I thought that it could be fun to discuss how some characters and other parts of the game came to be. Let me know if you want me to write more about some aspects of the game or the work I do.
I love Stardew Valley, and the way ConcernedApe captured the very essence of Harvest Moon and other classics of the genre in his masterpiece, with great attention to details, is really inspiring. In 2017, having just finished a card game about female scientists (free print & play pdf), the idea to create a game “like Stardew Valley but with Science and Robots” came to me quite naturally.
At first, I wanted robots to help with farming. They would need to be recharged frequently, you could customize them with extra batteries or extra backpack space to transport items, and so on, so they could plant, harvest and water the crops. But in a game where you can plant and build anywhere, it can quickly become a pathfinding nightmare, and I decided to put that idea aside for a while and use flying drones instead.
The first version of the robot was a bit ... scary!
Another problem came from the choice of NPCs. Using real life scientists make it easy to add personality and fun facts in the dialogues, but it makes it much harder to have comic relief. I wanted humor to be an important part of the game, to balance the scientific content.
I could make fun of the scientists, but I could not make them completely ridiculous. But a robot was fair game. And that is how Anne Droyd was born.
Her humanoid look with a rotating hand and a clamp is in part inspired by … Ada, from Fallout 4! I made no secret that I’m a big fan of Bethesda, as you probably guessed during the first encounter with Alexa. Plus it totally makes sense, since the name of Fallout’s robot is inspired by Ada Lovelace, a famous Woman in Science.
Anne Droyd’s personality was inspired by reddit’s group r/totallynotrobots, a community of humans pretending to be robots pretending to be humans (are you still following ?). The group is hilarious, and that was exactly the kind of robot I wanted. Later in game, Anne’s strange logic develops further in a quest inspired by the Antivax movement.
The current dialogues are far from complete, and I’m particularly impatient to further flesh out Anne’s personality. She will most probably join Albert “Totally not Einstein” - the lovable and surprisingly naive genius - , and Melon Husk (or is it Elon Musk ?) - a billionaire whose ambitious plans tend to fail spectacularly - in a comic trio.
Weekly Update #7
Howdy Scientists!
This week I updated the museum and fixed a few bugs :
feature : artifacts now appear in the museum
fixed : artifacts disappearing when you reload a game
fixed : inaccessible artifact spawner on the island(s) is not an error (you can get there … once you are able to walk on water), but it should not have been clickable from far away.
I’m still working on the full gamepad support (no mouse), it’s actually the main use of my time currently. If you are a gamepad user, please know that I did not forget you.
Weekly Update #6
Howdy Scientists!
We passed the mark of 10 reviews on Steam and earned a rating of “Positive” (80%). I want to thank all of those who took the time to write a review, it means a lot! If you haven’t yet, please consider adding yours. Steam’s algorithm uses reviews to decide if a game is worth showing to other potential players, for small indies it’s a lifeline.
Here’s the list of changes for this week:
Feature : Opening the inventory, quest panel or skill panel now pauses the game. The game still runs in the map section, because I think it’s nice to see the NPCs moving.
Feature : Genetic mutations will now randomly appear in crafted seeds. The better quality the fruits/vegetables used, the better chance to have interesting mutations in the seeds.
Fixed : The bar showing points doesn’t always appear when moving the mouse on the top of the screen.
Fixed : NPCs disappear when you come back from the BotArena minigame.
Fixed : Black screen when entering a house
Fixed : Sometimes you have to clic more than once to use the hoe
Fixed : Friday Night quizz game doesn’t start or ends abruptly
Fixed : Animal names are now limited to 25 characters
Fixed : Toolltip for the (raw) egg told that it could be consumed with a right-click, which is false.
Weekly Update #5
Howdy Scientists!
This week's feature is being able to pet animals to make them happy (Happy hens will lay eggs more often.), name them, and remove them by killing (producing meat) or selling. I put a list of 20 random funny names for the rabbits and the chicken, but only in English for now. If you have suggestions for other languages, I'll be happy to add them!
I also adjusted the growth time and productivity of each plant. The growth time now appears on the seed's tooltip.
Feature : You can pet animals by clicking on them and that makes them happy, with a second click you access their menu with possibility of selling, killing or renaming the animal.
Feature : Show the seed growth time.
Fixed : Could not use the barbecue
Fixed : Plants dying of thirst for no reason.
Changed : increased the probability of finding Battery Cells in Recycle Bins when Anne gives you a quest.
Weekly Update #4
Howdy Scientists!
There have been a few demands for faster movement, so I increased the character speed by 25%. Also, you might have noticed that items sold in the cart gave twice as much money than those you sold directly to Albert, that is now fixed.
When I'm not fixing bugs, I'm still working on the full gamepad support. There is much more to do than what I expected, but I'll get there.
