Here’s last week’s screenshot roundup!

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By far the biggest thing I worked on last week was furniture and other decorations. The above gif is from the same house – your very first one, which is nothing more than a storage shed – that’s being furnished over time.

The final release will have a *lot* of furniture and will run the gamut between the modern – like TVs and fridges – to the more fantastical and unusual

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Work also continues on making the village itself more visually distinct. I’ve added two types of fences – normal brown and the classic white picket – and also fleshed out some more gardens. You’ll be able to customize your own garden that’s outside your home

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If you’ve played the current alpha you’ll know that the historical society is pretty desolate – it’s basically just a single room with a bunch of pedestals to place your stuff on.

Last week I iterated over it again and started adding actual exhibits. There are currently two – one for your critter collection, the other for fossil, treasure, and other archaeology donations

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Finally I want to talk about weather. I love love LOVE weather in video games, but one thing has always bugged me – even when a game does have weather it often is very same-y…maybe it’ll have just a single ‘rain’ effect, or when it is raining it rains for the entire level or day, that kind of thing. Weather is too interesting and diverse to be this boring!

The above gif shows off 4 different intensities of rain – drizzle, rain, heavy rain, and thunderstorm – that you can experience in Village Monsters. The latter two even come up darker lighting!

Each day will have 8 ‘slots’ for weather, so like real life a single day can have multiple weather changes, and it’ll even try to that make ‘sense’. For example, there’s a weather pattern that starts out with fog in the morning, then cloudy and burning off into sun in the afternoon, then back to clouds and drizzle at night – for anyone on the west coast of the US that should sound pretty familiar!

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But beyond differing intensities I want to also have more uncommon “weather” effects, and to do this I’m expanding my definition of ‘weather’ to mean any effects in the air and sky.

In the above you can see two such unusual weather types – flower petals that’ll occur in the spring, and tree pollen which falls in the spring and summer.

In total there are 19 weather effects ranging from sunny and overcast to meteor showers and aurora borealis, and they’ll differ from season to season, and even by time of day. A major design goal in Village Monsters is to have each day feel different and unique, and weather is a big way I’m accomplishing this

A roundup of screenshots from the last week’s worth of work.

Experimenting with a prototype for placing furniture in your home. There’s going to be a lot of options for furniture and other customization in the final game, though for now it’s all pretty basic
The above shot also shows off the new interior tileset. I like it a lot!

 
Speaking of prototypes, here’s another experiment with a system for issuing commands to your faithful pup. Someone on the #indiedevhour suggested some sort of whistling mechanic, and to me that meant something akin to the Ocarina from OoT. It’s meant to be much quicker and has far less options than most Zelda instruments!

…and here’s a tragic bug from that same testing. Poor little guy

I’d say I have about 1/3rd of the villagers at least roughly implemented – there’s going to be 36 in total. However, beyond the 36 permanent residents there are also going to be plenty of ‘visitors’, like this guy. Visitors are not permanent and only show up during special times, like holidays, events, and other unique times

As you can see, this guy doesn’t even speak your language, which does make things tricky​

There’s a lot to do in an average day in Village Monsters – activities range from as the mundane, like shopping or talking with villagers, to multi-stage quests, odd jobs, and even exploration.

However, the most involved type of activity is called a Hobby. Hobbies are generally ‘slow burns’ that you’ll work on each day, and they require effort, upgrading equipment, and leveling up skills. Thankfully, the rewards – like cash and items to donate, use or display in your home – are also greater than other activities.

In the prototype you can actually play with two such hobbies: critter hunting and fishing.

This week I’m working on a 3rd hobby: Archaeology! (Like most things the name is subject to change)

You’ve probably already guessed this by the name, but this hobby involves a lot of digging around. As you wander the village and surrounding areas you may find a digable spot in the ground marked by an obvious red “X” – you can then take your shovel to dig up whatever is buried there.

Prototype / WIP

Most of the time it’ll be things that you’ll want to sell off, but sometimes you’ll get lucky and find rare treasures. You may even find the remains of ancient mythological beasts and other monsters that can be donated to the Historical Society, displayed in your home as a trophy, or sold to the very curious (and very insane) scientist that lives outside of town.

Prototype / WIP

But perhaps the best thing to find in the dirt isn’t a treasure at all, but rather: a map! These special items are each the start of a unique treasure hunt quest that can span several days or even weeks in the game.

