Verdant Village
January News Update
I don’t think I’ll go into a ton of detail on what’s up for the next patch, but rest assured things are being added and changed. I’ve received a lot of feedback this month on certain aspects of the game so there’s a good deal of QoL and changes coming. I’ve also managed to get 2 more NPCs added, I just have to write their quests, 5 in total and then they will be ready.
As for the patch itself, I’m hoping it will be out in the next week or two. As mentioned a second ago, there are two NPCs that need quests written. I just outlined them the other night so they won’t take long. There is some other stuff I’d like to address in this patch that I haven’t done yet so the timeframe is a bit up in the air, but the patch should be in the near future.
Outside of those notes, I’ve started to actively divvy up my time a bit, perhaps another reason this patch is taking a bit longer. I’ve mentioned before that combat is next on the docket so I’m using some of my time to set out everything in that space. At this point its mostly monster design. While I’ve had a lot of stuff laid out for some time, monsters were more cliff notes than anything else. I basically knew what kinds I wanted and where to put them, but there were some logistical challenges to figure out. I also had to figure out what their abilities would be. Bosses in particular are what I’m mapping out at the moment. Currently I’m about half way done figuring out their movesets and laying out a general idea of what each boss is about and how they are meant to challenge the player.
There has also of course been some modifying of the combat systems and some streamlining. Looking back combat has changed quite a bit and gone through a few variations. The most recent changes mostly streamline how the player grows stronger and develops. To put things simply it used to be very, very complicated. Lots of different stats, ideas, items, ways to improve, etc. Overdeveloped would probably be an understatement. So that has all been reigned in to a fairly straight forward system.
The other thing, which I think I’m more excited about, is secrets. Granted I’m also excited about combat, and most things in this game. This is something else I’ve been talking about for a while as well. The map is obviously large and I’d like to fill it up with lots of little challenges, rewards, or really just things to give some level of interaction to the game world. I’ve had a chunk of this planned out for a while, but nothing hyper specific, just a nebulous idea with a few rewards I knew I wanted to include.
Along with combat I’ve started to separate out a portion of time for secrets to be added to the world. I’m still devising a number of them, but if you subtract the ones found in dungeons it’s probably sitting at around 70ish things scattered around the map in various little hidden mechanics, puzzles, riddles, etc.
It’ll be a ton of work but I’m super excited about it. One of things I remember about playing Harvest Moon was wanting to be able to wander around and run into little things in the world to discover and interact with, so I’m hoping I can achieve that here.
As usual there is still a long way to go. Thanks to everyone for bearing with the bugs and giving feedback, reviews, etc. I appreciate all of it as its all helping to make the game even better. Hopefully, in a week or so here you’ll have a nice new patch to play with.
December News Update
Combat is still coming along. Monsters are mostly all squared away in terms of what they do. Bosses have also been setup in most ways, I think I’m missing an idea for 1 or 2 at this point. There’s also just been some general refinement of the systems relating to combat. The longer I work on combat the more I seem to simplify it. I don’t want to make it too straightforward obviously but some parts of the system in terms of progression, balance, and player stats were more obtuse than anything so they’ve been modified or done away with for what I think will make a smoother experience. This is a farming sim after all, not a super complex JRPG.
Aside from slogging through combat creation I’ve been working on some other things as well. There are several bugs that are being addressed. Outside of that I’ve got a few visual updates to the game that should add some nice touches. In the future I’d like to look into more things like this its just a matter of finding the time as usually there are more important issues to address.
Aside from the visuals, I’ve got some new NPCs in the works. Currently, there are two that will be added next patch but there may be more depending on how things go. Both should also have a few quests accompanying them as well as two interiors because they can’t live/work in a black void, although it would admittedly be way easier for me.
I think that’s mostly it as far as things worth mentioning specifically. While I can’t make a guarantee I’m hoping there will be a patch in January. Its somewhat dependent on a few art assets being made, but I’d guess that won’t be a huge issue.
That marks the end of the new stuff. This next part was something I found interesting from a developer perspective. Given that it’s the end of the year I figured it might be a good time to look back. I keep daily backups of Verdant Village. So, I went back to what Verdant Village was at the start of the year to see the differences. I also looked back at the earliest build of the game ever which is a hilarious white screen with some moving blocks on it.
In any case I don’t pay a ton of attention to changes made over long periods of time. Once a feature is in the game, I eventually forget that it wasn’t there at some point. Looking back at the old build and the patch notes over the year I found it interesting to see what was actually changed. Below is a list of the bigger items that have been added to the game over the year. I apologize if this seems self-indulgent, I don’t mean to inflate my ego or anything I just found it interesting and thought others might as well.
Anyway, over the course of 2021 Verdant Village has seen the following changes.
- 3 Zones (which I won’t name for spoiler reasons)
- 4 New Archeology Artifacts
- 3 NPCs (Petra, Isabel, and Graham)
- 2 Shops
- 10 Quests
- The Fermentation System
- The Buffs System
- Fisheries
- Fish Traps
- Hunting Refinement (smoking, drying, and marinading meat)
- 33 Perks
- Minor Archeology Artifacts
- The Windmill System
- A Variety Of New Furniture
- A Set Of Fish For The Mines
- Cocoa Trees
- Barley And Rye
- The Mines Overhaul
- Fishing System Overhaul
- UI Upgrades
- Alchemy System Rework
- Buildable Silo
- Truffle System Overhaul
- Forage And Surface Ore Changes
- A Slew Of QoL
- An Even Larger Slew Of Bug Fixes
Listing things out like that makes it seem sort of small actually. I think condensing down “Bug Fixes” and “QoL” into two lines is the cause of that. Looking back at the patch notes bug fixes alone were pretty much always multi page lists. It’s also occurred to me while making this just how many things were reworked in large ways, which I can’t say I planned to do from the outset.
