Verdant Village V0.4.8.3 Full Patch Notes
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue with some room transitions not working
Verdant Village
Verdant Village Patch 0.4.8.3
Verdant Village Patch 0.4.8.2
Also, this is probably a good touchstone for future updates. Except, monthly updates will (at least I really hope) have more to them than this. Basically at the end of each month I’ll hopefully have a small patch for the game.
I’ll be trying to stick to the roadmap that’s been referenced before. How I’m predicting this to work is that I’ll either be adding something listed on the roadmap or it will be a smaller feature I didn’t mention as the roadmap is pretty broad. Basically the only things that are off the table, bar any changes, are things that are not listed in the next patch in line.
So if you are looking at the roadmap, linked below, anything in patch 0.5 is on the table to be added in a monthly update, but I’m going to try to stick to smaller bits and pieces and save these larger features for the big patches and not monthly updates.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1236900/announcements/detail/3208261824665097992
So aside from all that I need to do some work to get my artists in order. I’ve got a big folder full of combat sprites so that’s well on its way but there are a lot of smaller things I want to add to the overworld, along with some minor changes to UIs and some zone specific tilesets and objects.
Once I get that settled it will be back to regular work. I think the plan is to divide my time between the major features of the next big patch and the small bits that will go into monthly updates. I’m not quite sure how this is going to go in terms of output but if I need to alter how patching works I will. The general plan is just to keep from having long stretches of nothing like the last patch cycle.
Anyway, I’ve talked enough, and there isn’t much to say given that I just patched anyhow. Assuming the holidays don’t make me lose track of time you’ll hear from me again before the end of the year, hopefully with an update of changes.
Verdant Village 0.4.8.2 Full Patch Notes
Quality Of Life
- The artifact exchange now only shows its availability on the map once you have accessed the shop at least once
- Added dialogue intros for the artifact exchange because it didn’t have them for some reason
- Changed the locations of transitions that take you from one area to the next to make them all consistent
Bug Fixes
- Shipping catalog would sometimes not show a third ingredient in ordering recipes (this manifested most commonly for the alchemy table, but could have effected any recipe)
- Fixed the amount listings on catalog recipes so the numbers stay within their respective boxes
- Fixed Steam achievements, they should now trigger properly, there is also a bit of code to retroactively award any you’ve already gotten (remember not all challenges have a corresponding steam achievement)
- Fixed a bug where Pinenestle Springs wasn’t showing on the map
- Fixed a glitch with the pickaxe where right clicking while it was selected in certain situations would drain your stamina
- Fixed a bug where Strawberry Seeds could be bought for 40 gold and sold for 80 gold allowing for infinite money
- Fixed a small issue with a cliff near the lake not being visible
Verdant Village Patch 0.4.8.1
Verdant Village V0.4.8.1 Full Changelog
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where 2 of the newly added NPCs couldn’t be interacted with (This does mean, depending on what time you saved, it might take an in-game day for them to start following their schedules)
- Fixed an issue where the map would spontaneously decide it wanted to float off screen
- Fixed an issue where the quarry could spawn normal mining nodes
Verdant Village Patch 0.4.8
I’ll try not to drag on here, but I wanted to mention a few things briefly. After this patch I plan to move to a monthly patching cycle. The patches will be smaller obviously, but the smaller cycle will keep me more focused on what is going into the game as well as give people something more tangible than me popping in once a month to say “yep, still alive, still working”.
Now to counteract that point, this new patch cycle may not start until the new year. I’m hoping I can get enough done to constitute a patch but December is usually pretty hard to manage with all the holidays. I’ll keep people apprised of that situation as it develops.
Aside from all that boring future stuff what have I been doing all this time? A lot, is the simple answer to that. However, I will say it may not look super impressive in list form. A lot of the work during this period was framework for future work. For instance, the compendium, a lot of the work was making sure it could account for new additions to the game in the future.
Also there is a full story (I’m internally calling them tales) that has been added for an NPC. A huge chunk of that was just writing a parsing system and making additions to the dialogue system to make it all work.
All this is to say that now those things are done so future additions to those systems should be far less work and far less time consuming. Which is good because that means more actual content going into the game rather than me creating things like a complex text parsing and export system *shudder*.
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, suffice to say a lot of groundwork was laid for the future here. After this we are on to combat for the next big system and plenty of smaller changes and additions to constitute the monthly patches along the way. Hope you all enjoy what’s been added!
