Feedback [WIP] Unnamed 2Dfarming game

Hello people, so I've been slowly learning Unity and working on my first game but since it is easy to miss things when being new, I hoped to see if I could get some feedback from what I have made and see if I might have things that could be improved, this is still in the prototype stage so I am still working on the basic gameplay loop of farming, building, help npcs, gather material, fight monster and explore dungeons.

So this game is inspired by Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon, I always wanted to add a reason to why you spend your time farming and it leading to something useful, so I decided to combine it with a basic city building and some procedurally generated areas to gather materials and fight enemies.

I have uploaded the prototype to itch.io if anyone wants to test it and give me some feedback.

it is free to download and test
Itch.io link : https://gutsytortoise.itch.io/farmingprojectwip

[edit]
I am looking for feedback on the basic, farming part of the game and the editors for Terrain creation and the building creator parts especially
ps. the building tile editor can rotate and flip tiles with, q,e,r,f

 

Hello people, I was working with making more houses and the starting village, I wanted to make a crafted beginner experience, while slowly leaning the player into the more procedural parts but I realized I needed an editor to build the houses due to the extra information needed to be added when making a house.

So I started out making an editor to make it easier to make prefabs that could be spawned procedurally and it kinda turned into a build your house kind of thing, which I thought about adding to the game, so you are able to make your own house based on a list of different sprites, still a lot to make it working properly though the base seems to be working at least and could be a fun thing to add.

 

So I decided to switch from using premade tiles for the house and village editors and switched to only needing sprites and generate tiles when needed, it involved a bunch of copying and pasting, which in hindsight was not the smartest move, hade to spend the next few hours tracking down all the bugs that popped up due to the calculations ended up in the wrong functions and suddenly everything looks weird, but in the end I managed to fix the issue and now I can combine 3 different terrains and they kinda create something that looks proper.



Anyways started adding a bunch of tiles for building houses and stuff you can add to a village and ended up starting on the beginner village, I realize I still have a long waaay and making houses is much harder then I thought.

 

So I have been spending much of my time getting the npcs to go from building to building and at the end of the day they generate resources depending on which building they been to for example woodcutters generate wood, a quarry gets stone was thinking of adding some rarer resources that have a chance to appear when adding a resource like a 15% or somethign.

I have also been trying to get a webgl version up and running was running alright except for saving and loading data from files which ended up being quite crucial so gonna be a while before we see a webgl version, it is going on the back burner and I plan on focusing on making the beginning town so I have something to work with for content.

 

Hi!

I'm replying, you must feel lonely talking all by yourself

I just quickly tried (even without the possibility of saving, a webgl version would be more than welcome, it's time consuming and not every one is OK to unzip a file and run some executable out of nowhere,which could be why no one has replied?), I haven't gotten into the editing part, so I won't comment about that.

- First thing that I noticed: the way the character moves doesn't feel responsive, there is a delay between the time I press an arrow key and the character starts walking, and it keeps moving after having released the key. Slippery character, it feels sort of heavy. It's not that bad, but quite unusual in that type of game.
- I don't know if it's a bug or not, but I can dig, cut, water, etc. using the mouse anywhere on the screen. Shouldn't it be right in front of the character? Although it's convenient (hello lazyyy), it doesn't feel right.
- I can select an item with the scroll button of my mouse (I think it should be inverted: scroll up to move right, scrolling down to go left), but can't select while clicking on an item icon.
- It took me a few seconds to figure that the right-click was to get inside my house. Why doesn't it directly gets inside when touching the entrance door?
- The icons above the character don't all have the same size, some are quite tiny.

That's all I had time to check, good luck!

 

Yay my first reply thanks, so now to the feedback, I will take a look at the movement script and see if I can make it feel more responsive.

So about rhe whole mining and cutting from any range is mostly because I have not decided if I should only allow the player to only affect the 4 - 8 tiles around the player or give em like 2 - 3 tile range to plow water etc, to make it a more comfortable experiance by not constantly having to move to plow and water nearby tiles and give you some accuracy to select tiles. Thoughts?

