Beta Homestead [Windows|Steam]

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
I want to update the demo, but there's too much stuff that just isn't done.
I mean, if you guys don't mind stuff being wonky for a while, I could start posting updates more frequently.
Otherwise I want to make sure what I have works before updating.
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Okay, but remember, a lot of stuff isn't done.
I'll try to polish it up a bit this week to push an update.

Updating the crafting interface with new art, and finishing the resource gathering bits soon!
I have to update the tutorial too, which is going to take the longest.
 
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Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Hai guys, sorry! The demo update will take longer than I originally thought due to some unforeseen circumstances.
I also won't be getting much work done in the next week or so due to the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild release.
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Ugh, sorry this is taking so long, have to get certain things back in place before updating.
I have inventory management down!

And I'm working on getting what I have stable for an update.
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Sorry for the lack of Farm Fridays guys!
Me and Ninety are still hard at work, we just don't have much to actually show for it, heh.
A lot of my stuff has been behind the scenes stuff and trying to get core functionality stable enough for a release.
Ninety's been doing some music and art stuff that I'm sure he'll share in a future update.
 

Ninety

Member
Lukan and I have been discussing a serious problem with the design of Homestead. You see, up until now, there was no way to get new animals. You were stuck with the starting ones you get in the tutorial. And while feeding the same chicken every day was a heartwarming exercise in cross-species bonding, it just wasn't fun. There was no way to expand! We knew we wanted the player to be able to grow their farm as they saw fit.

But how to do it? What happens when the player wants a new animal?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have hit upon a brilliant answer, and that answer is simple: you craft it out of meat.



As you can see, once you've collected 25 steaks, all you have to do is interact with your crafting table, and voila! A brand-new cow to take home and love eternally. It's exactly like making a chair out of wood, except you're making an animal out of bits of another, deader animal.

We're really passionate about this bold new mechanic, which will breathe life into a genre rapidly becoming stale. This mechanic will add new depth and moral complexity to life on the farm, and we hope you're as excited about it as we are.


(Thanks @Misu for this genius concept. New Farm Friday tomorrow, folks.)
 
D

Deleted member 467

Guest
Lukan and I have been discussing a serious problem with the design of Homestead. You see, up until now, there was no way to get new animals. You were stuck with the starting ones you get in the tutorial. And while feeding the same chicken every day was a heartwarming exercise in cross-species bonding, it just wasn't fun. There was no way to expand! We knew we wanted the player to be able to grow their farm as they saw fit.

But how to do it? What happens when the player wants a new animal?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have hit upon a brilliant answer, and that answer is simple: you craft it out of meat.



As you can see, once you've collected 25 steaks, all you have to do is interact with your crafting table, and voila! A brand-new cow to take home and love eternally. It's exactly like making a chair out of wood, except you're making an animal out of bits of another, deader animal.

We're really passionate about this bold new mechanic, which will breathe life into a genre rapidly becoming stale. This mechanic will add new depth and moral complexity to life on the farm, and we hope you're as excited about it as we are.


(Thanks @Misu for this genius concept. New Farm Friday tomorrow, folks.)
I knew as soon as I saw Misu make that suggestion about babies it was awesome, glad to see it was more than just a joke ^_^
 
(Thanks @Misu for this genius concept. New Farm Friday tomorrow, folks.)
You should rename it to "Farm Bi-Monthly," lol.
Your April Fool's joke made me laugh, though. X'D
....It's a joke, right? I mean, it's hilarious either way. I'd actually love this mechanic- so absurdly videogame logic-y, hahah!
 

Ninety

Member
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming:



Farm Friday #12

Welcome back to Farm Friday, our series of weekly progress updates!

It’s been a while, so this week, I’m going to recap what’s happened in the time since our last update.


Breaks and delays

Lukan and I both took a short break in early March, during which he took some much needed time off and I entered a game jam. Since then, progress hasn’t been as fast, since I’ve been back at university with a lot of work to do. This last week, however, has been extremely productive!


Menus and crafting

Lukan spent some time trying to fix the scaling issues we were having:



I’m glad to say they’ve finally been resolved, and the game now scales perfectly between different resolutions!



He also spent some time on various menus, and particularly on crafting. Now you can craft items and place them on your farm!




New indicator

I’m working on a new indicator for date, time, money, and stamina!



At the top, we have date and time, with money underneath. The bar at the bottom is your stamina, which is used up by various activities such as chopping wood and crafting. The bar changes colour as it shrinks. The circle on the left is a weather indicator, which will eventually be animated, and show both the passage of time and the conditions outside.

