they shouldnt find truffles)
• Fixed glitch where sheep couldnt be sheared despite having fully grown wool
• Fixed a visual glitch where animals would walk in place instead of idling

[ 2023-02-10 01:30:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alright, patch time is here and there is much to discuss. As I think I stated in the last monthly update this took a bit longer than expected, regardless we are here now. Simply put this patch has tuned up livestock a bit and made room for future additions as now the systems are set up. By tuned up livestock I mean a few things. First, you can let animals outside now. Where you normally look at the status of your animals you can now select an option to let them outside. Doing this will tell the game to calculate a pasture for the animals in that building. Pastures are formed as you would expect. The game will look at the space outside the building and qualify tiles as pasture until it runs into walls or other solid objects like buildings or trees. So basically, throw down a fence, or other things to block an area off and youll have a pasture. I didnt want to just directly mimic other games so I modified this system a bit. Using stardew as the example you grow grass in that game, but I always found it sort of inexact. In Verdant Village there are now more than a few new crops two of which will grow through Spring, Summer, and Fall, and give repeated yields like berry bushes. Animals you let outside will eat these crops to feed themselves assuming they are planted in the pasture. As you might recall I said there are a few new crops. Thats because only two of these crops feed animals. The others serve two functions. Two crops are also dedicated to allow for breeding animals. Feed an animal the crop when they are an adult, they get pregnant, totally just like real life. A few days later they will give birth, or lay an egg which will hatch. The other set of crops is there to add some variety that I thought would make livestock a bit more interesting. Not everything is in yet, I have a couple other ideas that I want to add eventually, just a matter of time and priority. For now, chickens and cows each have two different forms that can be attained by feeding them certain crops. I wont spoil that bit I guess, but you can expect a few other things like this in the future once I get more time on my hands. All that said, quick hint, if you want to find these crops you can cant just buy them, I suggest checking the fields to the left of your home. Aside from that there have been some bug fixes and small QoL stuff done as well but the majority of work was just the animal systems. The details are, as usual, listed at the end. Now, onto the meat of this post. As some of you may remember at the start of December I decided to try a new update schedule. The idea was once a month Id be putting out a smaller patch. The idea was to keep updates consistent while I worked on combat, the next big system, in the background. So we are two months into that and Im finding that I may need to modify it a bit. Long story short, time is hard to come by as an adult. I dont want to work on the game less, that isnt the problem. If anything I want to work more, but unfortunately I have to sleep and work a full time job. So, how things currently work is that I work on the smaller patches during the weekdays and combat on the weekends. Problem is that while the weeks are fairly consistent the weekends are not meaning the time I spend on combat gets shorted quite a bit. The best solution Ive come up with so far is basically a switching schedule of one month small patch work, one month combat work. So basically every other month there would still be a patch. Its not ideal admittedly, but I think if I dont dedicate a realistic amount of time towards it, combat is never going to happen. I try to be transparent about all this stuff given that anyone reading this has probably already bought the game. As youve already given me your money, I think you have a right to know what Im thinking/doing. While I dont think anyone is going to lose sleep over something like this Id be happy to further explain the thinking if anyone wanted more info. Okay, last thing, I know, lots of things. This is something thats been tumbling around in my head for a while. I dont usually ask for feedback, Im not sure how much Id get anyway. However, while I still hold creative control over the game this was something large enough that I wanted to pose the question. The game world for Verdant Village is big, to put it bluntly. I dont mean that as a compliment to myself I just mean that compared to other games of this genre most are more compact than this one. Now, I dont want to get rid of zones that I have or have planned, that isnt the issue. The issue Ive been bouncing around is that the scale is wrong for this game. To give a brief history, the reason for the size of the environments in this game stem from me as a child playing Harvest Moon and wanting more world to explore. When I started making this game the large zones were created by design to fulfill that. Problem is, well, turns out people who make games are smart, and theres a reason zones in those games didnt stretch on forever. Probably the most simple reason is that it just elongates travel time. While a game like Skyrim for instance might benefit from huge environments that is in part because it has the graphical fidelity to back up that scope. People want to just walk around in those games because it is pretty and interesting to just move around and find things. While the graphics are acceptable, Im under no illusion that Verdant Village is as interesting to simply move through as an Elder Scrolls game. This leads me to two thoughts. First, Id like to update the world graphical a fair bit. I think there are things that could be added and modified to make the world just more interesting in general. In the process of doing this I am considering condensing the games areas. Like I said, I dont want, or plan, cut out zones but Im thinking it might be good for the game to shrink things down a bit. A perfect example of this is the fields to the left of your house. They were made that size because I wanted some sort of sweeping field but as anyone who has walked through them more than once can probably attest, they take forever to get through. And this is coming from a dev that 90% of the time cheats a horse in when they start and it still takes forever. Id like to shrink down things like that to alleviate some pain points. Anyway, as I said at the start of this tangent, I wouldnt mind having feedback on this sort of decision. Its hard to get a true idea of what people think but if people just came out in mass and said no I love walking around everywhere that would probably sway my opinion. Otherwise, this seems like a good deal of work, but worth it to make gameplay tighter. As mentioned briefly this would probably result in some graphical changes. Not a complete redo, that would be insane, but some changes to make things more visually interesting in the world. Alright, that was long, sorry to write a small essay here. As I said before I like to be transparent about whats going on behind the scenes. If you have any opinions on whats been mentioned Id be happy to hear them. Below is the full changelog as usual. Regardless of what the patching schedule turns into I will continue to post these once a month to keep everyone in the know. Thanks for playing, more to come soon.

Verdant Village V0.4.8.5 Full Changelog

Additions

• Added the ability to breed animals
• Added the ability to let animals out to pasture
• Added two additional forms for both cows and chickens
• Added new crops/forage items to facilitate animal breeding and transformation
• Added 3 achievements based around new livestock features
• Added 3 tutorials related to new livestock features

Quality Of Life

• Made minor changes to mineral node spawns in the mines to hopefully prevent them from blocking a player in when they enter/exit a room
• Preserves Pot sprite and collision was been modified slightly to better fit on the grid
• Created a failsafe for if saving fails so the game doesnt just softlock
• The shift click command to buy a set number of items should now accept numpad button presses

Balance Changes

• Crops that are fully grown no longer need to be watered and will not wither regardless of time
• Tweaked livestock and fowl movement algorithms slightly to prevent them getting stuck on things
• Increased regular truffle sell price to 40g from 20g
• Increased selling price of goat milk to 180g from 120g (this is to balance out better against cows)
• Reduced cooked item sell prices from 1.4x the sell price of ingredients to 1.25x the sell price
• Irrigation pipes have been altered so that they can be run under buildable walls (this allows you to water pasture crops automatically)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where NPCs wouldnt stop their walk cycle and face you when you talked to them
• Fixed a bug where interacting with a cow or goat to milk them would alter their shadow temporarily
• Readded collisions for fowl. I dont think they were ever supposed to not have collisions so Im calling this a bug, or I was unhinged when I coded it that way
• Fixed music on the intro screen so that it now plays
• Fixed automatic full screen, the game was always meant to try to jump to full screen but an engine bug was preventing it. You can still play windowed mode by selecting it from settings
• Fixed a bug where entering and leaving a secret room in the mines and then using the portcullis would leave the mines map on your screen
• Made a broad change to the inventory system to hopefully snuff out the rare softlock players have hit occasionally
• Fixed a bug resulting in two different achievement bugs due to misnamed data entries
• Fixed a compendium bug where seed entries didnt list the seasons they could be grown in
• Fixed a bug where shift clicking to buy multiple items at once wouldnt charge the player
• Fixed a minor visual glitch for chests where they moved when being opened/closed
• Fixed a bug where secrets rooms in mines may not spawn in the correct biome style
• Fixed a quest for Sven that was supposed to give you 5 iron bars but instead gave 5 braziers
• Fixed a bug where stack text would show the 1 if the stack had a single item in it

[ 2023-02-01 04:53:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Normally I would just wait till the end of the month for this but I wanted to put out a small hotfix to address a few things. Really just two things. The simple reason is that one of these issues was rather disruptive if you were far enough into the mines. In short it would make the area unplayable at deeper levels. Anyway, this should now be fixed as well some other stuff listed below. One other thing I wanted to mention. Some people have noticed a bug relating to Ben. Specifically dealing with his dialogue window locking in relation to one of his quests. I spent about 3 hours trying every which way to trigger anything with him but I got nothing. Whatever this issue it is it seems to be rare, or only triggered under extremely specific circumstances. I will continue to look into this and hopefully have a fix by the end of the month but if you run into this issue and can relay any info to me it would be appreciated. Generally speaking I would need to know what area you are in when speaking to him (if you are on his farm Ill need to know inside or outside), what season it is, what dialogue line he spoke, if you interacted with a quest then which quest, and when the lock exactly happened (during regular dialogue, after you hit the quest button, after the quest dialogue, etc). I understand that is a lot of info, if you cant remember it all or even any of it Id still like to know anything you remember. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help with that. Below is the change log, its short but rather important Id say.

Verdant Village V0.4.8.4 Full Patch Notes

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the mines would display the incorrect and eventually no tileset when delving too deep
• Fixed an issue where the challenge for reaching level 100 of the mines would fail to iterate or proc, progress will retroactively be given so you may receive the achievement after the patch if you have already gone past floor 100
• Fixed several odd visual bugs in relation to the mines involving incorrect tiles and animations

[ 2023-01-05 04:08:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, and happy new year! 2022 is just about over, that sort of just whisked by. Before 2023 I wanted to put out a quick news update just to keep everyone informed. Given that there were just two sales on Steam there are likely a good number of people who havent seen one of these before. To keep things brief, I like to put out a (relatively) short post at the end of each month just to keep people up to date on what Ive been doing. For those unaware Im a solo developer for Verdant Village, although I do pay a few lovely people to do the art and sound. This means that progress is admittedly a bit slower than I would like, but I do what I can to put out regular updates. Speaking of, some of you may remember my last post saying that I was going to try to move towards a monthly update cycle. Smaller updates, but more frequent just to keep things from stagnating. This is still the plan, but as predicted, December was, as always, a bit of a mess with all the holidays. I am relatively close to having a patch ready to go, but I probably didnt pick the best thing to tackle during a month with limited time. So, what have I been doing? Modifying ranching mostly. Ranching is one of those systems that went into the game a long time ago and while it functioned there were always some things missing. What Ive been working on are a couple of things. First, youll be able to let animals outside finally. When animals are outside they can graze. Ill compare to Stardew here because its the easiest example. In that game you can grow clumps of grass to feed your animals. I didnt want to just copy that, and I wanted something a bit more quantifiable. As a result, there will be a new crop specific for feeding animals that are in pastures. It does renew and grows in all seasons outside of winter so its basically plant it, and with irrigation you can just leave it sit all year. This crop cant be bought it has to be found in the plains left of your farm to give that area more significance. Aside from this crop there are also a few more. Specifically, 4 that will alter the forms of cows and chickens so they look different and yield different things. And of course, there is a crop you can feed animals to have them give birth to another animal. All of these systems pretty much had to be built from the ground up or required modification of old code to allow for them, hence why its taking a bit. Unless something goes horribly wrong I have every confidence that this patch will be ready for the end of January. After that hopefully well keep on track for once a month updates. I wont 100% guarantee it because sometimes larger systems are just going to take too long for one month of work but hopefully Ill keep on track. Small aside, I am also splitting my time at this point for combat. I have an artist who has been tireless working to make sprites for the system. According to one of the many folders on my desktop I have 40 enemy sprites waiting. That whole system is still very much in the works but I like to mention it just so people know I havent forgotten. Its the long-term project while I work on smaller things for monthly patches. Once there is more to say Im sure Ill talk a bit more in depth. The whole system has gone through several iterations and Im currently doing lots of math and living in excel to try to balance stats out and such. So thats about it for now. To all those who bought the game recently I hope you are having fun. More content will be on the way as soon as I can manage it. One last thing I thought about and wanted to add here was something of a recap. I dont normally do this because it feels sort of like saying look what I did and Im not that vain. However, I was thinking that a lot of people might be new and I dont know about everyone else but Im often concerned when I buy an early access game, because you never really know how fast development is going or when the game will get an update, etc. I cant imagine anyone would want to sift through old patch notes so below I compiled a list of everything that was done to Verdant Village this year. I figured it may be an interesting read for some or I thought it might serve to quell some concerns with having bought early access. Thank you all again for your support this year. Im excited to bring more content to the game and see what you all think. As I said at the start, happy new year, I hope you all had a good 2022 and wish you an even better 2023!

2022 Update Recap

Additions

• Added 5 NPCs to the game
• Added 17 quests to the game
• Added 6 zones to the game (this count includes house interiors)
• Tree seeds can now be cooked into a small snack, this recipe is available from the start
• Added small bee sprites to apiaries, so now you can be afraid of getting stung while collecting honey now
• Added a visual movement to water in the world so it now moves up and down slightly
• Barley and Rye seeds are now available in the general store year-round, minus winter
• Placing fishing traps in the ocean now has a chance to yield shrimp
• Added a path from the Narbell Farm to the Dig Site, no unlocks required
• Added jam making
• Added the Compendium (In brief this is an internal database that tracks most things in the game, as well as has tutorials)
• Added Achievements (in game these are challenges, some correspond to Steam achievements, however there is cap on how many you can have so not all of them unlock a steam achievement. Additionally, those of you who are patching will likely get a few by default as some are given via non-repeatable events)
• Added full tale for 1 NPC
• Added 1 new exchange shop (Small note, it doesnt have all its items yet, so expect it to expand in the future)
• Added 1 archeology keystone dig
• Added Mail System
• Added another biome to the mines for floors 75 through 100, before it was just lava land for 50 levels now the lava biome is only 25 levels like the others
• Additional mine biome comes with its own set of fish as usual
• Added cloud save functionality to Steam versions of the game

QoL (Quality of Life)

• Barn and Coop animal UI (the book) will now darken slots to show how many total spots are available in the building for livestock
• Added a tooltip to the Watering Can and Hoe to explain that they can be charged when used
• Chests can now be picked up with the carpenter mallet, however they still need to be empty to do so
• Trees will no longer allow you to plant them if they are too close to another tree where they wouldnt fully grow
• Cooking station now shows your totals for what ingredients you are using next to the cost of an item
• Cleaned up the code around the object placement UI so that it is no longer overlapping other UI elements regardless of its position
• Stack limits for all items in the game have been raised to 99. The exception to this is stone and various woods which remain at 200
• Removed the Topics button from the dialogue menu. This was done mostly because the current button doesnt really do anything and its probably more misleading to new players than anything. It will reappear once that system is implemented properly
• Extended the discovery notification background for alchemy to more fully fit all the text that appears on it
• Added currency values to the descriptions of items. Gold was already shown but now uses the icon, and the archeology currency will appear on the appropriate items
• The silo will now check if feed needs to be distributed when the silo UI is closed. In short if your silo ran out of feed and then you added more to it that day to compensate you now wont have to manually feed the animals that day as well
• Silos will now automatically add extra feed to a tier 3 building if you buy and place an animal in such a building
• Changed dirt tiles to turn back into grass after one day regardless of their watered status
• Added a small effect to keysprites in the mines to make them slightly easier to find, this will hopefully also compensate for those who are hard of hearing or just play without sound
• Added a meter to the fishery UI to show how close fish are to spawning an egg and how close eggs are to hatching
• Chest inventory search functions now search chests based on distance to the player instead of via the arbitrary array indices. In short, this means if you cook something at the cooking station and it needs to pull ingredients from a chest it will pull those things from the chest that is physically closest to the player instead of potentially from some random one on your farm
• With the addition of Lauren to the game the inn now has two different menus you can order from depending on who is currently running the inn
• When scrolling your hotbar a small text prompt will now appear above the hotbar to indicate what you have selected
• Changed objects that you pickup manually to disappear as the player reaches down to pick them up
• Made a very small visual change to the interaction guide
• Changed object placement to round to 1px for objects that dont adhere to the grid. This still allows creative freedom but if you want to line things up to look nice it is no far easier to do
• Changed the collision on the bottom wall of the player house to match other interiors
• The shipping chest now operates on all of your chests as well as your inventory
• The forge now operates on all of your chests as well as your inventory
• Cleaned up the forge UI slightly
• Added the pickup sound to all objects in the game not just the ones you pick up manually. This is something I was sort of back and forth on, if you have an opinion on it feel free to let me know
• Animals will now stop walking when being milked/sheered
• Added SFX to objects such as looms and drying racks for an extra indication that you have interacted with it
• Added falling leaves to trees in autumn
• Made several minor changes to the world environment including some shadows, a deeper layer of grass and other minor modifications to spruce up areas
• Made a large change to the terrain in the upper right corner of The Whistling Fields zone. The purpose of this change will be made known at a later date
• Updated Main Menu and Exit Game buttons to match the rest of the UI
• Slightly modified settings menu to look a little nicer
• Quest rewards are now visible to the player in the quest log when a quest is selected
• Quests can now be pinned in your log to keep them at the top of the list
• Alchemy breakdown has been changed so that you are no longer limited to working from only your player inventory. How you select items to breakdown has also been modified
• A certain flower has had its name changed to Clivia Lily as its old name was insensitive. Apologies to anyone who was offended, I had no idea the old name was also a slur
• The forge can now be moved once it is repaired, this can be done via the building menu with Simeon
• Made an alteration to the message you get when you havent reached floor 10 of the mines and try to use the minecart, this is to prevent confusion
• Gave cooking slots a small plate for the stack information so the text is more readable
• Added code to ensure that you cannot double bind keys in settings
• The quest log now shows your current, available, and completed quests
• Fish are now filleted in a separate tab in the cooking station which allows you to choose what to fillet
• Alt currencies will now only appear in the inventory screen when the requisite shop has been discovered
• Alt currency trade ratios will now appear when hovering an item in your inventory next to the gold sell price (This only happens when you have unlocked the shop)
• The dock below your home has a shadow now (why did it not before? I have no idea)
• Gutted the old tutorial system in favor of the compendium to keep things consistent
• Changed several UIs back to their older versions in a push to make UI more consistent in general
• Modified the popup notification code to place notifications on a separate layer so they dont get caught behind other UI
• Made slight visual changes to items in stores
• Added simple item descriptions for furniture items as all other items have them
• Made slight updates to the map (more to come as it still isnt fully accurate)
• Altered setup to allow demo saves to turn into normal game saves if you buy and play the demo first

Balance Changes

• Oil and Stock have been increased to 60g and 80g respectively to balance out being able to craft them
• The mines have had ore spawns rebalanced. Coal should now be far more abundant and it exists in every level of the mines. Other ores have also been balanced to be easier to find in their respective levels
• Planted berry bushes have been calibrated to be more profitable. Each bush regrows more quickly now, listed below. Also the sell prices for each of the seeds have been reduced by 30g Strawberries regrow in 2 days Raspberries regrow in 1 day Blueberries regrow in 2 days Cranberries regrow in 2 days Blackberries regrow in 1 day
• Lowered construction time of most buildings by a few days
• Lowered upgrade time of barns and coops
• Increased the drop rate for animal fat from all animals
• Fishing XP has been modified to give more XP per fish given the time it takes to catch one
• Fish traps now grant minimal XP when a fish is retrieved
• Slightly increased Hoe XP to compensate for the tool not being used that often
• Irrigation Pipes now water all 9 tiles around themselves as opposed to the 4 directions (up, down, left, and right)
• Irrigation Pipe orders have increased to 8 pipes per order
• Tree tapping restrictions have been lifted and trees on your farm can now be tapped in all seasons outside of winter
• Watering Can charge patterns have been changed to be square instead of diamond shaped
• The Watering Can now has more charges at each level to compensate for the new watering patterns, charges per level are 15, 36, 48, 64, 80, and 100
• When hunting, the tracks left by a fleeing animal last longer
• Hunting animal spawns have been rebalanced to be more even across the board, also a bug was addressed which was making the spawns lopsided towards particular animals
• The Close Shave perk will now always grant the player a 3rd wool when sheering a sheep
• The Profit buff from fermenting is now, well, more profitable. There should be a much larger gain when fermenting drinks for profit,
• Dynamite rooms in the mines will now spawn chests instead of other random objects like stamina crystals or buff pillars
• Stumps that are dug up now fade faster as the animation was a little strange before
• Decreased the material cost of fences and paths by about 5 of the required material
• Dark furniture recipes now require pine sap to be made
• Removed spice plants from spawning in any area that isnt grassland
• Modified additional forage spawns given via the forager perk, you now get fewer
• Increased stack limit of all items to 999
• Modified stamina drainer spawn rate in mines to keep them from spawning as often
• Modified stamina drainers to remove some barricades surrounding their spawn location so you wont have to knock down barricades to reach them as often, note that this can still happen but the chance is reduced
• Altered fermentation ingredients to have fewer health and stamina restoring properties and instead a far more varied assortment
• Changed several fermentation ingredients to allow players to gain the tracking buffs from brews they make
• Modified several quest requirements to make them more manageable (less of a grind)
• Increased the number of objects that can be bases in fermentation
• Changed bases in fermentation so that they are doubly effective in whatever benefit they give
• Altered tastes of fermentation items to be far more balanced with far fewer sweet tasting items
• Altered prices of the items at the inn so that they are not cheaper to buy than they are to sell
• Changed wheat seed sell price to 10g from 30g
• Added more immediate rewards in the form of gold or items to most quests (For those who have already completed the quests only the gold rewards will be retroactively applied, rest assured you have not missed any significant items)
• Removed the requirement of owning a chicken for the first hunting quest to make hunting easier to start
• Increased all raw fruit stamina gains slightly to make them mildly viable as an uncooked snack
• Slightly modified keysprite effects to make them more visible

Bug Fixes

• Any existing fermentation recipes have been deleted, this is due to a bug with the calculations which is addressed in this patch, a brief explanation is the 4th paragraph in the patch notes
• Fixed a bug where pigs had a chance to disappear or shift barns when finding truffles
• Fixed a bug where dialogue lines would get mixed and interchangeable in the first and second floors of the inn
• Fixed a bug that would cause patching to take multiple minutes depending on how many irrigation pipes you had placed in the world
• Fixed an issue where food that gave the Sure Strike and Prospector buff would mince the two buffs, with the cooking station reversing them in the effects listing
• Fixed an issue where cooking recipes that were crafted instantly wouldnt subtract the required heat
• Fixed a bug where the player couldnt add animals to a barn or coop when it was being upgraded
• Fixed a few bugs relating to the crafting of fish fillets
• Fixed a bug where plants in the swamp cavern were giving cotton as a resource
• Fixed a bug where pine trees could be tapped but not give anything while consuming the tap
• Fixed a bug where you couldnt place specifically Desert Flooring in any room with specifically a controller
• Fixed a bug where the silo wouldnt feed barn animals
• Fixed a bug where cranberries were considered a catalyst in fermenting
• Fixed an issue where certain light sources would turn on/off before/after others
• Fixed a bug where Isabel wouldnt actually sit at the bar in Summer, shed just walk into it like a broken Roomba
• Fixed a bug where carrots wouldnt provide the dark vision buff when used in fermenting despite saying they would
• Fixed a bug where wall objects could be placed half way into the walls due to a collision error
• Fixed a bug where NPCs werent running the proper schedule when it snowed
• Fixed a bug where cantaloupe seeds would grow more quickly than they were said to. The seeds now take 9 days to grow as the tooltip states
• Fixed an issue that would cause much of a marine dcor to be hard to place. The fix unfortunately will move any placed piece to the right, these will have to be manually picked up and moved back
• Fixed a few bugs with marine dcor hitboxes
• Fixed a bug where the wool count in the barn book for sheering sheep was incorrect as it wasnt counting the amount gained properly
• Fixed an issue where truffles could still spawn under objects in the barn
• Fixed a small issue with cow animations
• Fixed an issue where cracked ring, pottery shard, dull knife, and crude etching couldnt be traded in the artifact shop
• Fixed the Fireblood Potion sprite in the alchemy UI
• Fixed a bug where items in alchemy that you had already discovered all the recipes for would still appear in the discovery listing causing cascading problems
• Fixed a bug where alchemy recipes werent paging correctly and they were skipping recipes
• Fixed an issue where certain tiles in the swamp were not shifting correctly with the seasons
• Fixed a bug where the message about the silo running out of feed was running off the message box
• Fixed a bug where archeology fragments were not being distributed properly causing certain fragments to be far more common than others. Namely Divine and Fae fragments should be much easier to find now
• Fixed a visual issue where items in the recipe section of the brewing UI would overlap the UI awkwardly once you got enough of them
• Fixed an issue where selecting fermenting recipes wouldnt delete the ingredient sprites from the previous recipe selection
• Fixed a bug where flavor compliment multipliers for fermentation wouldnt calculate correctly
• Fixed a bug that caused fish in the fishery to take an extra day to lay an egg when initially put in the fishery
• Fixed a bug that made all fish eggs hatch at the same rate
• Fixed a bug where ore would spawn awkwardly from seams
• Made changes to the inventory system in the hopes of alleviating a softlock bug. Unclear if this has fixed the problem as I cant seem to trigger the issue
• Fixed a bug where placing objects too close to doors would cause them to incorrectly z order in the world
• Fixed a bug where chopping down trees in winter could trigger them to come back in a different seasonal state
• Fixed a bug where perks and level meters in the Perks tab of the inventory screen would show the description box as huge for a tick before displaying the appropriate information
• Fixed a bug where lightning would still flash even when the game was paused
• Fixed a cascading bug where certain sections of the mines wouldnt generate the proper tiles to cap walls off the correct way
• Fixed a bug that would create an extra text box depicting your HP in the center of the screen
• Fixed an issue where braziers would lose their shadows when they were lit
• Modified shadow positions for several different objects in the game
• Fixed a bug where minecart tracks in the mines would hide the players shadow
• Fixed a bug where the angler buff was not augmenting the fishing minigame as it was supposed to
• Fixed a bug where fermentation barrels would always spawn a drink after a patch. This fix will not take effect during this patch but will work for future patches
• Fixed a bug where Simeon is standing the wrong way when building a fishery
• Cleaned up the fishery construction sprite so the grass will always match the season
• Fixed an issue where the silo wouldnt hold its animation frame through a patch, I.E. it would have feed inside but show as empty in the game world
• Fixed a bug that was causing all food in the snacks section to have the incorrect sell price
• Fixed a bug where you could continue clicking the Main Menu and Exit Game buttons despite a confirmation prompt being present
• Fixed an issue where controller you couldnt access the Main Menu button
• Fixed a controller mapping bug in the fermentation UI
• Fixed an issue where the player house after being moved couldnt be placed back in the exact same location. The solution to this is that the houses starting position wasnt aligned to the grid so if you experienced this you wont be able to put the house back in the same place but the house is now positioned correctly in new games
• Fixed a but where moving your house after upgrading it would cause it to visually regress to an un-upgraded house
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to speak to Lauren normally when she was at the counter in the inn instead of getting the store
• Fixed a bug where if an animal starved it could stop silos from feeding animals in tier 3 structures
• Fixed an issue where opening certain menus would visually reset the portcullis
• Fixed a bug where Caleb would teleport during a specific schedule
• Fixed a bug where secondary cooking slots (any past the initial one you have access to) wouldnt show proper details
• Fixed a bug where controller support wouldnt work if the mouse was still hovering certain parts of the game UI
• Fixed an issue where after a patch you would be able to start fermenting something in a fermentation barrel despite it already being the process of fermenting something
• Fixed a bug where gilded truffles generated on a pigs birthday wouldnt count towards their gilded truffle count
• Fixed a small visual glitch with drop down messages to keep them from stacking as heavily
• Fixed several minor bugs relating to binding keys
• Fixed a bug where the sleep and cancel buttons where mechanically reversed in the sleep menu for controllers
• Fixed a bug where Blessed Powder was pulling the wrong name in alchemy
• Fixed a bug where the Chef In The Making quest didnt properly dole out its rewards on patch
• Fixed a bug where the shipping chest wasnt displaying stack UI above the items in the slot on occasion
• Fixed several minor bugs revolving around adding augments to fisheries
• Fixed a z ordering glitch with the description display in menus
• Fixed a bug where the text for current pending orders could go out of the UI
• Fixed a bug where the players mount shadow would disappear under the ravine bridge
• Fixed a bug where an exchange shop could stop displaying potential trades
• Fixed an issue that caused large gates to not patch properly
• Exchange shops now show the appropriate item shop frame based on if you have the currency to purchase the item or not
• Fixed a variety of monetary and visual bugs from exchange shops
• Fixed a bug on controller where you couldnt scroll through your quest log
• Fixed a small bug with toggling between quest journal views
• Fixed a bug that would alter the sprite of fishery augments when scrolling them with a controller
• Fixed a bug where you couldnt remove augments from a fishery on controller
• Fixed a bug where you could use the quick pull from chest button while holding a stack which would lock you
• Added some code as an extra layer to protect against inventory softlocks
• Fixed a bug where rugs you placed in your basement would just disappear
• Fixed a bug dealing with rug placement placing unwanted rugs when transferring rooms
• Fixed an issue with a weapon rack not Z ordering in Svens house (It didnt have collisions on. I troubleshot for an hour and I just had to tick a box)
• Fixed a bug where the Neglected Palate quest gave the wrong rewards
• Fixed a bug where the map pop up to show the zone name could appear behind the player location icon
• Fixed a recipe bug with stone footstools
• Fixed a text bug with the quest A Noble Dilemma
• Fixed a small visual bug with Malcoms sitting animation
• Fixed a bug where specifying the amount of an object you were going to buy wouldnt charge you anything when you bought it
• Fixed a small visual glitch with characters sitting in chairs and z alignment
• Fixed a bug where placing a carpet while holding more than one of them would cause a small visual glitch
• Fixed an issue where dried deer jerky was using the boar hide sprite
• Fixed a few bugs regarding perk gain SFX
• Fixed a bug where you were supposed to unlock the refinement recipes for barrels and crates (decorative) from Simeons first quest (yay?)
• Made a few cosmetic fixes to controller support when dealing with menus
• Fixed a bug where passive functionality on certain items wasnt always disabled when entering a menu
• Fixed a bug where dyes could be alchemically broken down into fibrous extract
• Fixed a bug where the automatic pickup SFX would play regardless of the item actually being picked up
• Fixed a bug where the portcullis UI wouldnt reappear after a patch assuming you had it unlocked
• Fixed a very specific bug where holes dug with shovels that then reverted to a tilled tile naturally wouldnt let the player interact with them
• Fixed the Beginner Carpentry quest summary from leaving the area the text inhabits
• Fixed sprite for the Muskellunge (thats a fish btw)
• Fixed a bug where cooking instant recipes with a full inventory would use the ingredients but not give you the item
• Added a general distribution through Steam that will hopefully serve to handle extremely rare graphical glitches

[ 2022-12-30 21:39:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Terribly sorry, broke my own game. I trusted myself from the past to have done something consistently and he certainly did not. There have been reports of players not being able to access areas of the game or getting locked in once they get in. These should all be fixed with this very tiny patch. Sorry again, hope it didn't cause too much trouble.