Clicking on the hotbar but is a bug fixed a few days a go and the whole items above head is a temporary thing since I was planning to have the character hold the items instead but have not figured out how I want it done, though I am wondering if the whole item above head might be a good way to show currently selected item, how do you feel about the whole thing, would you consider it a good or bad thing?

Also thanks for the feedback it is much appreciated

 

Yes I actually thought about it, and although it may be unusual, I agree with you that having to be in front of the each tile to do an action is tedious and can kill the fun.
Last year I got Doraemon on Switch, and as a Harvest Moon-like, one has to do everything one by one. Talk about a game for kids... I stopped playing it, too bored.
Why not adding it as a skill to unlock and/or upgrade? At the beginning of the game, everything has to be done one by one, then after a few upgrades it can be up to x tiles around the player (not too many or else it won't make much sense). Which in my opinion is quite cool (never seen that before). The psychic farmer!

I don't consider the items showing above the head a bad thing, especially for a one-man made game.
Each tool being held will require specific animations, so in my opinion it's not the most important thing to do.

 

Ohh I do like the thought of making it upgradable ability, it can be a "magical" ability anyways here is my latest update,

So between Doom Eternal and the Terraria 1.4 I actually managed to do some work, been fixing bugs in the grid creator and all from not saving properly, adding and removing resources causing errors, not much content wise, though i added a killer chicken outside the house when you start so you can test the combat.

You have over 1k health and they do like 5 dmg, so they are mostly their for the player to test the combat ai and weapons, fixed it so the tools all have equally sized sprites, though forgot to change the sprite on one of the workbench tables so it is the size of a house, will be fixed with the next update.

Made some changes to the movement script to see if it makes it a bit less floaty, can't really tell, if it still feels floaty it is most likely due to the way it is animated and should be fixable.

Added another resource stone type mostly for testing, the stones now drop iron with around 20% chance, planning to add a pick axe for hitting stones.

right now the biggest issue is what should I be working on to make it interesting, more resources to gather? start working on the dungeon?, add the building of houses and npcs?, balance the item costs and sell values, more monsters, dunno, I guess just start adding and see what sticks.

 

What would YOU like to see to have fun?
I think that's very important. Not everyone shares the sames tastes, so there'll always be people who won't like a creation, no matter what. Therefore, it's better first to focus on what you'd like to see when you play rather than waiting for people to tell you what you should add or remove.
Do you want to play a kick-ass character from the start, or make him evolve and access new areas depending on his level/exp/inventory/acquaintances/etc.?
In Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the whole world is supposedly reachable from the start, but actually many areas/enemies/puzzles require specific specs/equipment. And it's, in my opinion, a smart (and unseen?) move. Isn't fake freedom what our societies are about? Haha! The player can do "whatever" he "wants", choose the order (which may be confusing to a casual gamer, maybe?), but he also knows that despite what everything seems to be, he'll have to improve Link's health, get a better equipment, unlock new abilities, etc.
I personally prefer that over the guards saying "you shall not paaaaass!!" until you get a stupid scroll or because an event happened. Because most of the time, that's not something likely to happen in any universe, at least not put in that way.
On the other hand, in a 2D game with no map and no clear path to follow can be unappealing and lead the player to quickly give up.
So I'd say it's more about what you want to convey and how you want to do it.

One important question, I think: "Is this or that annoying or boring?"
For example, farming. I personally get bored after doing the same actions over and over again. So if it were my project, I'll add potions or magical fertilizer to make the crops grow (waaaay) faster, or something that would triple their price, etc.
At least, whoever wants to take their time is welcome to do so, but the ones who want to make money faster or simply get a nice garden quickly can also do it.
Rain summoning, greenhouse effect, local thawing, dunno...

