Garden Game Devlog #1: [Time, New Plants, and More Art!]

Hey guys, NickNack Programming here,

I'm back after just completing the second build, 0.1.1 beta, of Garden Game and oh boy is there some more to talk about. This update includes a little more polish and some precursors to bigger updates to come.

|Changelog|

So to start off, the scaling of the UI in 0.1.1b looked a little off on different screen resolutions, so I set it to a fixed 16:9 screen ration. This keeps the UI looking unified and easy on the eyes. The most obvious change is the new art which includes the shop button getting a sprite, and the seed shop getting a nice rework. The seed shop UI looks much fresher now, and fits with the current aesthetic of the game. The seeds themselves have sprites too. The seeds are no longer split into categories however their season will still be added into the game when seasons become a bigger part of the game. The seed shop also shows seeds' name and price when hovered over so it's easier to navigate and see what you're buying. Another noticeable UI change is that I changed to font to Ronysiswadi 15 by Rony Siswadi from Fontspace. This small change added a lot of polish and aesthetic to the UI and also helped the UI feel joined.

The next big addition is the top UI panel, which now includes the players money, the next day button, along with the new date and time. The date and time system is fairly rudimentary at the moment but this will receive a lot of work in coming updates, but right now the seasons each have 5 days, which increase every day (ofc), and there is now time which now limits what you can do in a day. The day spans from 8AM-6PM. Each second in real time, 5 minutes pass by meaning a day lasts 10 in game hours, or 2 minutes in real time. You can move to the next day early if you would like by pressing the next day button, however you will be forced to move to the next day at 6:00. Instead of just moving to the next day, you now are presented with an end-of-day screen to allow you to choose when to be launched into the next day.

Other changes include the shelves being moved slightly so that they aren't obstructed by the top UI panel. And I added SUMMER FLOWERS! This doubles the amount of flowers you can plant and grow now. Because of the time restraints, and more flowers, I felt the watering was too slow so I sped it up a little bit, enough to notice a positive difference. And finally, I added a web build so you can play without having to download the files.

|Bug Fixes|

In it's current state there was not much to fix however there were two I found and fixed. When you planted a plant on the right first, and then planted a plant on the left, the buttons would correspond to the wrong plants. This was due to an error in some of my early shelf code and was an easy fix. The other bug was that the shelf panel was often open when it shouldn't be such as on new days, and when other UI was opened. This also was an easy fix.

|Up Next|

Hopefully in the next updates I will refine the season system, so that they have effect and they will likely be made longer. I also am chomping at the bit to create a selling system which will almost finish the game loop, and give the player a way to make money. Hopefully I will also finish adding all of the currently planned flowers. Past the flowers currently planned, I would like to add far more plants including other types of plants as well such as fruits, vegetables, trees, and more. I would also like to add shelf irrigation. This will make shelving matter, because the flowers on the same shelf will have to have the same optimal water level, because the shelf irrigation will water both plants the same.

So that's about it for this update, but I am working nonstop to bring as much to the game as I can, and I will continue writing devlogs to fill you in on what's changing and what I'm working on next. Also feel free to leave comments with bugs you find, or suggestions for new content.

Peace, NickNack