Verdant Village V0.4.8.3 Full Patch Notes

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with some room transitions not working

[ 2022-12-01 20:43:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, Im back, with updates, or rather fixes to my previous updates! This isnt very large but there are a couple of things that needed to be addressed which are listed below. Also, this is probably a good touchstone for future updates. Except, monthly updates will (at least I really hope) have more to them than this. Basically at the end of each month Ill hopefully have a small patch for the game. Ill be trying to stick to the roadmap thats been referenced before. How Im predicting this to work is that Ill either be adding something listed on the roadmap or it will be a smaller feature I didnt mention as the roadmap is pretty broad. Basically the only things that are off the table, bar any changes, are things that are not listed in the next patch in line. So if you are looking at the roadmap, linked below, anything in patch 0.5 is on the table to be added in a monthly update, but Im going to try to stick to smaller bits and pieces and save these larger features for the big patches and not monthly updates. https://steamcommunity.com/games/1236900/announcements/detail/3208261824665097992 So aside from all that I need to do some work to get my artists in order. Ive got a big folder full of combat sprites so thats well on its way but there are a lot of smaller things I want to add to the overworld, along with some minor changes to UIs and some zone specific tilesets and objects. Once I get that settled it will be back to regular work. I think the plan is to divide my time between the major features of the next big patch and the small bits that will go into monthly updates. Im not quite sure how this is going to go in terms of output but if I need to alter how patching works I will. The general plan is just to keep from having long stretches of nothing like the last patch cycle. Anyway, Ive talked enough, and there isnt much to say given that I just patched anyhow. Assuming the holidays dont make me lose track of time youll hear from me again before the end of the year, hopefully with an update of changes.

Verdant Village 0.4.8.2 Full Patch Notes

Quality Of Life

• The artifact exchange now only shows its availability on the map once you have accessed the shop at least once
• Added dialogue intros for the artifact exchange because it didnt have them for some reason
• Changed the locations of transitions that take you from one area to the next to make them all consistent

Bug Fixes

• Shipping catalog would sometimes not show a third ingredient in ordering recipes (this manifested most commonly for the alchemy table, but could have effected any recipe)
• Fixed the amount listings on catalog recipes so the numbers stay within their respective boxes
• Fixed Steam achievements, they should now trigger properly, there is also a bit of code to retroactively award any youve already gotten (remember not all challenges have a corresponding steam achievement)
• Fixed a bug where Pinenestle Springs wasnt showing on the map
• Fixed a glitch with the pickaxe where right clicking while it was selected in certain situations would drain your stamina
• Fixed a bug where Strawberry Seeds could be bought for 40 gold and sold for 80 gold allowing for infinite money
• Fixed a small issue with a cliff near the lake not being visible

[ 2022-12-01 03:21:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Extremely small hotfix to fix a few dumb issues I overlooked during the patching process. Apologies to anyone who played in the last like 15 hours. Fixes are listed below.

Verdant Village V0.4.8.1 Full Changelog

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where 2 of the newly added NPCs couldnt be interacted with (This does mean, depending on what time you saved, it might take an in-game day for them to start following their schedules)
• Fixed an issue where the map would spontaneously decide it wanted to float off screen
• Fixed an issue where the quarry could spawn normal mining nodes

[ 2022-11-22 18:46:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Its been a long time coming but its finally patch time. Like a procrastinating college student, I am slipping in literally right under my self-imposed deadline. Ah college, what a time, and what a terrible student I was. Ill try not to drag on here, but I wanted to mention a few things briefly. After this patch I plan to move to a monthly patching cycle. The patches will be smaller obviously, but the smaller cycle will keep me more focused on what is going into the game as well as give people something more tangible than me popping in once a month to say yep, still alive, still working. Now to counteract that point, this new patch cycle may not start until the new year. Im hoping I can get enough done to constitute a patch but December is usually pretty hard to manage with all the holidays. Ill keep people apprised of that situation as it develops. Aside from all that boring future stuff what have I been doing all this time? A lot, is the simple answer to that. However, I will say it may not look super impressive in list form. A lot of the work during this period was framework for future work. For instance, the compendium, a lot of the work was making sure it could account for new additions to the game in the future. Also there is a full story (Im internally calling them tales) that has been added for an NPC. A huge chunk of that was just writing a parsing system and making additions to the dialogue system to make it all work. All this is to say that now those things are done so future additions to those systems should be far less work and far less time consuming. Which is good because that means more actual content going into the game rather than me creating things like a complex text parsing and export system *shudder*. Anyway, Ive rambled enough, suffice to say a lot of groundwork was laid for the future here. After this we are on to combat for the next big system and plenty of smaller changes and additions to constitute the monthly patches along the way. Hope you all enjoy whats been added!

Verdant Village 0.4.8 Full Changelog

Additions

• The Compendium (In brief this is an internal database that tracks most things in the game, as well as has tutorials)
• Added Achievements (in game these are challenges, some correspond to Steam achievements, however there is cap on how many you can have so not all of them unlock a steam achievement. Additionally those of you who are patching will likely get a few by default as some are given via non-repeatable events)
• Added 3 NPCs
• Added full tale for 1 NPC
• Added 4 zones
• Added 5 quests
• Added 1 new exchange shop (Small note, it doesnt have all its items yet, so expect it to expand in the future)
• Added 1 archeology keystone dig
• Added Mail System (This hasnt been discussed but its another framework system, its current purpose is that it gives the player 4 quests that act as small introductory tutorials at the start of the game. It will be used more later)
• As mentioned in the previous tick 4 quests were added via mail (These are tutorials but players who patch up will get all these letters at once so you can complete them as completing quests counts towards achievements)
• Added another biome to the mines for floors 75 through 100, before it was just lava land for 50 levels now the lava biome is only 25 levels like the others
• Additional mine biome comes with its own set of fish as usual
• Added cloud save functionality to Steam versions of the game

Quality Of Life

• Fish are now filleted in a separate tab in the cooking station which allows you to choose what to fillet
• Alt currencies will now only appear in the inventory screen when the requisite shop has been discovered
• Alt currency trade ratios will now appear when hovering an item in your inventory next to the gold sell price (This only happens when you have unlocked the shop)
• The dock below your home has a shadow now (why did it not before? I have no idea)
• Gutted the old tutorial system in favor of the compendium to keep things consistent
• Changed several UIs back to their older versions in a push to make UI more consistent in general
• Modified the popup notification code to place notifications on a separate layer so they dont get caught behind other UI
• Made slight visual changes to items in stores
• Added simple item descriptions for furniture items as all other items have them
• Made slight updates to the map (more to come as it still isnt fully accurate)
• Altered setup to allow demo saves to turn into normal game saves if you buy and play the demo first

Balance Changes

• Removed the requirement of owning a chicken for the first hunting quest to make hunting easier to start
• Increased all raw fruit stamina gains slightly to make them mildly viable as an uncooked snack
• Slightly modified keysprite effects to make them more visible

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the players mount shadow would disappear under the ravine bridge
• Fixed a bug where an exchange shop could stop displaying potential trades
• Fixed an issue that caused large gates to not patch properly
• Exchange shops now show the appropriate item shop frame based on if you have the currency to purchase the item or not
• Fixed a variety of monetary and visual bugs from exchange shops
• Fixed a bug on controller where you couldnt scroll through your quest log
• Fixed a small bug with toggling between quest journal views
• Fixed a bug that would alter the sprite of fishery augments when scrolling them with a controller
• Fixed a bug where you couldnt remove augments from a fishery on controller
• Fixed a bug where you could use the quick pull from chest button while holding a stack which would lock you
• Added some code as an extra layer to protect against inventory softlocks
• Fixed a bug where rugs you placed in your basement would just disappear
• Fixed a bug dealing with rug placement placing unwanted rugs when transferring rooms
• Fixed an issue with a weapon rack not Z ordering in Svens house (It didnt have collisions on. I troubleshot for an hour and I just had to tick a box)
• Fixed a bug where the Neglected Palate quest gave the wrong rewards
• Fixed a bug where the map pop up to show the zone name could appear behind the player location icon
• Fixed a recipe bug with stone footstools
• Fixed a text bug with the quest A Noble Dilemma
• Fixed a small visual bug with Malcoms sitting animation
• Fixed a bug where specifying the amount of an object you were going to buy wouldnt charge you anything when you bought it
• Fixed a small visual glitch with characters sitting in chairs and z alignment
• Fixed a bug where placing a carpet while holding more than one of them would cause a small visual glitch
• Fixed an issue where dried deer jerky was using the boar hide sprite
• Fixed a few bugs regarding perk gain SFX
• Fixed a bug where you were supposed to unlock the refinement recipes for barrels and crates (decorative) from Simeons first quest (yay?)
• Made a few cosmetic fixes to controller support when dealing with menus
• Fixed a bug where passive functionality on certain items wasnt always disabled when entering a menu
• Fixed a bug where dyes could be alchemically broken down into fibrous extract
• Fixed a bug where the automatic pickup SFX would play regardless of the item actually being picked up
• Fixed a bug where the portcullis UI wouldnt reappear after a patch assuming you had it unlocked
• Fixed a very specific bug where holes dug with shovels that then reverted to a tilled tile naturally wouldnt let the player interact with them
• Fixed the Beginner Carpentry quest summary from leaving the area the text inhabits
• Fixed sprite for the Muskellunge (thats a fish btw)
• Fixed a bug where cooking instant recipes with a full inventory would use the ingredients but not give you the item
• Added a general distribution through Steam that will hopefully serve to handle extremely rare graphical glitches

[ 2022-11-22 02:27:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alright, spooky season is coming to a head so its time for an update. This one is going to probably be a little less about what Ive been doing and more about the future, so lets get into it. As for whats actually been done this month mostly the same things Ive been talking about. The zones for the next patch are done, except for an artifact I need to place. Currently, Im trying to determine which one to add. Which sort of leads into a side project Ive been working on. The lore for Verdant Village has been somewhat set for a long time, but I hadnt gone too far into the details outside of things relevant to the area the game takes place in. These things needed to be set out early incase any NPCs had anything to say about this stuff, or just had it effect their backstories. Admittedly, I think pretty much all of this more important talk has been relegated to the future dialogue system instead of just generic sayings. This decision was made because while it might be sort of strange to walk up to a person and just have them blurt out I sure do like the sunshine today! its probably far stranger to walk up to someone, say hello, and then have them reply My lineage is that of a king who reigned even before the collapse.. And no, there isnt a character in the game who will ever actually say that line. So anyway, Ive been solidifying the lore to setup for the future. I realized this needed to be done when writing one of the new characters actual story. Realistically, I should have solidified this completely some time ago, but things get away from me far too often sadly. Truth be told, I dont know how much of this stuff Ill use, but its something I think is important. Im talking about it here I suppose to justify the time spent a bit. I think people who play these sorts of farming sim games come for a variety of reasons. But I think there are two larger categories I can simplify them into. Some people (and I probably fall here) come to play the game. You know, make a farm, get the achievements, see everything the game has to offer, moving through objectives sort of like a checklist. Like I said, Im probably more in that camp. But I think there is another group of people that play these games who like to invest themselves into the world, meet the NPCs, read the dialogue, I guess roleplay it more. Now, Im not an expert, and I havent played a ton of these games so perhaps I just havent found the good ones. However, I feel that I havent truly cared about a story in any farming sim Ive ever played. Being social was always just another checkbox obscured behind a gifting system of some sort. This always seemed like a weird waste. I mean at the end of the day these games are meant to be a simulation, and the people within them should be interesting characters that you want to learn about or interact with, not just boxes on a list to check off. Nobody wants to roleplay in a boring world with one dimensional characters after all. I wont claim to be a great writer so Im not sure I can pull this off. I have admittedly written a few books (dont worry nothing youve ever heard of), but I wont claim to be particularly good at it. However, it seems a waste to make a game like this and not have anything substantial in terms of world building. Hence why Im currently writing down the specifics of historical events, religious groups, gods, wars, magic systems, and other stuff for a game about farming. The hope is that the world will have some level of depth to it and the characters will also take on some level of depth and have things to say about the world they live in. Im hoping that all of this will make more compelling characters and a more interesting world. This way the people who care about this sort of thing will have something to sink their teeth into, while the others who dont care will at least have it there if they decide they want to invest more into the world. I suppose also on the gameplay side of things (to incentivize the people who dont care about story) I plan to tie in rewards to character stories. Now, I dont know about other people, but when I read that sentence I think, Oh hes just going to give you like a recipe at the end. No, no, no my friend. I mean actual stuff. I have a whole bunch of stuff written down. All these are subject to change but some examples are, new NPCs appearing, new shops, new holidays, combat rewards, new systems like unlocking a boat to sail the ocean, new zones, etc. So anyway, lore, characters, world building, rewards, all that good stuff is planned, and Im finalizing the ground work to support the story that enables it all. More than a page into a word doc and all Ive talked about is lore, oh boy. In regards to the actual game this month work has proceeded as normal. Ive fixed a few bugs and made some changes here and there as well. I dont think anything is big enough that its worth going into specifically but Im basically cleaning up odds and ends to prepare for the next patch. The other two things to talk about are more structural than anything. The first is that I am aiming to patch before the end of November, fingers crossed. I suppose I dont want to guarantee anything 100% but Im fairly confident in that prediction. The second is related to patching. There was a certain someone who made a suggestion, however if you are if you are reading this, Im sorry, Ive forgotten your username. Their suggestion was a different patching schedule. If youve followed this game from when it was just on itch.io you might remember that I used to do weekly updates when I was just a young whippersnapper. That was when I was working on game dev full time so I could actually accomplish things in 1 week. Im not crazy enough to do a weekly patch schedule, but there is a compromise which is what was suggested, monthly patching. To explain, a while back I made and put out a roadmap for this game. It specified the patches for the game on a large scale. I think there were about 8 patches or so between now and a 1.0 release. That, for anyone unfamiliar with game dev, is not a lot given what still needs to be done. The problem with this is pretty basic and now that Ive been following the roadmap for a few months Im starting to see the issues. Updates are, simply put, too infrequent. If nothing else there are bugs that are reported that just sit in the live version of the game for far longer than they should. Aside from bugs there are smaller features or QoL that are done and I just sit on them waiting for a much larger system to be finished. It just isnt a great system. So, the plan is to make these news updates I guess news and patches. Or to do patches in the middle of the month and news at the end of the month like usual, sort of just depends on what I decide. The point being, updates once per month. The caveat to this is that it will mean splitting my time between larger systems and small stuff. If there is a month where nothing of note that is smaller gets added I would likely forgo a patch, however I dont expect that will be the case. The other thing to mention with this is that this style wouldnt be starting until after this next patch. With any luck Ill patch in November and this new sort of monthly style would start in December. I think thats everything. Long update this month although I think it was mostly just me babbling about things. As always thank you for your patience, with any luck youll be hearing from me soon. Oh, and happy Halloween if you celebrate that sort of thing.

[ 2022-10-29 21:33:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

I apologize that Im a few days late with this update. Ive been on a family vacation for the past week so needless to say its been a little less productive than usual. Of course, this means I lost a week this month so I havent gotten around to as much as Id like, but still, as usual, progress was made. As Ive said in the past this patch is likely close, but its pretty dependent on my artist still. What is basically happening is that what is specified on the roadmap, listed below, is essentially done. -Compendium -4 Zones -2 NPCs To clarify that, the compendium is done. The NPCs are in along with their quests. The zones are mostly done, just waiting on assets for basically 1 zone. The assets needed just happen to be large so they are taking longer. Im specifying all this because I am admittedly making this take a bit longer than it should. To explain that, I keep doing things that werent planned for this patch. As I said when I made the roadmap, its a rough outline. Two examples of this in this patch is that there is now a mail system implemented into the game. Dont expect to get many letters yet, but since I made the system I needed art, and as a consequence slowed down other assets. The other example of something that wasnt supposed to happen this patch is that there is another NPC on top of the 2 that were designated for this patch. This NPC isnt really like the others, but Ill leave that a bit of a mystery. In regards to art, this meant making a new NPC, a few animations, and a dialogue portrait so it also slowed stuff down. While the art is whats slowing down the patch there is also another major component to this character. I wasnt really planning to do this, but it didnt make much sense to have her in the game and not include this. Without spoiling much, this character will already have her story dialogue built in. More might be added later, but shes essentially a test run for what the NPC dialogue system will be. According to the roadmap those dialogues are supposed to be added basically last, but I wanted to test it all and see what people think in case I need to make changes. This of course means I need to develop the dialogue system but it should be pretty easy. Aside from those things, this month saw a few other minor changes that I wont go into detail about. I also spent some time trying to track down a particular bug related to a white pattern overlay appearing on screen. Still havent managed that one yet, but I should have a lead now at least. There isnt much else to mention I think, just working as usual. It isnt exactly relevant at the moment, but I did do some thinking while on vacation and made some final adjustments to the combat system. Its changed a few times at this point, but I think Im happy with it. The goal, as Ive probably said before, is to make the system a bit more involved than just a normal turn-based battle system where you hit them and they hit you, repeat, repeat. Well see if what Ive thought up is any better I suppose. When the time comes, I think I will create a mock up of it for public consumption to get some opinions just because, while I think its cool, it isnt good to develop in a bubble, especially when it is something this huge. In any case, thank you all for your patience, Ill certainly be back with another update at the end of this month. No vacation either, so I should be on time too. Hope you all have fun playing in the meantime.

[ 2022-10-02 17:05:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello again, weve once again come to the end of a month and I am once again confused as to how we got here. Ill get right down to business however. If you read the previous news update you may be thinking to yourself Hey Exodus, you said you were looking to patch this month, why are you a big ol liar?. To which I would say, This is the reason its a bad idea to specify release dates. In the words of my father, my mouth is writing checks my ass cannot cash. In all seriousness, I did mean to patch this month, but two things happened. First, and this is the big one. There was just too much art left to do and I miscalculated on that. There has also been some swapping around with artists and the mixing of things there slowed things down a bit. Aside from that I came to a realization about halfway through this month. I had been quietly starting to brush certain parts of this patch off saying things like, I can drop that for now. or We can put that off until next patch, it isnt that important. I realized a few weeks back that this was a terrible plan, mostly because it spits in the idea of a roadmap, which I just drew up and posted about two or three months ago. I determined that while it may take longer, I should put what was intended into this patch. This means not rushing it, even if it takes a bit longer and I have to look dumb because I said I would patch this month. This post so far has essentially been a long protracted, oops, and Im sorry. With all that said I did actually do stuff this month for Verdant Village. Both NPCs have their schedules set for every season. Dialogue is basically done for both, got a few lines left to write for one NPC. Quest wise two have been added, there are a few more to write. As for zones, Ive added two (basically three) zones. The third on basically needs a sprite drawn for it and thats it. Then I got one more to make to meet the four zones quota for the roadmap. Outside of that, the compendium is done, at least for its current iteration, some stuff will be added later as it becomes relevant but for now its working. I think for the compendium specifically what was actually finished this month was implementing the 100ish challenges. Speaking of challenges I actually have an update on that. There are plans for more of them yet, however I discovered an issue I was unaware of. Apparently, Steam put a cap of 100 achievements on any game on Steam, which I was unaware of. I was just going to make every challenge a Steam achievement because that made logical sense to me. Since that limit is in place Ill be picking out specific ones to make into Steam achievements. I apologize for the discrepancy, blame Valve I guess. I did look into it, apparently the reasoning is that some games were going onto Steam with literal thousands of achievements which they didnt like. Last bit about challenges. The reward for doing these was originally was intended to be the Steam achievement, because I mean, that makes sense. Given that not all of them can be achievements I have it written down to add some sort of in-game reward for completing them. Im not sure what this will be honestly. Ill have to give it some thought, might just be like a golden player statue or something cosmetic of that nature. I just wanted to mention this because I personally was kind of disappointed by the fact that I cant make them all achievements. Sort of undercuts the feeling of accomplishment a bit I think. Aside from all of that there is a mail system planned and I may put that in during this patch to allow for a brief, I guess tutorial or set of easy objectives to ease new players into systems. Verdant Village is relatively devoid of teaching moments honestly. Unlike something like Stardew the opening also doesnt give you a firm objective like rebuild the farm. You are basically dropped in so there should probably be some sort of gentle guiding for players less familiar with this type of game. After all of that there are also plans for another exchange shop like the archeology one but Ill be honest that may get neglected for this patch as putting it in would probably take a bit of development time plus a fair number of assets. While the Isabels shop was basically just furniture, which is easy to implement this one would actually have gameplay related stuff making it a larger task in general. So it will probably something for the future. I think thats basically everything. Sorry to write an essay here but I figure you all deserve to know whats going on, not to mention thats the point of these. To address when patching will happen, I dont know. I would like to say it will be in the near future. Given where development is at, I would think it will still be soon, but with the creation of art being a bit harder to predict I cant say for sure. So, your patience is appreciated. And for my part I will attempt to not give harder deadlines for patches when I cant predict them as well as I think I can. Hope you all have fun playing for now, youll hear from me again hopefully sooner rather than later.

[ 2022-09-01 01:05:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

As usual, another month and another quick news update for Verdant Village. This month, Im happy to report, has been pretty productive. Most of my time was focused into finishing the compendium. At time of writing, Im basically done; I just have to fix controller support for one hyper specific section. For anyone unfamiliar, the compendium is meant to serve as something of a mini wiki that you fill in as you play. It admittedly isnt going to be as robust as a real wiki, but it will serve to record most relevant information that you discover in the game. This mostly pertains to items and all the things associated with them but also branches into tutorials, and later a few other things. The hope is that with this you wont have to reference a wiki to remember exactly how certain things work or how to get things youve already obtained once. Despite what I just said, the compendium isnt exactly done. Currently, there are 3 sections to it. I have a few more planned, but they arent implemented because the relevant features arent in the game. Examples of these things are a bestiary, NPC profiles, and a few other things that I think would be useful. Once the requisite parts of the game are added the compendium will be updated accordingly. If you are wondering why NPC profiles arent considered relevant its because they have to do with how the social/romance system would work in the game which is very much not there yet. Aside from tutorials and items, the compendium also houses the challenges section. Ive mentioned it before, but challenges double as Steam achievements if you are playing on Steam. Currently, there are about 100. I have more in mind and more will probably be thought up as well, but I left out things that cant be achieved at this time in the game. These cover most aspects of the game and should give you something to shoot for if you like that kind of thing. While the compendium is the majority of this patch, Ive also fixed a few bugs and changed some values on items and the like. According to the roadmap I also need to add two NPCs, some quests, and a few zones. This may sound like a lot of work, and it is, but its usually quick work because, well, the processes for making these things are already set and I dont have to spend time tracking down issues. This of course means patch time is drawing near. While I dont like to give out dates for this sort of thing, I would hope that August will see a patch. Most of my work is done and what is left is pretty standard stuff that shouldnt be too time consuming. The only part that may throw a wrench in the works is art. There are still a fair number of assets to make. My artist is working diligently so hopefully he will knock everything out quickly and it wont be an issue but I thought it would be a good idea to mention it in case it causes delays. I think that about covers it for this patch. Im sorry things are a bit slow at the moment. As Ive said before, this patch was always sort of a filler patch to get things in line before adding combat. Hopefully, you all will hear from me before the end of August and Ill have something to share. Until then I hope you all have fun playing Verdant Village.