I'm saying that based only on my "experience" as a gamer, I've got no professional link with the gaming industry, so you don't have to take my words as guru advice or whatever.

 

I think there is two things about the game I am making, first is I agree this is a game I am making because it is a game I want to make and I am drawing inspiration from the games that I enjoyed in the past and blending them into a game I think I would enjoy to make, I think it is important to work on something you enjoy since it makes sure that you will keep working on it no matter what people think.

Second of all I am making a game not just for me but the people who wants to play it so I think it is important to take feedback from other people who also enjoy this genre of games, since when I am making games I end up being to close to the game, I know why this is working and why that is like this which ends up blinding me to what makes what good or bad, also I believe that there are a lot of people out there with great ideas that just want to contribute to make the game better.

For example, rain summoning, fertilizer and potions are all great ideas, balancing speed to the amount you earn is a good thing to consider when deciding balancing issues and that is things I love to hear about since it would work well in the framework of the game I am working on and I bet a lot of other people would enjoy those features to but might not realize it until they actually get a chance to try.

The whole thing is that I am making a game that I want so I put up the framework of the kind of game I want to make but within that framework there can be a lot of changes that where the other gamers comes in, suggestions on how the movement would feel better if we did this, or if the npcs did that.

Though in the end I still have to decide if it is a good idea, for example let us take an idea that I would not agree with, "let us kill the npcs" the reason why I would never add this is because it is supposed to be a light hearted type of game where people can do what they enjoy without any great pressures and in that type of game this idea would not work, it might work in other type of games but it is not the type I would like to see in mine.

So in the end I hope to gather opinions from other people what they would like to see to make a game not just for me to enjoy but a game for us to enjoy, sounds kinda corny ;p

 

So I was sitting here and wondering, right now the way buildings work in my game is, you enter through the door and it switches to a new scene where the layout is instantiated but I was playing with the idea of changing it so instead of switching scene instead the house has to be the same as the indoor layout and instead remove the roof and that way you are inside the house using the same scene, just do not know what is better,

example

 

I have a huge preference for the removal of the roof. And maybe blur all the rest around, only leaving the house clear, to let the eyes focus on the room?

 

Yeah was planning to dark everything except the layout so it feels like it is only the house you are dealing with

 

So another update, decided to change the terrain look to a bit more earthly color



and also added a few new houses so the world does not look so empty at the beginning and spawn in two npcs to talk to, the guys in the center are the temporary shopkeepers until I have decided where to put em, also added a bunch of mineral tiles





honestly the biggest issues is progression, there is a system for buying/selling, farming, fighting, building, a way to access random worlds and a basic dungeon also started the beginning of a boss it is a bit on the dull on the looks department but it can charge and shoot at the players, so there is a lot of components to use but how to create progression that is fun and interesting is waaaay hard since I have no concrete plan on how I want a player to experience the game

 

So started on the basics that will become the quest system, I feel the need for quests so there is something for the player to work towards, all from short quests as get some wood, to help complete the smithy or save the future gardener NPC from the boss etc. something concrete for the player to have to work towards.

the functionality seems to be working, it is possible to accept multiple quests and and it removes quest items that are needed to hand in and add the reward items to the players inventory, feel I have got to start considering more of the artistic side of things, right now it is functional, now to create a aesthetic UI that is user friendly.

Also planning some changes in how beginning works, was planning that you start with initial 5 - 10 bags of seeds and then you going to have to go around harvesting bushes for more seeds in the beginning, to get the player used to walking around and using its tools and let them have something to do for the first hour or so, the seeds they will get are wild seeds that have a random probability to be a certain seed type when planted, so we get a varied amount of different types of plants in the beginning.

Was also thinking that the absolute beginning you only start with a sword, save a villager from some mobs, gets introduced to the village, gets beginner quests like cut down 5 trees and bring me some wood and in exchange I will let you keep the axe and have a few quick quests to introduce the different tools and people with quests and in exchange for doing them some favors they provide you with the beginning tools.

