An action-adventure farm-life survival game for PC and console, launching the 22nd of June! Regrow not just your farm - but the world.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Adding your custom Spirits into Limbo - come and see your spirits! Plus new Dev Log is live!
over 2 years ago
– Wed, Apr 06, 2022 at 09:28:53 PM
New Dev Log!
The next Dev Log video is now up on YouTube! This video goes a bit more in depth on the new dungeon stuff that has been implemented, along with some other smaller updates.
Technical Improvements
The month of March really flew by, and while a lot of progress was made to the game, there isn't much of it that I can actually show off for one reason or another. I can say that quite a bit of time was spent on improving the architecture of the game itself, and finding ways to better improve and optimize all of the underlying systems.
I can list off a few of these major changes for those interested in the technical bits:
Reduced camera jitter while moving around, caused by where the camera position was updating in code
Optimized some of the Update methods to be more performant
Updated all item data to use Addressables instead of Resources.Load
Created a custom static method which can automatically load sprites via Addressables to replace the not memory friendly Resources.Load. Character sprite sheets now use this method, and eventually all sprites that need to load in will use this method as well
Fixed some glitches with a handful of animations that were causing small but noticeable flickering in a couple animations
Just as a note about the Addressables thing.. the way I was originally loading in lots of the assets for the game was through Resources.Load… which after learning more about Unity, I've found that this is not a great way of loading resources. It makes them harder to manage and it inflates the file size of the game itself.
In fact, before making some of the above changes, the total file size for the game was over 2GB! This was clearly way too high. I've since reduce this down to 800MB which is a drastic improvement, and I will continue to find ways to reduce the file size down to a reasonable level by release time.
Water Fun
As for some more visual things I've been working on, I finally got around to figuring out water shaders for a top down environment. As of now, I've only added in reflections, but I think they turned out really well. Still to add will be some distortion in the water. I've also added ripples when items are dropped in the water.
Quality of Life Updates
For some quality of life improvements, I've added some small but impactful changes:
Camera zooming and mini-map zooming is now inverted from what it initially was, to better fit what most people are used to
The next task in the player's task list will now auto-pin after completing the previous task. A toggle in game settings will be added to disable this feature
When completing a pinned crafting recipe, it will automatically unpin the recipe. Again, this will be a toggle in the game settings.
Picked up items now initially attempt to move to the tool bar instead of the backpack. Again another toggle setting to choose if you prefer sending to toolbar or backpack first.
Toolbar item info layout is now the same as inventory item info layout for better clarity
Several tasks have been adjusted or removed to better accommodate early game play
Crops at seed stage will no longer turn into dead plants when the season changes, and will instead remain seeds
Energy Orbs
Another quality of life feature I've been experimenting with is Energy orbs. Testers have initially been struggling to maintain decent energy levels in early playthroughs of the game. To combat this, I'm going to experiment with adding these Energy orbs into the game. Basically, when you defeat monsters, they will occasionally drop an Energy orb which when touched, will replenish 10 Energy.
These orbs will only exist for a short period of time before vanishing, so it's best to collect them as soon as you can. The hope is that this will provide a much needed boost of energy when other energy restoration methods aren't available to the player. Balancing energy is one of the most critical aspects of the game and I'll continue tweaking things until everything feels right.
Your Spirits!
Finally, I've spent the last couple of days implementing custom Spirits into Limbo! I'm happy to report that every single backer who backed a tier that included a custom Spirit, and who have submitted their Spirit info, has had their Spirit added into the game!
Over 125 Spirits have been added! Another fun thing to note, is that I went ahead and made portraits for all of the Spirits, which can be seen when you interact and chat with them! When the game releases, you'll find these little Spirits roaming around Limbo at random, which should really liven up the place!
As we're all Zelda fans, there's a project that just has to be shouted out this month - it's Toasty: Ashes of Dusk! Toasty is a charming, heartfelt tribute to A Link To The Past, mashed up with Earthbound/Mother, and with the humor of Monty Python. They're currently running a Kickstarter, and it's well worth a look. They also have a special Switch physical edition available on their campaign!
Toasty tells the story of Marshall, the Marshmallow Knight, who quests across the world of Geldia after a great calamity befalls the land. With no history or clue about who he is, Marshall faces many tests, makes many great friends and allies, and faces the most devilish evil - all the while, trying to answer that one tricky question... why is he a talking marshmallow?
That's all for this month. Getting super close to working more on developing a lot of new content for the game, so that should be coming soon, now that a lot of the technical stuff is out of the way. Hope to show more new art and stuff in the next update. Take care!