Verdant Village 0.4.8 Full Changelog
Additions
- The Compendium (In brief this is an internal database that tracks most things in the game, as well as has tutorials)
- Added Achievements (in game these are challenges, some correspond to Steam achievements, however there is cap on how many you can have so not all of them unlock a steam achievement. Additionally those of you who are patching will likely get a few by default as some are given via non-repeatable events)
- Added 3 NPCs
- Added full tale for 1 NPC
- Added 4 zones
- Added 5 quests
- Added 1 new exchange shop (Small note, it doesn’t have all its items yet, so expect it to expand in the future)
- Added 1 archeology keystone dig
- Added Mail System (This hasn’t been discussed but its another framework system, its current purpose is that it gives the player 4 quests that act as small introductory tutorials at the start of the game. It will be used more later)
- As mentioned in the previous tick 4 quests were added via mail (These are tutorials but players who patch up will get all these letters at once so you can complete them as completing quests counts towards achievements)
- Added another biome to the mines for floors 75 through 100, before it was just lava land for 50 levels now the lava biome is only 25 levels like the others
- Additional mine biome comes with its own set of fish as usual
- Added cloud save functionality to Steam versions of the game
Quality Of Life
- Fish are now filleted in a separate tab in the cooking station which allows you to choose what to fillet
- Alt currencies will now only appear in the inventory screen when the requisite shop has been discovered
- Alt currency trade ratios will now appear when hovering an item in your inventory next to the gold sell price (This only happens when you have unlocked the shop)
- The dock below your home has a shadow now (why did it not before? I have no idea)
- Gutted the old tutorial system in favor of the compendium to keep things consistent
- Changed several UIs back to their older versions in a push to make UI more consistent in general
- Modified the popup notification code to place notifications on a separate layer so they don’t get caught behind other UI
- Made slight visual changes to items in stores
- Added simple item descriptions for furniture items as all other items have them
- Made slight updates to the map (more to come as it still isn’t fully accurate)
- Altered setup to allow demo saves to turn into normal game saves if you buy and play the demo first
Balance Changes
- Removed the requirement of owning a chicken for the first hunting quest to make hunting easier to start
- Increased all raw fruit stamina gains slightly to make them mildly viable as an uncooked snack
- Slightly modified keysprite effects to make them more visible
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the player’s mount shadow would disappear under the ravine bridge
- Fixed a bug where an exchange shop could stop displaying potential trades
- Fixed an issue that caused large gates to not patch properly
- Exchange shops now show the appropriate item shop frame based on if you have the currency to purchase the item or not
- Fixed a variety of monetary and visual bugs from exchange shops
- Fixed a bug on controller where you couldn’t scroll through your quest log
- Fixed a small bug with toggling between quest journal views
- Fixed a bug that would alter the sprite of fishery augments when scrolling them with a controller
- Fixed a bug where you couldn’t remove augments from a fishery on controller
- Fixed a bug where you could use the quick pull from chest button while holding a stack which would lock you
- Added some code as an extra layer to protect against inventory softlocks
- Fixed a bug where rugs you placed in your basement would just disappear
- Fixed a bug dealing with rug placement placing unwanted rugs when transferring rooms
- Fixed an issue with a weapon rack not Z ordering in Sven’s house (It didn’t have collisions on. I troubleshot for an hour and I just had to tick a box)
- Fixed a bug where the Neglected Palate quest gave the wrong rewards
- Fixed a bug where the map pop up to show the zone name could appear behind the player location icon
- Fixed a recipe bug with stone footstools
- Fixed a text bug with the quest “A Noble Dilemma”
- Fixed a small visual bug with Malcom’s sitting animation
- Fixed a bug where specifying the amount of an object you were going to buy wouldn’t charge you anything when you bought it
- Fixed a small visual glitch with characters sitting in chairs and z alignment
- Fixed a bug where placing a carpet while holding more than one of them would cause a small visual glitch
- Fixed an issue where dried deer jerky was using the boar hide sprite
- Fixed a few bugs regarding perk gain SFX
- Fixed a bug where you were supposed to unlock the refinement recipes for barrels and crates (decorative) from Simeon’s first quest (yay?)
- Made a few cosmetic fixes to controller support when dealing with menus
- Fixed a bug where passive functionality on certain items wasn’t always disabled when entering a menu
- Fixed a bug where dyes could be alchemically broken down into fibrous extract
- Fixed a bug where the automatic pickup SFX would play regardless of the item actually being picked up
- Fixed a bug where the portcullis UI wouldn’t reappear after a patch assuming you had it unlocked
- Fixed a very specific bug where holes dug with shovels that then reverted to a tilled tile naturally wouldn’t let the player interact with them
- Fixed the Beginner Carpentry quest summary from leaving the area the text inhabits
- Fixed sprite for the Muskellunge (that’s a fish btw)
- Fixed a bug where cooking instant recipes with a full inventory would use the ingredients but not give you the item
- Added a general distribution through Steam that will hopefully serve to handle extremely rare graphical glitches
October News Update
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.
