Homegrown Devlog - Upgrading Tools!
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- Devlog video about "Homegrown", a casual farming game I'm creating using my own engine. Lots of changes to the tool and item systems this week.
Support the channel on Patreon and get access to the code for Homegrown, the city-builder, and Equilinox:
/ thinmatrix
Play my previous game "Equilinox":
store.steampowered.com/app/85...
You can follow the progress of the game on my social media:
Twitter: / thinmatrix
Instagram: / thinmatrix
Facebook: / thinmatrix
Trello: trello.com/b/W3zkIJTM/farm
Email: thinmatrix@gmail.com
Background music by Jamal Green:
open.spotify.com/artist/50jTM...
#devlog #Homegrown - Hry
![Planning my HEART Out with a New Town for my Game [ Devlog 4 ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SWG5HKiuGsU/mqdefault.jpg)
You should be able to enter your prize vegetable to the local fair to win unpurchasable upgrades 😊
sounds epic i agree
You should also be able to rub it in the face of the local HOA that has a policy against growing food instead of lawns 😂 Or is that just anmerican thing?
@@jennareynolds1403 a very American thing
You could also get trophies or ornaments you can place in your garden? E.g. water fountain, decorative rock, gnome, golden shovel award
Not uorades but estaticd woud be better
Adding animals could bring some life to the farm. They don’t have to be interactive.. but rabbits, butterflies, bees, birds, chicks etc.. all add life to farms.
Obviously you could introduce interactions.. but just seeing them about the world would be nice
Yep, there will be animals at some point! :)
I think interactive animals would also fit the theme. You could for example milk cows and collect eggs from chickens. You could sell those items in a bakery in town.
You could have rabbits that steal some of your carrots when you don't watch them closely enough
How about beehives to boost the growth rate of plants and produce honey
@@0.lennart another idea would be birds that pick up freshly planted seeds.
An interesting idea would be to introduce random weather events.
Rain - all plants are watered automatically.
Sun - plants need to be watered more often.
Wind - reduces the amount of harvested plants or damages some of them?
Clouds - slow down the growth of plants.
That's a cool idea, thanks!
Interesting dog plant looks to be growing well
As a programmer myself, I really enjoy when you talk about the code, the changes you made and the design you chose to go with. That is interesting to me at least.
Agreed, the video as a whole is interesting but seeing the code helps me understand features. I do get that people consider that the "boring" part though.
Maybe you should rename the area upgrade to "Max Area" to reflect the fact that you can change it.
Good point!
@@ThinMatrix Can you add cooking like in Zelda Breath of the Wild ? ☺😍
i love that you are giving your mom garden updates through these videos, that's so sweet
Of all the game development channels I watch, you are literally the only one I believe is going to release the game.
An other visual update could be if your are using a tool, a 3D model will float above the area of effect instead of a 2D sprite.
I agree that would be better, it's something I'm considering :)
I love these quality of life features! This game looks better and better
With the upgrade system, have you considered when you want to use tools more precisely? For instance, digging a path-lining one tile width bed of some plant.
Edit: Yes. Yes you have considered exactly this.
I like your idea of visualizing the upgrades by changing pieces of the tools. Another idea might be to unlock customization options based on the total upgrade level. Then, players can make adjustments how they see fit.
Easily One of the finest on youtube. I always come here back again and again to take inspiration for my own games and devlogs.! 🤭
Thank you ^^
I love the fact that you have an actual garden as well as a digital one.
Suggestions:
1 - Weather changing or seasoning, it will affect grow system and health + just gives a some sort of time and progress on work you have made so far in your garden
2 - Storage or warehouse where player could see the amount of work he made and also it gives you ability to think about fruits/vegetables life time after player gathered it + upgrading the capacity
3 - Tasks and goals for season like "prepare 200 kg of carrot before festival starts" or something (you will figure it out im sure)
4 - bugs, birds and other "bad" animals and protection from it
5 - soil status, it should have it's own health status and the time to recover from constant usage
6 - Add taxes and fees if player has big amount of land, so player should think about optimal space usage and what to grow to gain more money after selling stuff
You're my role model, man Love your problem-solving skills. Thank you for being around.