- Koni
February Wrap Up! New Dev Log and Dungeon Info!
over 2 years ago
– Tue, Mar 08, 2022 at 08:47:09 PM
Hey everyone! Looks like I'm a little late on this monthly update as well, but here it is!
First of all, there's a new development log video up so you can go ahead and watch it, or just keep reading and I'll go into more details on some things I've been working on.
Dev Log Summary
In this dev log I touch on adding ladders to the game, and also go into more detail on adding the new tree variation and growth stages for various mushrooms and flowers. I also briefly show a prototype of the mini-map and go over the buffs system. Oh yeah, and blowing dandelions...
Buffs (or in this case, debuffs) have been added to the game. If you attempt to eat too much food in a short span of time, you will receive a "Stuffed" debuff. This debuff prevents you from eating any more food for a period of time, but also provides you with 10 reserve Energy.
Reserve Energy is also a new feature. This works just like normal Energy but is only used up after all of your normal Energy has been depleted.
I've also added the "Rested" debuff. You get this debuff after sleeping for 8 hours in a short span of time. Getting the "Rested" debuff means you won't be able to sleep again for 16 hours, but it provides you a full reserve Heart. This of course, works much like the reserve Energy in that if you run out of normal Health, you will have this remaining Heart as backup Health.
The core concept behind these debuffs is to limit how much the player eats and sleeps, but in a way that doesn't 100% punish the player and instead kind of provides some benefit. I implemented this because otherwise you could just spam-eat a lot of food to restore energy at any time, and it creates an issue where energy isn't really a problem. If you can simply full restore your energy by eating a bunch of food whenever, then there wouldn't be much point to energy and it would be more of a nuisance than a challenge.
Same goes for health. If you can just full heal by sleeping, it makes it too easy to just run away when low on damage and heal up to full whenever you want. Also because sleeping fast forwards time, I want to make sure players are limited on how much time they can skip in a short period. The goal is to just create a good balance for energy and health in the game so you as a player will feel challenged and need to plan out when you eat and sleep.
Dungeons!
Aside from that, I've been working a lot on Dungeons through most of February. Last update I showed a really early prototype of the Dungeon generator laying out various blueprints for procedural dungeons.
Now I have the dungeons loading into the game, and I've created a host of various objects to include in dungeons such as floor spikes, barricades, push and pull blocks, and movers that ride along on floor treads to create all sorts of puzzles and obstacles.
I'm going to have another Dev log out hopefully in the coming week or so, and I'll do a more in depth update on the Dungeon stuff at that time.
The hope is to get through the rest of the major dungeon features this month along with some other core features for the game... and then it's on to working on the new custom island and working more on fleshing out Limbo. Should be a lot more to talk about once I reach that point.
That's all for now! I hope everyone is doing okay with everything happening in the world. Take care!
- Koni
First update for the new year! Trees, dialogue, dungeons and more!
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Feb 04, 2022 at 07:40:47 PM
Hey all! It's been a month since the last update so I'm here to fill everyone in on what's been going on with the game's development since then.
Tree Updates
In the previous update I mentioned wanting to rebuild the trees. What does that mean exactly? Well before the trees were in their own object which was sort of weird as I have a growable object which covers crops, plants, flowers, etc... so it made more sense to integrate trees into the growable system instead of having them in their own separate system. This would allow for more consistency between trees and other plants. They would all share the same system used for growing, harvesting, wind, damage, etc.
So that's one of the first things I tackled, and I'm happy to report that the trees have been totally integrated! I've also redesigned the Pine tree to be a bit larger with a stronger silhouette. This allows the trees to feel like they fill up more of the space, which creates a more closed in environment. Before I felt the trees were a bit undersized so I'm happy with this change. I've also added a new tree type, the Maple Tree!
I've updated both trees to have artwork for all seasons, and also have added more types of tree resources to collect. Including Maple Seed, Maple Leaf, Pine Needles and Pine Nuts! These will be used in various crafting and cooking recipes and will sometimes drop from a felled tree.
While I was tackling the trees I also set out to improve the growable objects overall. I've added proper states for when crops/plants wither and die during off seasons. You can also clear the weeds by whacking them or plucking them.
I also spent a lot of time fixing small issues, bugs, and just polishing up various small aspects of the game. I want to take just a second to mention this because I don't think many dev updates focus much on bug fixing but it's a pretty major part of the game dev process. Not only did I fix quite a lot of random bugs and issues, but I also managed to track down and fix a big memory leak issue which would have been really bad if left unchecked. Finally I fixed an issue with world generation where testers were spawning... in the ocean! Definitely happy that I fixed these two major problems as they were basically the two largest issues the game was having.
0.5GB of added memory every time the game was loading a new scene!