[ 2022-07-31 18:58:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Well, that was a month that went by far too quickly. Welcome to the end of June devlog for Verdant Village. It feels like I just wrote one of these, but I guess that was a month ago. June has been a busy month to say the least. Looking back on my own notes they are actually looking somewhat sparse, but theres a reason for that. Most of my work this month was done on the compendium. Specifically, one section of the compendium that I refer to as the item database. What is the item database? Well, basically what youd imagine. The compendium is meant to give you information regarding most everything in the game. As items are a big part of it this database tracks every item you obtain along with relevant information for how it is used or found. Its laid out in a way that youll reveal and fill it in as you play with completion percentages and the like if you enjoy that sort of thing. This probably sounds simple, and it mostly is. The cumbersome part is pulling all the data together and displaying it in a readable way. This dominated my time this month, but it is finally done. There are still several other sections of the compendium that need to be made, but none of them are nearly as labor intensive so I dont expect them to take anywhere near as long, famous last words, Im sure. The next section that I have slated is challenges, which double as steam achievements. It wont be a complete list as certain game systems still arent in, but there are a lot for people who enjoy achievement hunting. After that there are some smaller things that need to be added to the compendium but nothing too major as far as I can tell. If you havent looked at the roadmap that was posted Ill mention it here. The next patch is mostly the compendium, but there are also a few in game additions. Specifically, 4 zones and 2 characters. Ive just recently gotten some assets for one of the zones, and Ill be getting more soon so that is well under way. Aside from that cloud saves have been mentioned as a wanted feature. Cloud saves were actually supposed to go in a long time ago, but an initial test erased a save and it fell by the wayside since. I plan to get them working and put them in for this patch. All in all, this patch is mostly an interim patch. While the compendium is a very large feature it isnt exactly gameplay centered. This patch is mostly meant to get things in line before tackling combat in the next patch. With any luck this patch will release sometime in the near future. I dont have any hard dates as of yet but looking over what I have here I dont think there is a ton more to do so hopefully Ill have something more concrete in that regard soon. As always, thanks for your patience and I hope you are enjoying the game so far.

[ 2022-07-01 00:27:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick update for whats been going on with Verdant Village here. This month has been something of a mess from an outside perspective. Combination of trying to go on vacation and then getting Covid instead so a chunk of my time was sort of squandered. In any case, some things still got done. This month was mostly working on the compendium. A few other bits and pieces have come up and been altered as well, but the compendium is the main focus. Tutorials are done, at least for the current game. I will have to write a few more as some other systems are added or if people request them. Tutorials are sort of made at my discretion which isnt always the best. Since I made the systems, I find many of them self-explanatory when players may find that they need clarification. All that said once the compendium is out, I expect Ill probably be adding some more if they are requested or I realized something could be tutorialized. Tutorials aside most of my focus has been on the item database portion of the compendium. To put it simply, the compendium will have a section where you can look at every item you have found in the game. These have to be filled in as you play. Usually, an entry is filled in when you gather it once. Sometimes additional info can be unlocked by using the item however. For instance, breaking an item down with alchemy will unlock that related info on the item. This info is basic for some objects but others like fish will contain info like where and how to catch the fish, seeds list the growth times, etc. For people who like collecting stuff I guess this will serve as a small side system as you can make it a goal to fill out the database if you want. It does track item discovery and entry completion (filling in all the additional data for an item). So, if you like percentages you may enjoy that. There arent any rewards linked to completing the database at this point, but it might be something to look into for the future. Sort of feels like the kind of thing you should get a little something for. Once items are done there are a couple more sections to add. I think the next one Ill be tackling is, well, Im calling them challenges in game because I think that sounds better. If you are playing on Steam these will double as achievements. Currently, based on what Ive got outlined there are around 150 of them. These range across pretty much every aspect of the game. Admittedly, a lot of them are just do thing x times, such as plant 500 crops, but there are some oddballs in there. I do need to do some thinking on this bit because 150 steam achievements, or just achievements in general is a lot. I feel like most games average like 20 50 or so. What I might do is reevaluate some of them. I might remove a few of them and turn others into multistage achievements. For instance, if there were 3 achievements to spend 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 gold it would all be one achievement with 3 stages and on Steam it would just be the 1 achievement to spend 100,000. None of the achievement stuff is set in stone yet. I havent really been an achievement person since my Xbox 360 days. That said if anyone has any ideas on what they think would make achievements more satisfying or put together I wouldnt mind hearing ideas on that. Compendium aside this next patch has a few zones and NPCs to add as well. Im not sure if Ive said this publicly or not, but my goal for zones is to branch out from Amberglen. By that I mean zones closest to the town will be the first to fill in for the most part. NPCs are following a somewhat similar trend. My goal is to make every house in Amberglen have a resident first. There are still a few places that you cant enter because the person who lives there doesnt exist yet. Once there is at least one person in each house Ill branch out from there. As for zones, I think the first one Ill start with will be the quarry. I think people are long overdue for a consistent source of stone. Once combat goes in the mines wont really be an easy romp either so Id rather have a better way to get ahold of that basic resource before then. Anyway, I think thats basically it for right now. This month was kind of a mess as I said at the start. In fact, that last few months have been sort of busy with life in general, but things should be slowing down now so that should mean more consistent development on my end. Thanks for your patience and I hope you have fun playing Verdant Village in the meantime!

[ 2022-05-30 19:50:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small patch to address a few more issues that have cropped up since the quest overhaul of 0.4.7. I suppose this is also a content patch, although its very small. I was midway through adding something and I couldnt backtrack it so now its a live feature. The feature is fairly small, but if I recall people have been asking for something like this for a while. The quest log now displays your current quests, as usual, along with a section for available quests and completed quests. This was going to be part of the compendium, but then I decided it was dumb to separate it out into an entirely different section so I just merged it all into the quest log. Aside from that there are a few fixes for some other things. Namely a few issues regarding quest progress not iterating properly. One other thing. There were reports of fermentation barrels coming through the last patch broken, where they would just fill the players inventory with fake brews. Ive tried to replicate this what feels like a million different times and Ive come up empty. I dont know if this patch will fix whatever the issue was by virtue of patching or not. If you continue to experience this issue, please let me know.

Verdant Village 0.4.7.2 Full Changelog

Additions

• The quest log now shows your current, available, and completed quests

Bug Fixes

• Fix the beekeeper perk so you will gain the proper amount of honeycomb when you both have and dont have the perk
• Fixed a bug where the quest Gardening Aid for Remi wasnt iterating correctly. If you havent done it, the quest could very well be available now
• Fixed a bug where the two quests from Caleb following getting the bow werent iterating properly. Youll need to go hunting in order to unlock the first one
• Changed the names of the jerky products you can create as the long names were causing some UI issues
• Fixed an issue where trying to break down drinks bought from the bar would break the alchemy UI
• Fixed an issue where the players house door would disappear in specific circumstances
• Fixed an issue where the players house door wouldnt repair itself during renovation quests

[ 2022-05-06 19:39:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another month of development has come and gone for Verdant Village. What did I do this month? I honestly have to look; things have been a bit crazy lately. Most importantly 0.4.7 and a subsequent hotfix went live this month. These were both relatively small patches focusing on QoL for some things Id been meaning to get around to. That said I think, fingers crossed, that we are out of the woods that was this spring. Over the past few months, Ive been incredibly side-tracked when it comes to Verdant Village. Ive been working as much as I always do, however my attention has been divided to say the least. In short, there have been lots of bugs and suggestions that have been posted over the last few months. If you were someone making those posts, thank you. I appreciate feedback that helps to make the game better for everyone to play. At the same time, feedback tends to send me spiraling into hosts of smaller issues and mechanical changes that prevent me from working on whatever is coming next. I dont mind any of this, I just wanted to explain where my time has been going. Outside of this work Ive recently started making real headway on the compendium so that is what the near future holds as far as content. Hopefully I can explain whats planned here. So, lets see here, a few days ago? Weeks ago? I dont remember. A friendly person asked if there was a roadmap that was available to look at for the game. I promptly remembered the roadmap I once made about 3 or 4 years ago that I might as well have set on fire for how well I followed it. Still, a roadmap is a good thing to have, Im just bad at organizing my thoughts onto paper. So, I drew one up that Ill post and link. I have made this one in a way that I can actually follow it as well, so it will actually be indicative of what is coming. I think Im going to make a sticky for it in the steam forums and discord as well just so it can be seen easily. The sticky will have more (and some of the same) info attached, but Ill also elaborate a bit here. To be blunt, the roadmap is the definition of vague. Ive left swaths of detail out in order to allow myself some freedom in what I tackle in conjunction with what is listed. The map shows the major additions Id like to add for each patch. A lot of these additions are map zones and NPCs as those are the long-standing things that are being added slowly. In addition to these things most patches mention some sort of larger system, the compendium, combat, etc. If the system is mentioned here, you can expect that is a significant system in the game on the level of something like alchemy for instance. Aside from these major additions I will be doing other little things, but Ive left the details out as to when. For instance, breeding animals, more quests, letting animals outside, adding steam achievements, more exchange shops, etc. all constitute little things that arent listed here. At the moment, I am planning to have these things just added in as little surprises when these larger patches come out. The space between patches will be reserved for hotfixes, or if a patch is taking a particularly long time, I may break it up with a smaller patch. Hopefully Ill move fast enough to avoid that. One last thing to note, as looking at this it feels, well not that impressive to me at least. I guess Id keep in mind that the systems mentioned in the roadmap are hilariously compressed. For instance, combat, is one word. Combat involves, well actual combat, I think around 50 enemies with variants plus bosses, what is looking to be a rather in-depth crafting system, and a leveling system. Another example is secrets, which Im specifying because Im not just being secretive, I actually mean secrets. At present Ive got close to 100 ideas that will be scattered through the world. These ideas serve as little mysteries to solve or things to interact with where you get a reward. While a couple of puzzles repeat with minor variants these are meant to be mostly be unique things to find. The rewards are mostly unique as well. There are a few repeats (IE Max Stamina Upgrade) but none of them are just items or gold, they involve getting something you cant get anywhere else. So, I mostly just wanted to put that out there as something to mention that the roadmap is a little deceiving. It does tell you what is coming next but as I said before it is hilariously simplified. In part because I didnt want to write all that, and also because I like for there to be a little mystery to what is coming next. Anyway, I think Ive gone on enough about all this. I hope you are all enjoying the game, and thanks for your continued support. Im going to go back to making the compendium work now.

[ 2022-04-30 22:22:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

I just wanted to put some notes to go along with this roadmap. As specified near the top of the roadmap this only shows larger planned features. Smaller additions and changes will also be occurring, but they arent detailed here. In general, the plan is to use the patches listed here as major content patches. Each patch will contain the things mentioned and some extra smaller bits that will be added at my own discretion. Another general note is that this roadmap has intentionally been left simplified. Zones and NPCs are fairly self-explanatory. Other things that you see on this roadmap can be considered larger systems. If you have played the game, you could probably imagine them to be of the same depth as something like alchemy or brewing if not a bit (or a lot) larger *cough* combat *cough cough*. The idea here is that between these patches I will likely have smaller hotfix patches or if a patch is taking a very long time a minor content patch to tide things over. For all intents and purposes though, I would like to stick fairly close to this roadmap in terms of the order of additions. I hope this stuff looks interesting to all of you. I look forward to knocking out every task on the list. Also, I will likely update this post as time goes by and patches come out.

[ 2022-04-30 22:19:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick hotfix for a few outstanding issues with quests that cropped up during the modifications made in 0.4.7. Everything that is addressed shouldnt have any persistent effect on player progress. The most relevant bug, the minecart not repairing, should leave your mine progress intact as well.

Patch 0.4.7.1 Full Changelog

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where completing the quest Unique Spices wouldn't properly augment progress on the quest Gardening Aid. The progress is retroactively synced during this patch as well
• Fixed an issue with the quest "Bribing A Seamstress" would error upon trying to start it
• Fixed an issue where John's quest "A Dangerous Hunt" didn't properly use the player name instead of a variable
• Fixed an issue where Remi's quest "Gardening Aid" would patch incorrectly, this fix resets progress on the quest, but based on what I saw it was impossible to turn in anyway
• Fixed an issue where the minecart wouldn't repair itself during patching if you had already finished the quest, this should not effect mine progress

[ 2022-04-17 19:55:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Time for another patch! I got delayed a little bit due to a few art requests that took a little longer than expected. All in all this patch is somewhat small. I think this is the tail end of a lot of QoL changes and some bug fixes for the game that have been mentioned in the Steam forums and discord. If I didnt address something you mentioned it probably means Im still thinking about it. That said there are a few additions, two I can think of as entirely new things and not just changes. The first is a farm screenshot feature. This could be added to later if people wanted but I think its got most of the things people would like in this feature. You can access it from settings when you are on your farm. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it lets you take a picture of your entire farm usually for posting purposes. I added a few options in as well, simple things like hiding the player or the lighting and weather. Then some other stuff like showing the grid or changing the view to a simplified version that can be used for planning your farm more easily. Aside from that, jams. Is that not enough of an explanation? No? Okay, well the process of making jam as been added. You have to unlock it of course but youll be able to take any fruit or berry and make jam out of it. Its really just a small system to make those items yield some extra profit. It also lines up nicely as something real farmers would do so I thought Id add it. Outside of those two things have been a cavalcade of changes to how quests are given out. Mainly each quest should now be restricted so that you cant receive it until you have the means to complete it. For those patching this does unfortunately mean for you that you are going to lose the quests in your log as some will likely have new requirements and mincing the two would likely end in some sort of small catastrophe. A small note, quests that are obtained from signposts will remain in your quest log, this is because they are handled differently than regular quests. It is also important to note that because of the new requirements on quests some that were available to you prior to the patch may no longer be available yet. Quests also now sport additional concrete rewards outside of recipes and blueprints. Most of these are minor gold rewards meant to soften the blow of putting resources towards a quest. A note, for those patching you will receive the gold reward for quests you have already completed retroactively so dont be surprised if you suddenly have more money. All that said Ill leave the rest to the patch notes below. Were already half way through the month so Ill be posting news again soon. I think it will be focused on what is still coming so there should be a clearer picture of what is going to get added to the game.

Patch 0.4.7 Full Changelog

Additions

• Added a path from the Narbell Farm to the Dig Site, no unlocks required
• Re-added a quest for Remi, Gardening Aid
• Added jam making (The object to allow for this is ordered from the shipping chest, and is rewarded from the quest mentioned above, if you are patching up you may want to check as you might have already unlocked the preserves pot)
• Removed A Donation Of Flax quest from Kiera temporarily to augment the reward

Quality Of Life

• Added SFX to objects such as looms and drying racks for an extra indication that you have interacted with it
• Added falling leaves to trees in autumn
• Made several minor changes to the world environment including some shadows, a deeper layer of grass and other minor modifications to spruce up areas
• Made a large change to the terrain in the upper right corner of The Whistling Fields zone. The purpose of this change will be made known at a later date
• Updated Main Menu and Exit Game buttons to match the rest of the UI
• Slightly modified settings menu to look a little nicer
• Quest rewards are now visible to the player in the quest log when a quest is selected
• Quests can now be pinned in your log to keep them at the top of the list
• Alchemy breakdown has been changed so that you are no longer limited to working from only your player inventory. How you select items to breakdown has also been modified
• A certain flower has had its name changed to Clivia Lily as its old name was insensitive. Apologies to anyone who was offended, I had no idea the old name was also a slur
• The forge can now be moved once it is repaired, this can be done via the building menu with Simeon
• Made an alteration to the message you get when you havent reached floor 10 of the mines and try to use the minecart, this is to prevent confusion
• Gave cooking slots a small plate for the stack information so the text is more readable
• Added code to ensure that you cannot double bind keys in settings

Balance Changes

• Increased stack limit of all items to 999
• Modified stamina drainer spawn rate in mines to keep them from spawning as often
• Modified stamina drainers to remove some barricades surrounding their spawn location so you wont have to knock down barricades to reach them as often, note that this can still happen but the chance is reduced
• Altered fermentation ingredients to have fewer health and stamina restoring properties and instead a far more varied assortment
• Changed several fermentation ingredients to allow players to gain the tracking buffs from brews they make
• Modified several quest requirements to make them more manageable (less of a grind)
• Increased the number of objects that can be bases in fermentation
• Changed bases in fermentation so that they are doubly effective in whatever benefit they give
• Altered tastes of fermentation items to be far more balanced with far fewer sweet tasting items
• Altered prices of the items at the inn so that they are not cheaper to buy than they are to sell
• Changed wheat seed sell price to 10g from 30g
• Added more immediate rewards in the form of gold or items to most quests (For those who have already completed the quests only the gold rewards will be retroactively applied, rest assured you have not missed any significant items)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where you could continue clicking the Main Menu and Exit Game buttons despite a confirmation prompt being present
• Fixed an issue where controller you couldnt access the Main Menu button
• Fixed a controller mapping bug in the fermentation UI
• Fixed an issue where the player house after being moved couldnt be placed back in the exact same location. The solution to this is that the houses starting position wasnt aligned to the grid so if you experienced this you wont be able to put the house back in the same place but the house is now positioned correctly in new games
• Fixed a but where moving your house after upgrading it would cause it to visually regress to an un-upgraded house
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to speak to Lauren normally when she was at the counter in the inn instead of getting the store
• Fixed a bug where if an animal starved it could stop silos from feeding animals in tier 3 structures
• Fixed an issue where opening certain menus would visually reset the portcullis
• Fixed a bug where Caleb would teleport during a specific schedule
• Fixed a bug where secondary cooking slots (any past the initial one you have access to) wouldnt show proper details
• Fixed a bug where controller support wouldnt work if the mouse was still hovering certain parts of the game UI
• Fixed an issue where after a patch you would be able to start fermenting something in a fermentation barrel despite it already being the process of fermenting something
• Fixed a bug where gilded truffles generated on a pigs birthday wouldnt count towards their gilded truffle count
• Fixed a small visual glitch with drop down messages to keep them from stacking as heavily
• Fixed several minor bugs relating to binding keys
• Fixed a bug where the sleep and cancel buttons where mechanically reversed in the sleep menu for controllers
• Fixed a bug where Blessed Powder was pulling the wrong name in alchemy
• Fixed a bug where the Chef In The Making quest didnt properly dole out its rewards on patch
• Fixed a bug where the shipping chest wasnt displaying stack UI above the items in the slot on occasion
• Fixed several minor bugs revolving around adding augments to fisheries
• Fixed a z ordering glitch with the description display in menus
• Fixed a bug where the text for current pending orders could go out of the UI

[ 2022-04-16 00:38:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another quick news update here. Strange, I cant remember where March went, but I guess thats pretty normal for me at this point. This month has been lots of QoL work. Basically, all QoL work actually, along with a small addition or two and some bug fixing as always. There have been lots of smaller changes to systems, like pinning quests, alchemy breakdown not functioning off of only your inventory, and updating fermentation again because I must update fermentation every time I patch or Im not doing something right. As some people have mentioned quests are a bit much right now, in two senses of the word. Some are too much work, and some are just given out and you have no way of completing them yet. In response to this, I think I spent a few good days just making a new quest database. Not even the actual code in the game, just an excel spreadsheet that is more up to date. Ive been working off a pretty old design that became outdated at some point. Given that quests arent added very often I was just sort of patching things in and making additions where needed. This is obviously not a very organized system so I took some time to make a new spreadsheet and solidify rewards and requirements for everything. I still need to actually update the in-game quests to unlock at specific intervals, but the result should be less of a quest dump in the opening hours and more of a sprinkling throughout the game. Outside of a few oddball quests however most everything is still at your own pace, so if you want to blast through quests, you can. You just probably wont end up sitting on like twenty quests anymore. Aside from that I got some more planning done with non-quest-based elements and rewards. I also finished writing the compendium tutorials, at least for now. Aside from that, I also did some planning for the compendium. Ive gotten sidetracked, but it is still my back burner project when Im not putting out other fires. There are also some map changes coming, some visual, at least one functional, actually I think it is just the one functional one. Most of what Ive been talking about is vaguer, but I can also say that there is a built-in system for farm screenshots now. The feature has a few bells and whistles tacked on that I thought might be useful as well so hopefully thats something to enjoy. That said there may be one other small system going in, but it admittedly depends on a few things getting done in time. Im shooting for a patch sometime in the next two weeks or so. I think an actual deadline is before the middle of April. Anyway, I apologize for the lack of concrete additions here. There was a brief moment where I added NPCs and quests again before being buried by changes and optimizations to make. To clarify, as I probably have before. Many of these changes are things requested by players. I just wanted to say thank you and that I dont mind making changes so please dont hesitate to make suggestions. I just have a complex about not adding actual new stuff and instead just changing existing content, even if the end result does make it better. In any case, thanks for the continued support. Should have a new patch out in a few weeks.

[ 2022-03-30 00:00:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

I feel like Ive been posting a lot lately, but its the end of the month and that means another news update. What happened in February? Well a lot, and also not a lot, at least in terms of what I expected to do. Most obviously, patch, 0.4.6 went live and two hotfixes followed this month, although 0.4.6.1 had enough bug fixes to basically be its own patch. These patches comprised most of the recent work on the game. Of course there is still a lot more to do as usual. Each hotfix gets the game a little closer to stable. I think these past few patches have gone a long way towards achieving that. What Id love is to get back to actual content for the game. If you find a bug please report it, I obviously want to fix them and they should take priority in most cases. I suppose I just miss the days of non-stop content creation. On that note, after having talked about it for what feels like months I made concrete steps towards implementing the compendium in the past few days. For those unaware, the compendium is slated to be a sort of in-game wiki. It probably wont tell you every little secret, but it will hold a lot of information about the game for easy access. This includes things like available quests, data on items you find, tutorials, completed quests, character bios, and challenges, which if you are playing on Steam will double as achievements. As I recall Im sitting at around 90 (I think) challenges right now, and there will be more added when new systems enter the mix. Im excited about this just because I like filling things out in games and this will basically be that. It will also double as a resource to answer many questions that people have when playing. All in all, it should be a useful addition to the game. Aside from that I have other plans, because of course I do. Combat is still being worked on although it is very much in its infancy at the moment. A lot of the work being done is just getting sprite work commissioned for everything as there is a ton of it. Sprites are also larger with more animations than what the rest of the game has so its more of an endeavor. As for programming, I have things laid out but its been sidelined for the moment to work on some smaller systems, looking at you compendium. I would also like to go back through a lot of zones and update them a bit visually. Im looking to get some assets that I can hopefully use to spruce some areas up a bit as I think some of them are lacking. Im also eyeing the plains area to the left of the house as something to rework, its too large, although its real issue is there is little to nothing in the largeness. It may get overhauled in the near future, but well see. Another thing Ive been contemplating is doing a sweep over NPCs in the game. This is theoretical at the moment so dont hold me to it I guess. Ive been considering many of them and feel I might need to run through and characterize them more strongly, maybe even change some appearances, but Im not sure. A lot of this issue stems from the fact that the true dialogue systems arent in the game yet. Its a bit harder to characterize people when all you can really work with is one-liners that they say when you talk to them. Still I thought Id mention that its an idea that Ive been considering for the future. Without droning on for too long, I think thats about it for now. Ive had a few more bug reports, including one about further animal disappearances which makes me hurt inside. That in mind, Im hoping to shoot for another small hotfix at the end of this week to take care of the stuff thats been mentioned. Beyond that, its compendium work and some visual updating. As usual, thanks for your patience with both development and bugs, always appreciated. I hope you all have fun playing and Im sure youll be hearing from me sooner rather than later.

[ 2022-03-01 01:05:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alright here is another hotfix for Verdant Village. I call it a hotfix, but honestly this got a little out of control. I was intending to just fix a few issues that had cropped up that were causing some serious, if a little rare, problems. And an extra week or so later here we are with a whole host of fixes and some smaller improvements and changes. I dont have much else to say but below is the full changelog for this patch. Fingers crossed I can stop searching for bugs for a bit and get to work on some features.

Verdant Village Patch 0.4.6.2 Full Changelog

QoL (Quality of Life)

• Extended a feature from chest inventories to the main inventory screens where the small plates that house the stack size for an object will now always show up in front of the item icon
• Added a message for when the player tries to use an axe on a tree stump that will indicate they need to use a shovel to dig it up
• Changed fermenting UI to list the gold each recipe you have made will yield
• Moved the time and date slightly as it was just barely cutting into the edge of the clock UI with certain number combinations
• Altered the descriptions of several alchemy items to make their use more clear, specifically Tonic of Swiftness, Tonic of Vigor, Greater Tonic of Vigor, Tonic of Dark Eye, Saltwater Tonic, and Slumbering Elixir
• Altered collision boxes for buildings when placing animals and moving buildings to make the system easier to operate
• Increased the stack limit of augment items in fisheries to 99 to be in line with the inventory stack size change
• Updated the hotbar in appearance slightly to show stack sizes more clearly
• Changed the tints of buildings when upgrading to match other existing tints in the game
• The game now allows for apostrophes in all naming UIs
• The shipping system now has a failsafe for when you order too many things at once and the shipping chest fills up
• The shipping system will now stack items appropriately when they are ordered allowing for more space
• Changed end of the day functions slightly to keep the game from performing all the actions that happen at midnight until the black screen has fully faded in

Balance Changes

• The Accelerated Germination perk now causes any crop planted to grow to its first stage upon being planted
• Changed Sugilite to yield 3 Sugilite Dust via alchemy breakdown instead of 1
• Lapis Lazuli now yields 3 Lapis Shards instead of 1 via alchemy breakdown
• Diamonds now yields 2 Diamond Dust instead of 1 via alchemy breakdown
• Malachite now yields 2 Malachite Shards instead of 1 via alchemy breakdown
• Pearls now yield 2 Pearl Dust instead of 1 via alchemy breakdown
• Heavily modified alchemy product sell prices to follow a more balanced system
• Heavily modified how much Crystal Extract is gained from gems via alchemy breakdown to accommodate for the new system
• Lowered Diamond sell price from 400g to 300g
• All cooking objects now sell for slightly more meaning they will yield a profit if sold
• Reworked fermenting sell prices and profit buff to ensure brews turn profits regardless of the items used
• Grapes were not profitable, raised their sell price from 20g to 60g
• Changed the watering can pattern one more time. The pattern in now 3x2, 5x2, 5x3, 5x4, and 5x5. More importantly the pattern will now spawn and expand out from the tile you originally interacted with which should allow for better aim

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where certain players, usually ones with many crops, would see their game skip a day at midnight, I.E. jump from the 1st to the 3rd in one night.
• Fixed a bug with the fermenting UI where base objects could overflow off the UI
• Fixed a bug where in very specific situations brews made via fermenting could use the wrong brew type keyword, I.E. making a wine and the description would refer to it as beer
• Fixed a dialogue bug the quest A Chefs Dabbling
• Fixed a bug where some matrices in alchemy werent named correctly causing a few visual glitches
• Added an exception for both apostrophes to accommodate different keyboard layouts when typing
• Modified building collisions slightly to ensure that they can be placed correctly on the farm to take advantage of space
• Fixed a bug where the beer and whiskey tabs in the fermenting UI were reversed
• Fixed a bug where selecting a recipe would enable all arrows in the UI
• Fixed a bug where after moving a building on your farm all buildings capable of showing an exclamation mark would show one
• Fixed a small visual bug with the game trial message
• Fixed a bug where fermentation recipes couldnt be deleted
• Fixed an issue where several buffs were displaying incorrectly or missing data
• Fixed an issue where the quest New Kid On The Cutting Board could reappear after being completed
• Fixed an issue where cooking stations around the map would display exclamation marks from time to time
• Fixed a bug where chicken coops could freeze the game by failing to find a place to put items at midnight
• Fixed a bug where some alchemy items would sell for zero gold
• Fixed a bug where having multiple fisheries with the appropriate augment items inside could cause random alchemy items to appear in other fisheries
• Fixed a bug where fisheries wouldnt adjust stacks properly when adding augments to slots
• Fixed an issue where the sense buffs wouldnt pause while the player was in menus similar to other buffs
• Fixed an issue where buff timers would still tick while the user was in some menus
• Fixed an issue where using a Fowl Luck Elixir wouldnt decrement the stack on your hotbar
• Fixed an issue where using the Fowl Luck Elixir would display multiple responses at the same time, I.E. it would say that you both used the elixir and that the fowl refused to take it at the same time
• Fixed an issue where once you had discovered every alchemy item the discovery portion of the UI would begin showing all alchemy components again
• Fixed a bug where bones could be broken down in the alchemy menu, maybe one day, but not today
• Fixed a bug where you could get Loamy Essence from breaking down truffles, this is now Fibrous Extract
• Fixed several spelling and grammatical errors across the items Concentration Chew, Marine Jelly, Fireblood Potion, and Love Potion
• Fixed a bug where artifact dig spots in the chapel and several other areas would yield nothing
• Fixed a bug where buildings you were hovering when reverting from upgrade placement would remain tinted
• Fixed a bug where buildings wouldnt actively highlight red when they were in an unviable position during building movement
• Fixed a bug where irrigation pipes could be placed on top of paths

[ 2022-02-24 03:07:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

As per usual its time for a quick hotfix. This one is pretty small but it was a couple of things that I either forgot to address or addressed incorrectly. Details below.

