Hey! Progress is slow, but not nothing. Motivation has been low for a while. The weather prediction UI has taken an upgrade. It used to be a bar that showed tomorrow's weather chances, but in reality this is useless information to the player--there's not much they can do with it without making guesses as to what weather will actually happen. Now it will literally show you the next day's weather, which is information the player can actually prepare for and utilize.
Some other UI has been tweaked as well, such as the planting choices temperature UI, the harvesting state indicator, season icons, and others. Nothing too worth showing--mostly common sense stuff I didn't get around to that improves consistency and clarity. Mutations are now gone! As per my last post, they are now a thing of the past and have been replaced with Special Currency (working title). Not a premium currency (amen), but a special, rarer one that isn't the same as Units (the standard money). Like mutations, you can get these randomly from harvests, but you can get these from Milestones (achievements) and other places as well. This has basically incorporated Mutations into an existing system, reducing complexity while increasing depth--which are my two tenets of great games. Since you can't upgrade crop traits directly anymore, the Upgrade system will be expanded as well. Watering has changed a bit, too. The old system was rather boring and linear: watering a plot filled its water timer completely with no in between. Now, water is more fraction-based. Watering fills half the timer (making the action more frequent), but working with fractions lets me do other things as well. Rain, for instance, now waters bit by bit instead of 100% like old watering, which with some tweaking feels much more realistic and less RNG. I can (and have) also added sprinklers, the first building to enter the game, which water crops at the cost of tile space. More buildings will come down the line, and I plan on having them affect (and be affected by) crops and other buildings. This means where and when you place things always matters, and how you use certain things affects your results; buildings are not just money generators. Some backend has also been improved. I refactored some things and cleaned up the project itself a little so it's more readable on my end, which will make me more efficient in the long run. Apologies for the lack of updates. I have a lot of things on my to-do list and there's never enough time in the world for everything. There's some additional depth in the works for crops, which will make them interact with each other and completely change how you think about planting. |