Dialogue Additions
Also I want to briefly touch on the work being done with the dialogue system. I've rebuilt that as well, to be a lot more manageable for me, which I covered in the previous update... however I've since added more to this, along with what I'm internally calling "Cloudlish" which is the audible language characters will make as they talk. This is currently still in early experimental stage but you can give it a listen here:
Finally I've most recently started prototyping dungeons and dungeon generation. I've created a script that will procedurally generate a dungeon layout with proper placements for locked rooms, keys, a boss room, and more. You can see some random layouts in the gif below.
Generator showing puzzle, combat, obstacle, walkthrough rooms along with locked rooms and rooms with keys
That's all for this update! There's other random things I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention but I just wanted to get everyone up to date on some of the bigger things! I apologize if it feels like I don't update here often enough. The goal is at least to get a monthly update out, so I might be a day or two late this time but I'll try to stick with that schedule as close as I can. If you want more frequent smaller updates, be sure to join the discord and follow me on twitter as I generally chat with everyone daily in the discord server and try to make more frequent small updates to twitter!
Also as a final little note, I've had a few requests from backers to update their shipping addresses for their rewards. Just to let everyone know, you can update your shipping address by revisiting the same link you used to fill out the survey initially.
Thanks everyone for your support and I hope everyone is having a good start to their year!
- Koni
End of year update, looking into the next year of development
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Dec 31, 2021 at 11:37:01 PM
Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a fantastic holiday season! I took a short break to visit family during the holiday and I've been preparing to start back full steam ahead into Cloudscape's development at the start of the new year.
There was an issue with the video showing up in the previous post so if you missed out on that video you can find it here:
I'm still working on the next dev log video which will focus on adding ladders, mushroom growth stages, dandelions and more. :)
Meanwhile I thought it would be fun to just go over a couple of other things I've been working on just to provide some more updates.
First off, I've completely rebuilt the dialogue/sign system as it wasn't as flexible and easy to work with as I'd have liked. There's still more work to do with it but for now it's in a much better state than the previous system! I've also began to implement the system for having characters animate while they talk out their dialogue to the player.
I've also been working hard on the level editor that I'm using to customize areas like Limbo and the other inhabited islands. I've also done quite a bit of work on laying out all of the points of interest for both Limbo and the first island you'll encounter (Wimnim Island)
Finally I've been fixing a lot of bugs and balance issues with the help of my private alpha testers. Lots of things have been fixed up, and I've mostly addressed early game energy/food issues. Here's the most recently added structure to the alpha, the Cooking Campfire!
This is a rather crude form of cooking, so making food this way works very similar to how the Furnace works. As of now you can cook Roasted Mushrooms and Roasted Salmon. Cooked food provides a much better boost of energy, and you'll want to get more energy dense foods since there's a limit to how many pieces of food you can eat in a span of time.
Speaking of testing, one of my testers came up with a good idea to allow the recipe lists for crafting to be displayed as a grid instead of a list. I've since added the option to toggle between both views so you can choose what works best for you. I would imagine new players may want to see the list to help them identify certain items easier, and more advanced players would prefer the grid view to see a larger amount of choices per page.
You can also now pin a recipe to the UI so that you can keep track of just how many ingredients you have for a recipe.
Looking ahead:
So what is the plan moving forward? Well right now I'm working to get a complete vertical slice of the game ready in a couple of months. This could possibly be used for a public demo for gaming conventions or the like. This means I'm trying to work on key features to make sure the experience is polished and complete. I'm working mostly on remaining systems, bug fixes, building out Limbo, and taking on the task of building an NPC manager that will handle placing and keeping track of all the characters in the world.
A few things I'd like to rebuild/improve on would be trees and monsters. Hopefully in the next couple of months I can get a much better system for trees so there can be a nice variety of trees, better wind reaction, better growth cycles, more tree resources and much more.
For monsters I want to completely overhaul the system and add in at least a couple more varieties/types of monsters just to mix things up for early combat testing. I'd also like to try and add a couple of different weapon types and combat skills.
BackerKit Pre-Order Store:
Just one last thing to mention, the backerkit pre-order store is still open and I plan to keep it open into the new year, so if you wanted to buy any physical or additional digital goods, you still have time to do so! Every purchase helps continue to support the game's development.
Also it's possible to still update your shipping address using your backerkit link that you received via e-mail. If you haven't filled out the survey yet, I encourage you to do so! If you don't have a link to your survey, just send me a message and I can be sure to send it to you. (Note, if you only backed the lowest tier or provided money without backing a tier, you won't get a survey link and don't need to worry!)
