Verdant Village News #1

Well, I’m probably pretty overdue for this sort of thing lol. Apologies that its been a while since I’ve said anything. To be brief, things aren’t perfect, but certainly better than the start of the year. I’ll keep figuring it out, but that’s not particularly important for this post.

So, what have I been doing for like, what, 4 months or something? Well, a lot and also probably not as much as people would like, myself included. For a while I just didn’t have the mindset for programming so instead I went to adding sprites to the game. I’m not exaggerating when I say I probably added like 500, 600 sprites. Maybe more? Which probably sounds easy, but it usually ends up being complicated because you have to handle trimming, setting origins, converting sprite strips, managing frame speed, etc.

So, I did just that for a while for two reasons. One, I’d admittedly been putting it off cause its pretty boring. But two, things are steadily moving towards recreating the game world. A lot of systems are in place, but I basically just have a few rooms to test stuff in. What I wanted to avoid was a situation similar to the first time I did this. I was still getting sprites for a lot of that and so some zones would get made prior to me having all the sprite work. So unless I went back and modified things certain areas would be more generic than others. So hopefully this will be just an easier time in general. Strange as it probably sounds, actually creating the game world doesn’t take nearly as long as prepping for it. That said I am still getting some sprites so I’ve focused on other things for now, but adding so many sprites in gets me a lot closer to being able to make the world.

Let’s see, eventually I did get back to coding things. The cooking UI has been brushed up in several ways. I still need to make some changes to the oven section as I recall, but I’m brainstorming how to best do that.

I also made the entire foraging system. Which to be clear the game has allowed you to pick a forage item for a long time. What I mean by system is how the game actually generates forage items as well as remembering what has spawned in a zone when you leave it so it can be there when you come back. Also things like certain items only spawning in certain areas, and all that. Which may sound weird since I just said the world isn’t made yet. I actually thought the same thing after making it, but I guess I got in a mood to code something at the time. To explain, while the world isn’t there yet the system has been made and its made in such a way that it can basically be easily applied to any area that is made. I just have to place down spawn points, set a few variables, and it should all work.

The last thing I have written down is that I updated the sleep UI. I just looked at the sleep UI in the game and I wish I’d written something more descriptive. I believe all I did was brush up the UI with new versions of sprites. Most UI is getting some sort of treatment like that so I’d guess that’s all it was, nothing major.

Now, that’s all I wrote down, but not all that I’ve done. I write down tasks when I finish them, and the things I’m currently working on aren’t done. Maybe I should break them up into smaller parts to accommodate. First one to mention, combat. So, there was a whole combat system that I mocked up and had a few friends try. No one will ever see that lol. After talking to them I agreed with the feedback, it was too simple if I recall. It had sort of turned into just watching for the most part.

Combat has been this thing I’ve been trying to nail for a while. The trend has basically been that it started way too complicated for a game like this. I believe the original idea was like full on turn based RPG plus deckbuilder where you have to create the cards you use from like 4 different parts. Suffice to say, it was a lot. Like way too much for a game not really about combat. From there I kept simplifying things bit by bit. Until I got to what I just mentioned which went too far in the other direction.

Since then, I’ve been working on something else, and I think this is it regardless. I’ve discussed it with a few people and we agree that it seems like a good system with enough player input and choice without being too complicated. It should also move pretty fast cause I don’t want people getting bogged down in long fights.

To describe it, basically the player and enemies automatically attack with basic attacks on a set timer. Enemies will also use various abilities throughout the fight. The real player interaction has to do with picking actual attacks that are fired in leu of your basic ones. I’ll try to describe this as best I can. There are six basic elements, things like fire, earth, light, etc. You can assign these to one of four spots on a wheel. You press a button to queue up the element. Then you get another wheel with four more elements. So you pick one again. The elements you have queued can then combine into a new element. Side note, all of these spell wheels are setup by the player ahead of time.

As it stands right now you’ll have 4 spell wheels in total (eventually) for each turn you take. Elements are split into tiers. So tier 1 is the basic stuff, fire, water, earth, etc. Tier 2 is a combination of two of those tier 1 elements. There is a spell for every combination of 2 tier 1 elements. Many of which get kind of weird. Some are normal like Ice or Lightning. Some aren’t like Void, or Crystal. There are also tier 3 elements but they are much more limited to avoid having a billion spell combos.