Rest in heap, a half of the blueberry bush, you're going to be missed
Some games did it before you, but creating shortcuts for the tools, or a wheel by pressing a button, to quickselect the toolset would be great, to have a bit more flow.
And an idea: a shovel that could do 8x8 would be hilarious. Maybe add an electronic device for everything bigger. Could also help to install clean energy devices. Like a waterwheel (to include the unplayable space), cable routing over polls or sun, wind energy. So you could have a bit more tools for big farms (with a lot of the map coverd farms) that could help.
this game reminds me a lot of the FarmVille game I had on orkut, back in 2009.
An upload! I'll have to watch this when I get back home, love your videos!
The “Dog” label with all the plants cracked me up!
Can't wait until you implement the really exciting stuff, like pest infestations, natural disasters, unpredictable climate, theft, quality and health inspections, and taxation. You know, the things that keep farmers happy.
I know I'm not the only one that thinks this looks stunning! 😍
One amazing things we love seeing ThinMatrix do is spending the necessary time on those quality of life fixes that really make his game feel brilliantly fleshed out! Can't wait to see what else you do with this game 😁
I would love to watch more IRL content, like walking in the park with your dog or even more content on your garden.
Oh yes balcony update! I see the crop of "dog" is doing well this year, that gave me a wee chuckle
Upgrading tools is an awesome mechanic for farming. Would also love to see a automatic sprinkler system and such.
this game has gotten so advanced since the last time I watched the devlog series, good work man. (last devlog I watched was compost bins being added.)
I really enjoy watching these videos. I enjoy that you focus on functionality and ease of use.
It's also cool to learn why different things behave how they do.
Fantastic use of pop-up text for clarity in the video, love it!
Starting to look good, the only thing i'm still unsure about is the actual gameplay loop. Will this be fun to play for a longer time?
Hopefully ;) I'm confident it will be, but we'll have to wait and see!
I really love following Homegrown's development. You put so much work into the production of these devlogs, too!
This is how i remind that the farming games that i played when i was a children looked like, Kudos and cant wait for this to become public
Very impressive stuff. It's really visible that this is a project of passion for you. Everything looks and feels such a high quality. Great job, keep it up!
Absolutely love his series. Excited to play the game. Well done man.
Couple of ideas:
Digging up new beds could have a low chance to yield treasure like coin/rare seeds/artifacts
Unused beds could slowly backfill and grow over back to normal field
Some animals/insects splattered around to bring some more life to the scene
LONG SHOT: When you harvest and gain seeds they could have a chance to proc a star rating that improves giving you the ability to improve your seeds or even a basic breeding minigame like the game rust has. Although admittedly this is quite a bit of a task, it does add an entire new level of progression to each and every plant you start farming.
Love the progress so far!
Thanks a lot for the suggestions! I very much like the idea of randomly finding rare seeds/items. I could even have a "Luck" stat for the tool, which you could upgrade to increase your chance of finding treasure!
I always look forward to these. The game looks amazing!!!!
The damage on your beet leaves is likely due to the larva of a blue fly that is a native pollinator. I've forgotten the name, but they lay their eggs underneath the leaves of anything in the Chenopodium family (beets, spinach, goose foot). The larva then hatch and burrow between the outer layers of leaves and eat everything inside. The beets should be perfectly fine, but these guys get my spinach every spring.
It would be a cool thing to add to your game as well. Been watching for years and your content is golden!
Thanks for the info, I'm pretty sure you're right. I also had the same problem with my spinach in previous years. The beets have got pretty big now though, so it looks like they'll be fine :)
great update! you say not much to show but this attention to detail is what will make Homegrown a great experience
Not started the video yet but want to tell you i was missing it. Thanks for the updates and for the time you spent on this devlogs.
I "learned" java this semester at uni and your changes make so much sense. Each item should have its own methods. Great work cant wait to see your game finished!
Brilliant! I like the upgrade system for the tools and sounds like the code is in a much better place.
