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Gleaner Heights: A mystery farming sim

vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
Yet another boss is ready. This one came out a bit rougher than expected, random moves that have tells but left and right arm act (almost) independently and can fuck you up pretty quickly. On the plus side, this is an optional boss in an optional dungeon accessible with an optional upgrade. But in a farming sim pretty much everything is optional, right?

 

vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
Alright that's a crapload of items. And I'm not even done yet.

3vpktuS.png
 

vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
So I heard you uberfags like skills in your games.

L86zYfb.png


Every 10 skill increases you gain a new character level, along with a perk of your choice.
 

vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
Town Festivals!

August was Town Festival month. Throughout the year, there are eight distinct occasions that call for the player's attention. Some are competitions. Others are just for hanging around and talking to people. Others are spectacles to be witnessed with others, like a theatrical performance or the first sunrise of a new year.

Townspeople will inform you about an upcoming festival (usually a day before) and will remind you the specifics: Time, place etc, so you don't have to worry about constantly checking for an upcoming event or accidentally skipping one.

Chicken Festival (Spring)



Our favorite coop animal! If you have one, you can submit it and hope for the best: The best chicken of the year produces Golden Eggs! If you don't have any chicken or you don't want to submit one, you can still drop by and chat with the townsfolk.


Archery Contest (Spring)



As you might know by now, aside from farming, the game also has combat. players can also equip a bow and arrows and shoot at things from a distance. The charge mechanic for a bow is similar to any other "melee" tool; the more you pull it, the more range and power the arrow will have.

So! Here we are, at the archery contest! You can either watch others take their shots against moving targets, or you can participate yourself. The first time you participate you will be given a bow, which you can keep afterwards, beside any other prizes!


Summer Lake Party



Festivals are not always competitions. Sometime people just like to get together, relax, talk, eat and drink. This is what the Summer Lake Party is about. Next to the waterfall, you will find lots of folks to socialize with. Oh, and if you particularly like a certain person, it's time to make a move!


Horse Race (Fall)



You can either bet on other horses and watch the race as a spectator (and possibly gain a lot of money), or you can participate and race against others! The question is, how well have you been training your horse to endure running long distances?


Animal Festival (Winter)



Much like the Chicken Festival, the Animal Festival allows you to submit any barn animal, be it a cow or a sheep! Winning animals give Golden variations of their respective produce, however keeping an animal at top happiness to win the contest requires a certain amount of devotion from the player.


Cooking Festival (Winter)



Time to put those 100+ recipes you can learn to good use! If you think you have a shot at gastronomical glory, you can pit yourself against the best cooks in town. Usually Penny, the diner owner, wins every year. Can you topple her?


Theater Man Performances (Winter)



This is a three part "festival". The mysterious Theater Man appears every winter at the hotel. On the 5th, 15th and 25th day of Winter, he does three different performances at the hotel showroom. Who is he? How does he do all that weird magical stuff on the scene? And how does he know so many things about events that happened or have yet to come?


New Year Sunrise



The last night of every year, everybody gathers at the mountain summit to watch the sun of the new year rise. You should be there, too! The view is great!


That's all about the Festivals! September will be the "more cutscenes/quests/main plot" month. Hopefully by the end of the month I waill also have my first trailer ready. Stay tuned!
 

vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
Having your character be able to wear clothes other than the default set was in my to-do list since the beginning. However, while drawing the standard animation frames for the main character, I realised it would be a much bigger undertaking than what I originally thought.

You see, right now the full animation set of the main character has 170 unique frames. Even if we subtract 50 frames having to do with the character's legs, because if we want to draw a hat we'll skip those frames anyway), we are still looking at 120 frames. So for each piece of equipment that isn't a simple color switch, I must draw those 120 frames from scratch. Sigh...



Granted, in some frames the main character has the same orientation, so I could escape drawing stuff from scratch by copying and pasting from a similar frame, but still. When you are dealing with so many frames, even thinking about redrawing or copy-pasting takes time!

Fast forward one week. That was a lot of clicks in my image drawing program. A lot. But hey. We now have a bunch of clothes, hats, armor pieces and boots!











I have also decided to make some equipment sets grant bonuses when fully worn. As always, I hate it when in a game everything swims in a homogenous grey soup of balance. So there are clothes of trivial value, which don't make any big difference if you equip them, but there are also powerful pieces of equipment that grant cool bonuses. Depending on how you play and what you decide to explore first, there is no guaranteee that you will stumble on the weaker equipment first.

I've also created several hair styles for each gender, as well as finalized the female base sprite. Being an idiot as usual, I fiddled with the size of the arms size in certain animation frames, requiring me to make variations of some equipment for each gender. But hey, I'm past it now, moving forward.

If I may inject a more contemporary remark, recently Valve has begun dropping the Banhammer on a bunch of Shovelware games. You know, these low-effort, asset-flipping pieces of crapware that get re-released on the Steam store with different skins, passing for a different game?



It's sad seeing that some people have actually "earned" (more precisely, "gotten away with") money from selling non-games whose development cycle was probably even less that the time I spent drawing hats for my stupid little game. Just think about it!

Anyway, I'm currently finishing the crafting system, as well as finalising the "rewards" from each villager for each level of friendship you manage to reach with them. In general, I'm mostly left with connecting various infrastructure elements with each other, adding some optional areas, making the rest of the music tracks and adding sound effects. That's still a lot of work, make no mistake, but hey, the finishing line is on the horizon!
 

vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
Ladies and gentlecucks, we now have boat sailing and underwater exploration!

Once players fund the town pier repairs, a boat becomes available. It can be used to sail and discover a couple unreachable locations, but also, if a diving suit is crafted, players can go underwater and explore there. Where you land at the bottom depends on where you were above water. Also, an oxygen system has been implemented for underwater ventures: You get a limited supply each day and if you exhaust it you force yourself back to the surface and have to wait until the next day to descend again.

Many years ago. smugglers used to hide in caverns behind the waterfall, some locals say. But what happened to them and their treasure?

xrSy7bT.png


lYXOuUj.png
 
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vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
Micro preview: Mines revisited (with lighting and decoration). Inside the mines, you break the walls themselves to get ore and gems!

RT5jfsS.png
 

vdweller

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Feb 5, 2016
Messages
625
If any one from you folks want to get into beta testing, PM me and I'll send you your steam access. You can also provide your email for me to get you into the Leantesting bug tracker.
 
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pbrand

Novice
Joined
Dec 7, 2016
Messages
10
Speaking of collapses, how does this music sound to you for a boss battle theme?
I like the arrangement / drums / bell / synth but something about the squeakiness of the sax might get grating depending on the potential length of the fight. IMO you should pursue some sort of melodic instrument that complements the bell to emphasize the underground/mine theme. Not really sure what would be a good replacement honestly since I'm not much of a musician either, but my gut feeling says probably not sax.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Never played a farming sim, so I don't know if this is a stock item, but I found the shearing animation laugh out loud funny. The game looks great! Good luck with it.
 

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