The point of all this is basically twofold. There are a few more complexities but the player basically has to be thinking about 2 things, elemental advantage (basically pokemon type advantage), and element effects. Elemental advantage is straight forward enough. An enemy is fire type, so hit it with water for extra damage. And for anyone wondering if there are going to be like 30 elemental types, no, despite making combinations all spells break down to their base elements for damage calculation. So you won’t have to memorize a grid of what beats what.

The second part of that is effects. Each combination has its own effect like a stun, or giving your attacks leech, or disabling an enemy etc. And some are defensive so heals, buffs, etc. So all together the player should basically be picking between doing more damage with certain elements or hitting an enemy with a particular effect.

Now that probably sounds like a lot, but I’m doing what I can to make it simple to follow with the UI. Things like showing what combination you’ll be making before you press the button, and having indicators for what effect a combination has. Basically, I’m trying to give choice, but not an overwhelming amount of it. I think it balances fairly well from what I’ve tried and its snappy to just tap a few buttons and cast something, no menus or anything like that. In truth the game will likely also be tuned more towards the easy side of things. Which is to say, you aren’t going to be required to perform perfectly to succeed. I’d also like to put some sort of leveling system behind all of this so you’ll likely be able to just over level if you want to.

Alright so that was a lot of combat talk. As for how much of that is implemented, lets see, battles start and spawn enemies. Basic attacks work for both the player and enemies. Entities take damage and can die. The player can pick and combine spells and cast them. Enemies also have a framework for using their abilities. At the moment I’m implementing buffs and debuffs because they are effects that hang around for a while as opposed to something that just happens when you attack. All in all, there’s still a lot to do but a lot of framework is in.

And I’ve done one more thing as well. I believe I’ve mentioned this, but the game story is what I’ve been working on. Now the original plan some time ago was to have a short story associated with every character. Basically, the Stardew Valley route. I had planned out ideas for all the NPCs and I started writing them. Problem was, I quickly got bored. Perhaps that’s a shortcoming on my end, but my personal opinion was just that the stories were often not exciting or interesting. Combine this with the fact that there are like 45 characters or so and it would be a lot of boring and overlapping story beats.

My opinion on this was twofold. First, doing individual stories where you focus in on one character tends to be boring because while the player character does talk, its fairly minimal. So it ends up being a lot of one sided conversation with the character basically going on and on about whatever topic their little story is about. Second issue, because the stories were almost always focused on a single character there wasn’t a ton that could be done at least not with an indie budget and graphics. And because of the sheer volume of characters each was going to end up watered down.

So, the new plan that I came up with a while ago was fairly simple, combine them. Instead of individual character stories I’ve basically grouped NPCs up into 10 or so groups. Each group has a story and during it you’ll interact with all of those characters and they will interact with each other as well. The idea is basically instead of just having some NPC exposit to you it should feel more like you’re just part of whatever plot is unfolding for those characters.

In addition to this there is a main plot, because I never really liked how these games were just sort of open ended. You can certainly play for as long as you like, but I liked the idea of actually concluding a story. The main plot is what I’m writing now. I’ve been breaking it up into scenes, since all of these stories are basically just cutscenes. Currently I’m at 25 scenes. Now, some of those are very short, and some are called a scene but its really just the player getting a letter in the mail. But I’d say I’m about 50%-60% done. The main plot will be longer than the others, but maybe that will give you an idea of what I’m sort of shooting for. I should also say that despite what I just said about this being basically all cutscene there are moments in the story where the player will be required to do something specific like clear an area or find an item etc. So you will have to actually do certain things to progress the plot at points.

I know people always ask about romance as well. I’d still like to do that, I haven’t solidified anything yet. I think what that would end up being is a shorter series of events with individual NPCs that you can access probably after the group plot with that character is done. But like I said, that’s up in the air.

And I think that’s about it. Sorry its been a while since I updated. I know given how EA goes for a lot of games people are probably concerned that this project won’t be finished. At the moment, I still have every intention to keep going. If that changes for some reason I’ll be sure to say something. That said, I’m still not planning to go back to monthly dev logs. It may happen one day, but for the moment I don’t think it would work well with the pace. As I believe I said months ago, there’s only so much to talk about. But I’ll do what I can to keep everyone in the loop on the project. When I have something to report I’ll do what I can to update everyone. Thanks as always for your patience, I hope this sated your curiosity if only a little.