 

Honestly never considered myself an artist, I am the guy doing the things in the back, the thing you tend to never see but working on this project have made me realize just how important having an understanding of the basic of arts, so I have started to slowly start learning how to actually how to draw stuff because I need sprites that work well together, it does not have to be the best, just have to have a style to give it that feeling of belonging together and it all at least seem like it belongs with each other, been using a lot of free art to prototype.

Anyways, made a basic character, trying to get a decent template male and female character that I can use to work on characters from.

Still needs a lot of work, need to figure out how to make clothes look more medieval, colors needs work, form, shadows most things, but I think it at least have some character.

Also made my own grass terrain and bush drops wild seeds, that can turn into a random plant when placed.

edit: 69th post!

 

New version

Added an ui panel that shows what items are added to the inventory with sprite, name of item and amount added, keep refreshing as long as you keep picking up items, then disappear after a while.



Added a basic smelter that is possible to make through the workbench, the sprites are temporary until I can decide on an art style, added also a basic quest for finishing up your first house, it is only 1 stone and 1 wood right now until I have decided how to balance it, also it is possible to buy a workbench from the 4 merchants, been working on some basic animations



thinking of going 16 pixels since it is a bit easier or I will just slowly have to get better at pixel art, remember adding a basic boss that only rush you, is just a big circle, it is a start for a boss, it appears after going down the dungeon to the 4 floor, it is possible to defeat the boss though no exit added yet, so got to use the return button on the top right to return.

 

It looks better, I like all the details on the workbench and groceries.
The inventory that disappears after a while is a good idea (also, allowing a key to display it for a few seconds would be convenient - if not necessary).

 

So I have been browsing around and looking for some sprite that I could use as a starting point for different behaviours and decided to buy some sprites from Seliel who does the Mana Seed series of sprites from itch io so I have spent the days with implementing the different animations and adding the characters, it ends up being based on 16 pixel so think I gonna have to make the house a bit shorter to make em fit better with the character, I also added an exp system where you can level up with a little text that floats above you when you level up, I have not decided exactly what you get when you level up but there is sooo many choices I am sure I will figure out something nice, maybe increased stats, maybe open up new recipes, new tools who knows, the leveling stick has a ton of possibilities, made it so gathering resources gives xp, anyways here is some pics of the tool animations, they got all 4 directions covered, have not implemented forced direction for animations yet so gonna shove that onto the todo pile, then I also added quest stuff, where if you finish you either get items or buildings might finish up.

Anyways pics.

The different tool animations





The beginning of leveling up system,



ohh yeah did some bullet animations and added homing bullets, almost forgot

 

So it feels like forever ago since I last updated but I have been doing stuff! (With quarantine there is basically not much else to do)

I have added, music to the game, once a new game starts, you can switch different songs with Q and E on the main map, a few songs from the unity store and a few from itch, have not decided which one to be the main theme, so just added a basic playlist of the ones I thought might fit the game.

Also have changed the way you interact with tiles and tools, used to be you could select any tile with the mouse, after that I tried you could select any one tile away from you with the mouse but still felt weird, until I changed it so you now only affect the tile you are facing, like Harvest Moon, I am kinda miffed since I went from something complex coding, to simpler and simpler, feel like I over engineered the whole thing and now back to basics with it all.



Also as you can see animations for using the Hoe, Axe, Pickaxe, Seedbag, Watering Can are in with added sound for when you hit a resource or use it what it is supposed to be used for, there is even animations for when you hit trees to show some feedback.



The time it shakes is shorter then what is shown but thought it looked funny when the animation went on way to long.



Have also been trying to work on the UI layout since the current one is trash, I had nightmares about how to design the UI, I feel a new sense of reverence for the people who can make good looking UIs.

Anyways this is a bit of a mock up I have been working on



Not great but at least better then the last.