This week's changes :
Modified : Player speed increased by 25%, let me know if that is still not fast enough (but keep in mind that there will be faster ways to travel in the future)
Fixed : Items put in the cart were sold at full price instead of ½ price as intended
Fixed : Norman Borlaug's dialogue was replaced by the last opened dialogue.
Fixed : Norman Borlaug gets out from the wrong house, and stays at the door for hours.
Fixed : drones stations can now be removed and placed somewhere else
Fixed : multiple drones no longer try to water the same spot
Fixed : drones now have a quota of 50 plants to water, and will water them even if you go to sleep before they finish
Fixed: red and blue grapevine names and descriptions were inverted
Fixed : “Navets” plant was named “Betteraves” in French translation
Fixed : the price of soap was way too low
Weekly Update #3
Howdy Scientists!
The most noticeable change this week is the map. This should make questing much easier.
There are a few of bugs I haven’t fixed yet. In some cases, the difficulty is that I need to be able to reproduce the bug on my computer to know what is wrong and to check if the changes I make have fixed the problem. And sometimes, the problem just doesn’t happen on my configuration, and it takes much more time to analyze what’s going on and fix the issue. Please know that a delay in fixing a bug you submitted doesn’t mean I’m not working on it, I intend to track and fix all of them!
Feature : A map! Press M in game to show the map with all NPCs. You can hover people to show names and building to show the people inside. In the future I would like to add the map functionality to quests, to make it easy to know where you are supposed to go.
Fixed : Anne Droyd walks for no reason.
Fixed : Alex continues to appear named as alexa even after meeting
Fixed : daylight flashes briefly at night, when getting out of a building
Fixed : dead plants get alive again when game is saved and reloaded
Fixed : tooltips from the shop stay on screen after the shop is closed
Weekly Update #2
Howdy Scientists!
I continued to work on full gamepad support, but it will take a bit longer than expected to make it right. I’m hoping to finish in two weeks. The map is advancing as well, here is a preview of what it could look like:
I would like to show the NPC’s positions and movement on the map in real time.
This week’s minor changes:
Fixed : time goes back to 8:00 after BotArena minigame
Fixed : content of the cart for selling to Albert is lost after BotArena minigame
Fixed : lack of message when the cart was emptied by Albert at midnight was confusing
Feature : Added an email field to the F8 bug report screen
Fixed : fountain and weather (rain, storm) sound effects volume were not set correctly
Fixed : Unable to use scythe to remove (hydro/aero/aqua)ponic plants
Weekly Update #1
Howdy Scientists,
This week I mostly worked on the customization of controls, you can now configure the keyboard in game (from the options screen) which was a feature that was requested a lot. Gamepads are supported, but for now you still need to use a mouse on the side. I'll work on full gamepad support next week.
I also began to plan how the map will work. It won't be ready next week yet, but maybe the week after.
Feature: you can now configure keys in game. AZERTY / QUERTY / QUERTZ keyboards are automatically configured by default. (Only mouse + keyboard/gamepad is supported, full gamepad support will come later.)
Feature : access to the toolbar slots with number keys 1 to 8
Fixed : if you sleep at 2am, you should not wake up the next day (just wake up with less energy than a full night)
Fixed : game slows when you destroy a storage box with many items inside
Fixed : Corn didn’t grow. Note that corn needs other corn plants nearby to be pollinated by the wind, it should grow correctly if there is at least one other plant at a distance of 4 squares or less.
Thank you all for your support, have a great week-end and stay safe!
Ben
Friday's quick update
Here is the list of changes for today's update:
Change : The night does no longer skip from 0 am to 8 am if you don’t sleep. After 10pm, the character will constantly loose stamina until 8am. For now if you sleep at 2 am, you will wake up the next day, I plan to change that too in the next update.
Feature : Stopping the time in the F8 screen
Feature : Added an automated screen capture when sending a bug report
Fixed: When I don't sleep at night, the selling cart is not emptied and my produce is not sold.
Fixed: when loading a saved game, it would show the wrong day for a few seconds
Fixed: Alexa’s quest doesn’t work if the cutscene was skipped
Fixed: Alexa’s cutsene(s) should only start when getting out of the house, not from other buildings
Translation : added translations for the end of the day screen
Have a great week-end!
Wednesday's update
Another small update:
Optimization: improved performance when there are a lot of objects on the screen. More optimizations will follow.
Bug: sprinkler animation did not play in the morning
Bug: should not auto-change tool and hit trees with the axe if the player wants to collect fruits
Bug: polytunnel should not show an area of effect
Bug: Wangari Maathai does not accept her tomato seeds from her quest
Clarification : the double "Hello, I'm Temple ... " looked like a bug, the real Temple Grandin tends to greet people twice because of her autism. I made some small changes so that it doesn't look like a copy-paste mistake. There is a nice movie about her ("Temple Grandin", 2010) and she made a TED Talk that is very interesting too.
