Fantasy Farming - Orange Season

[Hudell]

Orange Town was once a place with no future. People were moving away with their kids, searching for better places to live and few remained there. One of those kids was Julia, who always dreamt of going back to her hometown. She studied business in college and along with her siblings, went back there with the dream of improving the town so that families no longer had any reason to move away. Thanks to her hard work, business in Orange Town improved a lot under her leadership, making it so that young people moved there looking for opportunities instead.

You're one of those people, with your own dream: to become a farmer, have a piece of land you can call your own and make your living from it. An unusual dream, but one that your parents fully supported after hearing you tell about it for years and years. Now that you're finally old enough, they bought you a piece of land and wished you luck, hoping that someday you'll pay them back.

--

Orange Season is a farm life simulator, inspired by games like Harvest Moon, Rune Factory and Animal Crossing. It's a game you can play for hundreds of hours and you'll always have something new to discover.

Game Features:

• High focus on exploration, with over a hundred hand drawn areas (mountains, forests, caves, lakes, deserts and much more).
• Three different towns, with different themes and dozens of characters each.
• Several festivals inspired by real life festivities from around the world.
• More than 30 different types of animals.
• Many different types of farm produce.
• Marriage system with over 10 marriage candidates.
• Rival Marriage system, without predefined couples.
• Farm customization (you can move your buildings around and place patterns on the floor).
• Several minigames.
• Share a single farm and inventory across different save files, so you can marry different villagers without replaying the whole game.
• Companion System: You can ask a villager to hang out with you, or take one of your animals for a walk. They will follow you and participate on everything you do.
• Mod System: Every single detail of the game can be modified by installing mods on them.
• Open Source: The whole game code will be available on release, so modders can change anything they want.

Screenshots:





Videos:






Gifs:

Spoiler

 

[sapiboong]

It's wonderful, Hudell.

Out of curiousity, I checked out about your project and found this one!

Played around with the demo and all of the game's feature is already functioning perfectly (the farming system in particular, makes me just wanna scrap all my project and just start learning scripting already...). Are you scripting all of the game's feature by yourself? For the NPC routine, are you using script or eventing? 

Anyway, good luck for this one! 

I'm sure you can finish it with a good result  

 

[Hudell]

Are you scripting all of the game's feature by yourself? For the NPC routine, are you using script or eventing?

Edit: The information here is about an older version of the game and isn't true anymore.

Almost everything in the game is scripted. And I use Tsukihime's Event Wrapper for almost everything: Farm, Fishing, Mining and to generate random items.

The NPC routine is quite simple: I use a variable to hold each NPC position and everytime the player changes map I decide the new value of each variable based on date, time and weather.

I'm glad you liked the game

 

[sapiboong]

Almost everything in the game is scripted. And I use Tsukihime's Event Wrapper for almost everything: Farm, Fishing, Mining and to generate random items.

The NPC routine is quite simple: I use a variable to hold each NPC position and everytime the player changes map I decide the new value of each variable based on date, time and weather.

I'm glad you liked the game

Do you use pathfinding script?

I haven't managed to catch the NPC walking around to a particular location, so I'm just curious

The only weakness of the game so far: lack of character portraits.

It makes it harder to remember the character. 

Maybe you can take a look at some free portrait generator (like Erangot's) to generate some character portraits! 

 

[Hudell]

Do you use pathfinding script?

I haven't managed to catch the NPC walking around to a particular location, so I'm just curious

The only weakness of the game so far: lack of character portraits.

It makes it harder to remember the character.

Maybe you can take a look at some free portrait generator (like Erangot's) to generate some character portraits!

Edit: The information here is about an older version of the game and isn't true anymore.

I do, I use Jet's pathfinding script, with some modifications.

There's a few NPCs walking while in the residential area, but for now most of them don't walk. I have also changed the way the "Random movement" works, to make it feel a little more natural, but I don't remember which NPCs are using my modification (I know the animals are not using it yet).

