Oct. 20th, 2021
This month has been a lot of fun sharing and working on the game! Some concept art sheets have been posted over Twitter and Instagram that represent crops and an animal type that I’d like to include- bees!
I’d like interactions with bees to go more in depth in terms of harvesting honey and wax. For example, when you capture the bees, you have to put them into a purchased/built hive. After they start making honey, you have to scrape off the top layer of wax, which can be used as a material, and then bottle the honey by hand. Later, the player can buy a honey spinner to do it automatically.
Other than art, progress like movement and interacting with objects is pretty much done, though it will evolve as the project gets bigger. Plant growth for crops is in progress and a template for growing a crop over time has been made. Something I need to add is allowing the player to till the ground where they want and then adding in the seed. Also, a visual way to water it- right now, you just click and it waters the plant. See more of this at the Havenroot Vale blog.
Along with this, I’ve been working on one of the refining machines for the player to use: a flour mill! The player will need wheat to activate it, but it should be able to produce flour bags once the wheat has been ground on the wheel. Once this is in a more finished state, I’d like to move on to either chopping items/crops or adding in a mortar and pestle mini-game to mash/crush smaller things.
As I worked on the basics, like movement and other code, it was nice to take breaks or do the smaller aspects, like tiny creatures, to help with world ambience.
Most objects I’ve made so far are mainly being used for testing. I’ll keep updating them as I think of better designs and I hope to make things look as best I can in the end.