Hi there! I go by Bee and I've always been interested in things like art and game development, so I decided to try joining this jam!

I've never really made a game before but I wanted to use this gamejam to learn how to make a top down tiled rpg / farming sim kinda game with Unity while joining in here ! 

I have a written journal to keep track of all the things to do, here's what I want to add in as the core at least :

• Starting screen
• A player sprite that can move correctly over the map
• A very simple farmland tileset for the character to walk around in
• The ability to plant 1 kind of crop on tilled soil that can be harvested when it's done
• A bed that can be interacted with to start a 'new day'

It's all very basic and probably not nearly enough to count as a full game, but I wanted to keep things very basic for the first time trying this engine and game making in general! I'm hoping that if I can complete this project, the next one will go a whole lot smoother as I already have things figured out for these parts. 

I also have extra features planned in case this takes less time than expected! I'll be logging the things I've learned as well as resources I used and any progress! 

12 / 07 : first day of working on the jam!

I worked on multiple projects today so I didn't get all that much done, but I did get an important bit up ! ..That is actually downloading unity and setting it up properly to work with Visual Studio. Apparently you're supposed to both add a package to Visual Studio with the installer, as well as changing your default editor in Unity to Visual Studio. Otherwise coding won't really work, whoops.

Either way, as for actual development, I decided to start with getting a 'player' sprite to move ! 

That is, to say, a 32 by 32 white square, as someone creative does use as a sprite when she's being lazy on graphics 

I first started out with following a youtube tutorial titled '2D Top Down Movement UNITY Tutorial' by BMo which worked perfectly, but I soon realized it wasn't exactly what I needed for this project- As common with most 2d pixel art rpgs, I was looking for a grid based movement - Thankfully I found avideo for that as well!

It was really helpful after I finally figured out this 'movePoint' you were supposed to use was actually an empty you had to add in yourself, and I finally got the movement to work correctly ! 

For now I decided to change the code so that diagonal movement is not possible, but I'm not sure if I'll keep things that way yet.

I also learned that there are two kinds of update methods used in this game engine- Update and fixedUpdate. Update is linked to framerate (I think it runs about once frame) and fixedUpdate runs at a fixed time, so the first one is better for input while the fixed one is better for physics and such.

Also an important thing for pixel based games: in every asset there is a 'pixels per unit' that you have to set to the right number in order to get it to the right scale!

Other than that I haven't done much other than watch a tutorial on how to use tilesets, so tomorrow I'm planning on making a very (but very) simple tileset and make a map off it, hopefully that will be a bit easier to figure out !

13/07: lots and lots of learning

Wooh okay, honestly? Didn't get a lot of work on my project done- But at the same time I still worked a bunch on things related to it !

Stuff I got done

I first started continuing the plans I had made yesterday to make a very simple tileset, I ended up whipping one up very quickly with about 5 tiles that should do the trick for now: 

(used palette) I added them in with the tileset palette that's included in Unity, though I heard that with that feature there's often small gaps between the tiles- next time I'll work on it i'll try a fix that suggests to change the cell gap on the grid to about -0.0001 in the x and y directions.

I made a small environment and messed around to try and get a few more things fixed, but I found it didn't go as smoothly as expected :( Due to things I've learned today I think I might overhaul the movement system once more after all, I think I might also just make an entirely new project once I've got all the things I want to do figured out so I can have a more coherent version up and running

Things I'm learning / working on

Wanting to get the functionality in first, I started trying to get collision working and the possibility to interact with objects in order to be able to 'plant' a crop, but I quickly found myself struggling to get any of this done correctly- and I didn't find any quick tutorials that would work for what I exactly wanted..

But then I got lucky! While searching for one thing, I kept running into this youtube series and decided to check it out. It is very, very long- But I decided to follow along because I'm trying to make a similar game and the playlist goes over the entire making of the game, which means I'm learning a lot of different things that are important to making the game I want to create.

At this point I finished the 11th video- not nearly the end of it, but I already learned so much I can apply to my game! I will be doing that tomorrow! I really recommend the playlist if you're planning on making a top down rpg like game yourself! 

Also, while working on the playlists example project, I found out what happens if you don't put on the Z axis constraint on your player:

Can't say I didn't laugh when it happened

Anyways, that's it for the day! Hope everyone else's project is going well! I might not update this devlog daily for the next couple of days because of my job, but I'll continue working on it when I got time!

This is looking so cute already! And that is an excellent bug :D

14 - 18 /07 : still going strong !! 

I may not have continued to post dev logs over the past couple of days because I was busy with my job and stuff, but I still got some work in on the game ! I'm getting pretty close to finishing the base requirements I had for this game, which I am very happy about considering that means I'll still have time to work on extra stuff and tweaking here and there before the end of the jam! 

Now, without further ado, what I got done in the past couple of days:

- Watched more tutorial videos of the series I mentioned, as well as a video by  Brackeys on main game menus to work on later

- Made a new, more complete tileset: 

I'm honestly still not too happy about it, certainly will switch the grass colours around considering I find the scene way too dark and do other tweaks along the way- I just wanted an environment that looks a bit more finished right now! As you may be able to see I also added in a small sprite instead of the cube, that I'll be animating later.