When playing any sort of casual game with inventory management I hate it when each tool requires it's own individual slot in some sort of hotbar or otherwise requires moving the mouse from one side of the screen to the other. This problem gets even more frustrating with ultrawide monitors and repetition. What I would like to propose would instead be a radial menu accessed via a right click or hold right, move to desired tool, and release.
The blueberries and beetroot bring up a good point... pesticide! A tough decision for any gardener: does one sacrifice produce quality in order to keep safe from critters and have higher yield? Maybe you'd prefer an ideal, bugless world however.
Your beets have spinach / beet leafminers. We got them bad this year, but spraying with neem oil around the base daily for a week helped, and also prune the worst offending leaves. You can tell it's leafminers cause they lay small patches of white eggs under the leaves. After we did this our beets bounced back and are happy again.
Ah yeah, that's them. I had them on my spinach in previous years too, which makes sense. The beet leaves have got pretty big now though and it doesn't seem to be such a problem any more :)
@@ThinMatrix Sweet! Glad to hear it. Enjoy the harvest.
Some really great UX improvements! Other game devs should take note.
This dev process has been so much fun to watch.
I think the change from objects dictating their interactions with other objects, to having objects dictating interactions based on their input object is a really good idea. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of 'smart objects', popularized in The Sims specifically for allowing DLC content - ie if a new doodad is added you wouldn't want to add logic to the Sim class for how to interact with it as that'd require a recompilation of the original binary, instead the new doodad will tell the Sim what to do (including what animations to play when interacting, how they can interact, what they can get from it, ...), theres loads of resources on this topic if you search 'Smart objects sims'. Thanks for the wholesome video and dose of inspiration!
It’s a good thing you labeled the dog, I would’ve never known what that was
Awesome devlog was nice to hear how you tackle architecture in your engine id love to hear more about prpblems like this and how you solve them, games looking beautiful cant wait to play!
100% agree, it would be so interesting to ger more information about the actual architecture. The devlogs showing the game itself are awesome. However, I think many subscribers have also subscribed because of the Game Engine Series (like me). Thus, a bit more technical stuff would be lovely!
Just started binging some of your devlogs and I'm loving them, any chance you can reverse the order for the Homegrown playlist and the Equilinox playlist so the videos start in chronological order like they do for your City-builder devlog playlist so it's easier to binge them?
The problem is that when I have those playlists displayed on my channel page the first few videos in the playlist are shown. I want to show the most recent videos on my channel page rather than the old ones, plus the first thumbnails of a project tend to not look great, which is why the playlist goes from newest to oldest. But I guess I could also make an extra playlist with them in the opposite order and link to that in the end screen of each video. I'll do that!
I think you could just add the playlist and then if you click on it on the left side and once youre watching on the playlist when a video finishes it just plays the next in the list which is the next in the order. Not sure if any of that makes sense but basically that's how I binged them!
yay new video! perfect addition to my weekend :)
oh the scaling of the space made by the spade is awesome!!!
I think part of your UI update, you should make an overview panel for listing all of your growing catalogue. With counters and prices etc, lots of data in one place. So that you don't need to count plants in your garden, or math numbers together for advanced planning purposes. An overall place where you can view your total garden (produce) values.
It's a good day when I see a new ThinMatrix video. Looking forward to the next one!
I love how you organize your Trello Board at 11:17 and am definitely going to organize mine this way from now on.
Same, trello is amazing for organizing everything
The sections of the video where you show your plants and your living room is the most replayed sections, I'm not the only one who loves those :) add some more of those in your videos bro, those are lovely
The fact that you made your own engine is awesome. I really like how the games athstetic looks. Can't wait to see more
The audible "oooo" I did when you showed the tool snapping when in use, and going to the nearest tile snapping probably made me sound crazy but that's such a nice and little feature to add and it's definitely most welcome for this type of game!
Also your balcony looks so good, I hope the blueberry bush can survive!