I'll do NPC movement much later, because I have some plans for it that are kinda hard to do.

I once tried to create some portraits for my characters with a generator I found, but they were not looking very good and I decided to drop it. I will try again at some point.

Edit: Accidentally put both websites down for half an hour. It should be back online now.

 

[Gothic Lolita]

I'll think I take a look on that, because the Harvest Moon on SNES, was my favourite one.
The PSONE and DS version was the only later and latest one I really liked.

But I must admit I only played the N-64 and Gamecube version of it, got never a hand on the others. :/

I will give you a review after playing. (\s/)

 

[Hudell]

I'll think I take a look on that, because the Harvest Moon on SNES, was my favourite one.

The PSONE and DS version was the only later and latest one I really liked.

But I must admit I only played the N-64 and Gamecube version of it, got never a hand on the others. :/

I will give you a review after playing. (\s/)

Thanks, I hope you like it

 

[Hudell]

Edit: The information here is about an older version of the game and isn't true anymore.

I have ditched the "create your character" feature.

When I first thought about it, I intended to replace the tool animations with something completely different. It didn't turn out very good, so I went back and kept it the way it was. The problem with that is that I would need to replicate the animations for every possible sprite set (there were already more than a hundred possible sprites, depending on your customization options), so I gave up on the whole customization thing for now.

Other than that, I have finished the tool upgrade system and the kitchen system. I've created a few more NPCs, redrawn the city and added a few more houses.

This will all be available on the next demo version, scheduled for january 13th.

By then, I believe I'll also have created a profile for every NPC in the game.

 

[Susan]

Good farming simulation game.

Feedback :

Spoiler

- Gameplay is good.

- A little simplistic, but you mentioned that it's still a work-in-progress.

- Maps are nice to look at, but some feel a little "empty". Maybe a more experienced mapper can guide you in this area.

- Maybe you can try to implement a map that will show where certain shops or houses are at.

- There is a mention from the people about rescuing a cow in Day 2. Is it possible for the player to participate?

- The auto-jump feature is nice, but it's a bit weird that the player can jump from a really high cliff and just shrug it off.

- Being able to fish everywhere is nice, but except for the piranha and brick, I was able to catch most fishes and flotsam everywhere.

- There are many fruits, vegetables and seafood available. Do you intend to make a cooking game later on?

- I haven't found any use for the pet food,

- Maybe you can create a way for the player to make hay. (Maybe it already exists in the game, but I haven't found it?)

- Haven't found a way to increase relationship with NPCs.

[SIZE=14.4444446563721px]- Some buildings cannot be accessed right now. Will they be accessible later?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.4444446563721px]- There is a row of empty tiles at the top-most and bottom-most of almost every outdoor map. It breaks immersion for me. Maybe you can add impassible tiles to compensate for the game characters' heights.[/SIZE]

- [SIZE=14.4444446563721px]I doubt you really need to make portraits for every character in the game.[/SIZE]

- [SIZE=14.4444446563721px]I have played many farming simulations before and lack of portraits certainly isn't a flaw, especially since there aren't that many characters anyway compared to standard RPGs.[/SIZE]

- I'm sure there are more, but I have run out of time for now.

 

Bugs:

- For some reason, the audio did not play when the game started but started playing after changing the game to windowed mode. It continued playing after switching back to fullscreen mode.

- Typos.

 

[Hudell]

Good farming simulation game.

Feedback :

Spoiler

- Gameplay is good.

- A little simplistic, but you mentioned that it's still a work-in-progress.

- Maps are nice to look at, but some feel a little "empty". Maybe a more experienced mapper can guide you in this area.

- Maybe you can try to implement a map that will show where certain shops or houses are at.

- There is a mention from the people about rescuing a cow in Day 2. Is it possible for the player to participate?

- The auto-jump feature is nice, but it's a bit weird that the player can jump from a really high cliff and just shrug it off.