Verdant Village V4.6.1 Full Changelog

• Changed the purchase price for pork to 130g. At its previous price you could effectively buy pork and sell it back for more causing a cascade of infinite money
• Some players have noticed that they are obtaining the Meal Prep perk on patch. While I cannot revert this a change has been made to prevent this from happening in the future. Essentially your progress was being doubled every patch due to a slight oversight
• Various food dishes at the inn could be clicked but not purchased, these have been fixed
• Ground tiles will turn back to grass after two days. The original plan had been to make them turn back overnight, however a player pointed out how this could cause issues during seasonal changes. I forgot to push it back to two days before 4.6 so that is being done now. However, tiles being watered will still not prevent a tile from turning back to grass

[ 2022-02-13 21:22:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

It is once again patch time. To be honest, I was a little worried I wasnt going to hit this deadline. I had what I thought was a huge problem on my hands just a day ago. Turns out it was poor optimization on my part that looked like it was a bug. In any case, that has been fixed. Admittedly, this isnt exactly the patch I wanted to put out. Originally, this was meant to be a content patch, with more well, content. Through a combination of the holidays and other issues and suggestions cropping up this turned into more of a quality-of-life patch. There are a few additions but things focus pretty largely on QoL as well as bug fixes. Hopefully the next patch will lean more heavily into content. I feel like I think that every time, but stuff inevitably gets in the way. I suppose its all in service of making the game more complete in one way or another. I dont think there is anything that stands out hugely from the list of changes, but I think together this patch does a good deal to make the game a little more polished. One thing that I want to mention just blatantly here. There were some changes made to fermenting and as a result fermenting recipes needed to be wiped for this patch, apologies. In short the calculations were wrong so recipes that already existed would be horribly miscalculated, this shouldnt happen in the future however. I also wanted to mention that I know various people have spotted issues or suggested changes. If you dont see something you mentioned referenced in here just know that it is probably still in my list of things to look at. I had to cut this patch off somewhere (as I usually do) and as there are a few larger issues plaguing the current release of the game I didnt want to drag it out much longer. Anyway, as usual thanks for your patience, I hope you enjoy the patch. The full changelog is below.

Verdant Village Patch 0.4.6 Full Changelog

Additions

• Added Malcolm to the game
• Added Lauren to the game
• Added Malcolms house interior
• Added the second floor of the castle
• Added 6 quests to the game from the afore mentioned NPCs, these are quest gated so they may not be available right away to players
• Tree seeds can now be cooked into a small snack, this recipe is available from the start
• Added small bee sprites to apiaries, so now you can be afraid of getting stung while collecting honey now
• Added a visual movement to water in the world so it now moves up and down slightly
• Barley and Rye seeds are now available in the general store year-round, minus winter
• Placing fishing traps in the ocean now has a chance to yield shrimp

QoL (Quality of Life)

• Barn and Coop animal UI (the book) will now darken slots to show how many total spots are available in the building for livestock
• Added a tooltip to the Watering Can and Hoe to explain that they can be charged when used
• Chests can now be picked up with the carpenter mallet, however they still need to be empty to do so
• Trees will no longer allow you to plant them if they are too close to another tree where they wouldnt fully grow
• Cooking station now shows your totals for what ingredients you are using next to the cost of an item
• Cleaned up the code around the object placement UI so that it is no longer overlapping other UI elements regardless of its position
• Stack limits for all items in the game have been raised to 99. The exception to this is stone and various woods which remain at 200
• Removed the Topics button from the dialogue menu. This was done mostly because the current button doesnt really do anything and its probably more misleading to new players than anything. It will reappear once that system is implemented properly
• Extended the discovery notification background for alchemy to more fully fit all the text that appears on it
• Added currency values to the descriptions of items. Gold was already shown but now uses the icon, and the archeology currency will appear on the appropriate items
• The silo will now check if feed needs to be distributed when the silo UI is closed. In short if your silo ran out of feed and then you added more to it that day to compensate you now wont have to manually feed the animals that day as well
• Silos will now automatically add extra feed to a tier 3 building if you buy and place an animal in such a building
• Changed dirt tiles to turn back into grass after one day regardless of their watered status
• Added a small effect to keysprites in the mines to make them slightly easier to find, this will hopefully also compensate for those who are hard of hearing or just play without sound
• Added a meter to the fishery UI to show how close fish are to spawning an egg and how close eggs are to hatching
• Chest inventory search functions now search chests based on distance to the player instead of via the arbitrary array indices. In short, this means if you cook something at the cooking station and it needs to pull ingredients from a chest it will pull those things from the chest that is physically closest to the player instead of potentially from some random one on your farm
• With the addition of Lauren to the game the inn now has two different menus you can order from depending on who is currently running the inn
• When scrolling your hotbar a small text prompt will now appear above the hotbar to indicate what you have selected
• Changed objects that you pickup manually to disappear as the player reaches down to pick them up
• Made a very small visual change to the interaction guide
• Changed object placement to round to 1px for objects that dont adhere to the grid. This still allows creative freedom but if you want to line things up to look nice it is no far easier to do
• Changed the collision on the bottom wall of the player house to match other interiors
• The shipping chest now operates on all of your chests as well as your inventory
• The forge now operates on all of your chests as well as your inventory
• Cleaned up the forge UI slightly
• Added the pickup sound to all objects in the game not just the ones you pick up manually. This is something I was sort of back and forth on, if you have an opinion on it feel free to let me know
• Animals will now stop walking when being milked/sheered

Balance Changes

• Oil and Stock have been increased to 60g and 80g respectively to balance out being able to craft them
• The mines have had ore spawns rebalanced. Coal should now be far more abundant and it exists in every level of the mines. Other ores have also been balanced to be easier to find in their respective levels
• Planted berry bushes have been calibrated to be more profitable. Each bush regrows more quickly now, listed below. Also the sell prices for each of the seeds have been reduced by 30g Strawberries regrow in 2 days Raspberries regrow in 1 day Blueberries regrow in 2 days Cranberries regrow in 2 days Blackberries regrow in 1 day
• Lowered construction time of most buildings by a few days
• Lowered upgrade time of barns and coops
• Increased the drop rate for animal fat from all animals
• Fishing XP has been modified to give more XP per fish given the time it takes to catch one
• Fish traps now grant minimal XP when a fish is retrieved
• Slightly increased Hoe XP to compensate for the tool not being used that often
• Irrigation Pipes now water all 9 tiles around themselves as opposed to the 4 directions (up, down, left, and right)
• Irrigation Pipe orders have increased to 8 pipes per order
• Tree tapping restrictions have been lifted and trees on your farm can now be tapped in all seasons outside of winter
• Watering Can charge patterns have been changed to be square instead of diamond shaped
• The Watering Can now has more charges at each level to compensate for the new watering patterns, charges per level are 15, 36, 48, 64, 80, and 100
• When hunting, the tracks left by a fleeing animal last longer
• Hunting animal spawns have been rebalanced to be more even across the board, also a bug was addressed which was making the spawns lopsided towards particular animals
• The Close Shave perk will now always grant the player a 3rd wool when sheering a sheep
• The Profit buff from fermenting is now, well, more profitable. There should be a much larger gain when fermenting drinks for profit,
• Dynamite rooms in the mines will now spawn chests instead of other random objects like stamina crystals or buff pillars
• Stumps that are dug up now fade faster as the animation was a little strange before
• Decreased the material cost of fences and paths by about 5 of the required material
• Dark furniture recipes now require pine sap to be made
• Removed spice plants from spawning in any area that isnt grassland
• Modified additional forage spawns given via the forager perk, you now get fewer

Bug Fixes

• Any existing fermentation recipes have been deleted, this is due to a bug with the calculations which is addressed in this patch, a brief explanation is the 4th paragraph in the patch notes
• Fixed a bug where pigs had a chance to disappear or shift barns when finding truffles
• Fixed a bug where dialogue lines would get mixed and interchangeable in the first and second floors of the inn
• Fixed a bug that would cause patching to take multiple minutes depending on how many irrigation pipes you had placed in the world
• Fixed an issue where food that gave the Sure Strike and Prospector buff would mince the two buffs, with the cooking station reversing them in the effects listing
• Fixed an issue where cooking recipes that were crafted instantly wouldnt subtract the required heat
• Fixed a bug where the player couldnt add animals to a barn or coop when it was being upgraded
• Fixed a few bugs relating to the crafting of fish fillets
• Fixed a bug where plants in the swamp cavern were giving cotton as a resource
• Fixed a bug where pine trees could be tapped but not give anything while consuming the tap
• Fixed a bug where you couldnt place specifically Desert Flooring in any room with specifically a controller
• Fixed a bug where the silo wouldnt feed barn animals
• Fixed a bug where cranberries were considered a catalyst in fermenting
• Fixed an issue where certain light sources would turn on/off before/after others
• Fixed a bug where Isabel wouldnt actually sit at the bar in Summer, shed just walk into it like a broken Roomba
• Fixed a bug where carrots wouldnt provide the dark vision buff when used in fermenting despite saying they would
• Fixed a bug where wall objects could be placed half way into the walls due to a collision error
• Fixed a bug where NPCs werent running the proper schedule when it snowed
• Fixed a bug where cantaloupe seeds would grow more quickly than they were said to. The seeds now take 9 days to grow as the tooltip states
• Fixed an issue that would cause much of a marine dcor to be hard to place. The fix unfortunately will move any placed piece to the right, these will have to be manually picked up and moved back
• Fixed a few bugs with marine dcor hitboxes
• Fixed a bug where the wool count in the barn book for sheering sheep was incorrect as it wasnt counting the amount gained properly
• Fixed an issue where truffles could still spawn under objects in the barn
• Fixed a small issue with cow animations
• Fixed an issue where cracked ring, pottery shard, dull knife, and crude etching couldnt be traded in the artifact shop
• Fixed the Fireblood Potion sprite in the alchemy UI
• Fixed a bug where items in alchemy that you had already discovered all the recipes for would still appear in the discovery listing causing cascading problems
• Fixed a bug where alchemy recipes werent paging correctly and they were skipping recipes
• Fixed an issue where certain tiles in the swamp were not shifting correctly with the seasons
• Fixed a bug where the message about the silo running out of feed was running off the message box
• Fixed a bug where archeology fragments were not being distributed properly causing certain fragments to be far more common than others. Namely Divine and Fae fragments should be much easier to find now
• Fixed a visual issue where items in the recipe section of the brewing UI would overlap the UI awkwardly once you got enough of them
• Fixed an issue where selecting fermenting recipes wouldnt delete the ingredient sprites from the previous recipe selection
• Fixed a bug where flavor compliment multipliers for fermentation wouldnt calculate correctly
• Fixed a bug that caused fish in the fishery to take an extra day to lay an egg when initially put in the fishery
• Fixed a bug that made all fish eggs hatch at the same rate
• Fixed a bug where ore would spawn awkwardly from seams
• Made changes to the inventory system in the hopes of alleviating a softlock bug. Unclear if this has fixed the problem as I cant seem to trigger the issue
• Fixed a bug where placing objects too close to doors would cause them to incorrectly z order in the world
• Fixed a bug where chopping down trees in winter could trigger them to come back in a different seasonal state
• Fixed a bug where perks and level meters in the Perks tab of the inventory screen would show the description box as huge for a tick before displaying the appropriate information
• Fixed a bug where lightning would still flash even when the game was paused
• Fixed a cascading bug where certain sections of the mines wouldnt generate the proper tiles to cap walls off the correct way
• Fixed a bug that would create an extra text box depicting your HP in the center of the screen
• Fixed an issue where braziers would lose their shadows when they were lit
• Modified shadow positions for several different objects in the game
• Fixed a bug where minecart tracks in the mines would hide the players shadow
• Fixed a bug where the angler buff was not augmenting the fishing minigame as it was supposed to
• Fixed a bug where fermentation barrels would always spawn a drink after a patch. This fix will not take effect during this patch but will work for future patches
• Fixed a bug where Simeon is standing the wrong way when building a fishery
• Cleaned up the fishery construction sprite so the grass will always match the season
• Fixed an issue where the silo wouldnt hold its animation frame through a patch, I.E. it would have feed inside but show as empty in the game world
• Fixed a bug that was causing all food in the snacks section to have the incorrect sell price

[ 2022-02-11 17:45:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Already a month into 2022. It doesnt feel like it at all, but regardless its time to give you all an update as usual. This month was a little strained due to my holidays seeping into the first week of January, but a lot has still been done. I dont think Ill go into a ton of detail on whats up for the next patch, but rest assured things are being added and changed. Ive received a lot of feedback this month on certain aspects of the game so theres a good deal of QoL and changes coming. Ive also managed to get 2 more NPCs added, I just have to write their quests, 5 in total and then they will be ready. As for the patch itself, Im hoping it will be out in the next week or two. As mentioned a second ago, there are two NPCs that need quests written. I just outlined them the other night so they wont take long. There is some other stuff Id like to address in this patch that I havent done yet so the timeframe is a bit up in the air, but the patch should be in the near future. Outside of those notes, Ive started to actively divvy up my time a bit, perhaps another reason this patch is taking a bit longer. Ive mentioned before that combat is next on the docket so Im using some of my time to set out everything in that space. At this point its mostly monster design. While Ive had a lot of stuff laid out for some time, monsters were more cliff notes than anything else. I basically knew what kinds I wanted and where to put them, but there were some logistical challenges to figure out. I also had to figure out what their abilities would be. Bosses in particular are what Im mapping out at the moment. Currently Im about half way done figuring out their movesets and laying out a general idea of what each boss is about and how they are meant to challenge the player. There has also of course been some modifying of the combat systems and some streamlining. Looking back combat has changed quite a bit and gone through a few variations. The most recent changes mostly streamline how the player grows stronger and develops. To put things simply it used to be very, very complicated. Lots of different stats, ideas, items, ways to improve, etc. Overdeveloped would probably be an understatement. So that has all been reigned in to a fairly straight forward system. The other thing, which I think Im more excited about, is secrets. Granted Im also excited about combat, and most things in this game. This is something else Ive been talking about for a while as well. The map is obviously large and Id like to fill it up with lots of little challenges, rewards, or really just things to give some level of interaction to the game world. Ive had a chunk of this planned out for a while, but nothing hyper specific, just a nebulous idea with a few rewards I knew I wanted to include. Along with combat Ive started to separate out a portion of time for secrets to be added to the world. Im still devising a number of them, but if you subtract the ones found in dungeons its probably sitting at around 70ish things scattered around the map in various little hidden mechanics, puzzles, riddles, etc. Itll be a ton of work but Im super excited about it. One of things I remember about playing Harvest Moon was wanting to be able to wander around and run into little things in the world to discover and interact with, so Im hoping I can achieve that here. As usual there is still a long way to go. Thanks to everyone for bearing with the bugs and giving feedback, reviews, etc. I appreciate all of it as its all helping to make the game even better. Hopefully, in a week or so here youll have a nice new patch to play with.

[ 2022-01-29 20:14:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

One more news update for 2021. Its been a long year with a lot of updates and changes throughout, but well get into that later. There isnt a ton to talk about for this month. December tends to be slow with the holidays taking over the latter half of the month. Still, I have been getting things done, just nothing spectacular, I guess. Combat is still coming along. Monsters are mostly all squared away in terms of what they do. Bosses have also been setup in most ways, I think Im missing an idea for 1 or 2 at this point. Theres also just been some general refinement of the systems relating to combat. The longer I work on combat the more I seem to simplify it. I dont want to make it too straightforward obviously but some parts of the system in terms of progression, balance, and player stats were more obtuse than anything so theyve been modified or done away with for what I think will make a smoother experience. This is a farming sim after all, not a super complex JRPG. Aside from slogging through combat creation Ive been working on some other things as well. There are several bugs that are being addressed. Outside of that Ive got a few visual updates to the game that should add some nice touches. In the future Id like to look into more things like this its just a matter of finding the time as usually there are more important issues to address. Aside from the visuals, Ive got some new NPCs in the works. Currently, there are two that will be added next patch but there may be more depending on how things go. Both should also have a few quests accompanying them as well as two interiors because they cant live/work in a black void, although it would admittedly be way easier for me. I think thats mostly it as far as things worth mentioning specifically. While I cant make a guarantee Im hoping there will be a patch in January. Its somewhat dependent on a few art assets being made, but Id guess that wont be a huge issue. That marks the end of the new stuff. This next part was something I found interesting from a developer perspective. Given that its the end of the year I figured it might be a good time to look back. I keep daily backups of Verdant Village. So, I went back to what Verdant Village was at the start of the year to see the differences. I also looked back at the earliest build of the game ever which is a hilarious white screen with some moving blocks on it. In any case I dont pay a ton of attention to changes made over long periods of time. Once a feature is in the game, I eventually forget that it wasnt there at some point. Looking back at the old build and the patch notes over the year I found it interesting to see what was actually changed. Below is a list of the bigger items that have been added to the game over the year. I apologize if this seems self-indulgent, I dont mean to inflate my ego or anything I just found it interesting and thought others might as well. Anyway, over the course of 2021 Verdant Village has seen the following changes.

• 3 Zones (which I wont name for spoiler reasons)
• 4 New Archeology Artifacts
• 3 NPCs (Petra, Isabel, and Graham)
• 2 Shops
• 10 Quests
• The Fermentation System
• The Buffs System
• Fisheries
• Fish Traps
• Hunting Refinement (smoking, drying, and marinading meat)
• 33 Perks
• Minor Archeology Artifacts
• The Windmill System
• A Variety Of New Furniture
• A Set Of Fish For The Mines
• Cocoa Trees
• Barley And Rye
• The Mines Overhaul
• Fishing System Overhaul
• UI Upgrades
• Alchemy System Rework
• Buildable Silo
• Truffle System Overhaul
• Forage And Surface Ore Changes
• A Slew Of QoL
• An Even Larger Slew Of Bug Fixes

Listing things out like that makes it seem sort of small actually. I think condensing down Bug Fixes and QoL into two lines is the cause of that. Looking back at the patch notes bug fixes alone were pretty much always multi page lists. Its also occurred to me while making this just how many things were reworked in large ways, which I cant say I planned to do from the outset. Looking back at this is a bit telling, I think. A lot of my time was spent fixing bugs or reworking systems. I dont want to set myself up here, but I think 2022 will be far more focused on additions rather than fixes or changes. Of course, Ill fix whatever crops up but I think things are reasonably stable, bar a couple of outstanding issues. At this point most of the major systems are in place. Major systems are something I define as a system that will take me multiple weeks to code and setup. There were several of these in the past year, the mines rework, fermentation, hunting refinement, alchemy rework, etc. At the moment I can foresee a few more large systems, such as combat, the topic and general conversation/cutscene/romance system, one that I wont mention because I havent talked about it yet, and the compendium, which wont be hard so much as just a lot of stuff. Keep in mind these are the large systems, it doesnt constitute other smaller things such as animal breeding, secrets, tailoring, holidays, or other things. So, there is still a lot to do but the point is a lot of this years work was squashing bugs, but another huge part was just setting up or reworking very large systems. Since there arent as many large systems to work on going forward, Ill have time to fill out the game in smaller ways, more NPCs, zones, and things to populate the areas. Essential a lot of whats been done I would call framework. Once the frame work is in place its very easy to create things within it. So with any luck that means more content faster. All that said Im excited to get started on 2022. I think a lot of cool things are going to be added to Verdant Village this year. With any luck you all will have the same opinion. As always, thanks for sticking with me through the bugs and development process. I appreciate all the feedback, reviews, reports, and everything else. This game is something Ive wanted to make since I was like 11 so Im happy I finally get to do that and share it with people. I hope you all had a good 2021 (or as good as it could be with Covid), and I wish you all a happy new year as well.

[ 2021-12-29 21:08:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

With the recent patching and such it feels a little too soon to be writing something up again however, here we are. A day late of course because it nearly slipped my mind. My attention lately has been focused on some of the more obvious bugs in Verdant Village. There are things that Im told about and others that crop up naturally as Im testing. Bug fixing aside Ive noted down, and made a few changes to some minor elements of the game in the hopes of polishing it up in a few places. Little details usually dont rank highly on my list of things to accomplish, but they are important none the less. All that said, there is still more obvious development going on. Im currently splitting my time between smaller additions and the combat system. As for smaller additions Ive got two NPCs in the works. I was developing the schedules on them until I realized that I would need to create another section of a zone to fully add them. Currently Im sidetracked on that. Aside from them I have a small system Id like to put in as it will allow me to readd one of the quests I made unavailable with the alchemy changes. Past those things I havent thought too hard about what smaller bits I want to add next. I have a seemingly endless list of things to do, maybe I should put all the ideas on a dart board and randomly choose. Being serious however, I think NPCs are going to be in my sights for the near future. There are quite a few missing and at this point in development I dont think its acceptable to still have buildings in town you cant enter so Id like to clear that up. As for combat Ive been nailing down the finer points of the system. Lots of numbers and excel spreadsheets, you know, the kind of pulse pounding things you think of when you think combat. Most of my time has been dedicated to balancing various elements, determining abilities for both the player and enemies, progression, combat areas, dungeons, deciding on bosses, AI difficulty, etc. Basically, getting all my ducks in a row before I start truly coding things. Ultimately, Ive determined the combat will be turn based with a few twists to keep it interesting hopefully. Ive toyed with some ideas, but Ive settled on this one. While I wouldnt mind coding some sort of top-down Zelda like combat the game isnt made to have that sort of combat structure. A lot of that sort of gameplay is tied to the environments you are in when you encounter enemies and balancing several parts of the combat puzzle while fighting. Verdant Village wouldnt handle that well. It might work in a few places but it would definitely fall short. Thats not even commenting on the issues there would be just coding it in an efficient way as the game wasnt designed with real time combat in mind. If I did real time combat it would probably end up being horribly basic due to the limitations, so better to avoid it, I think. All that said I want to keep things snappy when designing combat. Quick animations and little down time so the fight keeps moving. Outside of actual combat itself Im doing what I can to weave the system into the game itself. I dont want combat to be that isolated system that you just have to interact with every so often. I plan for it to be part of the game with risks and rewards for fighting anything from a random enemy to a boss. On top of that I plan to tie a good deal of the progression to item gathering. By that I mean obtaining items from monsters, maybe some mining or foraging or alchemy. In short you wont just be able to fight things to get stronger, in fact there is no planned level system really, youll have to do various things to improve yourself, some of which you will probably already be doing. But thats enough about combat for now. Outside of that, while I said NPCs will likely be my focus for a bit, Ive also spoken about secrets somewhat in the past. They are still something that Id like to address sooner rather than later. With any luck Ill find some time to start scattering things around the world that you can uncover for rewards. Ive mostly been hesitant on putting anything in because most of the ideas I have for secrets tie into either combat, which isnt implemented, or a smaller system that will need to be put in. If youve made it this far you can probably tell that there is a lot to do. You uhyou would be right. Thats nothing new of course and as usual Ill keep working to fix whats broken and get more things added. I cant promise any sort of time frame on a new patch, but I have it in the back of my mind to keep the pacing of them somewhat steady so it probably wont be terribly long. In any case, thanks for reading, hope you are enjoying the game, and with any luck Ill have an update for the game soon.

[ 2021-12-02 03:04:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small hotfix patch for Verdant Village. This one is mostly to sure up one issue but makes a few other small changes listed below.

Verdant Village V0.4.5.3 Full Changelog

• Fixed an issue where the Silo couldnt be built if you had already completed the Ranchers Trial quest pre-patch 0.4.5
• Fixed an issue where discovered alchemy recipes wouldnt be retained after a patch. This patch should retain anything you have unlocked as well
• Fixed a bug with Calebs pathing
• Fixed an issue with the meal prep perk where it would create recipes the player hadnt unlocked
• Made minor updates to several homes to further match the NPCs trade
• Standardized the Sure Strike buff to display the time the player has the buff
• Made alterations to the barn collisions, this should hopefully keep any animals from getting loose

[ 2021-11-27 22:22:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another quick hotfix for two things, one larger than the other. Probably not worth writing anything out in detail so Ill just list the changes below.

Verdant Village V0.4.5.2 Full Changelog

Bug Fixes

• The cavern in the bog should now spawn the correct forage objects and the correct variety of plants
• Fixed a bug with cooking that was causing certain items to appear as others

[ 2021-11-14 20:02:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Im back once again with a small hotfix for patch V0.4.5. Ive missed a thing or two here as usual. I apologize for the inconvenience. Not to make excuses, but this game has a lot of systems and things tend to slip past me. Or I make a change and dont realize that it breaks something else. In any case if you read nothing else in this patch notes read this, and Ill put it in caps to hopefully draw peoples eyes. IF YOU ARE MISSING A CHEST AFTER PATCH V0.4.5 THEN WALK TOWARDS TOWN FROM THE RIGHT SIDE OF YOUR FARM, YOUR MISSING CHESTS SHOULD BE WAITING FOR YOU TO COLLECT THEM. For those curious on the details, there was an oversight in the patching for the interior storage of coops and barns. They didnt spawn their own storage properly when the game patched and as a result the game stole chests from the front of the storage array and repositioned them to a hidden place on the game layout. Ive tested this fix a few times with various save files. This hotfix patch should create storage for the building interiors and reposition your items in town near the bridge to enter your farm from the right. Aside from that there was also a bug with livestock. If you read the 0.4.5 patch notes or played you might have noticed that the barn was smaller. The issue had to do with a hole in the collisions map. This allowed animals inside the barn to leave. Animals are not always spawned into the world, they despawn when you leave a barn. But if the animal walked out of the barn area before it was told to despawn it would remain in the world wandering. As animals function on a different set of collisions they could also freely walk into other areas. I know at least one player said one wandered into their house. This is because the interiors are all clustered together in one area so they wouldnt need to walk far to wander into any interior area. In any case, this also caused issues with animals being fed. And I know at least one died during the lapse. Im told their name was Peppa, RIP little piggy. I unfortunately cant do anything to fix this sort of thing with a patch. So if you lost an animal Im afraid they are gone for good. This patch will also fix any animals that did get loose and put them back into place. Aside from that there was a report of a pig finding truffles that werent appearing. This should also be fixed. It also had to do with resizing the barn. While Ive explained everything here, Ive put together the changelog below as well.