Hehe, glad you like the tool snapping ^^
This update really fixed some concerns I had about the game thus far, the tools will be quite a central part of the game I suppose and I think every QoL improvement with them will be worth a lot! Keep it up and this game will work out just fine :)
9:56 one small change for the entity, giant leap for Homegrown! Well done sir!
Amazing update!
That components technique is really clever and useful. I think I studied something similar called Visitor Pattern. Btw I liked the in depth talk about the code!
Oh those tool changes are looking really good!
A green house area would be amazing!
many cool improvements !
Would be neat if the tools changed color as you upgraded them. That way the tool visually shows the progression
12:18 "DOG" oh thank you I wasnt sure what it was XD thanks for clarifying that its a vegetable.
I enjoy your videos greatly.
the scale down was a pro move ngl
Hi, i will definitly buy your game when it releases, take care!
With the image of the shovel shoved in the ground i like the idea of tool selection being interacting with them in game to pick them up and put them down. Might save a bit on UI, possibly combined with shortcuts to swap quickly without something on screen.
I also like the idea of having the tools present in the 3D world somehow. I was considering something like a tool rack with items displayed on it when they're not in use/in storage. Not sure if I can get rid of the UI though - might be a bit annoying to always have to find your tools in the 3D world to use them, especially when you have a big farm.
with the blueberry bush it could be shock and just needs some fertilizer, if it's blight try a fungicide, if its too damp it could be root rot and just try not watering it as much and i always add cinnamon powder to help with bug management and to dry it out a bit. It also could easily be something eating the inside the leaves especially if the leaves lost color and are papery try neem oil if so.
Thanks for the help! I've given it fertilizer already so it shouldn't be that, but root rot is a definitely possibility. I don't think the soil I used has very good drainage, and I noticed it was quite wet when I dug down a bit :/
I like your videos even though I have to use subtitles (I'm Argentinian) and about 2 years ago I started developing and I learned many things thanks to you
~ 4:25 just an idea, I thought up:
what if they're sort of rusty and broken looking and become looking cleaner and newer, kinda like backwards minecraft tools (theres a mod out there that breaks your tools over time)
I think it'd be cool to see a game where you start out with kinda broken looking materials
It'd also fit with some type of narrative with you inherited a farm etc etc something like that
idk just thinking aloud
love these logs! keep up the good work! thanks for sharing it with the world :)
Love this 🙌🏻
How about the upgrade shop being a blacksmith? You could have that satisfying hammer on metal sound when you hit upgrade and the hissing of the fires when you open the menu!🔥🔨
Game is looking pretty good man! Keep it up!
Quick comment about the game:
Some videos ago someone suggested you to add a dog that would live in the farm and do random things as you take care of the garden. On top of that somebody else said the dog could sometime steal tools and the player would have to get it back from him.
The dog idea is interesting, but it made me think that the tools and items could be always physically in the game. Maybe it would be better if there is no inventory. All tools and other items are in the farm and you need to pick them up to use it.
Things bought at the stores get delivered to the farm and it is the player’s responsibility to manage and organize them.
I don’t know much about game design but it might be an interesting mechanic.
Either way! Keep up the good work and looking forward to see what comes next!
Thanks! It's an interesting suggestion and I have been considering the tools having a bit more presence in the 3D world. Something like a tool rack where you can see the tools if they're not in use. I'm not sure about getting rid of the inventory though - there are lots of other items in the game, seeds, produce, etc. and I'm not sure how well it would work with them. Also, once your farm gets very big it might become a little bit frustrating having to scroll over to where your tools are to pick them up every time. It might even get difficult to find them!
For the quick-examine mode, I sugegst using the space bar instead of the ctrl key. It's nice and large, so it's an easy target and is centered, so the player doesn't have to reach into awkward positions. Lots of apps like photoshop also use the space key to temporary switch to an alternative mode while using a tool (although for these it's normally switching to a pan mode).
Conventionally, the alt key would make more sense for this
This looks great! Perhaps the inspect icon could be a magnifying glass rather than the regular mouse pointer?
bro, you're my inspiration😢❤❤❤
your office looks so cozy
fav devlogs
Game Looks gorgeous right now.