Anyways updated the game to the newest version, might look a bit weird right now, since the character is really small compared to the world around it, mostly because the character is a 16px and the world based around 32px, have not decided if I should upscale the character or downscale the world, think up-scaling the character should be easiest but who knows, still got to run some test and see what looks best.

Also as an idea, was planning to change the crafting system,, from where you get an item the moment you click craft to a more graveyard keeper like crafting, where you use stamina and time to finish crafting an item, just hold down the craft button, the plan is that you should be able to set up crafting stations to make items, then either you spend the time crafting them and use your stamina, or one of the NPCs can come and craft it for you and use their stamina and time.

Anyways think that is all for now.

 

Hello people! , have not updated a new version yet, still some things I need to change to make a stand alone build working with the new stuff, so just gonna update with what I have been working on.

So got a bunch of stuff done, since I could not figure out how to progress with town creation tools, I decided to work on some side stuff, I realized the combat was a bit lacking without a dash, or roll feature, maybe a teleport feature to avoid damage, it gives the combat more fluidity, more stuff that are a bit skill based.

Anyways, so I went with dash and it looks like this right now, cool-down time, distance how fast, dunno, gonna have to wing it.





So in the beginning item just appeared on the ground, without any flair or pop but that was boring, it needed more fun animation, life so I right now it kinda pops up from what you foraging and now get sucked in towards the player, thinking I might add some speed lines or maybe a simple trail animation or something behind it, could give it more pop, so gonna going into the web looking for "How to make awesome trails", we will have to see.



When it comes to crafting, I dunno if I mentioned it, I have changed to a progress bar like type, you select recipes you want to craft, spend a few sec to craft, added a progress bar UI and I think it looks acceptable,



I also expanded the amount of different workbenches and made a new smelter, with a workbench, circular saw, anvil, a wood cutting block.



Was planning to make it so that NPCs can help you craft due to the limited stamina the player has, so with more villagers the more you end up being able to craft in a day, now the workbenches and stuff are planned to be mostly for player usage and the NPCs gonna have their own dedicated building for crafting stuff, which gives them a stamina buff when they are crafting making them able to craft more and give them more autonomy, was thinking they make stuff on their own and you can order them to make certain things that you might need and when they have nothing to do, they go back to the buildings and make more stuff for you.

Anyways have managed to get the NPC to get to the workbench and craft to work if you add a craft-able recipe on the workbench queue.



was thinking animations but we will get there, for now the fact it comes and goes is nice.



Now before this dev log I was planning on working more on the town simulation but got kinda stuck, so switched my focus to making buildings in the games instead, I feel like I at least, should have, a smith, a store, a church, player house and a few variations on houses, so this is what I came up with for now.







Still missing a smithy, store and a better looking player house, though I managed to make a church!

was thinking on working on these as basic templates and start adding different houses with fences, clothes hanging etc to so I can use the same house multiple times, just change the surrounding layout and voila a new house, I think that sounds brilliant.



Now the last thing I have been working on is the interface, wanted the inventory to look better, the one I had before was mostly hey does these things work? great!, have been working on a basic layout for the character window.

now there is a bunch of free space on the right side, was thinking maybe an equipment window, maybe status page, who knows?! on the top I was thinking different tabs for different windows, building window, npc window, settings etc.



Anyways that is all I have been working on since last time.

 

Updated to a new build, have run some test and it should be working, you can get it at https://gutsytortoise.itch.io/farmingprojectwip

Hiya, all, so I have been working a lot on the NPC behaviours as of right now, wanted them to come and water tiles and help out with crafting, right now they seem to be working, place done a seed on a tile and if any npc is free it will come and water the tile for you, right now they will come no matter what but was planning on being able to call on npc to water your tiles for you when you do not have the time, same thing for the crafting part, since both uses stamina.

made a gif of it but it ended up being pretty big so here is link instead

https://ibb.co/2FgQsG0

Also been working on some of the terrain looks, finally added animated tiles to possible tiles for resource placing which means I now can place down swaying flowers and other stuff in a procedural generated way, my first three attempt of basic flowers, I think it adds a bit more life and motion to the terrain.



