Author Topic: [KICKSTARTER: 30% FUNDED!] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!  (Read 22102 times)

Jubal

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #30 on: July 22, 2017, 11:50:37 PM »
I like the postal service ideas, that's great :)

Also, as a heads-up, avoid making any major posts in the first half of next week, we're about to do a big server migration (after which we'll be getting a lot busier and hopefully starting to get the site a bit more active again!)
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #31 on: July 23, 2017, 07:29:03 PM »
Sounds good! Good luck with the migration. Looking forward to even more activity on this site.

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Jubal

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #32 on: July 24, 2017, 10:55:49 PM »
Right, migration should be sorted (or be at least in the process of being sorted). All remarkably smooth!
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #33 on: July 30, 2017, 09:45:49 PM »
I feel fancier already!

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Jubal

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #34 on: July 30, 2017, 10:24:22 PM »
The main thing I feel is that, unlike on the old server, I can now install security patches so we're less likely to have the whole site break :P And now we've moved (and I've moved too, just starting to settle in to a new country), time to be working on some new stuff :)

I was talking to a friend about Village Monsters recently, she said a few of her friends might well be interested in it; definitely getting good signs when I've chatted to people about it lately.
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #35 on: July 30, 2017, 11:55:11 PM »
It's the weekend, so that means I get to share everything I worked on last week in yet another edition of the Developer Diary Digest!

Before I begin, I wanted to quickly plug something. You might not know this, but I have a newsletter for Village Monsters, and I would absolutely love it if you signed up for it!


Newsletter Signup: https://tinyletter.com/Village-Monsters

I try to reserve the newsletter for only big ticket items, so you'll be the first to know of releases and other important news.

Anyway, back to the update!

---

I had a few really productive weeks this month, so I guess I was 'due' to have a slow one. I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped, and I ended up getting caught in a few technical quagmires; still, I have things to share, so let's get on with it!

Fleshing Out Hobbies
From day 1 of development I knew that hobbies were going to be a major feature of Village Monsters. When you aren't talking with villagers, improving your house or solving mysteries, you'll probably be progressing your skills (and making money) with one of the various hobbies

Critter Capturing was the first hobby I put in, followed by Fishing and Archaeology. I had a bunch of ideas for other hobbies to add to the mix, but I wasn't sure which ones would work best. Well, until now.


(icons are very much 1st draft)

Village Monsters will now contain five hobbies for you to enjoy: Cooking, Critter Capturing, Botany, Fishing, and Archaeology. This post details some new updates to two of them.

Botany Prototyping
Botany is one of the new hobbies I've been working on, and it includes everything plant related.

The reason I'm going with Botany instead of something like Gardening is that you'll be able to do way more than grow a simple garden

This week, I played around with planting & watering trees, as well as managing growth as time progresses - assuming you make sure to water and care for them each day


Like all prototypes it's a big work-in-progress. However, thanks to feedback from a user at another site I've had some intriguing ideas that I'm keeping under my hat. Stay tuned next week, yeah?

Fishing Revamp
Fishing was one of the first hobbies I implemented, but I haven't touched it since. It's in a sorry state as of the last demo, and I'm pretty embarrassed by how bad it is.

What began as a 'revamp' quickly turned into a 'refactor' which the became a total 'rewrite'. I tossed out all my old code and rewrote it from the ground up.


It was a slow process, but fishing is in a much better state in terms of stability and mechanics. Work will continue on this system this week as well.

I've always been dissatisfied with fishing minigames in other life-sim games, so I'm going in a different direction. You can expect a system that's much more inspired by JRPGs than any existing life-sim out there.

Quality of Life
To wrap up, I also included a grab bag of bug fixes and quality of life improvements that I received from demo feedback.

Trees should behave better and no longer give you a permanent hug. Birds fly a bit slower. The keyboard control scheme was reworked. Critters should hopefully not crash the game as much. Your bit (currency) balance is now shown when you add or subtract from it

And so on.

I also got a lot of writing in this week as well. Every item - every single item - has a unique description and flavor text. Some even have detailed backstories. Pretty nuts, right? Well it's been a ton of fun, so there's no stopping me now.


Until next time!

