Since the last post, my main focus was on creating character dialogue. Now characters introduce themselves and also have something to say depending on the season, the weather, whether they are visiting someone else etc. Also, they accept gifts. There are four levels of reaction to a gift: They can hate your gift, be neutral about it, like it or love it. Your "friendship" level is adjusted accordingly. A common mechanic in these games is that when you give them a present on their birthday, the gift reaction value is multiplied. Also, multiple gifts per day can be given, but each subsequent gift has an even lesser effect.
When your friendship level with an NPC reaches a certain threshold, they will reward you in some way: Either with some town lore, a present of their own, some piece of clothing, a skill increase or a food recipe/crafting schematics. Friendship events haven't been implemented yet, but at least their dialogue is 99% done. Finally, in order to unlock certain events for some NPCs, you have to reach a certain friendship level.
Another aspect is the alternate townsfolk schedules: For example, some characters stay inside when it's raining. Or, meddling with a married character's private affairs may result in that character staying at the hotel instead of their own home...
Needless to say, all this work is a pain in the ass. Characters may no longer be around at some point, and the rest of the townsfolk has to react to such developments. They also say unique things when presented with certain items.
So currently I'm adding the alternate schedules of the "married to you" versions of some characters. Their schedule is largely the same when not married to you, but obviously they stay in your (fully upgraded) house and will allocate some of their morning time helping you at the farm, when asked to do so the previous day. Initially, I considered programming the husband/wife to actually walk around the farm, watering crops or picking them up for shipping. But this plan has some hurdles:
1) They must be really versatile when it comes to obstacle recognition. In a perfectly static farm, there should be no problem finding the crop, walking to an adjacent, unobstructed tile and watering it or picking it up. But at the same time you might be near him as well, tossing around fences like mad. You can see how this can become problematic.
2) Besides the real-time farm working, a certain amount of work has to be accomplished even when you're not near the farm. This means that an off-screen simulation has to take place for ensuring that you companion is not slacking :)
I'm not saying it is impossible to code a competent AI (and there are plans for a robotic helper, but it's a small guy and can completely ignore obstacles), but I'll leave this on the back burner for now. The present situation is, you wake up and if you have assigned a morning job for your spouse and the weather is good enough for them, they wait for you outside the farm, informing you when spoken to that they did it.
Also, town festivals are on the horizon! In previous farming games like Harvest Moon, when it was a festival day, all NPC houses were locked all day, probably to force you to go around the place until you hit the town square and start the festival event. I find his a bit...unnatural. First of all, I'm not sure I want 100% of the townsfolk present in all festivals. Maybe, like, 20 of them will be present? The rest will go about their businesses as usual. Second, I don't plan to go with the "locked doors" approach. People start their schedules like every other day, but when you get close to the festival area, the screen fades to black and then you are inside the area with everyone else. Festivals won't eat up all your day: They can begin at, say, 10 am and end at 4 pm. So everyone, including you, can carry on with their business, without NPCs vanished behind locked doors. The only thing I have to take care of is to forbid "irrelevant" NPCs moving in and out of the festival area when it's part of their schedule.
So that's the outline of my immediate tasks. But what else was added aside from NPC interaction?
Fishing
Yup. You have your fishing rod. You go to bodies of water, cast it, then wait for a bite. It's more like a reflex game, but having a high level rod/fishing skill helps. So far, 42 fishes are in the game and there are plans to add some more, as well as some unique ones.
Your horse
The town of Gleaner Heights is pretty large. As such, going around on horseback is not just for the looks: It's mandatory if you want to be in a lot of places within a single day. As with other large animals, holding down the Interact button and then moving causes you to "walk" the horse where you're going. Tapping the Interact button while facing the horse will make you leap on it, and the same goes for dismounting it. The horse will run when you hold the Run button, and when so it can jump over fences, much like you can on foot. Affection/brushing mechanics have not been implemented yet. But hey, the stable is ready.
Weather
Aside from the most frequent "normal" state of the weather, additional weather types are here:
1) Rain (bad for your animals)
2) Snow (bad for your animals)
3) Fog (lower visibility but otherwise no other effect for you or your animals).
4) Heat wave: A summer exclusive. Problematic for your animals and you, as using tools when outdoors will consume more stamina than normal.
5) Freezing cold: A winter exclusive with pretty much the same effects as its summer counterpart.
6) Storm: Contrary to other farming games where you are locked inside your house on a stormy day, I'm thinking of letting the main character go out in a storm. Of course, it won't be pretty. Also, expect some crop destruction, as well as some chicken being blown away by the wind if left outdoors.
TV
So far only the weather forecast channel has been implemented.
Crafting
Although in the earliest of stages, it's a shame not to include it here. You perform crafting on the bench of your farm workshop. You can create from pieces of clothing to bombs and cheese machines! Related items have yet to be added, but the bare-bones infrastructure is here.
So, many features are ready (or halfway there), but many more await in their respective queues. I have to create a number of indoors locations. Cutscenes for many in-game events are also not in place yet. Also, remember talking in earlier posts about boat-travelling in the river and underwater exploration with your diving suit? I haven't given up on this one! But I feel like some story-critical sections of the game should be completed first. To be honest, it's a race against time. Since I am now into full-time game development, I live on whatever income Emerge has generated (and still is, albeit at a much slower rate). Oh, and the upcoming Steam Greenlight changes, namely the entry fee, may prove financially crippling. At my current status, the safe zone is until September 2107. After that...
I've thought about doing an Indiegogo campaign or maybe a Patreon for a minimal target (as in the four-digit range). Or (shudder) go for early access. But I'm trying to avoid all of these for as long as I can...
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