September News Update
As I’ve said in the past this patch is likely close, but its pretty dependent on my artist still. What is basically happening is that what is specified on the roadmap, listed below, is essentially done.
-Compendium
-4 Zones
-2 NPCs
To clarify that, the compendium is done. The NPCs are in along with their quests. The zones are mostly done, just waiting on assets for basically 1 zone. The assets needed just happen to be large so they are taking longer. I’m specifying all this because I am admittedly making this take a bit longer than it should.
To explain that, I keep doing things that weren’t planned for this patch. As I said when I made the roadmap, it’s a rough outline. Two examples of this in this patch is that there is now a mail system implemented into the game. Don’t expect to get many letters yet, but since I made the system I needed art, and as a consequence slowed down other assets.
The other example of something that wasn’t supposed to happen this patch is that there is another NPC on top of the 2 that were designated for this patch. This NPC isn’t really like the others, but I’ll leave that a bit of a mystery. In regards to art, this meant making a new NPC, a few animations, and a dialogue portrait so it also slowed stuff down.
While the art is what’s slowing down the patch there is also another major component to this character. I wasn’t really planning to do this, but it didn’t make much sense to have her in the game and not include this. Without spoiling much, this character will already have her story dialogue built in. More might be added later, but she’s essentially a test run for what the NPC dialogue system will be. According to the roadmap those dialogues are supposed to be added basically last, but I wanted to test it all and see what people think in case I need to make changes. This of course means I need to develop the dialogue system but it should be pretty easy.
Aside from those things, this month saw a few other minor changes that I won’t go into detail about. I also spent some time trying to track down a particular bug related to a white pattern overlay appearing on screen. Still haven’t managed that one yet, but I should have a lead now at least.
There isn’t much else to mention I think, just working as usual. It isn’t exactly relevant at the moment, but I did do some thinking while on vacation and made some final adjustments to the combat system. Its changed a few times at this point, but I think I’m happy with it.
The goal, as I’ve probably said before, is to make the system a bit more involved than just a normal turn-based battle system where you hit them and they hit you, repeat, repeat. We’ll see if what I’ve thought up is any better I suppose. When the time comes, I think I will create a mock up of it for public consumption to get some opinions just because, while I think its cool, it isn’t good to develop in a bubble, especially when it is something this huge.
In any case, thank you all for your patience, I’ll certainly be back with another update at the end of this month. No vacation either, so I should be on time too. Hope you all have fun playing in the meantime.
August News Update
In all seriousness, I did mean to patch this month, but two things happened. First, and this is the big one. There was just too much art left to do and I miscalculated on that. There has also been some swapping around with artists and the mixing of things there slowed things down a bit.
Aside from that I came to a realization about halfway through this month. I had been quietly starting to brush certain parts of this patch off saying things like, “I can drop that for now.” or “We can put that off until next patch, it isn’t that important”. I realized a few weeks back that this was a terrible plan, mostly because it spits in the idea of a roadmap, which I just drew up and posted about two or three months ago.
I determined that while it may take longer, I should put what was intended into this patch. This means not rushing it, even if it takes a bit longer and I have to look dumb because I said I would patch this month. This post so far has essentially been a long protracted, oops, and I’m sorry.
With all that said I did actually do stuff this month for Verdant Village. Both NPCs have their schedules set for every season. Dialogue is basically done for both, got a few lines left to write for one NPC. Quest wise two have been added, there are a few more to write. As for zones, I’ve added two (basically three) zones. The third on basically needs a sprite drawn for it and that’s it. Then I got one more to make to meet the four zones quota for the roadmap.
Outside of that, the compendium is done, at least for its current iteration, some stuff will be added later as it becomes relevant but for now its working. I think for the compendium specifically what was actually finished this month was implementing the 100’ish challenges.
Speaking of challenges I actually have an update on that. There are plans for more of them yet, however I discovered an issue I was unaware of. Apparently, Steam put a cap of 100 achievements on any game on Steam, which I was unaware of. I was just going to make every challenge a Steam achievement because that made logical sense to me. Since that limit is in place I’ll be picking out specific ones to make into Steam achievements. I apologize for the discrepancy, blame Valve I guess. I did look into it, apparently the reasoning is that some games were going onto Steam with literal thousands of achievements which they didn’t like.