Verdant Village V0.4.5.1 Full Changelog

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug with chests disappearing post patch (If you had a chest go missing leave your farm through the right side of the map, your chests should be laid out on the path there)
• Fixed a bug where storage chests wouldnt appear in coops and barns
• Fixed a bug where animals could escape the barn and be seen in other interiors
• Fixed a bug where truffles may not appear in the barn each day
• Fixed a small animation bug with upward facing small chests

[ 2021-11-14 01:16:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's finally patch time for Verdant Village again. I was hoping to push this out a little more quickly than I did honestly. I kept running into small issues or new bugs that prevented me from doing so however. It sort of turned into a situation of just one more thing, then Ill patch until, well, here we are. Thanks for your patience on the matter. For a brief summary, this patch isnt anything radical. There are a few changes and additions and some QoL for the most part. With everything in this patch taken care of Im hoping to focus more on adding some overdue content to the game. Its been a while since I added an NPC to the game and there are still plenty to add. Secrets were also something I wanted to start getting around to as they house some of the more interesting rewards. The compendium (a built-in mini wiki) seems like something people would like as well. Theres also a multitude of other things to tackle, but thats not exactly new. In any case, this is a patch not a news update so I wont babble on forever. Below is a full list of the changes made to the game. As usual if you encounter an issue feel free to report it and Ill look into the problem as quickly as I can.

Verdant Village Patch 0.4.5 Full Changelog

Additions

• Added a quest for Sven
• Alchemy has been changed in a large way. You will no longer receive recipes from quests, and any youve gotten will be forgotten post patch. Instead, alchemy items can be combined to discover alchemy recipes in the game
• Many alchemy items have been added to the game as a result of the previous change to the system. This was done as the basic code for these items was already intact in the game and coding the game to ignore these entries would have likely caused more issues in the future. A broad note is that not everything has a use right now, but will in the future
• Contrary to what I just said, Ive added several potions with new effects that can now be made via alchemy
• Added a silo to the game which will automatically feed animals housed in tier three barns or coops. This building is rewarded from the Ranchers Trial quest. If you have completed the quest already it will be unlocked for you. You can construct this building via Simeon as usual, and like the stable you can only have one at a time
• Added built in storage for barns and coops, each building now has a single small chest within it for storage
• Hunting animals will now produce bones as an item which can be turned into stock at your cooking station. TIL you can make stock from bones, who knew, not me, thats who
• Truffle system for pigs has been overhauled. Pigs will now find a truffle every day, but there are now several types of truffles with different rarities. Obviously, the rarer ones have less of a chance of being found. This should make pigs feel like a more worthwhile purchase
• Added both gates and large gates for placeable walls, these can be ordered from the shipping chest and are available from the start of the game
• Reset the quest Gardening Aid for Remi and made it temporarily unavailable due to the changes in alchemy rewards. This will be readded once the new reward is implemented
• Reset the quest Fishy Friends for Mattias and made it temporarily unavailable due to the changes in alchemy rewards. This will be readded once the new reward is implemented

QoL (Quality of Life)

• Recalibrated surface mining node spawns so that the game will no longer be stuck in a state where it cannot spawn any more nodes in a certain zone. If you failed to every see nodes respawn in the swamp, this change should fix that
• Recalibrated forage spawns in the world so that spawns will be more evenly distributed in the world throughout the various zones
• Updated animal status for pigs to show the types of truffles they have found
• The perk associated with truffle finding has also been modified to compensate for the changes to pigs
• Pigs will now always find a gilded truffle on their birthday
• Added a smaller complete image of archeology puzzle artifacts to serve as a helpful guide for completing the puzzles
• Updated fermentation buff descriptions to match buff names
• Added a fishery tutorial
• Modified Quents Alchemical Wonders quest to adhere to the new alchemy system
• Modified Petras rockslide clearing quest to adhere to the new alchemy system
• Modified Alices Dying for Dye quest to, you guessed it, adhere to the new alchemy system
• Put a character limit in place for names. The limit it around 20 characters, this is mostly just to prevent putting in something extremely long as it starts to make the dialogue look a bit odd in a lot of cases.
• Moved animal feed to be in the front of Mels store to make it more easily accessible
• Altered quest reward text for the Helpful Hunter quest to say Sconce instead of Wall Candle to match the object blueprints given
• Adjusted animal spawn rates for hunting to make some animals easier to find in different seasons
• Shrunk the barn interior to a more reasonable size

Balance Changes

• Added a few seeds to the starting chest when starting a new game, mostly as something to hopefully give a bit of direction for players new to the genre as unlike other games you arent really explicitly told to farm
• Changed the mines to spawn coal veins on every level, this chance is still far less than normal past floor 60
• Raised amber drop rate in the mines from floor 1-20
• Reworked fishing traps to always yield at least 2 fish before breaking, however they can catch up to 10 in total. Once the related perk is acquired these odds are more favorable as well
• Mildly increased ore seam spawn rate in all floors of the mines
• When archeology is unlocked more fragments are spawned initially to prevent the player from finding keystones as easily

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where fowl wouldnt drop feathers ever. Note that ducks and geese do not have a 100% drop rate so they will not spawn feathers every day
• Feathers are also tracked via the livestock UI now so you can play favorites based on who drops more
• Fixed a bug where the mine wasnt capping properly allowing you to go past level 125
• Changed the mines so that you cant dig for clay on the first floor anymore, which was a left over from a previous patch. Clay must now be gathered in the swamp via nodes, this I have decreed
• Fixed a bug where fishing traps wouldnt give the correct fish for where they were placed
• Fixed several instances of wild berry bushes overlapping each other which prevented the player from picking both
• Fixed the Buff UI not appearing correctly when on the right side of the screen
• Fixed a typo in the keysprite barrier examination text
• Fixed an issue where the horse galloping SFX wouldnt play if you held a movement key while mounting
• Fixed the portcullis UI not functioning if your player was in position to interact with a store
• Fixed Simeon not saying specific dialogue when constructing a building on your farm
• Fixed a dialogue parsing bug in the quest Archeological Crash Course
• Fixed a bug where items that give the Sure Strike buff in fermentation wouldnt give the buff
• Added cocoa bean sprite for when you shake them out of cocoa trees, because no one should be subjected to my severely lacking artistic capabilities
• Fixed a bug where certain surface mining nodes would spawn multiple nodes in one place
• Fixed the building GUI not listing buildings properly after removing or moving an existing building
• Fixed a bug where the adequate barn would not highlight when trying to upgrade it to a spacious barn
• Fixed an issue with the quest to fix the minecart not triggering if you spoke with Sven via his shop before speaking to him directly. The quest should also be unlocked for anyone who patches up to this version
• Fixed a rounding error that occurred when digging up artifact fragments, this would cause random bugged fragments to be given to the player
• Fixed an issue where trying to interact with Isabels shop before you met her would result in a message about how you need to meet her first, even if she was, you know, standing at the shop
• Added sprites to all archeology curios that you can dig up
• Fixed an issue where the portcullis button was still clickable even when in various UIs
• Fixed a bug where deer hides and hoofs could be broken down for aqueous essence in alchemy
• Fixed an alchemy issue where certain recipes in certain circumstances wouldnt consume all of the ingredients they required
• Fixed an issue with the buff UI not displaying descriptions properly
• Fixed a bug where interior doors in the player home would disappear. Any doors that had previously disappeared should return upon patching
• Fixed a bug with fishing trap spawns that still appeared in the swamp on land
• Fixed controller support bug that kept the player from placing wallpaper in their home
• Fixed a controller support bug that kept the player from dismantling rugs and certain objects
• Fixed a large bug that miscalculated where objects could be placed on surfaces, for instance placing lockboxes on end tables
• Fixed a z ordering bug with Isabels shop table that would cause her to stand on top of it like a mad lass
• Fixed another bug that kept players from interacting with the left most section of Isabels shop
• Fixed a controller bug where the player could spawn a cursor while performing other actions which would cause unintended consequences
• Fixed a text error in the Collapsed Roof Renovation quest dialogue
• Fixed another typo in Ethans dialogue
• Fixed a typo in Isabels introduction dialogue
• Fixed a bug where cooking food in your own stove would make every other stove in the game excited and display an ! prompt
• Fixed several slight bugs in the mine generation code that resulted in slight collision box and visual glitches
• Fixed an issue where the Unique Spices quest for Remi was giving a different recipe than what was said in the reward text
• Adjusted green and red peppers so that their descriptions accurately matched their growth rates
• Fixed a parsing error with the Lightfooted perk description text
• Fixed a bug where you could assemble artifacts without the keystone assuming you have enough fragments in your inventory
• Added a small amount of code that will make Mels animals only appear during the day as they need to sleep too
• Fixed a bug where you could still move if you were mounted when the day ends
• Fixed a bug where some of the archeology artifact names would run off the UI
• Fixed a collision error with the portcullis button where it was unclickable while on certain frames of its animation
• Fixed a bug where the swamp cavern wouldnt spawn plants past year one
• Fixed a bug where the swamp cavern wouldnt spawn plants in winter
• Fixed a small bug that caused music to play the same song far more often than the others

[ 2021-11-12 17:48:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Looks like October has come and gone here, time for another look into development. Theres been a lot of work going on, but not a lot of standout developments to really dig into. Last month I talked a bit about combat and showed off a few monster designs. Work is still proceeding on that front, but my attention has turned pretty squarely onto this next small patch. Its been a bit since Verdant Village has seen a patch. Admittedly that is my fault. I meant to be a little more frequent with patches, but the changes I wanted to make kept growing/giving me weird issues to deal with. First and foremost, there are a number of bug fixes or changes to smooth out smaller issues. Aside from that, gates are being added in for placeable walls. These took longer than expected. I believe I said before that Ive had them partially implemented but I paused on them for reasons I didnt remember. Well, when I went back to finish the job I remembered why I stopped. In short, they have not been easy to get working, and involved a fair bit of tinkering to get them figured into the existing wall code. Aside from that, the other big change is alchemy which is more wide reaching both in the current game and the future. Ive been analyzing a lot of how Verdant Village is constructed. One of the things I looked at was quests. A lot of quests were setup to give alchemy recipes (and combat components but thats less important). I decided I didnt like this. While it might make sense for Quent or Petra to give you an alchemy recipe it didnt make much sense for most of the other characters. Because of this, the next patch is changing alchemy. Instead of being handed recipes youll be doing something that is far more in the spirit of alchemy as I see it. The alchemy UI will have a new section that allows you to mix and match items to discover recipes on your own. I figure this would make more sense in terms of gameplay and it keeps quest rewards from just becoming more of you getting a random recipe. I figure thats a little more passable with things like cooking recipes since cooking is a common skill. However, it doesnt make sense for Sven the smith, who is an old grumpy man with no interest in alchemy, to teach you an alchemy recipe. Aside from those two things a lot of this next patch is just QoL. Things like rocks and forage objects spawns now operating separately based on their zones which should result in a more even spawning of objects in the world. This will solve problems like no rocks spawning in the swamp for instance. Fish traps have been reworked to actually be worth the trouble. The current iteration in the game is technically useful, but the chances of a fish trap actually catching more than one fish before breaking were way to high. Some of the spawns in the mines were changed. Livestock got some updates, specifically a bug to finally fix feathers not dropping, and another change to make truffles from pigs a generally better system. Like I said at the start, a lot of little things. Changing alchemy is the big thing this patch, which unfortunately feels like treading old ground as it isnt a brand-new system. Im hoping that this will be the last time I decide to rework a major system in general. With any luck this patch should hit in the next week or two. Bar any huge complications Im mostly done, although I do have some outstanding bugs Id like to look into before I release anything. Still, you can probably expect something in the first half of November. Thanks again for your patience and I hope you all are having fun playing Verdant Village so far.

[ 2021-10-31 18:55:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Time for another news update. Things have slowed down a little bit for the game this month. Although, thinking on it, that might only be in comparison to last month where there was a large content patch and then several smaller patches. I've been hard at work regardless trying to get plenty of things squared away. Combat has taken a larger chunk of my time and will likely continue to in the future. I don't tend to post works in progress but I think I might attach some images of the art as its at least interesting to look at in my opinion.
Combat aside I've been trying to split my time into little things that still need to be addressed, smaller systems that I can add, etc. For those who have followed the game a bit they'll know that there was nearly a year of content drought for v0.4. I have no intentions of doing that again because it just sucks from a player perspective to get nothing new for a year. Granted that lapse in updates was more circumstantial than anything. In short, I hope to be bringing out smaller patches to breach the gap between large updates (like combat). These will include smaller systems, new NPCs, new quests, zones, balance and bug fixes, etc. Currently, I've got a few things figured out along with some minor fixes. Gates (for walls) will be in the next patch, I remember now why I stopped working on them, I had to basically remake the entire wall engine. Aside from that some balancing for how things spawn in the world, and a change to truffles for pigs. I'm sure some other stuff will be in there too. In the near future I'd like to get repeatable quests in, that would just be small tasks from a task board. The secret puzzles need to go in as well once I get some of the rewards squared away. I think I'd also like to start up on what I think I'm going to call the "compendium" which will be an ingame resource that tracks tons of stuff. For instance collections, tutorials for various parts of the game, past conversations and quest dialogues, and probably more than that in the future. Sort of like a mini wiki that you fill in as you play. Aside from that there are some NPCs that should really be added so I'll need to refocus on that as well in the near future. I'd prefer if every house in town could be entered at the very least. NPCs are a little easier to add but I felt I should put a little justification in for the lack of new zones. Those who have been playing for a while will probably also know that I haven't really added zones much in recent patches. This is mostly because I'm trying to give some more thought to each zone as to the size it should be and what I can put there to justify expanding the world. The plains are a zone that could have been smaller, I don't want to create another large empty expanse like that so I'm taking zone creation a bit more slowly. If I had to guess the plains will likely see some sort of addition in the future as well to give them some purpose. I don't think there is much more to say than that. Hopefully in the coming weeks there will be a new small patch and we'll go from there. Thank you all for playing, hope you are having fun with the game so far.

[ 2021-10-02 00:34:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small hotfix to take care of one serious issue and a few other small things I stumbled across. Not much to say other than I hope this is the end of the bugs for now so I can buckle down on combat. Of course, if you run into something let me know via the steam forums or the discord. As usual, full changelog below. Verdant Village V0.4.4 Full Changelog

• Fixed a bug where chests would create collision objects that were far too large causing there to be invisible barriers in their vicinity. Unfortunately, this fix relies on resetting all chests to a default rotation. If you had chests that were rotated, they will be all forced into the default position after this patch and will need to be moved manually, apologies for the inconvenience
• Fixed a bug in the keybindings interface where binding an arrow key would show a blank space. If you already had an arrow key bound you may need to rebind it to actually see the new symbol
• Fixed a bug where objects were incorrectly identified as catalysts in the fermentation UI. This would also cause a host of issues with fermentation recipes most notably them not being saved
• Fixed a small visual bug with the fermentation UI where arrow buttons would overlap other UI elements
• Went through and ensured that all fermentation components had the proper values to keep the UI from throwing 0s in various descriptions and voiding potential buffs
• Fixed a small SFX bug on the load game screen
• Oyster timers have been adjusted to open more frequently and lock you out for a much shorter period of time upon failure to grab a pearl
• Fixed a bug where the cooking station notification box would not disappear when utilizing the Meal Prep perk
• Fixed a bug where you couldnt click on the portcullis UI with the cursor when using a controller

[ 2021-09-06 15:53:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small hotfix to take care of some outstanding issues from patch 0.4. I think this will put the game in a pretty stable state. Of course if you find more bugs report them and Ill deal with whatever comes up. With that said there isnt much else I think, the full changelog is below. Verdant Village V0.4.3 Changelog

• Added a setting to turn off the flashes that accompany lightning
• Fixed a hunting bug where you could shoot an animal that was already dying which would reset the animation
• Gutted and remade the code around using the bow to hopefully alleviate any issues with the bow becoming locked. I fired around 200 arrows and didnt run into issues, so Im either incredibly lucky or its fixed. Hoping for the latter
• Added a main menu button next to the exit game button incase you want to go back to the main menu instead of quitting all the way out of the game
• Fixed a bug where Petra wouldnt move through her normal schedule. She will likely require one full in game day before she starts to move normally again
• Added a small chance of coal appearing on all floors of the mines as it is useful at basically all points in the game. The best place to mine it however is still floor 50 and below
• Fixed a bug with controllers not working during dialogue and a few other select places in the game. If you find that controller support is still not functioning in certain places please let me know
• Fixed a bug where cocoa saplings that were planted would disappear after one day
• Fixed a bug where the cooking station notification icon would remain permanently over the cooking station

[ 2021-09-03 02:00:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another month down, this one with some significant progress which was long overdue. If youre new to these sorts of posts I make them at the end of the month (and usually miss posting them by a day because something inevitably comes up to prevent me from writing them). As anyone who has played Verdant Village recently will probably know V0.4 and two hotfixes have been released this month, ending a very long patch drought. Ive mentioned it before, but that was mostly due to getting caught up on art and SFX assets. If youre looking for the details on those patches you can check the three previous posts to find what has changed. I do want to say thanks to everyone who has played (and dealt with bugs) I appreciate everyone sticking with the game for so long and any post patch rough spots that I tend to create. Patch aside, Id rather move into whats to come, because of course there is still a lot to add to Verdant Village. Before anything major, I am working on another hotfix issue to tie up a few lingering issues. Most notably, using the bow to hunt will still lock up and there are some controller support issues. Assuming I dont run into any large problems, that hotfix will hopefully be here before the end of the week. As for the future, the next content patch that I had planned was combat. Its something thats been long overdue and should add a significant chunk of gameplay and resource gathering loops to keep players occupied. There are several other small systems and additions that will likely go along with this as well. I dont expect this will take nearly as long as it did for patch 0.4 to come out as its far more focused, but time will tell. Regardless, Ill talk more about combat in the near future Im sure. The other thing I wanted to address was something that has been nagging at me for a long time. A few posts recently have forced me to consider it more fully once again. Game dev is constant reassessment of what you are making after all. The issue is that of the size of the world in Verdant Village. There have been a few mentions of it being too large, empty, etc. Of course I expected some of these comments because the game is in early access and not everything is filled in. However, over the course of development, goals and systems have changed. Things that I thought would be added have either been scraped in place of other systems or merged with other things. This leaves me in something of an odd state. To give some perspective, my original reason for having a large world was due to my playing Harvest Moon FoMT. Id imagine at this point most people would think I based this game off of Stardew Valley and while it certainly played a part in shaping the game, Ive always considered Harvest Moon to be what I was basing this game off of. I bring this up because HM FoMT had a fairly small world, it was for the GBA after all. If I recall correctly, it was your farm, a town with a beach, and some nature south of your farm, thats it. I wanted a larger world because, when I was a kid, I always wanted to explore more, but the game didnt really allow for it. Exploration wasnt really the point of the game outside of the secrets here and there. When I started making Verdant Village this was something I wanted to achieve. However, as time passed and I got further into making this game I realized that having vast areas to explore presented two problems. One, usually players have to check back into their farm each day to water crops, feed animals, etc. This means lots of back and forth. And two, the point of the game. To keep it simple, farming sims are mostly about, well, farming, raising livestock, building your farm. There are of course some other systems, fishing, hunting, mining, etc, but none of these really require a massive map. You really just need one place to go and do them as the systems themselves arent really complex enough to warrant doing them in multiple places. I.E. picking berries in the fields or the woods is essentially the same thing. The nature in these games needs to be there, but this isnt Minecraft. You can only interact with a limited number of things so a massive world ends up being a lot of set dressing for no real purpose. Pretty landscapes can of course be cool and fun to run around in, ala Skyrim, but I think we can all agree that this doesnt have the visual fidelity of Skyrim. Id imagine that the people who have put significant time into this game would agree that they spend plenty of time just walking because while the zones are large there isnt anything to keep you there. Of course, one obvious solution is to fill the wilderness with interesting things. The problem with this twofold. If the point of the game is to build your farm up, the most valuable things should only be attainable at that farm, bar something like the occasion secret. It wouldnt make sense to put tons of effort and time into your farm only to walk into the field nearby and pick some berries that sell for more than anything your gone to the effort of making. This naturally makes the wilderness less enticing as the rewards shouldnt ever really outshine your farm. They should be a small reward for going out of your way if anything. Or things that are more important at the start when you havent built up your farm yet. The second problem is a system problem. By their nature, these types of games have simple gameplay. I dont think any of us play these games for the fast-paced complex gameplay of something like Street Fighter or Starcraft. Building your farm is a long form gameplay loop. Over a long period of time, you get little bits of growth that keep you invested. Gameplay in the wilderness usually amounts to see thing, pick up thing. That isnt super interesting. I could fill everything with minigames, grabbing pearls from oysters in the grotto is an example of this. That said, Id be willing to bet this would just devolve into tedium when you have to play the 500th minigame to pick up a flower. Together what these issues mean is that there a lot of little reasons that meld together to make large empty maps boring. The solution of course would be putting in content. The problem is that, due to the nature of these games, the content that would be added would likely be shallow and not hold most peoples interest unless they had to do it. Not to mention the rewards for completing such content likely wouldnt be worth it. Ive gone on thisrant? Tangent? Explanation? To hopefully give some perspective to those who maybe havent considered this. I dont like to jump to change things when just a few people make a comment. Not that it isnt a potentially good idea, but Id be crazy to make drastic modifications to the game each time someone mentioned changing something. However, in this situation I can see the logic. As I said this is something that has nagged at me, for the lack of a better term, for a while. I ignored it because I thought there were future plans that would compensate for the problem. The more I examine the scope of the game however the more I think that the solutions, while they might mitigate part of the problem, would really not do enough to solve it. Ive taken all this time to say this, while it isnt set in stone, Im considering shrinking the world some. When making this game I dont think I stopped to consider the design philosophy of a larger world and what it would mean. I thought a larger world would automatically be better. But the phrase, size of an ocean, depth of a puddle comes to mind. It seems that, with the other elements and general gameplay loop set, a larger world only serves to spread out the entertaining bits and force you to walk long distances. The travel time is a gameplay equivalent of a sputtering engine, where you have to pause the fun to run somewhere every two minutes. So, I bet you thought, he just put out a patch, he probably wont have much to say in this update but here we are. The question Id like to ask is, what do you all think? Early Access is made for feedback and iteration after all. Maybe Im completely wrong and most people like the size of the map. But Id like to see where we stand so I can hopefully make improvements. I feel I should also specify. If I were to shrink the map it would mostly amount to squeezing a lot of areas together and shrinking the size. I dont think Id cut anything from the game, just downsize the play area and probably combine some zones so that the interesting bits are more packed together. I think thats it, if youd like to give me your opinion, Id be happy to hear it. Ill also be posing this question in the discord so if youd rather answer there, Ill be watching it as well. I hope patch 0.4 has given you all some enjoyment, there will be more to come in the future, with any luck a lot more quickly than before.

[ 2021-09-02 00:42:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small hotfix to take care of several issues that have arisen post patch 0.4. There are still a few things Im looking into as well as minor additions that people have requested. The biggest bug that I cant figure out at the moment is the bow becoming locked. If you experience an issue where you fire the bow and then are suddenly unable to do so again please let me know along with whatever details you remember. Aside from that I dont think theres much to say. Thanks to everyone whos been reporting issues and of course everyones patience. I very much appreciate you all helping me to make this game better, or perhaps more accurately not broken. Full changelog is below as usual, hope you all enjoy. Verdant Village Full Changelog V0.4.2

• The alchemy station will no longer allow players to infinitely craft items. This issue stemmed from the system being able to find resources in chests but not actually subtract resources from the stacks.
• Fixed a bug where you could lock your interactions after successfully grabbing a pearl from an oyster
• Changed the clock UI slightly so that it will not show descriptions and text when you are in another GUI to avoid overlap
• Isabels shop now has a collision so you cant ghost through it
• Fixed an issue where the artifact exchange shop would leave behind pieces of UI upon being closed
• There was a bug with quest rewards not appearing in the shipping chest, most notably the lockbox recipes you receive from Kiera were not appearing. This has been fixed, if you encountered this bug the rewards should be unlocked for you post patch
• Fixed a bug where all artifact puzzles were showing the same puzzle
• Fixed a bug with artifact puzzles where puzzles with the maximum number of tiles would show an extra tile making them unfinishable
• Mines minimap has been updated and should now appear properly
• Mines minimap has undergone a slight visual change in order to better accommodate ladder symbols in certain rooms
• Fixed a bug where the buff monument in the mines wouldnt always grant a buff. Fun fact, rounding a number is different than flooring a number.
• Fixed incorrect icons being used in the cooking station buff section
• Fixed a minor visual bug where deconstructing the cooking station would leave an item on the ground with no icon
• Fixed a bug that made it rather difficult to click the portcullis button
• Fixed a bug where the cooking station wouldnt show a notification icon when food was done cooking. An important note. This fix required hard resetting the status of the cooking station. This means that if you had food that was done cooking when the patch was applied you will not see a notification box above your cooking station post patch. This is a one-time issue and any food that is cooked post patch should result in a notification box when it is finished

[ 2021-08-26 02:54:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, very small hotfix patch for a few things today. Given how many different systems could have blown up in V0.4 Im pleasantly surprised to see that the bugs (black screen and saving aside) seem to be isolated to a few key things. Of course, they still need to be addressed and I will attempt to do so quickly. I did want to put this small hotfix out to fix a few things. One rather large glaring issue still remains but as I cant seem to find a quick solution to it Ive opted to at least fix the few things that Ive come across. To address something quickly, the mines are still not fixed. Multiple players have experienced invisible collisions and objects not working in the mines. I am currently seeking to address this issue, and as soon as I figure it out, I will put out a patch for it. That said I do apologize as I realize the mines are a very important place in the game, and you need to go there quite often. At the moment I cant seem to replicate the issue, hence the delay. Ive spent hours in the mines at this point and havent seen the bugs at all which leaves me rather stumped. There were some minor changes made to the mines in this hotfix, so maybe those have fixed the overall issues, but I find that unlikely, still I guess a potential bonus is that these issues are fixed. In any case Ill try to find a solution as soon as I can. Below, as usual, is the full changelog, this one is quite a bit shorter. Verdant Village Patch 0.4.1 Changelog

• Popup text for buffs has had its character spacing adjusted so letters will be spaced more consistently
• The mines minimap should no longer reveal random rooms or room outlines with no room sprite
• Text teaching you most of the alphabet appearing in the top right corner after certain interactions with the cooking station should disappear and never return, hope you leaned A-V
• Fixed a small bug with hidden caves leaving their interaction objects behind resulting in your character sometimes spouting disconcerting lines about blowing up walls
• The quest to fix the minecart should now function properly. If you have already introduced yourself to Sven it should be ready to obtain, if you have not youll have to talk to him first

[ 2021-08-20 02:11:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alright, this has been an extremely long time coming. I am happy to announce that there is finally a patch for Verdant Village. Ive spent a long time on this so hopefully it lives up to the wait. I feel I owe just a bit of explanation for those out of the loop. Prior to this long patching dry spell I had been updating weekly. This changed for two reasons. First, I cant keep that pace and put out significant content once per week when working a full-time job. Second, Steam has systems in place that reward large patches over small ones. A lot of this delay was also just due to funding and having my artist play catch up. That shouldnt become an issue again at this point. So, what actually changed? Well, a lot. The aim of this patch was to sure up a lot of loose ends, squash bugs, polish existing systems, flesh out other systems, and add a few new ones. Sort of a grab bag of changes honestly. There is still a lot to do, but I feel the game is now in a much better state. In the future patches should be focused more on content. For instance, the next patch on the docket is combat. There is an entire combat system that still needs to be put into the game. Aside from this there are still a lot of missing NPCs, quests, and several other systems that Ill piece in as I can. I did want to mention as well that there have been calls for various different features to be added. I got to some things this patch and not others. While I cant say Ill add everything that has been suggested I just wanted to say here that I have been listening, and usually responding. Every idea that has been suggested I have written down for consideration so if you dont see something you suggested in here just know that I havent forgotten and it may show up in a future patch. So, I think Ive made people wait long enough. Speaking of which, thank you to everyone who has reported bugs, and had patience with me for the duration here. Below is a changelog for this patch that Ive separated into sections to make it a bit more readable. Last note, there are likely some bugs still mixed in, but Ive done some pretty extensive testing so hopefully they arent anything major. If you find an issue, please report it and Ill fix it as soon as Im able. Hope you all enjoy.