It’s nearly done, I’m now working on polishing it up. The idea is that this will condense a lot of important information into one easy-to-read panel.

~~~~

That’s it for this week. You can read the previous update here, or follow us on Twitter for regular peeks at development (Lukan, the lead developer, or myself). You can also follow our progress on the Homestead subreddit or at TIGSource.

Until our next update - which knowing me will probably be sometime in August.
 

Ninety

Member


Farm Friday #13

Welcome back to Farm Friday, our series of fortnightly progress updates!

Yes, you might have noticed a change there: we’re going to be doing these updates every fortnight now. We rarely have enough content to make a weekly update worthwhile, and given that these take so long to make and push out, we thought it would be better to aim for meatier updates every two weeks. (Besides, it hasn’t been weekly in some time now.)

So since our last update, we’ve done more work on the GUI, updated the controls, and made some major improvements to the lighting system.


Lighting

Lukan revisited the lighting this week. Just to refresh your memory, it used to look like this:



There were a few problems with this: the banding was visually distracting, and separate lights didn’t combine so well.

Here’s what we came up with instead:



The first thing you’ll notice is that the lighting is now smooth, and separate lights combine better. Light sources such as torches and lanterns (which I made new art for) now flicker a little. The result is a much more natural-looking lighting system.

We had some interesting bugs while working on this system, which I thought I’d share:





We’ll still be revisiting lighting at some point to make the day/night cycle look better, but for now, let us know what you think!


GUI and controls

As you can see above, the new indicator is in the game!



We also added new controls: rather than having one button for all interactions, there’s now two. One is to interact with the world (for example, using a machine, or talking to an NPC), and the other is to use the item you’re holding (for example, eating a turnip, or casting a fishing line).



We also added new contextual control signs. They’ll show you what buttons you can use when. I made some icons for them:



~~~~

That’s it for this week. You can read the previous update here, or follow us on Twitter for regular peeks at development (Lukan, the lead developer, or myself). You can also follow our progress on the Homestead subreddit or at TIGSource.

See you next time!
 
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Ninety

Member
Now that we're updating fortnightly, I'm going to try posting little bits of progress in the days between, so that the thread doesn't die in the mean time. Farm Fridays will serve as more of a recap for those who prefer to keep up that way. As usual, you can follow art progress on my Twitter.



Been working on the player animations.
 
N

N8Games

Guest
This game is looking really professional. Great job guys. I especially appreciate the excellent pixel art. I'm only recently learning how to create pixel art so can appreciate the skill level it takes to produce stuff this good looking.

Kudos!
 

Ninety

Member
Working on some weather icons! They'll show you what time of day it is and what the weather's like. At some point I'd like to get them fully animated, but for now they're static.

Still got some edits to do, but they're getting there:



Takes forever for this page to load for me now :(
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Regular updates are hard right now. I got a job semi-recently and it doesn't leave me much time.
I'm going to try and do some work over the weekends, but it's hard to find the time.
 
I still enjoy reading these updates every time I remember to check up on it. You guys are doing a great job, keep it up :)
By the way, if that weather indicator would be animated and still look that good, I might spend a couple in-game days just watching it cycle through <3
 

Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Well jobs are important. :p As long as development carries on, even once a month or week. When I was working I'd find myself getting ideas for the game while being away, then I'd be all excited to get back into it.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
UX suggestion: right-align prices, then use string_width() to figure out how far left of the right border you should place the coin icon. Also, shouldn't the HUD use a coin icon instead of a $ character for consistency? :p
(Hopefully these shouldn't take too long to implement)

Having tons of small things like this to fix (that are very simple and quick to fix) is a great way to sneak in a little bit of development whenever there's some time over to keep your self-confidence and motivation high. :3
 

Ninety

Member
From memory there's sun, rain and snow. There's also the wind factor, which changes the appearance of rain, falling leaves etc. lukan was also working on some cloud effects for the overworld a while back.
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
I think the lighting effects don't match the game's intended pixel palette. Usually when you make retro games you are limited to using certain colors and the lighting effects seem to use too many shades, but that's just my perception, which may not be accurate. I love the art style, and you certainly have the skills of an artist. I look forward to seeing how this further develops. :D
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
The lighting is done by me programmatically. I'm not sure if the overall game has a set palette, I'm very dumb art wise, I just liked the way the lights looked, so I stuck with it.
 
M

Mtyler87

Guest
Oohh I'm very much looking forward to seeing how this goes over time, looking wonderful! Amazing work all around.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
The lighting is done by me programmatically.
Tip, btw, if you're using subtractive blend mode: instead of using pure grayscale colors for the mask, try having a little bit more blue or red - it gives tinted darkness that's looking nicer when you want a colder or warmer darkness (e.g. winter, sunset, etc).
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Okay... Don't expect much from this, as a lot... AND I MEAN A LOT, of it is unfinished.
Since I got a job, it's a lot harder to work on the game regularly.