- Being able to fish everywhere is nice, but except for the piranha and brick, I was able to catch most fishes and flotsam everywhere.

- There are many fruits, vegetables and seafood available. Do you intend to make a cooking game later on?

- I haven't found any use for the pet food,

- Maybe you can create a way for the player to make hay. (Maybe it already exists in the game, but I haven't found it?)

- Haven't found a way to increase relationship with NPCs.

[SIZE=14.4444446563721px]- Some buildings cannot be accessed right now. Will they be accessible later?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=14.4444446563721px]- There is a row of empty tiles at the top-most and bottom-most of almost every outdoor map. It breaks immersion for me. Maybe you can add impassible tiles to compensate for the game characters' heights.[/SIZE]

- [SIZE=14.4444446563721px]I doubt you really need to make portraits for every character in the game.[/SIZE]

- [SIZE=14.4444446563721px]I have played many farming simulations before and lack of portraits certainly isn't a flaw, especially since there aren't that many characters anyway compared to standard RPGs.[/SIZE]

- I'm sure there are more, but I have run out of time for now.



Bugs:

- For some reason, the audio did not play when the game started but started playing after changing the game to windowed mode. It continued playing after switching back to fullscreen mode.

- Typos.

Edit: The information here is about an older version of the game and isn't true anymore.

Hi Susan, thanks for the feedback

The game intro has no audio in this version, it will be fixed in the next one. I'll also try to fix all typos.

I've already created a cooking system for the game, but I'm still writing some recipes for it.

And I'll add a map as an overlay once I'm satisfied with the city (I'm still adding a lot of stuff to it).

For now you can fish anything anywhere if you are on the right season, I'll change it in the future, but not soon.

If you are holding an item and get close to an NPC or animal, you can give the item to them by choosing the right option after pressing the "use item" button (defaults to 'D'). For now, animals will like anything you give to them and people will all like/hate the same items. I'll change this in demo version 0.14.

Their relationship will improve if you talk to them and/or give items to them. There will be new ways to improve it soon.

All locked houses are stuff that I've planned but not implemented yet.

I completely forgot to make the pet food work. And I had not thought about creating hay before.

And last: the empty row of tiles on the top is a workaround I made for now. I'll take it off once I find what's causing it to appear in the bottom too.

Edit: You can't participate in the cow rescue. Each day something different happens and NPCs will talk about it for that day, but that's all there is to it.

And thanks again for the feedback

 

[Capitán]

This looks absolutely spectacular, Awesome work.

 

[Shaz]

I've never played a Harvest Moon type game before. This looks very cute - think I'll have to give it a whirl

 

[Hudell]

 

I've never played a Harvest Moon type game before. This looks very cute - think I'll have to give it a whirl 

This looks absolutely spectacular, Awesome work.

Thanks

 

[Kaiju Master]

I am gonna give this a go, I love HM games.

I've never played a Harvest Moon type game before. This looks very cute - think I'll have to give it a whirl

you are missing out, there is only 1 HM game I didn't like and that was a gameboy color game.

 

[Hudell]

Orange Season 0.13 is out!

I remade the first post in the topic including new information. Check it out.

Aaaand. I've found a new bug in the fishing system, I'll fix it tonight / tomorrow.

 

[wynautastronaut]

Congratulations on the new demo version! I'll give it a try right now and edit in comments as I play it. 

Spoiler

1. I don't hear any sound up until you can move the main character in his new house. Is that on purpose or is it a problem on my end? 2. The ellipsis bubbles blinking are a little distracting. Maybe if you found a way to keep the bubble up, and only the ellipsis animated would be better.