-I redid the movement script a bit to get it to work more smoothly and edited a few small things here and there to declutter the project

- I added a 'soil' object, on which you should be able to plant stuff! I added a script to it as well, at first it just displayed a message upon interaction, but now I got it working so that the crop will be planted upon interaction! Here's a gif with all the stages when I was testing stuff:

In the soil script the stage of the crop gets saved as an integer value, and each individual stage is saved as an animation! The animation transitions from one stage to the next depending on an integer value that represents the stage, in order to get the crop growing i'll have to implement a system that starts the next day and then adds to this number !

-I added a camera movement script based on the one in the tutorial series mentioned in an earlier post, but the smoothing isn't working as I want it to- It makes everything look rather choppy when it's below 1, so I'll have to find something else for that - I might also make the camera a bit smaller in general, as things look a bit zoomed out still right now.

That's about all I got done! All that's left to implement to finish the core of what I had left now is a start screen, an option to harvest a crop, a mechanism that starts a 'new day' and puts all crops in a new stage (and perhaps more updates to the art) and then i should be good to go and start working on extras!

19/07: CORE FINISHED

I am very happy to be able to say that after about a week of working on my game (having started with absolutely no knowledge of unity or game making) I have finally completed all the requirements I set for myself at the beginning of this jam! Even though I finished this, I will still continue to work on things for the remainder of the jam- As I want to push this project as far as possible. Next on the list of things to do are:

• Changing up the tilesets so I like them better
• Update the start screen with actual images
• Attempt to get the character a better aim for objects (I often accidentally plant 2 crops instead of one)
• Watering crops
• Selling crops
• An inventory
• Energy bar ( accompanied by basic UI )

Not sure how much I'll get done of that, but I'll do my best ! I'll try to perhaps add some lore to it as well if I can find the time, though it's not my main focus. A name for the game would be fun as well, if anyone has suggestions please tell me ! 

Anyways, back to what I got done today:

-I already had a very simple player sprite made, which I then made a sprite sheet of with the character facing in different directions and walking (it could be way better, but I chose to not focus on bettering my skills with that as I'm mainly focused on the functionality of the game):

I then implemented that, making an animation clip for all idle stances and walking motions in all directions, and then added all transitions to the animator as well as edited the movement script to call on these animations.

-Secondly, I put more edits into the camera settings since I felt like it was a little too zoomed out

-After that, I changed all the 'soil' objects (the spaces you can plant) up a bit - I moved them out of the tilesets, and added all of them as planned- I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it though, but i just copied them all and placed them as seperate objects like this:

..I have a feeling there's another way, but alas

-The next thing I did was the most vital part !! I wrote a next day script (after a lot of struggle), that upon interaction with a certain space (I chose the house) would put all planted crops in the next stage of growth ! Each script for the soil has variables saving the current stage and if a crop is planted, I called those variables with a code that looks like this: 

GameObject.FindGameOjectsWithTag("tagNameObject").GetComponent<scriptYouNeed>.variable;

You also need to implement a setter if you want to edit any variables in the original code, I believe.

-Lastly, the last thing that was left on my to do list: making a menu! I followed the tutorial of the Brackeys youtube channel, and found out that there is a thing called 'textmeshpro' in unity that you can import when adding it under UI, it includes several fonts and should be more clear than the basic text. Either way, I added in a few simple buttons and some background music, and with that all is complete! (though i should probably find a way to close the game after you leave the menu).

I made a quick build of my current game, and this is what it looks like right now!  (i had to split it and twist it a lot to get it working, so that's why it looks a bit off whoops)

Anyways, that's all I got for today !! If you got any questions, suggestions, or anything- feel free to !!

omg that is AWESOME TO HEAR!! honestly having small goals and being okay with just hitting them over the course of the jam is the best way to go about it and i'm so glad to see you were able to hit them! also augh your tile set is so cute ;;/ seeing the gif of it with the gameplay is so exciting omg... lastly i love that you included the bug hahaha. this is looking so great great job so far!! i'm excited to see what you submit!

The game has been submitted! You can find it here: https://orchidhues.itch.io/leaf-garden

It hasn't had any changes since last update I made sadly (except for escape now closing the game), because I unexpectedly ended up having to work at my job a lot and I haven't really had any time to add stuff to it - But I hope to take the stuff I've learned, learn more, and then take it to the next game I make! I already feel like I got much further then I originally thought I was going to get, haha

Honestly, I'm not too sure what I'll do next? I might join a couple more gamejams to learn new things on the way, continue with the tutorial series I was following to get better at making these top down kinds of games, or start something entirely new! Working on a team sounds fun as well, though I'm not sure if I'll go looking for those kinds of opportunities just yet

Anyways, thank you for giving me the opportunity to get started with game making, I hope to one day be able to finish a full product of something I want to make !

Bonus:

I actually redid the tileset I had in the game, and I frankly like the colours and stuff way more - But I didn't end up having time to implement it! Perhaps I could use these for a new prototype somewhere along the way, though.