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Emerald Woods

You have started a new life in the tranquil Emerald Woods, miles away from any sign of human civilization. · By Slashie, QuietGecko

Some more comments

A topic by Lone Spelunker created Mar 10, 2020 Views: 222 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 4

Spent some more time with the game, so here are some more comments and suggestions.

  • Animals seem to be vanishing. This is new behavior. I'd see an animal, and I'd go chasing after it, and when I'd get close, it would sometimes just...vanish.  Many times when it happened, I was very close to it, and the impression I got was that maybe it tried to move onto my space and that caused the game to lose track of it or something.
  • Still having trouble with the whole "exhaustion to the point of fainting while my stamina is high" thing.  Those really feel disconnected; I can tell when I'm getting tired from swinging axes, but not...whatever drives the other thing.  "Oh!  I'm so tired I'm fainting! Didn't know."
  • It would be cool if you could plant berries to have berry gardens near your house.
  • Not a huge deal, but it seems strange that a gate/door takes five times as much wood as a fence/door; it seems like they should take about the same amount of wood.  On a related note, you could reduce some tedium by granting two or three units of wood per tree.
  • Sometimes mining rock wouldn't yield a unit of stone.  Not sure if that was intended.
  • Still need a way to rest during the day.  If I wake up in the morning, go chop a few trees down, dropping my stamina low, and I go back to my house to take a nap until the afternoon, it feels like I should regain at least some stamina and be able to go do something.  My hunger still goes up, but my stamina stays low.  As it stands, the efficient strategy seems to be to do a lot of "one hour workday" sorts of things where you are active for an hour or two, then sleep over and over until you wake up the next day.
  • Seems like the above could work with some nice features.  Like, say you add a "rest" command that lets you spend some time to regain a stamina point.  You could make the amount of time you have to rest to gain a stamina point variable, and the more "comfy" the place you rest, the faster you get stamina back.  Craft a comfy chair next to a fireplace for quick stamina gains. Lie down on a bed for quick stamina gains. Sit down in the wilderness for slow stamina gains but you don't have to travel back.  Etc.  Would give a nice incentive for decorating and building up your house, and it would make it feel more "homey".
  • Still needs a save/load game feature.  Infrastructure-building games really need the ability to pick up where you left off.
  • Any suggestions for playing the game large onscreen?  Zooming in on the itch.io page crops the game on the right, and clicking the fullscreen button works, but the game is in the top half of the screen with the bottom half of the screen white.  I could play the game large back when it was on your site, but I can't seem to get it to work now that it's over on the itch.io site.
  • The remappable controls you talked about would be really nice.  I mentioned it before, but the control key is especially problematic, because on the Mac, control-arrow is a system shortcut for switching screen spaces, making it quite often cause you to accidentally leave the game and go to another application, and have to re-establish focus when you return. Happens a lot when I'm harvesting and I accidentally hit control while I'm arrowing.

You asked for suggestions on things to find out in the wilderness.

  • Flowers and other plants.  Flowers could be transplanted as decoration, but other plants (like berries) could provide food or other benefits, like a rare fruit you could eat that would replenish your stamina.
  • Something interesting in caves.  The mushrooms showing up in caves are cool, but unless I'm missing something, they're still not harvest-able.  Maybe gemstones or minerals that you can put in the bin for credits?
  • Lakes in caves would be neat.  (A craftable item to shed light in caves would be a cool addition once you start adding neat stuff to find in caves.)
  • Animal nests, dens, and lairs where there are several of that species milling around the same area.
  • Fish in the pond areas that you can craft a fishing pole to fish for.
  • More cool discoveries like buildings.  (Maybe you have a lot of these and I've just not encountered them; I've only found one so far.) These might be a cool place to spend your credits - find a place in the forest, and you can trade credits for some neat item or a crafting blueprint or something.

Anyway, the improvements are looking good. The game's enjoyable and interesting; I'd love to see more content for it.

(1 edit) (+1)

Thanks!

You can still play at the website at https://slashie.net/emeraldWoods/, not sure if that helps with your fullscreen issue but I'm also going to add an easier way to switch into that. Eventually we'll also have a native executable with that on by default, and separate help screens.

Newly added to TODO

  • Only remove animals if not in sight (for x turns)
  • Fainting at 2AM with full stamina is not very clear. Options:
    • Remove 
    • Change it so that you get more tired as you get closer to the night
    • Change max stamina based on time of day.
  • Plant berries, create berry gardens.
  • Add wooden gate: Cost 1 wood
  • Produce 2 or 3 units of wood per tree.
  • Min stone produce should be 1 per rock.
  • Rest command to recover 1 stamina point.
  • Stamina recovery when resting or sleeping should be based on how comfortable you are. (Instead of just safe/unsafe/fainted and fullSleep/nap)
  • Craft chair, you can rest on it for higher stamina recovery.
  • Resting or sleeping next to a fireplace should boost stamina recovery.
  • Easily accesible full screen mode
  • Reconsider Ctrl as default pick up due to issues with Mac

Already in the TODO list

  • Improve "Nap", less prompts, more stamina recovery.
  • Sleep in bed
  • Save game

Nice!  I'll check it out.

(+1)

Sorry, I meant these items were already in the TODO list :D

moved this topic to Ideas for Improvement