Verdant Village 0.4 Changelog

Additions

• Added new zone Harontin Estate
• Added new zone Glittering Grotto (finally a reason to fix the bridge on the beach)
• Added 4 Archeology artifacts to find and assemble
• Added new NPC, Petra, to the game
• Added Alchemist Shop (run by Petra)
• Added new NPC, Isabel, to the game
• Added new NPC, Graham, to the game
• Added the fermentation system to the game. After unlocking this will allow you to create custom drinks with a variety of ingredients and effects
• Added Buff System, the system already half existed, it has been expanded upon and been given a UI
• Added Fisheries
• Added Fish Traps
• Added hunting refinement. You can now refine meat you get from hunting. This includes drying racks, marinade pans, smokers, and recipes for 3 different marinades
• Added additional perks, increasing the total from 11 to 44. A small note, 5 or so of these are not available in the game as they pertain to combat which isnt implemented
• Added exchange shop, an exchange shop functions on a separate currency that isnt gold. Currently only one such shop exists at the western digsite
• Added minor artifacts that can be dug up via archeology, these can be sold or traded
• Added soulstones to the game, obtained via random chance when mining
• Added windmill interior, and millstone. Several ingredients now need to be ground at the windmill rather than in your cooking station. Things such as wheat, spice plants, and sugarcane for instance
• Added additional potted plant variants
• Added additional pottery variants
• Added a new set of furniture
• Added a set of fish that can only be found in the various levels of the mines, each tier has a small set
• Added placeable boulders and shrubs for your home
• Added a Cocoa Tree that can be planted and harvested from
• Added recipe for chocolate
• Added Barley and Rye as all season (spring, summer, and fall) crops, mostly used in fermenting
• Added cloud save support if you are playing via Steam. This also resulted in having to move your save files. Saves can now be found in the saves folder within the steam application data
• Completely overhauled the mines. In brief, floors are now randomized and filled with several different things the player can encounter and interact with. More variation and layouts will likely come in the future
• Added 9 quests, for various NPCs and signposts around the world

QoL (Quality of Life)

• Added description text to the catalog categories to more easily identify them
• Homogenized tints when placing structures
• Changed fishing system once more (whatever number time is the charm, right?)
• Updated fishing tutorial to match the updated minigame
• Changed Blazing Snapdragon quest to unlock the recipe for macaroni noodles so you know, you can actually make the recipe he unlocks for you, 10/10 game design right there (if youve already finished this quest the recipe will be unlocked for you as well)
• Changed Perk Gained UI to be more consistent for all perks
• Made shovel upgrades have a purpose. Anything gathered via the shovel will now yield more if you upgrade your shovel
• Updated confirmation prompt sprite
• Added new flower tiles to the world
• Apiaries will now create non harvestable flower tiles around themselves, these will slowly disappear if apiaries are removed. (These tiles will NOT grow over other objects such as crops)
• Haggler perk renamed to Merchant to hopefully avoid confusion. This perk will apply to any item you sell via stores or the shipping chest
• Modified rain drop generation to appear more naturally when the player is moving
• Modified flower seed descriptions to avoid a bit of confusing information
• Updated popup message dialogue boxes to make them a little less unsightly
• Cleaned up the effects on some items that are generated in the world, things like wood and seeds appearing above tree leaves, etc
• Dirt patches that you have created, patches you can plant crops on, will now disappear at midnight instead of after a full day
• Altered the flooring tiles of the second tier of the mines for something that tiles better
• Altered several sections of code to reduce looping and give a slight performance boost
• Altered inventory manipulation to allow for pulling and placing of partial object stacks via right click. I.E. if you try to right click a stack into something like a chest and the chest can only hold part of the stack the game will move as much as it can into the chest instead of doing nothing
• Changed sugarcane to an all season crop (spring, summer, and fall). Sugar is needed for a lot of recipes this should keep players from having to rely on the store if they dont want to
• Changed Wheat to an all season crop for similar reasons as sugarcane
• Altered several tiles around the map to ensure that archeology digs will not spawn on top of flower tiles as this resulted in a strange appearance
• Gave shoreline grass sprites in the swamp a once over, moving several into better locations
• Updated and added new buff sprites
• Modified the tree sway algorithm to make the effect a little more pronounced
• Slightly rebalanced some SFX to hopefully blend better
• Modified collision masks on several indoor environments to make them more accurate
• Made some forage objects not adhere to z ordering rules, specifically ones that dont rise off the ground
• Added a recipe for animal feed that is available at the cooking station from the start of the game
• Modified bridge sprites for the swamp, beach, and ravine
• Added tutorial to explain saving
• Slightly altered one of Lylahs paths to account for new terrain, also because I didnt want her staring at a cliff like she was in Blair Witch
• Made several small UI changes to make UI cleaner, such as hiding the clock or tutorial prompts at certain points in the game
• Remis store will now sell crops that are out of season for a high price, this should make cooking more feasible, if a little expensive
• Swapped out crops on Narbell farm from wheat to a variety of crops to match the current season
• Changed the quest log to make it infinite, as a result the player is no longer able to drop quests
• Added mouse wheel scrolling to all sliders in the game
• The cooking station can now be picked up with the carpenter mallet and placed in a location of the players choosing
• Touched up animal naming UI to improve the look slightly
• Altered ending quest dialogue for Archeological Crash Course (the quest that unlocks archeology) to better explain how to find fragments and assemble artifacts
• Added a small section of code that spawns some archeology dig sites when you finish Archeological Crash Course to keep the player from only discovering keystones for the first few days
• Made alterations to the alchemy crafting UI to display how much of a resource you have at your disposal when crafting with it
• Updated the shop UI slightly
• Updated some text sections to display a gold coin instead of a G
• Changed the archeology artifact assembly minigame to something slightly different
• Added specific fleeing animation for deer as before they just sort of shuffled very quickly
• Modified many UIs to improve the look and feel such as the cooking, alchemy, shipping, archeology, sleep, chest, and blacksmith
• Updated the Beginner Carpentry quest reward text to make more sense
• Added a failsafe for NPC movement which should prevent any further instances of NPCs just walking through space and time. This should also fix any NPC that has broken already in your save file
• Updated currency display to show alt currencies in the inventory screen
• Altered the names of some stores to align more with the games setting and characters
• Added a system to the map to show shop hours when you hover the town (I have also had requests to show NPCs that are in an area. This may be added but it would be at a later date and probably be done as a game mechanic you have to earn)
• Implemented a temporary system to unlock the players inventory if they get soft locked in it because I cant replicate this issue to save my life, but it is a pain when a player runs into it. Once this is fixed the system will be removed. An explanation of this system is on the inventory screen
• Recreated the snow weather effect to make snow fall more realistically
• Retextured the main game font and header font
• Added several more ambient SFX
• Changed the Cavern Mapper perk to have a more relevant effect given the new mines systems
• There is now a drinking sound effect for when you drink things, because last I checked you dont chew milk, and if you do chew your milk, throw it out, its expired
• Chests can now be rotated when they are placed in the world
• Disabled the ability to press F12 to open the chromium dev tools in game. It wasnt so much an ability I guess as a why can I do this anyway sort of thing

Balance Changes

• Slightly lowered the upper limit of wood you get from chopping down a tree
• All food has been overhauled to include buffs and hp recovery instead of just stamina recovery
• Adjusted sell price of several hunting items
• Altered alchemy breakdown values slightly, some items will now break down for multiples of an ingredient making some more valuable than others
• Removed Seed Rationing perk as it was obsolete
• Decreased the sell price of honeycomb
• Increased the sell price of honey
• Slightly lowered the prices of several generic cooking objects such as stock, sugar, and oil
• Lowered the price of all fruit tree saplings by 2500 in an effort to make them profitable faster
• Changed requirements of Extra Pockets quest to make it slightly easier and smoother path to getting more bag slots
• Altered the ending dialogue of A Bigger Bag quest to point the player towards Alice to get more bag space
• Significantly reduced the amount of time it takes for, non-fruit, trees to grow and regrow (Because I deforested the woods before the end of Spring Yr 1 one time)
• Reduced material costs of several buildings
• Changed requirements for Wanderer perk from 100,000 steps to 80,000
• Changed cooking station to pull all items and ingredients, including fuel, from all chests not just the ones inside your home
• The alchemy station will now look at all chests for ingredients as well your inventory so you dont have to carry everything you need to the station
• Reduced the stamina used by all tools in the game, because I was tired of having the stamina of a toddler. As a result, leveling your skills doesnt reduce stamina costs by as much but the change is significant enough that you should still notice it
• Rebalanced mining veins to have consistent HP instead of HP that scales with your depth in the mines
• Made minor adjustments to fish catch rates to improve the variety of what you catch
• Adjusted the sell price of chocolate slightly to compensate for it being craftable now
• Changed ore nodes in the swamp to drop clay instead of stone when mined, paired with one of the new zones it is also no longer possible to dig up clay in the mines but this source should be more consistent and hopefully easier and more obvious to acquire

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a dialogue error with one of the gravestones in the mountains
• Fixed player becoming stuck when drawing bow and quickly releasing it without firing an arrow
• Fixed a bug that would lock the player out of shooting the bow
• Fixed a bug that would allow you to have an indefinite and stacking strength buff
• Fixed an issue with stone path being misaligned upon placement
• Fixed a bug regarding dismantling paths giving multiple objects
• Fixed a variety of bugs with dismantling when using a controller
• Fixed small visual glitch with Calebs portrait
• Quent will no longer be bedridden, but seriously he should move around the world normally now
• Fixed visual bug with the description box appearing oddly
• Updated buff system to work with sleep, previously the system would halt all buff timers during sleep
• Fixed a bug where dismantling an object that had a notification box above it (box with !) would leave the notification box intact indefinitely
• Fixed a bug that caused the description display to half appear when specifying a stack split amount
• Fixed a bug where when changing from controller to keyboard and mouse in a specific situation you could temporarily lock the players movement
• Fixed a small visual glitch involving retracting a nocked arrow in your bow when using a controller
• Fixed a massive bug where certain invisible checks werent handled properly which caused them to accumulate within the game and eventually cause lag (If you played long enough you were probably being affected by this, excess checks will be disposed of when running this patch)
• Fixed a bug where holes dug on the beach the night before a season change would turn into dirt tiles after midnight
• Fixed a bug where you could plant seeds in holes dug in the sand on the beach
• Fixed a visual glitch where you could still interact with shop buttons when naming livestock you had purchased
• Fixed a section of Elises pathing schedule as she may or may not have been walking through cliffs, oceans, and other things that you knowpeople cant walk through
• Fixed a bug where fowl would still spawn feathers when they hadnt been fed the prior day
• Fixed a bug where feathers from fowl were not properly eliminated each day
• Fixed a bug where some hunting objects would try to list consumable effects despite them not being edibleI mean I guess you could eat a deer antler if you wanted but I wouldnt recommend it
• Fixed a signpost near the lake that was missing a collision mask
• Fixed a bug with the error messages you would get when using an attunement stone, messages should now display properly based on what you are doing
• Fixed a bug with the shipping chest that could result in longer gold values being cut off
• Fixed a minor visual bug in the mines relating to rock sprites
• Fixed a long-standing visual glitch regarding the player shadow disappearing when mounting and dismounting a horse
• Fixed a bug regarding Simeons dialogue when he is in the middle of constructing a building on your farm
• Fixed a bug that kept the player from removing dark wooden fences
• Fixed a bug that left a text object in the center of the screen after sleeping
• Fixed a minor z ordering glitch with mining nodes in the swamp
• Fixed several missing shadows in the plains
• Fixed a bug that would temporarily freeze player movement when the seasons changed
• Fixed a small visual glitch on the character select screen
• Fixed a bug involving left clicking on an interactive object while trying to dismantle something with the carpenter mallet soft locking player interactions
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to place rugs outside
• Fixed a bug regarding controller support not working for the quest accept UI
• Fixed a bug where you could close out of the livestock shop while naming an animal, which, you know, resulted in some issues
• Fixed a bug where you could jump to the map screen via the hotkey even when you were specifying the amount to split from a stack in your inventory
• Fixed a visual bug that would size description boxes incorrectly for one tick when hovering certain UI elements
• Fixed a bug that prevented the game from booting in Linux in some cases
• Fixed a bug where you could still edit archeology puzzles after having completed the puzzle
• Fixed a bug where interior doors in your house wouldnt change their style to match the wall styles you can apply
• Fixed a bug where dismantling an object that was holding another object such as dismantling a desk when a book is sitting on it, would result in the book remaining and defying the laws of physics
• Fixed an issue where the night vision buff could be applied infinitely, increasing your vision range an infinite amount
• Fixed a bug where large adamantium nodes couldnt be mined
• Fixed a small bug with the shipping chest that would show the cycling arrows as usable when they shouldnt be
• Fixed a bug where fruit tree saplings wouldnt drop seeds when they were dug up
• Fixed a glitch with the interior of Grahams house not aligning with the camera
• Fixed a glitch with Graham being stuck walking behind his bed
• Fixed a bug where some tiles in the deeper forests would turn into black squares in winter
• Fixed a bug where objects placed on hanging wall surfaces would not z order properly against them
• Fixed an inconsistent UI bug where some buttons wouldnt play their animations when using a controller

[ 2021-08-14 01:05:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Many things got taken care of this month. Looking back at the list of changes that I keep I actually surprised myself a bit. Ive been tied up working on larger systems for so long that I forgot what its like to solve a lot of smaller problems and fix bugs. Most things probably arent worth mentioning individually but there were a few things that were taken care of or changed that warrant a note, I think. I reskinned the chest and shipping chest UI. It should differentiate chests from inventory when looking at everything as well as give the shipping chest a more unique feel. Admittedly there is a part of me wondering about UI consistency and if its a good idea to do something like this. Well find out I guess. If its universally disliked I can always go back after all. Onto two other issues that I know people will be happy about. First, there is now a failsafe for NPC movement. Id heard a report or two of NPCs just ice skating around the world, phasing through buildings, walls, and reality in general while trying to get where they were supposed to be. Why this might be happening is a little complicated but there is now a section of code that should keep it from occurring. The code is also set up in a way to where if you were experiencing this issue the NPC should fix themselves. The other issue is the inventory softlock. Anyone who has experienced it probably knows what Im talking about but for those who dont heres a brief explanation. In short, something in the game seems to trigger wrong a player will open their inventory and then be unable to interact with their inventory or close it. Effectively, you have to just close the game when this happens. To be honest, Im still not sure if this is fixed. I cannot seem to trigger the bug while playing no matter how hard I try. The live version and the version I work on are extremely different at this point however. Its possible that the bug has already been fixed. On the off chance it isnt however, Ive added a hotkey to the game so that if you experience this bug you should be able to use it to clear the softlock and continue playing. This hotkey also lists some info that if reported I can use to fix the issue permanently. Two other things. First, Ive added a system to the map that shows store times which I know people have asked for. I may expand this system a bit. I know people have requested to be able to see NPC locations as well. I have this listed as something for the future, potentially. If I add it though it will probably be tied to a quest in game. The other things that Ive heard a few people ask for is cloud saving. Im currently working on it. Cloud saving should work for Windows and Linux, and currently struggling to make IOS cooperate in regards to file permissions, but with any luck it will be setup before the patch. Which of course brings us to the all-important question. When is the game patching? If you read the June update I mentioned wanting to patch the game around end of July or early August. I am still shooting for that time frame. Of course, today is the first of August. At the moment Im pretty much done. Mac cloud saving is really the one big loose end at this point. In short, Im waiting for my freelancers to create a few more needed sprites and SFX. Adding these things in wont be difficult but the release of this patch is basically dependent on how quickly they work. I would think, and perhaps I shouldnt be saying this incase something goes wrong, but I would think, the patch will go live in the next week or two. Hopefully I dont break that deadline. Ill whatever I can on my end to make it happen. Thanks again for everyones patience, and if you made it this far, thanks for listening to me ramble on. I hope you all will be hearing from me again before the end of August.

[ 2021-08-01 16:43:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

As usual Im a day or two late here, but better late than never I suppose. As usual, work has been steadily continuing. Ive actually upped my regular hours in a sort of self-imposed crunch time. I plan to stay that way until this patch comes through. As for whats been done well, Im still putting a few finishing touches on the mines. Things are mostly in place, just a few spawning bugs to fix up. Outside of that Ive rebuilt several of the UIs. Most of this work was minor updates and visual changes just to make things look a little nicer. In some cases, minor bits of functionality were added as well to smooth over some annoyances. Aside from those two things, there isnt a lot of notable work to speak of. Theres been a lot of applying graphical assets to the game, but most of this work is for things that arent even in the live version so the changes feel sort of pointless to talk about since there is no perspective there. Aside from that Ive been noting and fixing smaller bugs and hitches that Ive been running across while testing other things. So, there isnt a ton to say, but I am going to throw this out there. Now, if youve been following these little monthly updates, you might be aware that I dont ever give dates for when a patch will release. This is because its usually very hard to predict. Outside of art assets and sound design I am a one-man team so the game develops only as quickly as I can work and actually fix/add things. Going back to full time work has also made it harder to predict things as my time is much more limited. However, I feel relatively comfortable in saying that this patch should be released soon. Tentatively, and I cant stress that word enough, Im hoping that this patch will go live around the end of this month or sometime in August. Im really hoping for sooner rather than later. I just got in touch with my SFX freelancer again and am putting him to work, I tend to only do that when Im close to sending something out as sound is the last thing I manage. So, like I said, I dont want to get peoples hopes up, but if everything goes according to plan, Im hoping to get the last few things added in, squash any residual bugs, and then publish. As usual Id like to thank you all for your patience, it is always appreciated. I hope you all are enjoying/or at least have enjoyed, the game in its current state. In a few weeks time Ill hopefully have a litany of additions for you all to enjoy.

[ 2021-07-03 00:04:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

This month was more of the same for the most part. Work on the mines from last month continued. The scope increased slightly, hence the longer turn around time. As it stands, I have one more thing to program for the mines then I just have to create the randomized chunks to fill in the levels. This is arguably the easy part. Programing new elements is usually what takes longer as problem solving is usually involved. Once Im done programming things however it should just be a matter of piecing the terrain together. That can be a bit tedious but it usually doesnt take long. In regards to the mines there are now several different things you can find within them. Some are good for you, others bad. As I said before, once combat is added on top of these systems I think it will be a fairly robust section of gameplay. The only thing of note that isnt really a spoiler is the addition of a minimap for the mines. I was playtesting a bit and realized that with the reduced vision you normally have in the mines along with the randomized layouts I could hardly navigate. A minimap feature has now been added that will fill in as you explore each floor and it will keep track of some things like where the entrance and exit are. I dont want to put too many details on the minimap so it will probably just stay as is. I figure if I start adding tons of icons it will be confusing, and probably also take away some aspects of exploration. Mines aside, there has been a lot of work on sprites, specifically UI. Ive mentioned a lot of things over the past few months, fisheries, exchange shops, fermenting, etc. While all of these things were coded the sprites were still, mostly, my own expertly made temporary sprite work. Needless to say, when I draw things, everything is a box. Thankfully, my artist has been hard at work making UIs and other things that wont make your eyes bleed. While it isnt very difficult work on my end, I have been implementing a lot of this stuff this month which has taken up a chunk of time as some things have required me to rework existing UI and other minor changes. On this same note one of the things I did was add in a new furniture set, which is a rather detailed process. Personally, I think its pretty cool though. That said, I know furniture is more a cosmetic thing at the moment. Ive had an idea recently that I am, admittedly, ripping from My Time At Portia. In that game, you could decorate your home and the items you placed would give you stat buffs. I wasnt a fan of it giving you particular stat increases as I feel it would influence you to decorate your house a particular way in order to get certain buffs. However, I think Ill add some sort of well rested buff you can get based on decorations. It will probably be some sort of general boost that has tiers based on how many objects you have placed that way there is at least some sort of practical incentive to decorate your home. All that aside, I dont know if Ive mentioned this in these updates before, but Ive finally got clay squared away as well. A more common question I see is how to get clay. Which, if you are that person right now, the answer is to dig with a shovel in the mines. This in general is a bad solution to this problem and it is being changed. In this next patch, mining nodes in the swamp will give clay instead of stone. Alongside this, one of the areas I am developing includes a clay pit for a steadier supply of the stuff, however youll have to reach it first. While on the subject of areas Ive also been working to get the mill interior done. It is, all in all, a pretty small addition, but it will change how some things work. Mostly with cooking as instead of just making specific ingredients like wheat and spices at your cooking station youll take things to the mill to grind them up. As the mill is a little out of the way, I may also consider adding a machine for your farm that you can use to mill objects but it would be much later. That sort of thing falls into engineering. To briefly explain, Ive tinkered with the idea of adding some basic engineering stuff to this game as a sort of endgame mechanic. I cant say much on the specifics, and to be fair I dont know if Ill even do it. However, the general idea that I had was to have a couple of large-scale endgame projects that would require a ton of money and resources. While you could do them the traditional way, engineering would sort of come in to increase your production for these things. Like I said though this is entirely theoretical. There are tons of things I still need to do before I can even consider adding that. Like for instance the whole being able to have a boat and sail around the bay area. Fun fact, there are four sets of fish (one for each season) for the deep ocean (where you would fish when out at sea). Theres currently no way to access them yet though since you cant get a boat. Ah well, maybe one day. Ive gone off on a tangent though, the point is that Im still considering some larger features for the game in the far-off future. In any case, thats really about it for this month. Not a lot of concrete stuff to say I know, but thats the nature of large projects and additions, a lot of work that can be summarized in a few sentences. I hope you all had a good month, thanks again for playing and sticking with me through this long development process, hopefully next month there will be something a little more exciting to talk about.

[ 2021-05-29 23:35:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

This might actually be a short devlog for once, guess well see. Not that a lot hasnt happened its just all centralized into one system this time around. The month of March was spent very wholly on the mines. Ive been putting this off for a long time and I finally decided to tackle it this month. I spoke briefly about this in the March news, but now the system is far more concrete, so I can expound on things a bit. If youve played Verdant Village for any significant amount of time youve probably been to the mines. In the live version of the game the interior of the mines are just several (I think around 6) static rooms. These rooms randomly generate ore nodes on the ground to give a slightly different feel each time and thats it. Originally, my plan for the mines was to simply make more of these static layouts. This is, generally speaking, what most games of this genre do. I was faced with two issues when I thought about this. The first was logistics. Because of how the areas in this game are laid out I essentially have a limited amount of space for new zones. I could expand this area, but it would threaten performance so Id rather not. Not to mention in order to get to a reasonable number of layouts Id probably have to make around 20 more or so. The second issue was more an opinion I had. Personally, I didnt like the idea that the mine levels were static. I did it originally because a lot of my when I started development many of my ideas for this game were just following trends from other games, Stardew for example. However, mining can already feel tedious in a lot of ways. In short, its basically just, go to mines, hit rocks, get ore, repeat. While this works, there isnt much to it. I feel it also doesnt help that the mines feel like a good opportunity for a little more adventure. Take Minecraft for instance. A big part of its gameplay is going down into caves, digging around, and finding things you werent expecting, good or bad. It keeps the act of mining fresh because there is an element of discovery, danger, etc. While Im not crazy enough to implement 100% random terrain generation into this game, I did want to play on this. This month Ive spent the majority of my time reworking the mines. The old static levels are gone. Instead, each level is randomly generated when you enter it. Once again, Im not crazy enough to do complete random generation so instead this functions more on the principles of rogue likes, where the algorithm will piece together small chunks of pre made terrain in order to cobble a level together. To explain, when you first enter a level the game spawns rooms. Imagine, if you would, a grid of squares. In the case of this game the grid is 5x4, so 20 squares. The first thing the game does is to cobble together a basic structure that can be any shape or size within this grid, consisting of different sized rooms. Then each room inserts sections of terrain to make a conglomerate piece of terrain, thus giving you a semi-random map to explore. Of course, if all the mines consisted of were walls it would be pretty boring. Currently, in the live version, the mines contain ore nodes and large ore nodes. The other thing I wanted to do was lean more heavily into some random elements scattered about that you could stumble upon. To name a few, merchants, fishing ponds with unique fish, stockpiles of resources, etc. Im still hashing out the details of what exactly I want to include, but the hope is that there will be a few things on each floor that will make you want to explore a little. Adding to this idea of exploration is one other critical change. Currently you just mine ore nodes that are scattered on the ground. They are plentiful, and the abundance paired with the small levels means you dont have to go far to find something usually. The new mines are set up differently. Ore nodes are now much rarer. Some will still spawn here and there but not with nearly as much frequency. To compensate, there are now different objects called seams that spawn within the mines. For instance, a copper, iron, or gold seam. These will be your main source of minerals. They are built into the sides of walls and only one or two of them will spawn per floor so youll have to go looking for them. It should feed into the idea of wandering through the caverns to look for ore. I think that once combat is added on top of all of this, youll have an experience that is altogether a little more treacherous and engaging as well as more rewarding. As I said before the hope is that this new set up will engage the player a little more and keep mining from feeling like a grind. Sadly, a system this large means I really didnt do much else this month. I recently completed another long-term project (not game related) that Id had, which means more dev time, which always helps. Ive allocated that extra time towards other smaller projects that need to be done aside from the mines. This time was only freed up a week ago so I only did a few small things and one thing of note. That thing was that I just finished adding a cocoa tree. I wanted a way for the player to get chocolate without having to buy it, so now youll be able to craft it using cocoa beans that you harvest like any other fruit. One detail outside of in-game additions that you may have already noticed reading this. The Steam assets have been changed. In the past they were just stretched versions of the in-game title screen which looked really unprofessional in my opinion. As a result, I hired a concept artist briefly to render something a little more fitting. Outside of that my artist is still working his tail off to catch up, and doing an admirable job I might add. Currently, hes got a list of UIs to update and then I believe we are on to odds and ends before I set him off on the arduous task of making everything related to combat. Which for reference, this patch will not include combat. That stands to be the center point of the next big patch after this one. As much as Id love to give a date for when this patch will arrive I really cant. Developing a game in your free time tends to slow things down quite a bit. Suffice to say, there isnt a ton left to do for this patch. The continued updates to the mines are far and away the largest project. The good news is the code is mostly in place. I have a few bits and pieces to iron out, but once that is out of the way it mostly comes down to designing the smaller elements that are used to construct the random terrain. Something that is a bit tedious, but doesnt take too long and certainly isnt very hard. As with every news update, I just want to say thanks for sticking with the development of the game. I appreciate people playing it, reviewing, posting bugs, whatever. While I dont have a time frame, I can promise Ill do what I can to make your purchase worth it. Ive wanted to make a game like this since I was like 10 so rest assured, Ill do whatever I can to make it the best it can be.

