So, how to create an original map for the player's farm?
Let's look at our requirement and what it should have as stated in the previous post:
A farm / player home
A crop
A_body of water
A road / path to go to the next section which will contain the city / store to sell your items.
Now, I do not know a lot about farms and farming so my first step is to get documentation and inspiration from real life examples, games, movies, anything I can find to help me. I_will purpusfully ignore Stardew valley own map to not get distracted or too close to the original. This will help me to come up with something 100% original.
By a simple search on Duckduckgo about farm layout I start to have tons of examples
This will help me to make some decision. (It's funny how the game stardew valley is so popular that a simple search Farm layout will show results from the game, but we will ignore them).
Now on all the images I_found, the one that inspired me the most is this one
Not sure why but it contains a lot of description it has a body of water and I kind of like it. But I will not do copy of it, just take it as inspiration.
In the next post I will show my layout and the reasoning behind it.
I_admire your motivation and its cool you started again with new tiles however I'm afraid you are still too close to the original game. As other stated you can't just reproduce almost tile by tile the layout of a map. If I_look at your picture to me, with the exception of using a new tile look almost everything looks likes Stardew valley down to the position of the ponds, the cliff on the left. This is blatant copying, with almost no originality and would be asking for potential troubles.
Apologize for the lack of updates but I was busy experimenting with custom GUI for godot. I envision Hortica botanica as a game that can be extended and levels / maps can be added quickly.
In the options for every interactive objects I started to restrict options that make no sense. This is the old interface to setup a door:
As you can see you have all the options even if they make no sense. If restricted opening is not enabled, setting a time for opening / closing is completely useless.
In the new interface it looks like this:
I hope this will make it easier to get started and add content. Thus paving the way to release of the code of the game.
Regarding content there has been a new building. The general store where you will be able to buy / sell items from your inventory.
Hi, I'm glad it did not demotivated you to continue working on it. I_think its better to deal with those stuff early in the project because its easier to change compared to having to redo everything 2 years later.
I have a new update :). I have now a full day / night cycle that works in the game and changes the colors / shadows / mood of the level. Initially I wanted to work on the day / night cycle much later since I do not consider it as an important feature but I figured that its better to do it now so I know the artwork can work under any light condition.
I also took the opportunity to redo the player's farm / house with something that looks more like a barn / farm / cottage.
I included a Gif so you can see the day / night cycle. The next step will be to create probably a general store to experiment with two things:
* Ability to sell / buy items * To make a location accessible only during certain hours.
On the more technical aspect I added a speed up / slow down button for the in-game time. While this isn't the most exciting feature it helps a lot with debugging.
This is why I_think making a pure clone is a bit sad and opens to many potential issues including the project being shutdown.
So many open source project aspire to be only clones of popular games. I think we should aim at creating our own universe, Open Valley is a very cool idea and to be honest even partially inspired me for my own game but I always try to make everything original.
Not only changing the names and stuff but also the maps, the locations, the tileset, the story even exploring a different gameplay.
If you need inspiration you could do research and documentation about farming and try to come up with a unique place.
You can even take a map from OpenGameArt and modify it to make it fit your theme and put your own location.
If you would like I_can create you an overworld map quickly to give you inspiration with unique location (and you are free to adapt them).
I think it does not look bad, you are a bit harsh with yourself. There are definitly things I could see improved but It's a very impressive start.
to help me guide my answer could you let us know which game engine are you using? But in general I would say look for ambiant lighting based on the sky (IBL etc). This is a way to modulate the ambiant light with the sky texture and it makes everything looks amazing.
The water looks horrible especially the waterfall, you should spend some time to improve it or at least add some particles to make it more interesting.
Some assets like the haystack are weirdly blocky. They do not fit with the rest of your style.
So, how to create an original map for the player's farm?
Let's look at our requirement and what it should have as stated in the previous post:
A farm / player home
A crop
A_body of water
A road / path to go to the next section which will contain the city / store to sell your items.