Last bit about challenges. The reward for doing these was originally was intended to be the Steam achievement, because I mean, that makes sense. Given that not all of them can be achievements I have it written down to add some sort of in-game reward for completing them. I’m not sure what this will be honestly. I’ll have to give it some thought, might just be like a golden player statue or something cosmetic of that nature. I just wanted to mention this because I personally was kind of disappointed by the fact that I can’t make them all achievements. Sort of undercuts the feeling of accomplishment a bit I think.
Aside from all of that there is a mail system planned and I may put that in during this patch to allow for a brief, I guess tutorial or set of easy objectives to ease new players into systems. Verdant Village is relatively devoid of teaching moments honestly. Unlike something like Stardew the opening also doesn’t give you a firm objective like “rebuild the farm”. You are basically dropped in so there should probably be some sort of gentle guiding for players less familiar with this type of game.
After all of that there are also plans for another exchange shop like the archeology one but I’ll be honest that may get neglected for this patch as putting it in would probably take a bit of development time plus a fair number of assets. While the Isabel’s shop was basically just furniture, which is easy to implement this one would actually have gameplay related stuff making it a larger task in general. So it will probably something for the future.
I think that’s basically everything. Sorry to write an essay here but I figure you all deserve to know what’s going on, not to mention that’s the point of these. To address when patching will happen, I don’t know. I would like to say it will be in the near future. Given where development is at, I would think it will still be soon, but with the creation of art being a bit harder to predict I can’t say for sure. So, your patience is appreciated. And for my part I will attempt to not give harder deadlines for patches when I can’t predict them as well as I think I can. Hope you all have fun playing for now, you’ll hear from me again hopefully sooner rather than later.
July News Update
Most of my time was focused into finishing the compendium. At time of writing, I’m basically done; I just have to fix controller support for one hyper specific section. For anyone unfamiliar, the compendium is meant to serve as something of a mini wiki that you fill in as you play. It admittedly isn’t going to be as robust as a real wiki, but it will serve to record most relevant information that you discover in the game. This mostly pertains to items and all the things associated with them but also branches into tutorials, and later a few other things. The hope is that with this you won’t have to reference a wiki to remember exactly how certain things work or how to get things you’ve already obtained once.
Despite what I just said, the compendium isn’t exactly done. Currently, there are 3 sections to it. I have a few more planned, but they aren’t implemented because the relevant features aren’t in the game. Examples of these things are a bestiary, NPC profiles, and a few other things that I think would be useful. Once the requisite parts of the game are added the compendium will be updated accordingly.
If you are wondering why NPC profiles aren’t considered relevant it’s because they have to do with how the social/romance system would work in the game which is very much not there yet.
Aside from tutorials and items, the compendium also houses the challenges section. I’ve mentioned it before, but challenges double as Steam achievements if you are playing on Steam. Currently, there are about 100. I have more in mind and more will probably be thought up as well, but I left out things that can’t be achieved at this time in the game. These cover most aspects of the game and should give you something to shoot for if you like that kind of thing.
While the compendium is the majority of this patch, I’ve also fixed a few bugs and changed some values on items and the like. According to the roadmap I also need to add two NPCs, some quests, and a few zones. This may sound like a lot of work, and it is, but it’s usually quick work because, well, the processes for making these things are already set and I don’t have to spend time tracking down issues.
This of course means patch time is drawing near. While I don’t like to give out dates for this sort of thing, I would hope that August will see a patch. Most of my work is done and what is left is pretty standard stuff that shouldn’t be too time consuming. The only part that may throw a wrench in the works is art. There are still a fair number of assets to make. My artist is working diligently so hopefully he will knock everything out quickly and it won’t be an issue but I thought it would be a good idea to mention it in case it causes delays.
I think that about covers it for this patch. I’m sorry things are a bit slow at the moment. As I’ve said before, this patch was always sort of a filler patch to get things in line before adding combat. Hopefully, you all will hear from me before the end of August and I’ll have something to share. Until then I hope you all have fun playing Verdant Village.
June News Update
June has been a busy month to say the least. Looking back on my own notes they are actually looking somewhat sparse, but there’s a reason for that. Most of my work this month was done on the compendium. Specifically, one section of the compendium that I refer to as the item database. What is the item database? Well, basically what you’d imagine. The compendium is meant to give you information regarding most everything in the game. As items are a big part of it this database tracks every item you obtain along with relevant information for how it is used or found. It’s laid out in a way that you’ll reveal and fill it in as you play with completion percentages and the like if you enjoy that sort of thing.