Each hunt will require you to solve riddles, find specific landmarks, or explore long-forgotten ruins, and some may even require help from other townsfolk.

The rewards are worth it, though: the treasure you find on your hunts will often be unique items with powerful abilities, like a book that can let you talk to ghosts, or a rod that can control the weather.

One last thing! Not too long after starting the game you’ll have the opportunity to get a dog companion. This pup isn’t just for playing with, but is also able to help you out in various daily activities.

I’m still working out the details with how this works with the other hobbies, but for Archaeology I’m leaning toward allowing the pup to find digable spots on his own and dig ’em up for you. Of course, he should probably fetch the items as well, but one step at a time, yeah?

Prototype / WIP

WHY NOT BOTH?

Week of May 14th, 2017

WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

• The state of our WARP CORP continues to hold steady at ~doin’ fine~
• The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is holding steady at ~39 weeks away. Rad!

I’m trying something new! That’s what working for yourself allows for, yeah? Pivots, baby!

Truth is, I was spending more time than I wanted to on these planning and retrospective posts. I mean, ok, it wasn’t that much time, but it was always something I kept putting off and putting off, and then when I actually did do it I always half-assed it.

I won’t get rid of the concept entirely because I think it’s important to my psuedo-agile approach, but I am combining the two. This new thing will go out each Sunday (except for, uh, this first one?) and it’ll look exactly like the Planning posts with the addition of a Show & Tell section. I’ll also try to weave in last week’s successes (and many failures) into the Goals. Ok, cool? Cool!

Not much to report on the biz side of things. The prototype release Flower has been out for about a week now, which is rad! Everything else is on schedule.

SPRINT GOALS

The latest prototype contains two hobbies – critter hunting, and fishing. Since the start I always envisioned three primary hobbies, and this week marks progress in that 3rd one: archaeology!

This’ll be the most involved of the hobbies, and includes things like digging up jewels, finding treasure maps and clues leading to even greater treasure, finding the remains of long-dead ancient creatures…there’s a lot!

More importantly, this hobby has the most ties with other systems of the game – like seeding the ground with things to dig up each new day, or adding new quests to the Compendium if you dig up a map, and so on. As such, focusing on something like digging will end up improving a whole lot of systems as I work through them all – it’s like five or six birds with one stone!

SHOW & TELL FROM LAST WEEK

IT’S NOT BUILT FOR SHOES

Week of April 30th, 2017

OVERVIEW

This was a pretty lousy week, if I’m honest. You ever have one of those days where it feels like you do a ton of work, only to you realize you don’t have a whole lot to show for it? Imagine that, but it’s all week, and you have an idea for how it went.

Dunno why, really, just one of those things.

This coming week includes a full moon – meaning a new release! – and I’ve felt completely taken by surprise. Has it been a month already? What the hell! Only 4 days to go…so, I best get back to it.

SHOW & TELL

IT’S NOT BUILT FOR SHOES

Week of April 30th, 2017

WARP DOGS’ CORP LOGS

• The state of our WARP CORP continues to hold steady at ~pretty ok~
• The Extinction-Level-Event (ELE) is holding steady at ~41 weeks away. Rad!

Not much new to add on this front – money is continuing to be spent, but not too much. We still have just under a year to figure this stuff out, and I’m still feeling confident we will.

For the first time in like a decade we’re getting a tax return back, and its substantial enough to make a blip on the ol’ WARP CORP charts above. That’ll come some in the summer. Between that, various retirement accounts and other sources of income, I think I’ll be able to keep on trucking until an eventual plea for money in the form of a Kickstarter. Ah, but before that I need a game worth backing, right? Well stop making me type this and let me get back to it!

SPRINT GOALS

I have a few different analysis-related goals this week. I’d like to get together a “Lore Bible” of sorts – for myself! I’m picturing an Excel sheet of sorts that lists every character, their personality, relationships, places in the world, and so on.

I’d also like to finish up the public roadmap that I’ll be sharing over Trello – I’m committing to getting that out this week, actually, so look forward to that.

On the coding front the plan is to continue with ‘core loop’ items. This week I’ll definitely focus on player housing including furniture placement, upgrades, and lots more. Finally finally, I’d like a more robust dialog system (one fed via an external file instead of the hardcoded version I have now)

So, could be a busy week. Let’s get to it.