Now, I do not know a lot about farms and farming so my first step is to get documentation and inspiration from real life examples, games, movies, anything I can find to help me. I_will purpusfully ignore Stardew valley own map to not get distracted or too close to the original. This will help me to come up with something 100% original.
By a simple search on Duckduckgo about farm layout I start to have tons of examples
This will help me to make some decision. (It's funny how the game stardew valley is so popular that a simple search Farm layout will show results from the game, but we will ignore them).
Now on all the images I_found, the one that inspired me the most is this one
Not sure why but it contains a lot of description it has a body of water and I kind of like it. But I will not do copy of it, just take it as inspiration.
In the next post I will show my layout and the reasoning behind it.
I_admire your motivation and its cool you started again with new tiles however I'm afraid you are still too close to the original game. As other stated you can't just reproduce almost tile by tile the layout of a map. If I_look at your picture to me, with the exception of using a new tile look almost everything looks likes Stardew valley down to the position of the ponds, the cliff on the left. This is blatant copying, with almost no originality and would be asking for potential troubles.
So after some clean up I'm ready to share with you the code of the game. This is the repository: https://github.com/samuncle/hortica-botanica
You will need godot to run the game.
neat, I really cannot wait to give it a try :)
Do you have a new demo which can be tried?
Apologize for the lack of updates but I was busy experimenting with custom GUI for godot. I envision Hortica botanica as a game that can be extended and levels / maps can be added quickly.
In the options for every interactive objects I started to restrict options that make no sense. This is the old interface to setup a door:
As you can see you have all the options even if they make no sense. If restricted opening is not enabled, setting a time for opening / closing is completely useless.
In the new interface it looks like this:
I hope this will make it easier to get started and add content. Thus paving the way to release of the code of the game.
Regarding content there has been a new building. The general store where you will be able to buy / sell items from your inventory.
Hi, I'm glad it did not demotivated you to continue working on it. I_think its better to deal with those stuff early in the project because its easier to change compared to having to redo everything 2 years later.
Hi,
I have a new update :). I have now a full day / night cycle that works in the game and changes the colors / shadows / mood of the level. Initially I wanted to work on the day / night cycle much later since I do not consider it as an important feature but I figured that its better to do it now so I know the artwork can work under any light condition.
I also took the opportunity to redo the player's farm / house with something that looks more like a barn / farm / cottage.
I included a Gif so you can see the day / night cycle. The next step will be to create probably a general store to experiment with two things:
* Ability to sell / buy items
* To make a location accessible only during certain hours.
On the more technical aspect I added a speed up / slow down button for the in-game time. While this isn't the most exciting feature it helps a lot with debugging.
This is why I_think making a pure clone is a bit sad and opens to many potential issues including the project being shutdown.
So many open source project aspire to be only clones of popular games. I think we should aim at creating our own universe, Open Valley is a very cool idea and to be honest even partially inspired me for my own game but I always try to make everything original.
Not only changing the names and stuff but also the maps, the locations, the tileset, the story even exploring a different gameplay.
If you need inspiration you could do research and documentation about farming and try to come up with a unique place.
You can even take a map from OpenGameArt and modify it to make it fit your theme and put your own location.
If you would like I_can create you an overworld map quickly to give you inspiration with unique location (and you are free to adapt them).
I think it does not look bad, you are a bit harsh with yourself. There are definitly things I could see improved but It's a very impressive start.
to help me guide my answer could you let us know which game engine are you using? But in general I would say look for ambiant lighting based on the sky (IBL etc). This is a way to modulate the ambiant light with the sky texture and it makes everything looks amazing.
The water looks horrible especially the waterfall, you should spend some time to improve it or at least add some particles to make it more interesting.
Some assets like the haystack are weirdly blocky. They do not fit with the rest of your style.
Goodwin Madron
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