also I changed how buildings work so now it is possible to walk behind them and that will cause them to be see through, now I have only done this for the smithy and shop so it is working going to slowly finish up the rest of em.





except for all this, I have been mulling over how I wanted players to place down buildings, I have tried with selecting from menus, by doing quests and now I tried it as usable item in inventory and I think Blueprint usage from inventory is most likely that which will be best experience for the player.

also another a big gif so a link to that instead

https://ibb.co/T0DdVWj



well I think that covers the most I've done as of right now.

 

So I kinda got stuck in the hole that is webnovels but back again to work on the game, gonna upload a new version of the build as soon as I have managed to create a stable build.

The latest that has been going on is a lot of ui changes, that I hope look better then the old ones, both the inventory and shop ui decided to add them both to a single window now when you are buying

I think it give a better overview of what you have and what is offered in the shop.

I have also added so that NPCs can water your crops for you, they also help out with crafting tables, you can just leave them in the list and the npcs will finish them up if they have the stamina and there are materials to make em.

There was also a mass migration of data from the inventory gameobject into scriptableobjects instead to make it easier to save the data by using json.

The basics of a quest system is in the game, which when completed can finish up building , give items and give you items when you start the quest, I have added a basic quest to finish up the players house, only need 1 wood and 1 stone, so if you want to sleep you need to finish that quest first, if you run out of stamina before you got 1 wood and stone it is basically game over.

Added a few new crafting stations, such as a circular saw, I fixed the anvil and worktable.

Added a few new items such as stamina grass, chairs, simple walls, it is also possible to place roads and place things on top of em, now since it is possible to place things on the world there need to be a way to remove em so I added an hammer that can remove all placeable objects such as roads, walls and furniture, I am planning it to work on crafting station too but have not implemented yet.

There is also a change to trees, they now sway by altering the tile rotation instead of animation which makes it easier to add different tree without having to create an animation loop for it being hit, so the new trees sway when hit by axe.

The main house has been replaced with a new house that is more inline with 16pixel look and the indoorlayout for the main house has also been revamped



and I think that are the basic things added as of late.

 

So been spending a few of my days getting the construction system working, I tried several different things and ended up with just buy the blueprint ploop it down grab your resources and finish it up as the best option to how I wanted it to work, right now buildings are tagged depending on what types of building they are, npc house are for npcs, production houses have ability to produce things, and working houses are where people can work.

I have made some changes to the woodcutting station so now it looks different from the last time, the same to the smithy also finished up a new house for NPCs.

The second thing I have been working on is the placement of what I would call city tiles, example would be roads, the issue was how do you deal with road tiles so they end up looking like roads when you connect em to each other, what if you hade an intersection how would that look etc, so I took a page out of GM studio and did something like how their half tile auto tile system works, well I think I made something that looks like that, I have no idea how GM actually does it , anyways I make a bunch of tiles that are 1/4 of a full tile and combine them into a single full tile ended up having to make 6 full tiles but it was more worthy it than having create the actual tiles needed, that way it is possible to get a lot of different variations is by combining the half tiles in different way to create a unique tile that fit into the position based on the tiles around it.

I did something similar for wall tiles execpt only checking the four cardinal directions so that was a lot less work compared the eight different direction I hade to do with the roads it is a 2^4 compared to a 2^8 different possibilities.

Also UI updated!

anyways here is a video that shows off some of the work

 

So I realize it has been a while since last update, I have been doing a lot of stuff on the game and honestly I have no idea how to cover all changes in text form so I decided to just upload a video of where I am at with the game I also uploaded a basic version of the game for people to test, I still has issues with aspect ratio, since I have no idea how screen size work yet still got a bunch of sites to read to figure it out.

Anyways here is an youtube clip of what has been done as of yet.