Looking back at this is a bit telling, I think. A lot of my time was spent fixing bugs or reworking systems. I don’t want to set myself up here, but I think 2022 will be far more focused on additions rather than fixes or changes. Of course, I’ll fix whatever crops up but I think things are reasonably stable, bar a couple of outstanding issues.
At this point most of the major systems are in place. Major systems are something I define as a system that will take me multiple weeks to code and setup. There were several of these in the past year, the mines rework, fermentation, hunting refinement, alchemy rework, etc. At the moment I can foresee a few more large systems, such as combat, the topic and general conversation/cutscene/romance system, one that I won’t mention because I haven’t talked about it yet, and the compendium, which won’t be hard so much as just a lot of stuff.
Keep in mind these are the large systems, it doesn’t constitute other smaller things such as animal breeding, secrets, tailoring, holidays, or other things. So, there is still a lot to do but the point is a lot of this year’s work was squashing bugs, but another huge part was just setting up or reworking very large systems. Since there aren’t as many large systems to work on going forward, I’ll have time to fill out the game in smaller ways, more NPCs, zones, and things to populate the areas. Essential a lot of what’s been done I would call framework. Once the frame work is in place its very easy to create things within it. So with any luck that means more content faster.
All that said I’m excited to get started on 2022. I think a lot of cool things are going to be added to Verdant Village this year. With any luck you all will have the same opinion. As always, thanks for sticking with me through the bugs and development process. I appreciate all the feedback, reviews, reports, and everything else. This game is something I’ve wanted to make since I was like 11 so I’m happy I finally get to do that and share it with people. I hope you all had a good 2021 (or as good as it could be with Covid), and I wish you all a happy new year as well.
November News Update
My attention lately has been focused on some of the more obvious bugs in Verdant Village. There are things that I’m told about and others that crop up naturally as I’m testing. Bug fixing aside I’ve noted down, and made a few changes to some minor elements of the game in the hopes of polishing it up in a few places. Little details usually don’t rank highly on my list of things to accomplish, but they are important none the less.
All that said, there is still more obvious development going on. I’m currently splitting my time between smaller additions and the combat system. As for smaller additions I’ve got two NPCs in the works. I was developing the schedules on them until I realized that I would need to create another section of a zone to fully add them. Currently I’m sidetracked on that.
Aside from them I have a small system I’d like to put in as it will allow me to readd one of the quests I made unavailable with the alchemy changes. Past those things I haven’t thought too hard about what smaller bits I want to add next. I have a seemingly endless list of things to do, maybe I should put all the ideas on a dart board and randomly choose. Being serious however, I think NPCs are going to be in my sights for the near future. There are quite a few missing and at this point in development I don’t think its acceptable to still have buildings in town you can’t enter so I’d like to clear that up.
As for combat I’ve been nailing down the finer points of the system. Lots of numbers and excel spreadsheets, you know, the kind of pulse pounding things you think of when you think combat. Most of my time has been dedicated to balancing various elements, determining abilities for both the player and enemies, progression, combat areas, dungeons, deciding on bosses, AI difficulty, etc. Basically, getting all my ducks in a row before I start truly coding things.
Ultimately, I’ve determined the combat will be turn based with a few twists to keep it interesting hopefully. I’ve toyed with some ideas, but I’ve settled on this one. While I wouldn’t mind coding some sort of top-down Zelda like combat the game isn’t made to have that sort of combat structure. A lot of that sort of gameplay is tied to the environments you are in when you encounter enemies and balancing several parts of the combat puzzle while fighting.
Verdant Village wouldn’t handle that well. It might work in a few places but it would definitely fall short. That’s not even commenting on the issues there would be just coding it in an efficient way as the game wasn’t designed with real time combat in mind. If I did real time combat it would probably end up being horribly basic due to the limitations, so better to avoid it, I think.
All that said I want to keep things snappy when designing combat. Quick animations and little down time so the fight keeps moving. Outside of actual combat itself I’m doing what I can to weave the system into the game itself. I don’t want combat to be that isolated system that you just have to interact with every so often. I plan for it to be part of the game with risks and rewards for fighting anything from a random enemy to a boss. On top of that I plan to tie a good deal of the progression to item gathering. By that I mean obtaining items from monsters, maybe some mining or foraging or alchemy. In short you won’t just be able to fight things to get stronger, in fact there is no planned level system really, you’ll have to do various things to improve yourself, some of which you will probably already be doing.
But that’s enough about combat for now. Outside of that, while I said NPCs will likely be my focus for a bit, I’ve also spoken about secrets somewhat in the past. They are still something that I’d like to address sooner rather than later. With any luck I’ll find some time to start scattering things around the world that you can uncover for rewards. I’ve mostly been hesitant on putting anything in because most of the ideas I have for secrets tie into either combat, which isn’t implemented, or a smaller system that will need to be put in.
If you’ve made it this far you can probably tell that there is a lot to do. You uh…you would be right. That’s nothing new of course and as usual I’ll keep working to fix what’s broken and get more things added. I can’t promise any sort of time frame on a new patch, but I have it in the back of my mind to keep the pacing of them somewhat steady so it probably won’t be terribly long. In any case, thanks for reading, hope you are enjoying the game, and with any luck I’ll have an update for the game soon.