[ 2021-05-01 16:34:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another month of work for Verdant Village down. Im a few days early, but its the weekend so Ive got time to write this. A lot of things were done this month, but not a ton of it is worth mentioning in explicit detail. Mostly this month I got around to a lot of the QoL and bug fixing thats been on my list. There is still a lot to go, but a significant dent was made in March. Theres been lots of visual updating going on. Its an ongoing process, but a lot of the UIs are seeing minor changes and a bit of tinkering to make them look a little more finished. Something Im trying to get away from is using the generic text seen in the game for parts of the UI. It doesnt look good in a lot of menus as it wasnt meant to be used there. Theres still a lot of fine tuning going on regarding, that but its more on my radar to look at and change now. Besides UI some other parts of the world are getting their visuals changed a bit. The most obvious one at the moment is bridges. There are a number of them in the game and they are all the same. In several places, that generic bridge doesnt really fit or mesh with the tiles around it well. These have been replaced with new versions. Graham has been given a quest. Thinking on it, Im not even sure if Graham exists in the live version yet. Regardless, he has a quest now. Unlike a lot of other quests, this ones reward is a bit more unique as well. I dont want to spoil anything too much, but its movement related. Mining has seen a bit of a balance update. The way the mining nodes HP worked was a bit strange. It was likely a left-over design element from something that changed. In short, nodes currently scale their HP the deeper you would go into the mines. So, mining a node on floor 3 might take two hits, where mining a node on floor 90 might take five. These has been leveled so that nodes have the same HP throughout. Leaving things as they were essentially made it not feel good to mine at the deeper levels because the scaling made it take so long to break anything. It also made your pickaxe upgrades feel sort of worthless in the long run because their increased power was just nullified by stronger nodes. Since we are on the topic of mining this feels like a good time to mention the mines in general. Ill be honest, Ive neglected the mines for some time. Ive had plans to make more level layouts for some time, like a really long time, but Ive just never done it. Part of this has been that its sort of a laborious process, another part has been that there have always been more pressing matters, and the last part is that making more layouts is sort of inefficient due to how the game has been set up. All this said, the next thing I think Im going to tackle in the cavalcade of a patch is randomized mine levels. So to explain, at the moment there are about 6ish layouts for the mines. As you go through floors it picks one of these layouts and sticks you there. The only part that is random is what nodes spawn and where they spawn. As a result, if you play the game for any significant amount of time youll eventually start to learn the layouts. Part of the purpose of the mines is to have to explore to find the exit each time. Thats the reason theres reduced vision there, its supposed to be you wandering around, mining and progressing (and eventually fighting, one day combat will happen I swear). Having set layouts directly contradicts this since every player will just learn the map and know where to go. Im still fine tuning an algorithm for how I want the floors to generate, but with any luck Ill have something that works before the next news update and certainly before this patch comes out. I will say up front that this will not be some sort of 100% Minecraft level terrain generation but Id like to get it to a point where it isnt completely obvious which direction you should be going. Im also considering adding some subsystems to the mines to make it maybe a little more than just run around and hit rocks. More details to come on that. Next up, I felt it should be mentioned just because it was a lot of what I did this month. Bugs. I fixed a lot of bugs, most all of which were visual or minor, but bugs nonetheless. Ill mention three here just because they were noticeable and could affect you if you are playing right now. First, there was a visual bug where when the player got on and off their horse their shadow would disappear instantly when the animation started. Not a big deal, but it always looked jarring to me since everything else has shadows. This has been fixed. Another, and far more important, bug has to do with controller support. If you are used a controller to play the game you wont be able to accept quests, you physically cannot press the button in controller mode. I made an alteration to some code a while back and broke the button without realizing it. I apologize for the inconvenience, but if you are using a controller to play this, youll have to click the accept button with a mouse to actually get a quest. Controller support is setup in such a way that it should be drop in, drop out, meaning you should be able to just click a button with your mouse then start using a controller again and it will pick up as usual. Lastly, I recommend no one places dark wooden fences unless you are absolutely sure you want them in that location because as of this moment you cant pick them up. This will be fixed in the next patch; it was the result of another minor change with an unintended side effect. Also, if you already have fences down you will be able to pick them up after the patch so no worries there. A couple of bigger changes to mention next. First the store that sells saplings now sells all out of season crops as well. So, if its summer the store will sell all non-summer crops, etc. They are more expensive, but the intended purpose of this is that youll be able to still cook things that are out of season since so many recipes require one or two season specific ingredients. I suppose it can also be used to complete quests that require specific items if you are willing to pay for them. A change that was often requested, the quest log is now infinite, complete with a fancy slider and everything. It probably should have always been like this, but believe it or not when I started making this game I didnt think there would be that many quests. Oh, how wrong I was. Small aside here, Ive also added mouse scrolling to all slider related UIs because for some reason that wasnt a thing. The cooking station can now be picked up and moved like any other object. Probably a long time coming, but I figure not everyone will want their kitchen in that one spot. The alchemy UI has been altered so that when you are crafting something the game will show you how much of an ingredient you have next to how much is required. Should help you keep track of your stuff a little better. The mill, oh the mill. That windmill has been in this game pretty much forever. For some reason I failed to actually give it a purpose. That has been changed. Several recipes have been removed from the cooking station. The windmill has been given an interior and youll now have to go there to grind up certain things. I believe you unlock access to it upon doing the spice quest for Lylah, and her dialogue has been changed to explain it. Lastly, the artifact assembly minigame has been altered a bit. You used to have to drag the pieces of an artifact into place to assemble an artifact. Those who have done this have probably run into bits of the picture that have a single pixel in them. To change this setup outright would involve a lot of manual work. While Im not opposed to doing it, the task doesnt seem like a priority given all the other things that need to be done. Instead, I changed the minigame in a way that should keep you from having those sorts of issues where you have to hunt for where the single pixel fits onto the puzzle. I think thats all the stuff worth mentioning this month. As for future plans as I said before, randomizing the mines is probably my next priority project. Aside from that, Ive been asked about steam achievements again recently. I have always intended to put them in, but always thought of them as low priority. Given that Ive seen a few requests for them I think Ill have to re-evaluate that. So that might be another project in the near future. If nothing else Ill at least write up a list of potential ones. They are pretty simple to add after all. Ive also gotten requests to make the map more useful. I think I may make some changes to that as well soon, but there is another feature Ive been considering that sort of overlaps with parts of that request. So, Ill have to think on it a bit, but I guess know that making such changes is at the forefront of my mind for the moment. Anyway, I say this every time, but thanks for your continued patience, hopefully all these nice changes will be coming your way sooner rather than later. I know waiting for a game to be finished is sort of the point of early access, but it always feels a little strange when I consider that sort of transaction. Also, mildly off topic, but to those of you who post issues or suggestions on Steam, or Discord, or where ever else I just wanted to say thanks. I appreciate any feedback or suggestions for what to fix, add, or change for this game. In any case, thats it for now, thanks for reading all.

[ 2021-03-28 18:23:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another quick update for progress on Verdant Village. Were getting closer to an actual patch. Feels like Ive been saying that for a long time, but my artist is getting closer to catching up on things. So hopefully sooner rather than later on that. That said, this month was focused pretty heavily on QoL and bug fixing for me. Because of that I wont go into detail on everything that was done, it doesnt make for the most interesting read usually. I would like to talk about some changes in a broad sense though. Most of these changes come from an extended playthrough I did recently. As a solo dev Im usually too busy just making the game to really give it a long form playthrough, but I figured it had been a while and was worth doing again. I discovered a number of things that I found really inconvenient from a gameplay perspective. The first, and most glaring issue was stamina. I had nerfed the stamina cost of using tools a while back which I thought had solved the issue. The idea at the time, as I remember, had been that stamina costs would be high at first, but once you skilled up a few times youd be capable of using tools without much issue. As it turns out, this is not the case. Going to the mines just to mine like 15 rocks and then being out of stamina was painful, especially before fixing the stairs. This sort of problem transferred to pretty much everything, when it takes like a fourth of your stamina bar to water crops, something is wrong, and I cant believe I didnt notice this sooner. As a result, stamina costs have been altered pretty drastically to hopefully allow for a smoother gameplay experience. Another thing I found incredibly annoying, there are several things on your farm that allow you to craft items, the cooking station, alchemy station, forge, ordering items, etc. Having to actually have the items in your inventory in order to use these is really annoying. The cooking station somewhat circumvented this because it looked at all the items within your house at least. However, I felt that still wasnt enough, so basically everything on your farm will now look at everything you have, including what is in chests and pull from them as needed. For bug fixes, there have been more than a few small ones. There is one I feel I should mention however as it will affect people more the longer they play. In short, there is an invisible object in the game that is spawned by objects that go transparent when you walk behind them. In other words, trees spawn this object. And trees despawn and respawn each time you enter/exit a new zone. This invisible object was not being handled correctly. As a result, they just accumulated in the game endlessly. Thankfully they are at least invisible and dont do much but if you play long enough, they will start to lag the game. Once the next patch comes out this will be fixed, and any extras of this object will be erased from your save. Back to QoL stuff, there were some other changes that were made as well. Things like the second bag quest being easier so you arent stuck at 15 slots for so long. Building material costs were reduced slightly in many cases. Trees will now regrow more quickly. Right clicking stacks into chests that cant fit the entire stack will now place as much as possible inside instead of just doing nothing. Sugarcane has been changed to a crop that can be grown year-round like wheat so sugar wont be as difficult to come by. There is now an interior to the windmill and you will have to use it to grind up certain things, namely flour, sugar, and spices. Theres still a whole bunch of other things that Id like to alter, but as I havent actually done them yet it seems like I probably shouldnt mention them. Like I said at the start, hopefully an actual patch will happen soon. Once the art is all caught up, we should be ready to go. In any case, thanks for being patient, and I hope you all are enjoying the game in its current state at least.

[ 2021-02-27 20:00:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another quick news update for the game. Things are progressing well enough. As far as the game itself goes Ive moved on to bug fixing, balance and QoL for now. The major additions of the coming patch are in place, now Im just working to hopefully make some things a little nicer, and fix some of the issues that have cropped up. While I dont like to give exact dates, Id like to think that the patch will be coming soon. It is almost 100% dependent on how quickly my artist works. I suppose that is the biggest news actually. Briefly put, I have a new job, and thanks to that income, I have hired on an artist to continue work on the game. Pretty much the sole reason behind the recent delay in patches was a lack of an artist to work on the game. From what Ive seen so far, he seems to work pretty fast and hes capable of matching the current art style. There are some things he does differently, which means some art may receive an update in the near future. For now, however Im having him focus on the work surrounding the next patch so that I can push that as soon as possible. Outside of that there isnt much to say this time around. I suppose all I can say is sit tight, and hopefully the next update will be here soon. Thanks to everyone for sticking with the game through this slow patch. With any luck well have a more regular update cycle from here on out.

[ 2021-01-31 17:34:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another quick news update before the end of the year. Also, congratulations, you survived 2020! So, to start things off, I have to mention a few things regarding working on this game. Normally, I wouldnt dive into this stuff because you probably want to know about the game and not my life, but this affects development pretty heavily. In short, making Verdant Village has been my full-time job for some time now. However, the scope of this game has increased beyond what I had originally intended a few times. Along with that I dont think I realized just how much money would go into production. Simply put, I need more money to finish the game, I.E. full time job. Ive been hired recently, so that part is now taken care of. I bring this up for two reasons. First, lack of funds is pretty wholly the reason why updates have dropped off. Theres a lot of stuff ready to go, but no art assets for it. Now that I have a source of income again that should end. The second reason is that, obviously, a job means less time to work on the game. Ill do what I can to keep updates coming quickly, or at least have news posts like this. Im no stranger to working full time and then also doing game dev in the evenings/weekends. Alright, now that all that is out of the way, what actually happened this month? Well, probably a bit less than Id have liked honestly. Between holidays and job searching things went a little slowly. Still, some stuff got done. First and foremost, perks have been expanded on. At present in the game there are 11, after the new additions there are now 44 perks in total. I think around 5 of them relate to combat, which means they will be unavailable until that is added, but the rest are ready to go and can be attained. Perks took up a large amount of time, but aside from that alchemy got a few changes. When breaking down items, some give more of a resource than others, meaning there are more efficient plants and things to use for alchemy. Hopefully that adds a bit of decision making to the system. Along with this, there were several changes and bug fixes to various systems around the game. Three more things. First another NPC has been added, along with two quests. Next, and this has been a long time coming, the shovel now actually has a reason to be upgraded. An upgraded shovel will yield more of whatever you are digging, clay, sand, even artifact shards. Last, Ive made an entire system for what Im calling exchange shops. These are special shops that will be around the game world, most will probably be in more secluded areas. These special merchants dont deal in gold like normal shops. Instead, you have to exchange items you find for special currency. You can then use this currency to purchase things from their shop. The items they sell are unique to their shop and youll be unable to find them anywhere else in the game. There is only 1 shop that has been implemented at the moment, but I have ideas for a few others. Thats everything that has been added in December. Currently, Im working on a puzzle system for secrets in the game. I think Ive mentioned it before, but secret areas will be hidden around the world, a lot of them. This will hopefully push exploration a bit as the world is pretty big. These areas will be locked behind small puzzles youll have to complete. The system is in its early stages at the moment but I think it is shaping up well enough. I think thats it for now. Apologies again for the delays. With any luck youll start seeing some movement and actual patches for the game soon. Whenever the next patch drops it stands to be pretty huge so hopefully it will be worth the wait. And finally, happy new year! Heres hoping 2021 is better than 2020.

[ 2020-12-30 16:00:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small patch for today. This patch should address a few of the more egregious bugs that have been pointed out or that Ive discovered myself. This message will also serve as an update for what is happening in terms of development and where the game is heading/what Ive been doing all this time. If you want to see the actual changes to the game scroll to the bottom, otherwise strap in. Oh, and before I forget happy Thanksgiving! And if you dont celebrate the holiday happy November 26th I guess? First, a slightly personal note that has bearing on the development of the game. I dont care to delve into my personal life online, but this sort of effects development so I figure an explanation is due. For the past year and a half or so I have been developing Verdant Village full time. Game development is a never-ending learning process and Im still a novice. The lesson I learned this time is that finishing this game would take far longer than I imagined and cost more than I would have thought. All that said, Ive basically come to a point, financially speaking, where I need to find a full-time job again just to continue funding the project. How does this relate to the game? Well, full time work will obviously eat into dev time to some degree. Ive worked on game development during nights and weekends in the past though so its hardly a foreign concept. The upside is, Ill be able to commission more artwork and finally get an actual patch out. So, it is sort of a mixed bag, I felt it was worth mentioning just to give an understanding of where Im at as a developer in terms of time and money. I have every intention of finishing the game. That shouldnt be a problem. This is just a bump in the road in terms of how much time I can devote to development every day, and I thought it worth mentioning. But enough about all of that. Lets talk about what has actually been done and whats coming. So, to preface this, the things I am mentioning here are done. The problem is related to what I said before, a lack of money means no art. So truthfully the hard part is done, I just have to drag and drop assets in once they are made. First, the things that have actually been done since the last time I did an update like this. Spoilers ahead if youd rather be in the dark for this stuff.

• Fisheries, which are buildings you can raise fish in.
• Fish traps, that you can place in the world to catch fish automatically. They are a bit more labor intensive than just set it and leave it there forever.
• Five more quests, so far.
• Drying racks, to make jerky out of hunted animal meat.
• Smokers and marinades, to make, I guess, better meat? I dont really have a term for that, but its another way to refine hunting meats.
• Food buffs have been overhauled and some have been given additional buffs.
• A visual UI for buffs
• More buffs in general, around 15 I think
• A new fishing system which youll see in this patch as I cant undo it really. I actually did it twice during this stretch but decided that my first idea didnt work well. The art assets are mostly tolerable, but youll have to bear with it for now.

Those are the things that have been added, they are ready to go, I just need sprites. Now there is something else Ive been working on that is big. In fact, Ive been splitting my days in half because of it. The first half is used to make things similar to what is listed above. I.E. systems, quests, zones, etc. The second half of my day I use for the impending dialogue system, which sounds kind of ominous now that I read it a second time. Ive mentioned it before, but Ill restate in brief. The general idea I have for dialogue is something that I hope is more organic. Throughout the course of the game you will do certain things, actions you take, discoveries you make, etc. These will sometimes open up topics of conversation with various NPCs. These topics can be anything from a personal detail on that character, to their opinion on something that happened, or even lore regarding the world. Aside from that each character is planned to have a short story relevant to them. These serve as the meat of conversation for each character. If youve played Stardew Valley imagine the conversations and events that existed for the marriage candidates. Each character will have something similar to those. On average so far these stories consist of around 5 or so events. Completing these will grant the player rewards. Some of these will grant more generic rewards, unless I can think up other things, but many, I think around half of them cause more tangible changes to the game. Things like the construction of new buildings, adding new zones, unlocking systems, dialogue changes, adding new characters to the town, etc. These conversations that you engage in also allow you to make dialogue choices. I would like to say though that these are just cosmetic and hopefully allow you to roleplay a bit. As much as Id like to have branching story paths and meaningful decisions, even Im not crazy enough to try to implement that. Still these will hopefully allow for some interactivity during conversations. To clarify all of this, this is a massive part of the game. Like probably one of, if not the largest, things Ive ever added to the game. Looking at the relevant word document, it is sitting at about 28,000 words at the moment. At time of writing, I have made 4 main stories as well as 56 smaller topics. For reference, including extra character that show up to town, there are around 50 characters in the game. Im throwing all these numbers around to hopefully give you a scope of what this is. I dont want to give the impression that this will be done in a week and ready to go. It will likely take me a while. By the time its all done it will probably have the word count of an average sized novel. I havent decided if I will add these topics in a more piecemeal fashion or all at once. Piecemeal seems like the way to go, but it will involve working to make sure everything patches correctly. In short, how it gets added to the game is still up in the air. As for what is next in terms of systems, my current projects are perks and secrets. The perks, as anyone who has played thus far, are a bit lacking. It was always my intention to add more Ive just been swamped with other things Ive deemed more important. It also helps to have most of the systems in the game now so I actually have stuff to make perks for. Ironically, I just paused to write down two more perk ideas. At the moment, there are 11 perks in the game. By the end there will probably be 44. Why 44 you ask? Because thats how many can fit in that box of course. At the moment I think I have about 30 more planned so I just have to consider a few more, then I can start putting them in. As for secrets well thats next. The map is big, as you might have noticed. At the moment, it is also somewhat empty *cough* western fields *cough* *cough*. There are things to do in most zones, but for the most part its empty space. While some other additions will hopefully go towards fixing this, Id like to plug the game map with small puzzles and secrets that give small rewards. These will mostly be relegated to the zones that are farther away from town. The hope is that these will serve as smaller distractions or things you can stumble across and get some sort of permanent item from. With any luck it will give another reason to actually explore the map a bit. So, all in all, thats about it. Plenty of stuff to come. Once I have a steady income at my disposal a content patch should come soon after. Once that patch is out of the way the next major one should be the combat system, which should be sizable as well. In the background of all this, Ill continue to write more dialogue which will see the light of day at some point. Im personally excited for all this, I hope the rest of you are as well. Ill be trying to do these updates on a monthly basis I think just to keep people informed on what is happening. It seems like a good interval to go with from what I can tell. Lastly, I wanted to quickly say thank you. If you purchased the game, I understand that trusting early access is something of a leap of faith. I hope you feel you already got some of your moneys worth out of Verdant Village. In the future, I hope this will be something you can see in your game library and feel like your money was well spent. And now, without further ado, if you read this far, the change log for this hotfix is below. Verdant Village Patch 0.3.5 Full Changelog -Revamped the fishing system entirely. Please bear with the graphics, most of them are temporary and will be replaced as soon as possible, apologies, and thank you.

• Homogenized visuals for tints when building a structure
• Fixed a bug regarding path placement misalignment
• Fixed a bug regarding dismantling placed paths
• Fixed a variety of bugs regarding dismantling objects with a controller
• Adjusted the sell price of hunting items to accommodate for the new hunting systems that are coming soon
• Fixed a small visual glitch with Calebs portrait
• Changed the Blazing Snapdragon quest to unlock the recipe for macaroni noodles in addition to the previous reward. If you already finished the quest this patch should unlock the recipe for you as well

[ 2020-11-26 19:21:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thought it was about time I did a proper news post for Verdant Village. As I just checked the last real content patch came out at the end of August. In case you werent aware I used to update on a weekly basis. I changed this, mostly based on how Steam works. It seems to want you to push large patches, not weekly builds to take advantage of marketing stuff. Aside from that, the export process takes an extremely long time, at least a few hours to get everything exported and pushed out (Im looking at you Mac and Linux users, nah just kidding). Doing that on a weekly basis feels like a waste of time since I probably lose close to a half a day in the process. Anyway, a lot has been going on in the meantime. If you pay attention to twitter you may have seen a few of these things already. In terms of additions there are already three new zones plus a house interior if you count that (I count that). More archeology digs have been scattered about, because of course they have. There are some new items to place down for decoration, including boulders and bushes. Someone mentioned that a while ago and I agree with the idea, I think they can add some more organic decoration to the exterior of your farm. Aside from that there are two new NPCs who have been added, one of whom has a shop. As well as a quest. That seems pretty meager, one quest and two NPCs, but Ill explain in a bit (or a lot) more detail later. Aside from that, the fishing minigame has been updated. I think this one will suit the game better and hopefully be more comprehensible to all people. Ive said it before, but the current fishing minigame seems to either come across as too easy or too hard for most people. With any luck this one will have a more balanced reception. If not, maybe Ill finally give in and use the stock standard fishing game. Next is something Ive mentioned a bit before, but now its done. There is now a system in place that allows you to brew alcohol. To explain it in more detail you essentially pick one of 6 types of items. This will determine what kind of drink you are making, wine, beer, mead, etc. Then you get to add 5 other ingredients from a list of something around 120 or so I think. Items that you add have two basic traits. The first is the effect the item gives, these effects range from gaining stamina or making you run faster, to resistances in the future battle system, extra profit for selling the drink, or improved fishing skills. The second trait is its flavor or taste. Items that you add to your drink each have a flavor such as sweet, sour, earthy, or bitter for instance. By combining similar flavors or similar effects, you will enhance the potency of the drink. As for flavors you can also add complimenting flavors to increase the effects. When youve crafted the drink you want, youll get to name it and pick a sprite for it. At the end of the day youll basically be crafting your own unique drinks. Once you craft it once the game will remember it as well so you can manage your recipes and easily recreate drinks you find useful or profitable. The brewing system sort of leads into buffs as well. Up until now there have only been a few basic buffs. Im currently in the process of making a buff UI, but in total there are 21 different effects at the moment. I will preface this by saying that more than a few of these relate to the battle system that will eventually exist. In any case, buffs will be added on to certain food recipes as well so in general buffs should be a lot more relevant in the game. At the moment, I believe the only way to get them is to buy some of Johns drinks from the bar, but who wants to do that. The last thing Ill mention is probably more of a tease than anything. This bit is difficult to give any sort of exact timing on. With the other things mentioned so far, I can tell you that they will all be in the next patch. This bit I may hold on to for a while as its something that could become extremely volatile in the code if I rush it and mess it up. So, what am I talking about? Dialogue, lots and lots of dialogue. If youve played Verdant Village for any significant amount of time you probably know that NPCs (outside of quests) have a few basic lines of dialogue depending on the season or where they currently are. While this basic setup isnt likely going to change there does stand to be a pretty massive addition, at least in my opinion. Those who have followed this game for a while may have heard me refer to the topic system. That is what this is, and it stands to be the meat of the dialogue engine for this game. For those who have played the game or seen it, you might have noticed that topics button above quests when you talk to NPCs. If you clicked it you probably saw that you got a throwaway line like the mines are caves that have rocks in them crazy right?. Originally, a long time ago when I was a wee lad, I planned for the topic system to be more of a discovery tool where NPCs would clue you in to bits of the world and maybe point you towards interesting things, ala rumors in TES: Oblivion, minus the spooky Mr. Potato Head NPCs. Side note, I love Oblivion. The remnants of the old system are still intact, but this idea is no longer the plan. The basic idea for the topic system was to have the player do things in the world that would trigger topics of conversation with various NPCs. For example, catch a number of different fish, maybe youll get a conversation with Matias about one of his past fishing adventures. Basically, things you do would spark more dialogue with NPCs, hopefully in a fairly organic way so it feels more real than walking into a guys house and then having him vomit his life story at you. Because, while I cant be certain, I dont think people do that in real life. This was the plan, but then plans change, mostly because when professors in college told me about limiting the scope of a project, I ignored them. In the words of Homer Simpson, I am so smart, S-M-R-T. Much like how brewing was originally going to be put hops in barrel, get beer item this system got some iteration. The basic plan is still there. Id like to have certain conversations become available after you do certain things. However, the change comes in when I examined systems like friendship hearts in Stardew and, uh, whatever harvest moon had. I played that game when I was like 10 and I spent all my time mining instead of making friends, which is oddly telling. In any case, I dont like these systems. I mean I like filling up meters in game as much as the next guy, but it always felt really strange and unrealistic for me. I mean I Im simplifying a little, but Stardew was essentially just throw gifts at people every week until you were besties or married. Its a very gamey solution and I cant blame the guy for going that route. On a basic level, it makes sense and it functions well enough. Not to mention, in his defense, he did sprinkle in little dialogue scenes with characters to let you learn about them which was cool. So, my current solution is to replace all of that with the topic system. Instead of grinding out gifts Im currently working to write small stories for each character. Each character in the game will get one of these. Characters that you can romance will have two, a normal one and then a romance related one. To give an idea on how long these are I wrote one characters the other day and it was 6 pages of dialogue. Some of these scenes involve using the cutscene engine as well, which to clarify thats the engine used for the intro scenes in the game. The general idea is that between these longer form stories and then the topics that come up naturally there should be a fairly large amount of dialogue in the game. Its my opinion that this sort of thing would be more compelling than a system where you grind for friendship by repeating generic tasks. Also, Id like to add, because I dont like pointing out what I consider flaws, that I love Stardew and I mean it no ill will. Im also trying to make a point to have visual changes or larger world changes accompany the longer stories. I cant say if every story will have such a thing but so far, Ive got a few ideas in mind. If not a huge change, Id like to at least maybe have these events alter NPC schedules or dialogue or something of the sort. In a way I guess they are sort of like quests except, at the moment at least, no one is going to ask you to collect 5 copper ore or whatever other wacky quest requirement Ive come up with. The hope is that with all this in place getting to know the characters in the game will feel more like an interactive process and story rather than a series of checkboxes. So, now that Ive laboriously explained things, I hope you didnt fall asleep by the way (although I wouldnt blame you), I can mention the catch. Remember way back at the start of this post that I said Ive only added like 2 characters? Thats because before I write anyone else into the game, Id like to get this stuff squared away, or at least mostly fleshed out. I feel like if I just keep putting characters their personalities may not match whatever story I write later. In general, Id like to write an entire character all at once, which means characters additions may be sparse for a while. Granted I have plenty of other gameplay things to do in the meantime, like that whole battle system thing, Im sure that wont take too longha, ha. But in all seriousness, super excited to make the combat. I am dedicating about half my day to writing this stuff right now, so I hope that it doesnt take an insane amount of time. However, I do feel obligated to say that there are like 45ish characters planned. Which is assuming I dont add a couple more for the single characters to marry once you pick your spouse. Im sorry college professors I just keep having ideas and I cant help myself. This of course ties back in to the whole I cant predict the timing on this thing. As much as Id like to say that this will come soon I just cant. Writing aside, the logistics of making it work via the code are another thing to handle as well. While I dont know this for certain I can say that its likely these things will come into the game piecemeal. Ill probably write everything first and then slowly add the stories to characters a few at a time. So, that is most everything. Lots of work being done at the moment. Lots more planned for the future of course. I hope some of this got you a little excited for the future of the game. While I wish I was sitting here announcing a patch, all I can promise is that Im still working on it. Early access has a bad track record of games that never get finished, but I intend to shirk that stereotype. Your patience is appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed this look into what is happening with Verdant Village and what is coming in the future. Also, Im sorry for my terrible jokes, hopefully you survived all of them. This will likely be the new format for these sorts of updates. Once I think I have enough to talk about Ill just post about it. Ill also continued to do patch notes when the patches actually come out but given how sporadic the updating will be these seem like a good idea to keep people who are interested up to speed. With any luck in the near future Ill have a substantial patch for the game as well.