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Jubal

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #36 on: July 31, 2017, 10:46:35 PM »
Excellent, just in time for this month's Updates: http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5231 :)
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #37 on: August 02, 2017, 04:41:45 AM »
Whoo!!

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Jubal

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #38 on: August 02, 2017, 11:03:36 PM »
Also I like the idea of mithril being massively over-hyped. I'm not sure I've *ever* seen the "mithril is the best shiny stuff" trope played anything other than straight before.
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #39 on: August 06, 2017, 11:07:39 PM »
It's the weekend, and that means another edition of the Village Monsters Dev Diary Digest (VMD3)!

Like last week I have a bit of housekeeping to do before diving in. Longtime followers know that I've tried several different ways to present progress updates, but none of them have really 'stuck'. However, it seems this weekly format has really been working for me.

As such, I went ahead and created an archive for every Dev Diary Digest I've posted since I started doing them. If you missed earlier editions, or if you just want to see how far I've come, then please do take a look!

http://warpdogs.com/developer-diaries/

Anyway, onto the update

Pets
I may have shared this anecdote before, but the road to pets was a serendipitous one

A few weeks ago I was working on debugging critter behavior, and for whatever reason I was testing it in the player's house. As I kept going in and out of the house it occurred to me how much I actually liked having a critter there - it was sort of like having a pet! Wouldn't it be cool if that was an actual feature?

This week I was able to prototype this idea:


Here's how it works: first, you gotta catch a critter. Then, walk up to an special item (currently a pet bowl) and select the pet you want to tame. You can only tame one at a time, so choose wisely

At first, all critters start out as "Wild", and they'll act much like they did before you caught them. Over time, if you feed them and treat them well they'll increasingly become tame and more affectionate.

Tamed critters will also continue to behave similarly to their wild versions, and they'll retain any unique attributes. For example, if you catch a Snowflake Elemental he'll make your entire house cold; good during the summer, but not so good if you have a lot of fish on display...

Hail / Thunderboomers
I always enjoy working on weather systems, so I took a detour to add a new weather type - Hail


I had to improve the weather system to handle the little hail pellets, and these improvements should help with any 'ground based' weather effects in the future...leaf piles in the fall, snowdrifts, rain puddles, and so on.

I then went ahead and added more sound effects to the various weather types. I also added a minor feature where weather sounds can still be heard indoors at a lower volume. It's surprisingly atmospheric, especially during thunderstorms!

UI Improvements (Map, Inventory, Notices)
Finally, though I generally don't like it, I also spent a great deal of time on UI work. I've never enjoyed UI work, not even at my last job where functionality was preferred over looks, but I'm actually pretty happy with how things shook out this time.

First, I added a map for the village to the Compendium. It's very basic and just lays the foundation for future maps:


I then added movement to various notifications. I like it a lot better than the notices just appearing suddenly.



Finally, I completely blew up and reworked the inventory. I actually did this some time ago, but I added an extra layer of polish and usability this week. It's unquestionably better than the old inventory, but that's not saying much - the old one was really bad!


Anyway, that's it from me. As usual I also added a lot of minor things, quality of life improvements, and bugfixes, but nothing I need to call out. Have a good week!


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Jubal

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #40 on: August 06, 2017, 11:33:22 PM »
Eee! Will all critters be tameable in this way? (Also, definitely have some really monstrous/weird critters you can turn into pets, I know lots of people who'd happily get a game just for being able to have tiny daemonic horrors or whatever in a tank in their house).
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #41 on: August 07, 2017, 10:31:54 PM »
As of now, yeah, all pets can be tamed. I don't really see a reason not to, and I agree - sometimes it's cool to tame a hedgehog, othertimes it's cool to tame a beholder :)

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Jubal

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #42 on: August 07, 2017, 10:52:30 PM »
Also, as I make this feature request of every dev on the site somehow - if you include a pet pangolin I will be very happy :P
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Gmd

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #43 on: August 08, 2017, 02:35:20 AM »
This is some impressive stuff!
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WarpDogsVG

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Re: [New Trailer & Demo] Village Monsters - Kinda like Animal Crossing!
« Reply #44 on: August 09, 2017, 05:45:21 PM »
Thank you so much!

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