Report any bugs to me via pm or here in the thread.
Here... Is... The... link
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
So, I am here to point out a few bugs that I noticed after my sleep deprived posting of the most recent update.
The gender selection for new games is missing, I am working on fixing it right now.
Starting a new game seems to freeze the player in place, saving from the menu and reloading fixes this.
A few in game shop menus are using very old assets that don't work with the game's newer scaling engine.
The caves are a wicked mess.
An error in loading caused by the new Newsfeed system.

I am working on fixing these issues as fast as possible, and may release a bugfix soon to patch some of the more major ones.
 
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Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
So, small update with some new-ish content!
A few more npcs have been added, mostly Mayve and Colette in the new Bar area.
I've also fixed a few issues with the way the game loads npc stuff, should have fixed some softlocks happening when speaking to certain npcs(like Theodore).

I believe there are still a few issues I need to fix, some stuff regarding Mail and the mailman are known about, hopefully they'll be fixed by Monday.

I also fixed the shop menus, so they use the new Assets.

Download:
https://spellweavergames.com/downloads/homestead/Homestead-9.1.17.zip
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Been working on fixing bugs and updating some systems.

The collisions system is currently being revamped, as I was using objects, and though they were optimized, they were still having an impact.
I am now using tiles, which makes the newer bigger areas I'm working on, much easier to add collisions to, and easier to run.

I am also working on actual npc stuff, like relationships and routines.
The first real npc in the game is going to be Mari. Though she still has the placeholder art, I am hoping to have her fully done code wise by next week.
She is a traveling merchant who comes to town on weekends to sell her limited wares!

I'm also working on a few other things under the hood, but nothing to show yet.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
The collisions system is currently being revamped, as I was using objects, and though they were optimized, they were still having an impact.
I am now using tiles, which makes the newer bigger areas I'm working on, much easier to add collisions to, and easier to run.
That's a really good idea... I remember the pain I had in GP1 where I had to make all the levels twice, essentially (first tile out stuff and then cover all the edges in wall objects). It's so easy to leave a little gap somewhere and then it takes months before someone finds it and uses it to break the game :p I'm more into using objects for everything now, but that's more suitable for action games with tons of slope collisions and moving platforms and such (which is the game type I do the most).
 
This looks really cool, just downloaded the demo from itch.io - but I can't enter any characters for my name on a new save? I think I tried every key and mouse button, but I can only move the selector around, but no letter is ever picked.

NOTE: I just saw in one of your recent posts a separate download. I will give that a shot... you should maybe fix the itchio link on the first page of your post.
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Oops, I'll get on that! Sorry!

EDIT: Itch has the most recent version of the game.
The onscreen keyboard is kinda wonky, and I have fixed it in my dev build, but I can't update yet.
You move the selector with the arrow keys and use either "Z" or "X" to enter, I don't remember which at the moment.
Sorry about that!
 

Lukan

Gay Wizard Freak
Welcome back to the Land of the Living, Homestead!
There's no actual update to the game, but I'm just gonna tell you guys what's been happening in my silence.

So, the biggest thing is what I am dubbing TurnipEngine.
It is an entire reworking of the underlying systems of the game.
You see, HS has been build up on from 3-4 year old code that's just been piling up on top of other code.
All un commented, as it started as a jam game.
This made updating features and bug fixing... Almost impossible without breaking something.

So, over the past 2 months I have been hard at work redoing every line of code in the game.
Everything, from crops to the save system!

I have almost finished the rewrite too!, should be out by next month!

The save files have been shrunk by 97%! 97%!
Saving all of the same data, all of the important bits of your Homestead experience, in a file that's minuscule in comparison to what I'll call Classic HS.
The load times are gone, it's just instant. Click your save file, bam it's loaded!

Oh yeah, I said CLICK your save file, because I've heard the cry of the masses. ALL MENUS ARE NOW FULLY MOUSE COMPATIBLE!
Here, have a gif of that glory in action:

MOUSE!

Also, the transition system is no longer a clunky chunk of cow dung. It's snappy and nice to look at!

The overworld has had the best facelift, Cher would be jealous.
I've taken all of the Zone data from Classic, and mushed it into one cohesive overworld presentation.
So you don't see fifty fade out/ins on your way to buy some Turnip Ale, you see one, when you enter the bar!

The crop system has also seen the light, the lighter load it now has on the cpu that is!
In stead of being a cumbersome map with look up times slower than molasses, it's now a snappy system of what I'm calling data blobs.
A grid holds a "blob" consisting of the variables for your crops, and the game just uses this data to represent them on screen.
Before, the map took up a lot of space... Like 10 megs of ram got taken when it loaded. HOLY POOP!
Now, it's 2 megs when fully loaded with crops! WOWZERS!

There's more, but I have to keep some stuff under wraps for release day. I'll just say this, get your Macs ready.

Sorry for the lull in updates, but as you can see, I have been hard at work. I hope you enjoyed this, hopefully I'll talk to y'all soon!
 
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