Just a screenie

Today we visit the house of a cranky old man. A hoarder and a drunkard, but a source of great knowledge about the village's past...if you become friends.

Clicky clicky for larger screenie!

Development goes really smooth, more and more assets are ready. Hopefully by the end of October I'll have a nice teaser and by the end of the year a proper Steam Greenlight entry!

Provisional Blog title and progress report

Hi everyone!

Originally I planned to name the game Harvest Peaks, so this was the blog's title. However I sense that I might be treading into murky waters, since I would be partially using words from trademarked titles of certain franchises. For example the "Harvest" part is a nod to Harvest Moon. Is it "safe" to do so? I don't know yet.

Zenimax had a scruff with Mojang because the former has trademarked the Elder Scrolls title and the latter made a game and named it Scrolls. It didn't even have to do anything with the Elder Scrolls series. It just contained a word!

"But, vdweller, you aren't Mojang! You're just a small developer! Surely they won't bother you!"

Hmmm... another small-time developer was torn a new one by InXile (you know, those true indie, game loving, nothing to do with greedy corporations, funded by the people guys). The reason? Said dev named a game "Alien Wasteland". Inxile owns the Wasteland trademark. Facepalm. The Aftermath? Title had to be changed to Action Alien

Maybe Inxile had no choice. Maybe the main guys had no problem but their legal team told them "blah blah sir we must do it because of reason X". The point is it was done. This is how things work I guess.

So until (and if) things are cleared up, I will use a temporary blog (and project) title. It's a farming game with mysteries invovled. So, Mystery Farming it is, for now! Even if I come up with the final name, I see no harm in having the address remain mysteryfarming.blogspot.com . The same applies to the Twitter username.

As for the progress so far: More graphics are ready. Below is a view of a place just outside your farm inside the Game Maker: Studio editor. The villa graphic is not yet finished. The abandoned villa is going to play a major role in the game. A mysterious man lived there many years ago, then something terrible happened...

Tools are also ready to use! Each tool has different power levels, unlocked via upgrading them.

I'm currently working on the inventory screen. I like the style of the older Harvest Moon games. I don't want the inventory to be extremely streamlined, with lots of hotkeys. I am thinking of  a separate "Tools" and "Items" group of slots. You can assign 4 tools and 4 items to their respective quick slots and then you can then cycle through them without having to access the inventory screen again. Also, I'm thinking about the ability to filter the "Items" group and display only food, equipment, miscellaneous items etc.

That's all for now! See you next update!

Are you still there?

More than ever!

Currently working on exterior graphics. This is the path leading to the waterfalls and the great hotel. Day/night cycle is also ready!

Not much else to say, but rest assured I'm on the job!

PS The cliff face needs more blue in shadows.

A study in pixels: Rocks and grass

Carefully concealed disclaimer

This is a series of steps in order to create a rocky wall and some grass on top. Aside from the transition from rock (vertical plane) to grass (horizontal plane), I won't be covering edges, ground shadows etc.

I am no pixel art professional. I just like recording and sharing my venture into the world of pixel art. And, who knows, until that uber-professional artist approaches you (or me) and teaches you (or me) all their secrets and techniques, something posted here could be of use to somebody. Images are scaled to 300% for your viewing convenience. As a final note, colors may require tweaking depending on the color context of the rest of the image. Don't copy colors from tutorials unless you make sure they fit your scene. Rest assured that I'll be tweaking those "final" images a lot as I go along making more graphics.

The graphics of Harvest Peaks: Town Diner

It's easy to speak of a game without having much in your hands to show. So, let's take a look at one of the town's locations, the Diner.

Click on the image to view a crisp, 3x version.

I am a newcomer to pixel art so it should come as no surprise if many outlines are improper or object proportions are slightly off -at least for what's common for this kind of graphics: some objects usually tend to be exaggerated in such games but I can't bring myself to follow this tradition.

Ignore the little guy behind the counter -it's just for helping measure the size/height of other objects.

So how does it look? Can you tell what's on the table next to the door? Should I add more objects, Should I make some objects bigger and thus more identifiable? What about the colors? Let me know!

Curved, rising paths in orthographic projection

Before delving into the murky waters of our problem, let's first talk a bit about screen projections of the game world:

Two famous ways to display the game world are isometric and orthographic projection. Without employing any technical jargon, let's just say that both projections have no vanishing points (all imaginary lines that define structures like buildings are parallel), isometric (iso) projection displays the top of a structure and two sides and orthograhic (ortho) projection only displays the top and one side.

Phantasy Star IV (1993 - Sega Genesis) uses orthographic projection

Fallout (1997 - PC) uses isometric projection

There is a wealth of technical info around the net for achieving both projections in a consistent manner.

Harvest Peaks will use ortho projection. It's simple and easy for the player to navigate, especially in a farming sim game where you walk tile by tile to pick up fruit and other things. Games like Harvest moon (SNES) used it and it was fine, while for example Playstation's Harvest Moon: Back to Nature used iso projection, which I found really hard to get used to. There is something inherently baffling when you press down and you see your character move down-left in a diagonal fashion.

One of the weak points of ortho projection is that most "height changes" (for example when players walk a stairway to a higher level in their current map) are either horizontal or vertical. There is a general lack of curved paths, especially when height changes.

Note the arrows: Stairs change height first horizontally then vertically.

So what if we want to design both a curved path with simultaneous change in altitude? Is it worth attempting? Let's find out!

In the "placement map" of Harvest peaks, where I simply place rudimentary, undetailed tiles just for the very basic layout of the town, just to see where the town square, your farm, the mountain hotel and every other building will be, I wanted to do the following:

This path leads to the mountain which is, of course, higher than the rest of the town.

So players walk this curved path which also rises in elevation until it reaches a flat state. But what happens with the "cliff face" of  such a path in ortho projection? How will the tileset's textures be drawn in order to convey this change in altitude?

So what do you get...

...if you cross a farming sim in a seemingly quiet town full of secrets, plots, double lives and supernatural horrors?

...A mess?

...A masterpiece?

...A lawsuit?

So many possible outcomes! But let's go for the masterpiece.

Since Emerge: Cities of the Apocalypse came out, I have been messing with this idea in my head.

You have played farming sims (hopefully). You have experienced the innocence. The quiet village life. The friendly townsfolk. The cordial invites to festivals. Wake up. Plant stuff. Water plants. Now run to town! Give presents to your prospective wife. Go fishing. Go home. Sleep. Repeat. Innocence.

How about plotting with a married woman to get rid of her abusive husband and take his place? Or finding out about an abandoned villa that no one dares to enter or even speak of? Or about meeting a mysterious illusionist performing in the town's most esteemed travel lodgings, atop the mountain overlooking the waterfalls?

What can you expect from this blog? Well, I'll be using it as a dev log for the creation of my next game, which will be an amalgam of the concepts shown above. I will be posting interesting ideas, as well as game art, in a tutorial-ish fashion. Feedback and suggestions are welcome!

At this point I should clarify that the game is now beginning development. Right now I am fiddling with pixel art, trying to find a coherent, aesthetically pleasing style. The game will be programmed in Game Maker: Studio.

So let's begin the journey! See you along the way!