Firstly, frost has been modified, and now halts crops from growing. This is not only a measure more realistic, but actually affects your active growing gameplay like other weather events. It does still prevent you from harvesting the crop until it is cleared, but now it matches other weather events in severity. Only limiting harvestability was less engaging and not very significant. I have spent a lot of time brainstorming, which is why it's been a week since the last update. The last major system that needs to be in the game before I consider it "playable" are ways to upgrade crops. Mutations already exist, but there is an alternative I call "Genetics" that is less random and more concrete. I did not like my previous concept, as it had a number of issues. A good Genetics upgrade system needs to do two things:
For example, let's say a Milestone is "Tomato Farmer: Harvest tomatoes." This is what you could expect from that Milestone:
You can spend Genetic upgrade points to make one crop really good or many crops equally good. You'll be using a variety of new and old crops no matter what (a core tenet of this game's design), so there's pros and cons to both options. Additionally, the Milestones themselves do a lot to encourage a wide variety of gameplay goals: new and old, broad or specific, simple or complex. I can push players towards mechanics that may get less attention, which greatly helps balance the whole experience to feel diverse. The only major remaining issue is if a player wants to modify their "build"--my current thoughts are either a classic incremental game "reset" mechanic or some way to refund the upgrade points spent on a crop. However, this means a whole new system to track Milestones has to happen before Genetics come around: Nothing notable yet, but the diversity of Milestones may create a fair amount of work tracking them behind the scenes. I have a good idea how I want to do them, but effort is still time.
Introducing the onion: It takes quite a bit of time and effort to grow, but it is worth a lot. This is different from other crops which have faster growth but less value. There will eventually be many varieties like these ranging from blazing-fast to snail pace. Settings sliders are also in. Coding slider bars is simple enough but annoying enough, too. Unity and Unreal users have it easy. Similarly, pause buttons now have icons for easier identification. All the buttons being the same color and shape makes them a little annoying to identify at a glance. Again, this is all programmer art. Don't judge too hard. And finally, winter's signature annoyance: frost. Where heatwaves drain your water, frost freezes over your crops. Frozen crops cannot be harvested, but frost can be easily removed with a left-click. Don't worry, not every weather event will be unbearable--there will be some nice fall/spring events to counterbalance the nasty summer/winter ones.
Combos now have an extra dimension to them: variety. The more variety you have in any given combo, the more extra cash you'll earn after it's all over. Varieties add a lot with very little:
Deliveries are now an upgrade, and are locked until you purchase the upgrade. This might seem dumb or redundant, but locking this feature for the first part of the game is actually extremely important, as it acts as an invisible skill/tutorial barrier (i.e. you can't use deliveries unless you've familiarized yourself with the game enough to earn $10,000). This prevents players from being bombarded with too much to learn right at the start of the game, and instead distributes new mechanics/systems a little more evenly throughout gameplay (which is unimaginably important to learning and retention, i.e. tutorials and how your player learns to play). Lastly, rain was added previous--heatwaves are added now. Somewhat like the opposite of rain, your water lasts half as long while a heatwave is active: Once a heatwave is over, though, your water expiry goes back to normal. Much like rain, this effect lasts one "day", i.e. one minute (subject to change).
On the topic of weather, I plan on dividing it into seasons. Seasons will last a number of days and carry their own modifiers that affect weather and temperature, meaning that gameplay will vary slightly on a day-to-day (minute-to-minute) basis but vary greatly on a season-to-season (while-to-while) basis. For example, summer may carry high temps or heatwaves day-to-day, but no other season will (they'll do something else), meaning the summer season has its own effects to watch out for. Other seasons will do the same, though I plan on fall and spring being the extreme in-between seasons--i.e. they're a bit nicer and more relaxed to give breathing room between summer and winter (which carry problematic growing conditions). Did a bunch today. Menus can now be momentarily hidden. This lets you peek to see what's going on beneath them if you paused with a combo going, so you can orient yourself before resuming. Makes unpausing a bit less frustrating. Fertilizer and water now run out. Nothing nice ever lasts. This forces you to rewater and refertilize as necessary, and multitasking water, fertilizer, and planting as they come is what makes comboing a skill. Commensurately, take notice of the new water timer (top) and fertilizer timer (left) on plots. Water currently lasts 60 seconds, and fertilizer 30. Fertilizer would feel lame, however, if higher qualities decayed just like lower qualities. Instead, fertilizer decays into the quality tier below itself: This makes higher-tier fertilizer a more satisfying and technically longer-lasting investment. Higher quality fertilizer makes crops grow faster and have a higher chance of being quality. However, that's not all: fertilizer isn't just a stat-booster. Some crops now demand fertilizer to grow properly, like the new almost-ugly rice: Crops that need fertilizer demand a certain fertilizer quality. This can vary, and growing crops that need higher-quality fertilizer can be a high-risk, high-reward task, as better fertilizers will be more expensive to buy. Crops that do not get the proper fertilizer quality or water they need (all crops currently need water) become malnourished. Malnourished crops grow much, much slower (30% of normal speed) and are thus much harder if not impossible at times to sustain combos with. Healthy crops make healthy combos. Weather is also now a thing. Currently, it can rain, which automatically waters plots for you: This gives a great opportunity to grow more difficult crops, as the weather takes care of one of your tasks for you. Alternatively, it's also just a great time to relax and not have to worry about watering. I greatly enjoy this feature as it gives some variety to the gameplay loop--we all need a breather sometimes, and rain is there to give it to you. I'm hoping to add more weather-based events like these that change the dynamics of how you play. It's what gives life to the game systems.
Been a while. Worry not, though, as there's due progress to match the silence. First off, I fixed some issues with my menu button hitbox scaling, which was dysfunctional for a while. It works as intended now, though there's still some improvements to be made that I need to look into eventually, but it's definitely more of a "for me" change than a "for UX" one. I also improved the UI a fair bit with some proper labeling and finer scaling customizability. Secondly, the combo bar now has a timer for some much-needed clarity. It also grows quite a bit more visible to match the "top-layer" UI read (i.e. the most visible things your eye and attention see right away) when you're running out of time. Those are just the small changes, though. More importantly, you can now remove anything you desire from a plot by holding shift on any planting/fertilizing/watering mode: And shift with no mode enabled destroys everything. I'm very happy with the button layout on this one, as it feels very intuitive on top of my existing controls. Another big change has been an important set of restrictions that enable a sense of progression: crops are now unlocked through spending. As expected, you can't plant them if you haven't unlocked them, but deliveries also won't demand crops you haven't unlocked yet (I don't think I've explained deliveries yet, but they're small, rudimentary "orders" of crops that you fulfill for a lump reward). (Remember when I said I still needed to add rows to the crops page?) You can view a crop's stats before buying it due to how the controls are laid out, allowing you to make an informed decision about what you're buying.
I'm quite happy with how this menu is turning out. In light of layering unlocking onto this menu, it's also come to mind that my plan for upgrading crop traits will probably be located here as well (likely as a secondary tab on individual crop-stat pages). I've contemplated moving my mutations here too, though I'm hesitant to do so--mutations as of right now are conveniently mass-lumped into one page where you can just flip through all of them and make your choices very easily. Moving them to the crops page would mean separating mutations by crop type into their respective pages, which potentially adds a lot more menu-flipping than the currently implemented alternative. I might just take the best of both worlds and put them in both places, though I definitely feel like a separate mutations page is more convenient and the crop page implementation might end up redundant and unused. Lastly, I'd hope you've noticed the new, two-minute tomato in all its glory. |