Fantasy Farming - Orange Season

[RyanBram]

Hi, Hudell.
I want to share you again my experience about another minutes of playing your game  . Sorry if most of them is using Harvest Moon as my reference: 

1. Map is too big, make it harder for player to memorize the place. In Harvest Moon - Back to Nature, the Mineral Town is divided into many parts (Farm, Town, Square, Beach, etc). In yours it seems you put the whole town into single map;
2. Random NPC behavior. I try to tail some NPCs just to see where they will go, but it seems they don't have destination to go. The just randomly walking. In Harvest Moon NPCs usually have they own schedule (go to market, go to hospital, praying to church, gossiping, etc);
3. NPC Walking too slow. In Harvest Moon, they walk faster than our character if they want to go to some place, although we can still catch them by running.
4. Difference term in English translation between Rucksack and Backpack in your game make it little confusing at first as both of them are actually referencing to same thing.
5. Talking balloon when speaking to NPC. I see it as bit confusing, since the three dots "..." in balloon usually indicated that the NPC is not talking and just silent. I don't think the balloon is necessary for every conversation, except for showing expressions like angry/surprise ( exclamation mark (!) ) or confusing ( question mark (!) ).

That's all for now. I may tell you some other more if I have time to try your demo again. Although it may that most of above experience is already in your work in progress.

Good luck for your project.

 

[Hudell]

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

Hmmm, Is the map really that big? Or is it just that every house is too similar? I plan to change that, as well as displaying an indication of what each building is.


NPC's are no longer random, I just haven't updated the demo with the new ones. Their speed was also changed.


The balloon was also removed, changed by the character busts.


The next demo will include a lot of changes, but it's going to take a while because I'm redoing everything on MV. Hopefully I can finish it before the end of november.

 

[jwideman]

Would it be possible to add mouse support and/or hotkeys for each of the tools?

 

[Hudell]

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

Would it be possible to add mouse support and/or hotkeys for each of the tools?

You can assign hotkeys by opening the backpack, selecting a tool and pressing one of the number keys.

Mouse support will come on the next version

 

[jwideman]

You can assign hotkeys by opening the backpack, selecting a tool and pressing one of the number keys.

Mouse support will come on the next version

Yay! My wife will be quite pleased. I'm pushing her to playing this instead of Farmville.

 

[Screech1989]

You SIR! are a legend! i posted about wondering if a HM game could be made with MV and then i get sent a link to this, im thinking No way!! then i realize its on VX and i was thinking dammit, i was really hoping someone was making it for MV, but after seeing the work you have put into it, and then reading you are working on converting it to MV, i can feel butterflies in my stomach haha im following this 100%

 

[Hudell]

I guess it's time to finally post here again!
It's been over a year. In this time, the project was completely converted to MV, with a new art style, new music and a much more experienced Hudell.
I've updated the first post in the thread with the new stuff, go check it out

 

[KanaX]

Good to have you back and updated. Do we get a release date?

 

[Hudell]

Good to have you back and updated. Do we get a release date?

If I meet my february goals, I should have a playable version by march. The full game release is planned for september.

 

[parallax]

I don't know if you have updated these things since the trailer you put out, but a few things I noticed definitely seem like they'd be common complaints.

1. Map seems way too big unless you have a mini-map for players to pull up whenever they want.
2. The cave is FAR too large and it seems you have to go way too deep to find anything.
3. The land is really barren looking, especially between your farm and the town, the dirt just looks really..bad. Just some trees, shrubs and grass or whatever would fix that right up though.
4. Needs lighting badly in a lot of areas, the farmhouse should/could have some lamps that maybe you can turn on/off or are just always on. The cave could use some torches or something, I found it difficult to see things clearly while watching the trailer.
5. In some of the first few scenes of the trailer when the character is watering plants I noticed that you watered all but one in the center, is that just because you forgot/ignored it or is it like the old HM games where you can't walk over plants to water ones in-between, because that was just the worst thing they've ever done and it thankfully got remedied in every other HM game since along with popular farm sims like Stardew Valley.
6. At 5:21 in the video that row of dead trees and logs is not a very pleasant sight and that comes back to the whole "looks barren" thing, a lot of the places seem very bland and just dead feeling.

Besides those and some not really important nit-picking it is always nice to see another farm sim come out. Keep up the good work.

 

[Hudell]

Hey parallax, thanks for the feedback!

There will be a minimap when the game launches, but as I keep changing the maps often, I didn't make it yet. I totally understand what you mean with it looking barren. That's because I usually keep working on the maps over time instead of finishing them one by one. That way I can keep adding new stuff to the existing areas. The overall size and layout of the maps is set, but the content of it keeps improving.
As an example, the town entrance already changed since the video was released. It now looks like this:

Spoiler

The cave is large on purpose, the player will need to find their way through it once, but there will be fast travel so they don't need to do it all the time.
Several people commented on the light issue and I fixed it already. The game used to be darker because I had light sources everywhere, but I decided to go back to having simple lights and didn't increase the brightness enough.

If you sow seeds in a 3x3 square area, you won't be able to water the middle one with the initial watering can, but there are other ways to water it and you can also sow your seeds in a 2x5 area instead. I've recently been thinking about having only the 2x5 area.

I just updated that mountain map, check it out:

Spoiler

 

[fizzly]

@Hudell I love Orange Season idea from the very beggining, but (no ofense please) I think that those maps are just too large for a Harvest Moon-type game. They seems endless in that "new look" trailer.

 

[Hudell]

@Hudell I love Orange Season idea from the very beggining, but (no ofense please) I think that those maps are just too large for a Harvest Moon-type game. They seems endless in that "new look" trailer.

Yes, most Harvest Moon games have very small areas. I wanted to do something different with many areas to explore, but at the same time I know that people won't go through the whole maps more than a few times, so I made it so that once you go through a map once, you unlock a shortcut or a fast travel option to cross it faster the next time. The only reason for going through the whole map again is if you want to forage.

Also: The character runs quite fast.

 

[Tigersong]

Glad you've made so much progress, Huddell. I like the new art style- has a nice earthy tone to it.

 

[Hudell]

Glad you've made so much progress, Huddell. I like the new art style- has a nice earthy tone to it.

Thanks!
I just updated the main thread with a new video. This one is of the title screen:

 

[Tigersong]

I'm thinking of making my project about an orange grove to avoid competing with you. Actually it's because I live in Florida and want to research the citrus industry.

 

[Hudell]

I'm thinking of making my project about an orange grove to avoid competing with you. Actually it's because I live in Florida and want to research the citrus industry.

haha! Are there many oranges in Florida?

 

[Mister.Right]

Look good and professionally done.

 

[Hudell]

Included a new video in the main post:

I'm still working in the fishing system, but the basics are working.

 

[NhatNguyen]

I like its simplicity.