This probably sounds simple, and it mostly is. The cumbersome part is pulling all the data together and displaying it in a readable way. This dominated my time this month, but it is finally done.
There are still several other sections of the compendium that need to be made, but none of them are nearly as labor intensive so I don’t expect them to take anywhere near as long, famous last words, I’m sure.
The next section that I have slated is challenges, which double as steam achievements. It won’t be a complete list as certain game systems still aren’t in, but there are a lot for people who enjoy achievement hunting.
After that there are some smaller things that need to be added to the compendium but nothing too major as far as I can tell.
If you haven’t looked at the roadmap that was posted I’ll mention it here. The next patch is mostly the compendium, but there are also a few in game additions. Specifically, 4 zones and 2 characters. I’ve just recently gotten some assets for one of the zones, and I’ll be getting more soon so that is well under way.
Aside from that cloud saves have been mentioned as a wanted feature. Cloud saves were actually supposed to go in a long time ago, but an initial test erased a save and it fell by the wayside since. I plan to get them working and put them in for this patch.
All in all, this patch is mostly an interim patch. While the compendium is a very large feature it isn’t exactly gameplay centered. This patch is mostly meant to get things in line before tackling combat in the next patch. With any luck this patch will release sometime in the near future. I don’t have any hard dates as of yet but looking over what I have here I don’t think there is a ton more to do so hopefully I’ll have something more concrete in that regard soon.
As always, thanks for your patience and I hope you are enjoying the game so far.
May News Update
In any case, some things still got done. This month was mostly working on the compendium. A few other bits and pieces have come up and been altered as well, but the compendium is the main focus. Tutorials are done, at least for the current game. I will have to write a few more as some other systems are added or if people request them. Tutorials are sort of made at my discretion which isn’t always the best. Since I made the systems, I find many of them self-explanatory when players may find that they need clarification. All that said once the compendium is out, I expect I’ll probably be adding some more if they are requested or I realized something could be tutorialized.
Tutorials aside most of my focus has been on the item database portion of the compendium. To put it simply, the compendium will have a section where you can look at every item you have found in the game. These have to be filled in as you play. Usually, an entry is filled in when you gather it once. Sometimes additional info can be unlocked by using the item however. For instance, breaking an item down with alchemy will unlock that related info on the item. This info is basic for some objects but others like fish will contain info like where and how to catch the fish, seeds list the growth times, etc.
For people who like collecting stuff I guess this will serve as a small side system as you can make it a goal to fill out the database if you want. It does track item discovery and entry completion (filling in all the additional data for an item). So, if you like percentages you may enjoy that. There aren’t any rewards linked to completing the database at this point, but it might be something to look into for the future. Sort of feels like the kind of thing you should get a little something for.
Once items are done there are a couple more sections to add. I think the next one I’ll be tackling is, well, I’m calling them challenges in game because I think that sounds better. If you are playing on Steam these will double as achievements.
Currently, based on what I’ve got outlined there are around 150 of them. These range across pretty much every aspect of the game. Admittedly, a lot of them are just do thing x times, such as plant 500 crops, but there are some oddballs in there.
I do need to do some thinking on this bit because 150 steam achievements, or just achievements in general is a lot. I feel like most games average like 20 – 50 or so. What I might do is reevaluate some of them. I might remove a few of them and turn others into multistage achievements. For instance, if there were 3 achievements to spend 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 gold it would all be one achievement with 3 stages and on Steam it would just be the 1 achievement to spend 100,000.
None of the achievement stuff is set in stone yet. I haven’t really been an achievement person since my Xbox 360 days. That said if anyone has any ideas on what they think would make achievements more satisfying or put together I wouldn’t mind hearing ideas on that.
Compendium aside this next patch has a few zones and NPCs to add as well. I’m not sure if I’ve said this publicly or not, but my goal for zones is to branch out from Amberglen. By that I mean zones closest to the town will be the first to fill in for the most part. NPCs are following a somewhat similar trend. My goal is to make every house in Amberglen have a resident first. There are still a few places that you can’t enter because the person who lives there doesn’t exist yet. Once there is at least one person in each house I’ll branch out from there.
As for zones, I think the first one I’ll start with will be the quarry. I think people are long overdue for a consistent source of stone. Once combat goes in the mines won’t really be an easy romp either so I’d rather have a better way to get ahold of that basic resource before then.
Anyway, I think that’s basically it for right now. This month was kind of a mess as I said at the start. In fact, that last few months have been sort of busy with life in general, but things should be slowing down now so that should mean more consistent development on my end. Thanks for your patience and I hope you have fun playing Verdant Village in the meantime!