Hello all, time for another update on Verdant Village’s development, or rather re-development at this point. Things are moving along smoothly I think. Similar to last month there is definitely still something of a learning curve with the engine. All in all however I think I’m moving faster than I was. Which is pretty much all I can ask for.

So, what actually happened this month? Well, let me tell you something. I just looked at the last dev log to see what I’d accomplished last month as it all runs together for me. The last thing I mentioned was and I quote “At the moment, you can really only till ground but everything else should follow quickly.”. As is sometimes the case, I had no idea what I was talking about. Farming is complicated to say the least. I am happy to report that it is working in basically the same capacity as it is in the live version now. I think the only thing that’s missing is a function for using growth powder to make crops grow, but that would truly be a single simple function.

I say all this, quote and all, because I clearly forgot how complicated farming is. For a brief rundown, first you have to be able to till a tile of land, check. When I started this month, this was quite literally the only check. A tile then needs to be recorded so that it can be recreated when you leave and re-enter the area. For the object itself this involves creating the tile but then also setting up functions to display the tile correctly depending on how many tiles are surrounding it. Tiles also need to be able to adjust their appearance after they are created for when tiles around them appear or disappear. And need to be able to do this quickly to avoid stutter each time you till a tile.

After that you need to be able to water a tile, which involves the watering, as well as the use of the watering can. Adding the watering can involves implementing an item that has limited uses and displaying the data properly. As well as adding water that you can actually fill the can up from.

And after all that you need to be able to plant seeds, which need to be recorded similar to tiles so they can be recreated and manipulated properly. Then they need to have code to be able to grow, wither, become harvestable, regrow in the case the perennials, and abide by seasons.

I didn’t consider it when I started remaking farming, but its probably one of the most complicated systems in the game. Its not particularly hard to code, but there’s just a ton of factors. Compare this to something like mining which is basically, hit rock, get item. So long story short, past me thought farming was simple but got to remember that its very complicated.

Despite this, I did manage to tackle a few other things this month. First, the automatic pickup system works now. For those who have played the game that’s when there are items on the ground and you walk over to them they will gravitate towards you and be collected automatically. This also displays a bit of UI on the left. This UI has also been coded to work with manually picking things up like when you harvest a crop. It’s a smaller system but still something else out of the way. I also did a bit of refactoring on the inventory system to make it more efficient and scalable.

And last I started on what I am still working on, trees. As with crops they are a complicated system mostly because they grow. Progress is going well however, you can chop them down and gather materials so that’s about half the battle. The tough part was in animation, which I’m happy to say there’s been an improvement. If you played the current game you’ll likely notice that trees just sort of shift their angle and wobble when you hit them, even the roots move. It took a bit of doing but trees now animate in a different way that looks better in my opinion.

Next on the list is to get trees finished which mostly involves having them grow and record their data properly. This is thankfully more simple than crops which abide by more factors. Trees sort of just grow and they don’t have to correlate to a tilled tile. Since I’ve already done this sort of thing once I think it actually won’t take long this time around. But future me will be sure to quote current me if I’m putting my foot in my mouth right now.

So that is basically it for this month. Things are progressing nicely but there’s still plenty to do. My general plan was to get all the basic tools working first. That sort of spun into all of farming. Similar to how the axe is spinning into setting up trees. The next and last tool is the pickaxe. As mentioned before though that’s basically, hit rock, get item, so it should be easy. After that I’m not sure what I’ll move to next. A likely choice seems to be setting up some basic zones and getting shops working. Currently I’m walking around in a giant green field with a puddle to fill up the watering can, a single tree, and the player house. So you know, that probably needs to change a bit.

Anyway, as usual, thank you all for your patience and support. Seeing people thumbs these up and comment and stuff is always nice. You’ll hear from me in a month with hopefully far more to report on.