I think a toggleable grid would be great for planning things, just a subtle semi-transparent grid which appears to highlight each tile. Watching you till areas of soil at a glance is hard to tell whether or not a plot of 4x4 or 3x3. I can see this being problematic and potentially annoying when planning out pathways between plots and other similar scenarios. :)
Love the progress on the game so far!
Thank you, and yeah, I think you might be right about the grid. It is something I've been considering.
i love the scale dig system
Very cool! :)
If you have the plastic melter you could have plastic trash sometimes wash up at shorelines and you pick it up and put it in the plastic melter
12:20 I'm not a gardener, but you may try reading literature on adding "helper" plants around. For example, mustard is used to fertilize the soil, others can prevent insects. Soils bought on market are sometimes too strong/acid and can be nice to cut it with real ground (forest). You can also burry a tree log. Add worms to aerate the soil and make nutriments for the plants. Straw can be nice to keep the soil wet ... but again I'm not a gardener but could be nice to experiment for real and ingame :)
something that would be sick is if the produce, from plants and machines etc, "pops out" from the plant/machine onto the map so you have to collect it with the mouse, a little bit of extra interactivity. And of course, adding "containers" to automate it if wanted.
The customisation options -- I would suggest replacing that space with an image of a shopkeeper to make the world feel a little more lived-in (and maybe they could periodically spout some dialogue). There's a bunch of dead space on the right rn -- you could put customisation options like name, tool sprite, etc there to use up that space a bit (and make the left side of the shop "the shop side" and the right side "the customise side").
I really like the graphic style of the game. It looks pretty cute! I know the GUI is far from the final cut and you said you wanted a 3D model as the display icon for an item but I actually think (in my not artist opinion) taking the item out of it's 2D box and give it a glowing light effect (can google this exactly) that is slightly animated as the backdrop. Maybe not for every single thing in the game but maybe in certain spots. Would make the item look more fancy to me :p . Also possible can scale how nice the glow effect is based on how upgraded the item is. Maybe a fully upgraded item can have a very golden glowing light aura behind it with some very light transparent circular particle effects shooting out and dissipating. I think the trick is really adding that dopamine rush to the users head wanting to upgrade and think their 2D item is a lot cooler than it is :p and having it glow and not inside a box just seems more fun for smooth brain people like me.
An idea to help the player not to constantly water the plants is to add a sprinkler :)
Sprinklers will be coming soon ;)
Nice video as always! You make me want to go back to my game engine project again, after a loooong while, dammit :D
A way to reset upgrades in case for example you enjoy 2x2 area digs more -or- you can have multiple of the same tool and can buy randomly generated ones with random boosts to start
What if I want to create a 2x2 space with a 4x3 shovel?
Buy another shovel?
Tip: when upgrading the size, upgrade the MAX area you can dig up without a COOLDOWN.
Maybe introduce REPAIR and STURDINESS.
Edit: ah ok there is an option to do this with scroll wheel.
If you could click+drag instead of just clicking, it would make larger-scale farming much more satisfying.
For the upgrade shop, currently it's not clear what the upgrade path is like, i.e. what it's being purchased. Maybe already planned in the UI update, but having a more visual upgrade path with specific levels changing the visuals of the tool could be interesting. (Rusty > wooden > metal ...)
You could maybe add trucks that come by to ask for large amounts of specific items and pay extra
I already have plans for a feature similar to that! In the town I'm going to add a restaurant which, now and again, will request orders of specific vegetables and fruit. If you can fulfil the request (within a certain time) then you'll be paid a lot more than the vegetables would usually cost.
the wear feature of the tools, was it completly dropped, personal experience with spades is that they break more often then expected :D
I'm still not sure whether tools are going to have durability or not, I'm still considering it though.
@@ThinMatrix depending on length of planned Gamesession it might fit. But that ist just from me, having destroyed already so many tools in the garden :D
Yaaay, finally I see you using IntelliJ ❤
You should add a 3D printer that takes melted plastic and can print all kinds of useful items. Maybe you could add unlockable blueprints/schematics for the printer.