[ 2020-10-23 20:09:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small hotfix patch today. A couple of things were brought to my attention and some things I just found naturally. Aside from hotfixes, there are a few visual updates and minor improvements that will hopefully smooth out some other issues. Aside from that, Ive decided to reinstate the trial version of the game. Unlike the old alpha, you cant just play it forever. Basically, youll get 10 days of playtime within the trial. After that you would have to purchase the full game to continue your save. On the plus side, the trial version is compatible with the full version so you wouldnt have to start over once you transition over. Past that, work on the larger patch is still coming along. This patch stands to be a hodgepodge of different things. Since I dont have a firm theme for the patch Im not 100% sure when it will actually go live. It will likely just be when I determine there is enough content to warrant it. Thanks for your patience, I feel like this is taking a long time, but I suppose at the end of the day work is getting done and thats what matters. Verdant Village V0.3.4.3 Full Changelog

• New icon for irrigation pipes
• Modified barn and coop interior tilesets
• Modified truffle sprite to make it stand out more
• Fixed a bug with looms patching incorrectly
• Put in a small path leading to the fire attunement stone to make its location more obvious
• Made a slight modification to make objects with flickering flames in their animation not play in a synchronized manner
• Fixed a bug where, when using a controller, using the carpenter mallet on nothing would give you a chest
• Fixed a bug where, when using a controller, placing an object when using the controller would disallow you from moving the cursor to place more objects
• Fixed a bug where if you held down a movement key while mounting your horse the horse would fail to animate once it started moving
• Fixed a bug where description text would appear below alchemy UI in certain situations
• Made skill description text clearer as to what it does when you level up
• Fixed a bug where when placing objects in the world while playing in keyboard only mode the player would still move when trying to place something
• Fixed a small bug in the archeology UI related to navigating it when using keyboard only mode
• Fixed tooltips for placing objects in keyboard only mode
• Fixed an issue with squirrel meat turning into squirrel fur when picked up (for real this time)
• Added a link to Steam page on the title screen
• Added a free trial mode for the game

[ 2020-10-13 16:16:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick hotfix today. There were two things pointed out to me recently. The first is that if you were hunting squirrels any fur they dropped would turn into meat once it hit your inventory. This should now be fixed. The other issue which may have affected a fair number of people was a bug related to the construction signs scattered around the world. Essentially, if you spoke to the respective NPC at their shop before talking to them normally the signs would never activate making the quests impossible to start. This has now been fixed. If you happened to already stumble into this bug the patch should fix the issue for you as well. Aside from that, Ill take the opportunity to talk a bit about what is going on. As mentioned before, things may slow down a bit in the near future. At the moment, I dont have the capital necessary to pay an artist for more assets. That alone prevents me from adding any new systems to the live version of the game. I am coding them, so progress is being made, but without art I cant add them to the game. In short, work is getting done, but it may be a little bit before it sees the light of day. This issue shouldnt last long though. As for what I have been working on, alongside some other random stuff, its been mostly the fermenting system lately. As it stands, you can make 6 different types of alcohol and there are 121 different items that you can potentially add to anything you make. The system is completely custom, as in there are no recipes other than the ones you create. You can name whatever you craft as well as pick the sprite used, and the item will be given a custom description. Whatever you add to the drink will dictate what it does, restore stamina, give buffs, sell for more, etc. There is also a multiplier system in place so some taste combinations will work better than others which youll have to discover that yourself. In essence you should be able to start a start a little craft brewery if you want. Like I said earlier, a lack of art might delay that for a little bit (its currently all drawn in paint with my expert skills). Once everything is done though I think it should be a pretty neat little system for the game and another option for people if thats something that interests them. Anyway, thats it, below is the full list of fixes. VERDANT VILLAGE PATCH 0.3.4.2 FULL CHANGELOG

• Fixed a bug with cooking related to picking objects from the oven when your inventory was full
• Fixed two spelling errors related to silk cloth
• Fixed a bug that caused fireflies to spawn too early in summer
• Fixed a small bug with alchemy product icons that could occur when moving them around
• Fixed a bug with hunting squirrels where fur would turn into meat once it entered your inventory
• Fixed a bug where construction signs would never activate depending on how you interacted with NPCs

[ 2020-09-23 16:22:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tiny little hotfix patch today. Ive heard a few times now that hunting has some bugs. After looking through it myself I found a few outstanding issues as well. Given that they had the potential to be fairly game breaking I decided to put out a little hotfix for it. As anyone following development knows, Im not doing regular weekly patches anymore. However, since Im taking the time to write patch notes, I figured that I should also mention what Ive been doing/will be doing. So, the plan for patching is to take advantage of a feature on Steam. Basically, if you develop games on Steam, they have a system that you can use about 5 times per game. This system lets you push your game back into the spotlight of the store when you have a big patch or DLC. Most likely, if youve spent time on Steam youve probably seen this used for other games and maybe didnt even know it. The qualification is that your game needs to be seeing major additions or changes. So, the patches I have planned will need to be large. This isnt a problem, but it will obviously take longer to achieve. As for the patch Im currently working on there are already 3 new zones, a new character and shop, and one new mechanic tied to one of the areas. Aside from that Ive added a few artifacts to find, more fish (again tied to a specific zone) and some other odds and ends. Thats just at the moment mind you. I plan to add quests more characters and a fair number of other things as well. I figure these large patches will likely have themes to go with them. This one is shaping up with a focus of things that arent farming. Things like curing or smoking the meat you get from hunting, another building you can make that will deal with something that I guess is livestock, although thats probably a loose qualification. Probably livestock in the same way silkworms are livestock, I mean they sort of are, but no one calls them that. The current project Im working on deals with fermenting and brewing alcohol. That system wasnt planned to be large, but it turned into just that. Assuming all goes well, youll basically be able to mix various ingredients in whatever way you want to make a drink. These drinks will be unique to your game and should allow you to pick their appearance and name them, stuff like that. I feel sort of bad writing this because none of these things are in this patch, just some bug fixes for hunting. For the most part, I just wanted to mention these things because Id like to let people who have already bought the game know that there are still plenty of things to come. I dont have any real ETA on this stuff, but rest assured it is being worked on and Ill try to keep posting updates, probably in the form of twitter posts, but occasionally I may write up something like this as well. VERDANT VILLAGE V0.3.4.1 FULL CHANGELOG

• Fixed several bugs with the hunting system that should result in a smoother experience.

[ 2020-09-16 19:43:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

This message should be shorter than usual. In short, I will no longer be doing patches once per week. Ill explain the general thought process behind this below. The first thing is that it takes a fair amount of time to patch the game. By that, Im literally referring to the process of exporting and uploading everything, along with writing patch notes, updating social media, etc. That eats into dev time a little more than Id like it to each week. The second reason is far more relevant. For the moment, Ill continue to work on the game as I have been. However, I feel I should mention that in the near future this will likely not be my full-time job anymore. While the game has received mostly positive feedback in both alpha and early access it hasnt really taken off in terms of sales. Im not bringing this up to garner pity or anything, its just a basic reality that Im not shy about mentioning. Assuming things continue on this trend, development will slow down. I do have every intention of finishing the game. Id rather not become one of the devs that puts something out in early access and then drops the project. Given this potential new schedule I wouldnt be able to put out a patch each week anyway, there simply wouldnt be enough change to justify it. The hope is that while patches will be less frequent, they should be larger chunks of content. Ive never done early access before so this has all been a bit of an experiment. Starting out, I was modeling after the Minecraft approach, by which I mean the infdev Minecraft approach, back when Notch patched the game once a week. After doing this sort of thing for a while I think Ive decided that updating each week and adding one or two things to a game like this isnt as appealing as having a big patch where many things change all at once. I think in terms of motivation to play, one large patch would serve as more of an attention grabber. So thats it, still plenty more to come obviously, but there are going to be some changes in content delivery. Im not sure if Ill post little updates still or just throw something on twitter from time to time. In any case, Ill still be around to answer questions or hear suggestions in discord and the like. When a patch does come through, Ill be sure to make it worth the wait as well. Thanks for your patience everyone.

[ 2020-09-04 21:56:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

This weeks work was pretty content focused. Before I get into it, I wanted to apologize about some of the alchemy items added last week. There was a bug with some of them preventing them from being moved or sold. That has been fixed in this patch. Normally, Id have put out a hotfix over the weekend for something that big, but last weekend was pretty hectic so things got delayed. Hopefully, it didnt affect anyone too badly. I spent my time this week between three major additions to the game. The first and probably simplest, although tedious, was the addition of Miles. He is the owner of the inn at the center of Amberglen. Until now that building was literally run by no one, which is strange to say the least. He also sells some food when he is behind the counter if you are looking for an easy meal. Aside from Miles, there were 7 quests added to the game this week. Quests are something that Ive been slow to get around to. With alchemy and hunting now in the game it opens up some of the potential rewards and requirements so hopefully those will keep coming. I think most of these quests require that youve done some other quests that are already in the game so you may have to do some leg work before they become available. Lastly, there were two map changes made. I suppose its more accurate to say one addition and one change. The first is to the chapel in town. I thought the area around it looked and felt a little bland so it is now on top of a hill. The more important change is in the swamp. Im trying not to ruin surprises within the game incase people would rather naturally stumble upon things. Suffice to say check the swamp, especially if you fixed the bridge, theres actually something up in that area now. Normally Id talk about whats next, but Im actually not sure at the moment. There is plenty to do, but I havent quite picked a direction yet. Im working on combat in the background every day, but that is still very early in development. As for actual features I might press my artist for a few sprites so I can get brewing into the game. Its not a massive system, but it is a fun little side project to mess with. I was going to look into the fishing mini game as well and possibly alter that. I may turn to some smaller QoL changes and minor, but important, systems. Things like repeatable quests with special rewards, or a board in town that can tell you who has quests available. That stuff aside Im sure Ill be adding another NPC next week and maybe working on more zones as well. In short, there are a lot of things to do and its sort of a grab bag in terms of what I focus on unless something strikes me as desperately needing to be addressed. Anyway, below is the full changelog as usual, hope you all enjoy. Verdant Village V0.3.4 Full Changelog

• Fixed a bug related to alchemy products not being interactive
• Fixed a bug where trying to use the "C" key when naming an animal would cause the shop to bug out. Specifically, it wasn't the "C" key that broke things it was whatever key was bound to opening and closing your inventory
• Added a clause that prevents opening your inventory while mounting or dismounting your horse, this had the potential to cause several different bugs, some more egregious than others
• Made a few cosmetic modifications to the area around the chapel in Amberglen
• Added a secret so that fixing the bridge in the bog now actually has a purpose
• Added Miles, an innkeeper who also sells food
• Fixed a spelling error in Ethan's quest description text
• All snacks now allow for stacks of 5
• All drinks now allow for stacks of 5
• Fixed a visual glitch where tabs on the cooking menu would appear slightly out of position making them appear unattached to the GUI
• Added 2 quests for Remi
• Added a quest for Alice
• Added a quest for Ben
• Added 2 quests for Miles
• Added a quest for Ethan

[ 2020-08-29 00:37:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patching is coming slightly early this week. Ill be out of town starting tomorrow so I thought Id sneak this in while I can. That said, not a ton happened this week, or at least thats how it felt. I suppose it was lots of behind the scenes things. Most of my week was spent doing data entry within the game. As a result, alchemy is now in the game in a much more expansive state. You can now break down a variety of items for alchemical purposes. You can also finally make more items than just dyes at your alchemy table. There are still a lot of items to add to this system, but now the limiting factor is quests instead of the system not being filled in. A lot of quests come from characters that arent in the game yet. This is something far easier to tackle and they will basically be added over time. Some alchemy products are also just irrelevant at the moment due to combat not being in the game along with another system. Speaking of combat, when I wasnt entering loads of data into the game, I was doing some more brainstorming on the system. Its gone through a few iterations but I think Ive come to an idea that I like at this point. Work to actually start putting it in slowly will begin next week. Im sorry to say that there wont be anything tangible for the player for a while, but Ill try to mention things about it in updates. Regardless, I do think the system that Ive come up with should be fun and something a little more unique for this type of game. In regards to what was actually added this patch its just a few things. Alchemy is now in the game in a sense that you could actually live off of alchemy if you wanted to. The sell prices may need some balancing however. Two more attunement stones were also put into the game as you may need to use them soon. Aside from alchemy there were two quests added, one for Elise and another which is Simeons final renovation quest. Aside from that Caleb now has all of his schedules so he should function differently based on the season. As for the future, more NPCs will be coming, probably one per week if I keep to my schedule. Some of my time is going to be going into slowly developing combat in the background. Alongside all that Ill probably be looking into smaller systems. Fishing traps have been a long time coming, I think I also have a new idea for the fishing minigame so that may be changed out soon. Theres some smaller QoL stuff Ive been meaning to get to as well. Id also like to start pushing more quests to unlock stuff. There is plenty in the game that is just locked away because there is no quest to get at it. Putting in more quests will probably become a higher priority soon. Verdant Village Patch V0.3.3 Full Changelog

• Caleb's remaining schedules have been added to the game
• Fixed a small visual bug regarding description text appearing under other UI in the alchemy screen
• Alchemy has been expanded to include breakdown of various objects in the world
• Quent's quest "Alchemical Wonders" has been modified to give several alchemy recipes, if you've already completed the quest the recipes will be unlocked for you after patching
• A quest has been added for Elise
• The final home renovation quest has been added for Simeon
• Two more attunement stones have been placed into the world

[ 2020-08-21 03:41:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch day is here once again, this one can probably be considered a bigger one. Before we get too far into it, I have one thing I want to address. Its come to my attention that there is a bug where when you launch the game, youll (rarely) get a window, which will simply be a black screen. The game will never load, and if you try closing the window and relaunching the same thing will happen. This is something Ive personally witnessed once. Relaunching the game on my PC caused it to launch normally. It always struck me as some sort of jank with the Construct 3 engine which the game is made in, which further research suggests it may be. My concern is with how frequent it is. While Id prefer for it to never happen, the core of the issue is related to the game creation program and not my code. Meaning I am somewhat at the mercy of the developers who make Construct 3 and NWjs. Ive been looking into this in my spare time this past week, checking forums, making posts, etc, and may have stumbled upon a solution. This patch is basically a test. Id ask that if you are playing Verdant Village, and you experience this black screen launch issue to let me know. From what I understand, its a pretty rare occurrence, but if it is still happening with the changes that have been made it will let me move on to trying other solutions. So, boring tech stuff aside, this patch has both a lot and a little honestly. The main attraction is hunting. A system I was supposed to have in the game by V0.3, oops. Better late than never I suppose. So, in order to hunt youll have to speak with Caleb who is a new NPC also added this patch. Hell set you on a quest to unlock hunting. Speaking of, a quick note on Caleb. Due to how patching works he will likely idle in place for a day before he starts moving normally. If you just patched and dont see him moving dont fret, he should kick into gear the following day. In the future Ill try to look into a way to fix this, but I didnt have time this week. I wont go into the particulars for hunting, but what was added this patch is still only part of the system. You can now physically hunt animals, however there isnt much to do with what you get from hunting them. You can sell the raw meat for some money, but in the future, there is a more extensive system surrounding all this that Ill implement. In short, by the time things are done you will be able to hunt and then refine the meat via smoking, marinating, and stuff of that nature. I have most of the art for this I just didnt have time to work it all into this patch. Sometime in the future Ill get back to it though. While hunting is the main part of this patch there are a couple of other smaller things. First, a new zone was added, you have to have some place to hunt after all. It is west of the Beryl Woods. Aside from hunting in that zone there are also some artifacts to find, and new foraging plants. Youll find that your fowl now drop feathers. At the moment, chicken feathers are the only ones with a purpose, to make arrows. But in the future duck and geese feathers will also play a role. Aside from all that there were a couple bug fixes that Ill list below. Also, Mel now sells some farm products along with animals. The prices are a bit high, but if youre short an egg or some milk you can buy it from her now. Last thing, this is just a bug fix but it has implications that may confuse people. There was a bug pointed out in the last patch where extra irrigation pipes would appear on your farm after the patch. This was due to a small oversight in how they were created. I have fixed this issue in the code. The thing is, I cant do anything about the pipes you may have already laid down. In short, any pipes that you placed and later pulled up are going to reappear when you patch. Once you pick them up this time they should stay gone for good. Basically, you are going to get some extra pipes this patch assuming you placed down, and then removed any in the past. Other than that, the changelog is below. As for whats coming next it will likely be some smaller systems. Im also going to slowly begin work on combat. That will be the next major addition, but there will be plenty to tide things over until then. Verdant Village Patch 0.3.2 Changelog

• Fixed an odd bug that would occur occasionally when scrolling the mouse wheel when charging a tool
• Fixed a bug that could occasionally give specific items the wrong sprite in your inventory
• Added hunting
• Added Blackthistle Forest (southwest of the Beryl Woods, or south of Shimmerdew Lake)
• Added feathers from fowl, chickens, ducks, and geese have a chance to drop feathers each day, ducks and geese do not have a 100% drop chance
• Added two more artifact keystones to the world
• Added Caleb to the game, currently he only has one schedule but more will be added next week
• Added a quest for Caleb
• Sven's quest (that has been in the game since the first alpha for some reason) can now be completed due to hunting being in the game
• Increased stamina gain on milk and goat milk to 35 and 50 respectively
• Added the following items to Mel's store for purchase
• Chicken Egg
• Cow Milk
• Goat Milk
• Chicken Feather
• Duck Feather
• Goose Feather
• Fixed a bug regarding having tilled ground near an irrigation pipe, which if you dug with the shovel to make a hole, then filled said hole in, the tile would not be watered
• Made clay a consistent drop when digging in the mines for now, also slightly increased drop rate. A new system will replace this one altogether in the near future
• Fixed a bug where irrigation pipes would not properly assign a variable causing ones that had been placed and removed to reappear when the game was patched. NOTE, this will happen once more during this patch, once they are removed this time, they should stay gone. Sorry for the inconvenience, enjoy the free pipes
• Changed the "It's locked" dialogue to "It's locked, looks like no one is home" to hopefully avoid confusion as to where an NPC is
• Made an alteration to exports to hopefully prevent random low probability on launch crashing.

[ 2020-08-15 01:08:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, time for patch notes. First off, thanks to everyone who has purchased the game so far, it means a lot to see anyone spend money on something Ive been making. If you are new to all of this, Ill say a few things here. At the end of this are a few links to various social media stuff. Im not really active on them to be honest, but whenever there is an update it will be pushed through all of these outlets. So, if you are looking to pay attention to changes following any of those would be your best bet. One other thing, I normally do patch notes the same way each time. The bulk of the notes will be me talking about various things to give a more complete story of what happened since the last patch. However, if you dont care to hear me ramble on (I wouldnt blame you) there is always a list of the actual changes to the game at the end of the notes. Other than that, there is one note that is probably more important. Some people have been following this game since early this year so they likely know already. While it isnt exactly set in stone, Verdant Village will usually be patched on Fridays every week. I think since the game first went up, I only forwent a patch on 2 different weeks, I believe because I was out of town. I will likely hold to this sort of patching schedule while the game is in early access on Steam. If I change that, I will be sure to let everyone know. Assuming Im not working on one large system that I cant finish in a week each patch usually has a few small things added into the game along with fixes and QoL. This week has been a little different. With the release on Tuesday Ive found myself replying to emails and dealing with things unrelated to development for a portion of the week. Id guess next week will be far more normal. That said the only real changes are a few bug fixes to some systems in the game. One of the more important ones is a plugin that was updated that may have been the cause of the game occasionally crashing on startup. I suppose Im actually happy to report that, so far at least, I havent really heard of any bugs from players since launch. With any luck that means things are fairly stable. Bugs aside, what I spent the rest of the week on was hunting. Its a system that is a bit overdue. I meant to implement it earlier, but got bogged down with other systems like controller support and revamping the inventory system. From where Im sitting it seems that most of the major difficulties with hunting have been taken care of. The toughest part involved a bit of recursion and tree graph node tracking. Parts of my college life I never wanted to relive, but here we are. Im hoping that the system will be live by next Friday. Assuming I dont run into any huge complications I think that will be possible. Once it is out of the way Ill probably focus on getting more of alchemy implemented since I have the sprite work. Some other NPCs and zones also need to be added. Theres a litany of smaller gameplay systems Id like to address as well, fishing traps, fermenting, more quests, etc. So, in summary, sorry this patch is a little light, but hopefully there will be much more to come very soon. In case you were wondering what hunting is shaping up to be I grabbed a screencap earlier today as well.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExodusSoftware Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/TJ7FtQ3 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ExodusSoftwareLLC VERDANT VILLAGE VERSION 0.3.1 CHANGE LOG

• Fixed a dialogue error (repeated line of text) in the quest for the broken staircase.
• Fixed an issue where the broken staircase signpost would not activate its quest dialogue even after speaking with Sven.
• Fixed a bug where using cooking ingredients in a chest wouldn't properly delete a stack when it was used up.
• Fixed a bug where making fish fillets from fish in a chest would allow the stack to go into negative numbers.
• Fixed a bug where John would not open his bar on rainy days, he would walk there but you would be unable to buy drinks.
• Updated a plugin within the Construct engine that may have caused the game to crash on boot in rare cases.
• Add a line of dialogue in the opening cutscene to reference the oven and how it can be upgraded.

[ 2020-08-07 23:02:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Been a while since Ive done this. Ive been holed up working on things prior to Verdant Villages early access release. Before any notes, lets get that out of the way. This will likely be the last patch (unless I have to hotfix) before the early access release on Steam. After a long, whats it been now like 5 months or so, open alpha on Itch I believe the game is finally ready for early access. If it were up to me, I think I would just keep it under wraps until it was done, but the financial nature of things is that I have to put this out and see where I stand. Anyway, on August 4th Verdant Village will be released onto Steam at $15.00. The price will be the same on Itch as well. To any who are already playing the game I wanted to say thank you. Everyone who has given feedback, or encouragement, or even just told me that fishing is too hard, I appreciate all of it. Because of all of you the game is far more stable than I ever would have been able to manage on my own, and it makes me extremely happy to see people playing something Ive made and having fun. Mushy stuff aside, I think Im long overdue for a patch. While I wish I was about to drop tons of new features, characters, and zones, sadly I am not. One thing Ive wanted to get done, and have procrastinated on for far too long, is controller support. As of this version of the game, controller support has been fully implemented. You should be able to just pickup a controller and use it. The buttons can also be rebound as usual. If you use a controller you will have to forgive some of the UI art, I need to have some things commissioned. For now, you are stuck with my godly ms paint skills. Some other things might be a bit rough around the edges so there will likely be polish added to this system over time, but it should (fingers crossed) function. Aside from that keyboard only mode has been added to the game as well. I know there were a few requests for it a long time ago. With controller support going in I figured now would be as good a time as any. Keyboard only mode has to be enabled manually in the settings. While Id love for it to automatically figure out that you are just using a keyboard there are too many complications for it to be possible. This is why in general you dont add support like this so late into a games development. To any devs reading this, heed my somewhat wise, sometimes irrational words, if your game is going to have controller support, add it as you go, not after like 2 and a half years of development. All that aside, there were some bug fixes for various things. Im hoping that this patch will do away with the bug related to Simeon disappearing for several days post patch. Other than that, I did manage to squeeze one thing in today. The cooking station will now look at the inventories of every chest inside your house when you are cooking. So, you no longer need to carry all your ingredients to the station to cook. This works for adding fuel as well. I may look to add similar systems to other things as well in future. Aside from that one other QoL thing was done. I altered the stack sizes of a lot of objects. Most things in the game now stack to 50, or more in the case of building materials. The only thing really left unchanged is food stack sizes. The reason being, I dont really want to have high stacking food. Doing something like that basically makes stamina irrelevant because people can then just carry 50 full course meals in their pocket. It still could be subject to change, but for now at least Im sticking to my guns on that. As for the future, I think I can finally get back to content now. Ive spent the last, I dont even know how long anymore, altering existing systems for efficiency, fixing bugs, adding things like controller support, and whatever else. I think things are mostly stable now, so while I may still do some of that I think Ill focus on new features. Next on the docket is probably hunting, Ill probably also put Brock in so people can open up that cave. People seem to really want to do that. Anyway, if youve read this far, thanks for listening to me ramble. Hopefully the next patch come quicker, and if I can shamelessly plug one more time, dont forget August 4th for the games release. Thanks and stay safe out there. Verdant Village Version 0.3 Full Patch Notes

• Fixed a bug where you could click arrow buttons in a shop from beneath the animal naming interface.
• Fixed a few bugs relating to swapping the flooring in rooms of your house.
• Fixed a variety of spelling errors in item descriptions (credit to rstonewall for tracking them).
• Fixed a bug with the blacksmith where upgrading tools wouldn't accurately update your inventory visually.
• Added tint to moving buildings to make it more apparent when you are selecting one.
• Controller support has been added, bindings can be fully customized in settings, some art assets for this system are not final, forgive my poor paint skills. In case you skipped the long form patch notes, there are likely bugs with this system as it is a massive, complex, thing, if you find any let me know and I'll try to address them quickly.
• Fixed a bug where archeology artifacts would show their name on the description display prior to having been completed.
• Fixed an issue where items created via alchemy breakdown would not properly dim the sprite upon creation.
• Fixed a visual issue where the scrolling buttons in the catalog menu would not properly activate or deactivate based on where you were in the listings.
• Fixed a bug related to patching and shops not being open for a day. When saving was changed to happen whenever a player slept there were likely some overlooked issues. This one specifically has to do with shops not activating the first day after a patch assuming that the game was last saved when the shop was already open. This fix, will not apply on this patch due to how it is implemented, but in future patches it will no longer occur.
• Fixed a bug with binding the Map key, which would promptly open the map as soon as you remapped the binding.
• Setup keyboard only mode, key bindings are customizable, this mode must be enabled in settings in order for it to work. Similar to controller support there may be bugs, if you find any let me know and Ill see what I can do.
• Hopefully set up a failsafe to prevent Simeon from disappearing post patch, as he is prone to do sometimes.
• Fixed a bug regarding patching and deleted buildings reappearing under specific circumstances.
• Added a system to cooking, the cooking station can now utilize items from the player's inventory as well as anywhere inside the player's house, I.E. in chests. This system also works with adding fuel for heat.
• Altered max stack sizes to be more consistent and more accommodating, items that were affected are listed below, in short, most items will now stack to 50. A short-generalized list is below.
• Crops
• Fish
• Fruit
• Gems
• Farm Products (eggs, milk, honeycomb, sap, etc)
• Minerals
• Seeds and Saplings
• Foraged Plants
• Food Ingredients
• Alchemy Ingredients

[ 2020-08-01 00:27:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

There will be an AMA in the Verdant Village Discord Server to discuss anything about the game and its development. The AMA will take place at 12:00 PM on Thursday June 18th (CDT).

[ 2020-06-06 15:00:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

There will be an AMA in the Verdant Village Discord Server to discuss anything about the game and its development. The AMA will take place at 12:00 PM on Wednesday June 10th (CDT).

[ 2020-06-02 20:54:20 CET ] [ Original post ]