Alright, spooky season is coming to a head so its time for an update. This one is going to probably be a little less about what I’ve been doing and more about the future, so let’s get into it.

As for what’s actually been done this month mostly the same things I’ve been talking about. The zones for the next patch are done, except for an artifact I need to place. Currently, I’m trying to determine which one to add.

Which sort of leads into a side project I’ve been working on. The lore for Verdant Village has been somewhat set for a long time, but I hadn’t gone too far into the details outside of things relevant to the area the game takes place in. These things needed to be set out early incase any NPCs had anything to say about this stuff, or just had it effect their backstories.

Admittedly, I think pretty much all of this more important talk has been relegated to the future dialogue system instead of just generic sayings. This decision was made because while it might be sort of strange to walk up to a person and just have them blurt out “I sure do like the sunshine today!” its probably far stranger to walk up to someone, say hello, and then have them reply “My lineage is that of a king who reigned even before the collapse.”. And no, there isn’t a character in the game who will ever actually say that line.

So anyway, I’ve been solidifying the lore to setup for the future. I realized this needed to be done when writing one of the new character’s actual story. Realistically, I should have solidified this completely some time ago, but things get away from me far too often sadly.

Truth be told, I don’t know how much of this stuff I’ll use, but its something I think is important. I’m talking about it here I suppose to justify the time spent a bit. I think people who play these sorts of farming sim games come for a variety of reasons. But I think there are two larger categories I can simplify them into.

Some people (and I probably fall here) come to play the game. You know, make a farm, get the achievements, see everything the game has to offer, moving through objectives sort of like a checklist. Like I said, I’m probably more in that camp. But I think there is another group of people that play these games who like to invest themselves into the world, meet the NPCs, read the dialogue, I guess roleplay it more.

Now, I’m not an expert, and I haven’t played a ton of these games so perhaps I just haven’t found the good ones. However, I feel that I haven’t truly cared about a story in any farming sim I’ve ever played. Being social was always just another checkbox obscured behind a gifting system of some sort. This always seemed like a weird waste. I mean at the end of the day these games are meant to be a simulation, and the people within them should be interesting characters that you want to learn about or interact with, not just boxes on a list to check off. Nobody wants to roleplay in a boring world with one dimensional characters after all.

I won’t claim to be a great writer so I’m not sure I can pull this off. I have admittedly written a few books (don’t worry nothing you’ve ever heard of), but I won’t claim to be particularly good at it. However, it seems a waste to make a game like this and not have anything substantial in terms of world building.

Hence why I’m currently writing down the specifics of historical events, religious groups, gods, wars, magic systems, and other stuff for a game about farming. The hope is that the world will have some level of depth to it and the characters will also take on some level of depth and have things to say about the world they live in. I’m hoping that all of this will make more compelling characters and a more interesting world.

This way the people who care about this sort of thing will have something to sink their teeth into, while the others who don’t care will at least have it there if they decide they want to invest more into the world.
I suppose also on the gameplay side of things (to incentivize the people who don’t care about story) I plan to tie in rewards to character stories. Now, I don’t know about other people, but when I read that sentence I think, ‘Oh he’s just going to give you like a recipe at the end’. No, no, no my friend. I mean actual stuff. I have a whole bunch of stuff written down. All these are subject to change but some examples are, new NPCs appearing, new shops, new holidays, combat rewards, new systems like unlocking a boat to sail the ocean, new zones, etc. So anyway, lore, characters, world building, rewards, all that good stuff is planned, and I’m finalizing the ground work to support the story that enables it all.

More than a page into a word doc and all I’ve talked about is lore, oh boy. In regards to the actual game this month work has proceeded as normal. I’ve fixed a few bugs and made some changes here and there as well. I don’t think anything is big enough that its worth going into specifically but I’m basically cleaning up odds and ends to prepare for the next patch.

The other two things to talk about are more structural than anything. The first is that I am aiming to patch before the end of November, fingers crossed. I suppose I don’t want to guarantee anything 100% but I’m fairly confident in that prediction.

The second is related to patching. There was a certain someone who made a suggestion, however if you are if you are reading this, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your username. Their suggestion was a different patching schedule. If you’ve followed this game from when it was just on itch.io you might remember that I used to do weekly updates when I was just a young whippersnapper. That was when I was working on game dev full time so I could actually accomplish things in 1 week.

I’m not crazy enough to do a weekly patch schedule, but there is a compromise which is what was suggested, monthly patching. To explain, a while back I made and put out a roadmap for this game. It specified the patches for the game on a large scale. I think there were about 8 patches or so between now and a 1.0 release. That, for anyone unfamiliar with game dev, is not a lot given what still needs to be done.

The problem with this is pretty basic and now that I’ve been following the roadmap for a few months I’m starting to see the issues. Updates are, simply put, too infrequent. If nothing else there are bugs that are reported that just sit in the live version of the game for far longer than they should. Aside from bugs there are smaller features or QoL that are done and I just sit on them waiting for a much larger system to be finished. It just isn’t a great system.

So, the plan is to make these news updates I guess news and patches. Or to do patches in the middle of the month and news at the end of the month like usual, sort of just depends on what I decide. The point being, updates once per month. The caveat to this is that it will mean splitting my time between larger systems and small stuff. If there is a month where nothing of note that is smaller gets added I would likely forgo a patch, however I don’t expect that will be the case.

The other thing to mention with this is that this style wouldn’t be starting until after this next patch. With any luck I’ll patch in November and this new sort of monthly style would start in December.

I think that’s everything. Long update this month although I think it was mostly just me babbling about things. As always thank you for your patience, with any luck you’ll be hearing from me soon. Oh, and happy Halloween if you celebrate that sort of thing.