3. I passed out, so I went to sleep until morning and got an error that shut down the game.

4. Rebooted, walking around town, talked to Annie. "I saw you coming to town with the mayor. Then, I asked..."

5. Jennifer on second day intro: "[There are] currently 22 people in town. When you ... come talk to me again...

6. In the Church, I can't go to the little hallway on the right. There's an invisible barrier.

7. After that the menu kept popping up by itself, then the game crashed again. I think this happens every time I put the game window in the background.
8. I am having some trouble with the watering can. When I use it, it triggers a water sound effect but nothing happens.

9. It was after 10 am and there weren't many people out for the Making Friends task. I went in the little beach house, talked to Benjamin, and when I came out the character disappeared and I'm at the beach not being able to move anywhere else.

The farming system is simple and easy. I couldn't water the crops, so I can't say too much more about it. The quick tool keys are very helpful and I appreciate not having to confirm every time I want to crop, water, plant, etc.The icons for the tools are also very nice and clean.

During the first day I passed out after not much work. Is there a penalty to this? I saw my health bar dropped, but I filled it up just by sleeping. Will the character get sick eventually if I keep doing this? And have to visit Bonnie? That would be a nice feature.

I like your NPCs a lot; their personalities do come across even in the little bit of dialogue they share with the main character. I am interested in seeing how the main character bonds with them.

I also like the tilesets you used, and the sprite sheets are pretty. You could use some more mapping details to fill up some empty spaces. I don't know if you are using overlay maps for morning, day, evening, but you should add light effects to enhance the look at your game.

The Menu works well. Its simple, well organized, and easy to navigate. The Continue feature is amazing, thanks for adding it. Every time the game crashed, I could just continue from where it crashed, even if I hadn't saved.

I'll post more comments as I continue to play it.

 

[Hudell]

Edit: The information here is about an older version of the game and isn't true anymore.

I already fixed issue number 9 a little while ago. Just hit the update button on the launcher and it will install the fixes

About the others:

1: There's no sound in the intro yet. I'll add it soon.

2: I'll add add a note about this on my backlog.

3: I got only one report of this issue before, I'll see what I can do.

4 and 5: Thanks, will fix on next update. And the number of people to meet is actually 31 now.

6: Already fixed it here, will include it in the next update.

7: This is really weird, I will see if I can make it happen here too.

8: Your watering can is empty. There's no animation for it yet, but just use the watering can near any water source and it will fill up.

The icons, sprites and tilesets were all made by Celianna. They're great, aren't they?

There's no sickness in the game yet. But there will be. I have not planned how it's going to be though.

Oh, and thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

Edit: I've updated the game launcher. The new version will include the backtrace file generated by Solistra's script when you use the "Report a Problem" button to help me solve problems like number 3.

New Edit: Released a new update, fixing problem number 3 and 6.

 

[JacobM]

Hello! Can't wait to try your game tonight starting at 10:00PM CST! I hope some of your followers will be able to make it! I'll probably need help since I've never played this style of game before, but I'm sure I can figure it out! Here's the link for those who are interested: Drassray's Twitch Channel

 

[Hudell]

Thanks!

I'll try to bring as many people as possible, 10PM CST is 2AM here, so I don't know how many will watch, but I hope people from rpgmakerweb will be there too

 

[JacobM]

Here ya go Hudell: Let's Play Orange Season

I had fun! It took me a bit to figure out things and it was good that I had your help.

Things to note:

The menus is easy enough to navigate but I would recommend, like we discussed, looking at adding game controller support. It would have made it so much easier (for me) to play. 

Spelling and grammar mistakes were pretty heavy but that's to be expected with a translation. Lot's of areas where the player says "I'm am called Jacob" =P

The mapping is wonderful, I didn't seen anything I would change.

There's SO much to do it's awesome. I can see wasting hours on all of it.

The NPCs seem to have a life of their own which is always great!

I would maybe include more tutorials on how to use the tools. That's just a personal preference for me because I don't play Harvest Moon style games.



That's all I could think of off the top of my head. I like the game, and it has a ton of potential. I'd like to see what my wife thinks of it, I'm sure she'll love it!

Thanks for the submission!