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I'm hoping to get a lot done in the coming months, and I appreciate everyone's patience and support. I know the updates are sparse but trust that I'm still working very hard on the game and that's usually what is causing delays in updates. :) That's all for this update, look forward to another dev log video coming soon and I'll make sure to get another KS update posted here some time in January!
Happy new year!
- Koni
New Dev Log! Adding Bug Catching, Fishing, Clothing Coloring and much much more!
almost 3 years ago
– Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 01:17:26 AM
Whew! It's been quite a while since the last update here! Really sorry about that one, but I've been focusing all of my available time on developing the game every day, so I have to sort of just catch a moment to put together this update and videos. Just to give you a bit of an idea as to how much stuff I've been working on... here's a glimpse at all of the stuff I've done since the past update!
I've condensed this into a Dev Log video (first of two!) so feel free to give that a watch if you don't want to squint and read hundreds of lines of text. :)
Custom Clothing Colors!
I've worked on adding customizable clothing colors for all clothing/accessories. You can get everything in 32 different colors. Clothing items now have a special color attribute that displays next to the item's name such as "Basic Tunic (Light Blue)". As of now there's no in-game way of actually obtaining the colored clothing, however I plan to allow the player to purchase clothing from shops and also craft their own clothing as well.
Bug Catching!
I've added Bug Catching to the game as well! Right now I've set up the core system for this, including a spawn controller which will basically control what insects will spawn and when. Different insects will spawn based on season, time of day, weather and several other variables. You will be able to use different nets to catch bugs, with the ability to sneak up on bugs if necessary! Collect them, use them in recipes or donate them to the wildlife museum!
Fishing!
Finally, among many other smaller changes, fixes and additions, the last major thing of note is Fishing! I'm happy to report that after about a week of constant work, I've implemented the bulk of the fishing system! It's now possible to craft a fishing rod, equip it, cast it, and catch fish! I've tried to implement fishing into the game in the most organic way possible. I've always enjoyed fishing in real life, and it's the excitement of getting that bite and fighting the fish while giving it some room to tire out on its own.
Fishing works very similarly in Cloudscape. Once you cast your line, your bobble will wiggle as the hook gets nibbled, and once the fish bites, your bobber will go fully under water! At this point you'll need to start reeling in (by holding down the tool button), and then when you see/feel the fish starting to fight back, you'll need to ease off from reeling or else risk having the line snap! After a short back and forth battle, you will finally be able to reel the fish up to the shore, and catch it. So far with the playtesting I've done, I've found fishing to be pretty enjoyable and it's really neat how you can tell how big/tough a fish is simply by how hard it pulls on the line and how fast/slow reeling in can be.
As of now there's only a handful of different fish, but I have plans to include 100 different things to catch as of now. There's also plans to add proper bait and tackle. There's a lot more to the fishing system but I think I'll wrap it up for now. More details will come later!
Thank you for your patience!
Thanks everyone for your patience and I'm sorry again for the delay between updates here. The good news is that the private Discord channel is now live and if you backed at the Early Access tier or higher, you can check it out for more frequent updates and sneak peeks at development! Make sure to join the Discord, and if you haven't received your Discord role yet, just send me a message on Discord with your Kickstarter e-mail and I can go ahead and get your role assigned!
Also in Backerkit news, I am planning to most likely close Backerkit orders before the year's end, so if you wanted to get in on buying physical goodies or extra copies of the game that you didn't buy during the campaign, you might want to do that soon! We have 92% of surveys completed on Backerkit so far! I will send out a reminder to everyone who hasn't filled out the survey soon.
In the meanwhile, you can check out the Backerkit store if you want to order any additional physical/digital goodies or an extra copy of the game (or if you didn't get a chance to back the campaign, you can help support the game by buying stuff on Backerkit!)
Finally, for anyone who backed a Design tier, I've been slowly putting together the first e-mail with information regarding the design process. I definitely haven't forgotten about you! Thank you for your patience and I will be reaching out to you soon!
Project Shoutout: Toasty - Ashes of Dusk!
Last but not least, a shout-out for another fellow developer making their run at Kickstarter soon! Toasty: Ashes of Dusk is an upcoming Action Adventure RPG starring an unlikely hero, that's a tribute to classic childhood RPGs such as Earthbound, FFVII, Majora's Mask, and Pokemon Gen1 all mashed together! Play as Marshall the amnesiac Marshmallow Knight, and stop an all-powerful evil to protect the many friends you make in the magical world of Geldia. All the while, discover the truth of your own mysterious origins... such as why you're a talking marshmallow? Step into Marshall's shoes and make your journey across Geldia, seeking out his memories, gaining new allies, and exploring the fabric of reality as you search for the past. If that sounds good to you, please sign-up and subscribe to their campaign by clicking this link!
