Posted January 22, 2023 by QuentinWH
While this version doesn't add anything that could be considered ground breaking, it still changes quite a few fundamental systems and game mechanics. That means this version is NOT compatible with any previous save files. Your unlocks are still valid and will work. Even imprints should work without any problems. This nicely leads to the first new thing.
Incompatible save files now don't crash your game when you try to enter the loading screen. They will have different name and you won't be able to load them. Overwriting them with new save files works normaly. Should remove the confusion when you tried to load old saves on new game version and the game just crashed. Now for the main changes in this version.
Old farming system was not my original work. I found it on the internet years ago, back when I knew pretty much nothing about programing. That system was well done, but it had some questionable design decisions and was designed for completely diferent type of game. I did some changes to it to make it work slightly better, but I had very little programing experience at the time so the result was not very good. It was laggy, few of the features like plants regrowing or seasons support were broken.
So I decided to make a new one from scratch. It is quite simplistic, but easier to expand. It also doesn't lag and supports all the features I want it to have.
Here is how it works. In your hideout, there is a new tool chest.
When you open it for the first time, you will get a short message telling you to learn the basics of farming from Billy and to get some seed. Next time you open it, you enter "farming mode".
New hud element will appear in the bottom right corner and you will get a short popup telling you to press shift. Hud will show you your selected seed /tool, the amount of seeds you have and how much produce resulting from that seed you have. Pressing shift will open the new seed selection screen.
This screen shows you all your seeds and it displays important information about the selected seed. How long the plant grows, how many seeds you have, how much produce you get from harvesting one plant and how much produce you already have. Once you select the seed, you can start planting. You don't have to select the seed for every tile like you had to before.
You also don't remove plants by interacting with them. You have to select the remove tool from the seed menu first, so now you won't remove any plants by accident. And if you interact with ripe plant with this tool selected, you harvest it normaly instead of destroying it.
Farming mode gets turned off once you rest in your tent, close the tool chest or leave your hideout, so the hud won't bother you anywhere else in the game.
I also rebalanced most of the plants in the game. Some take longer to grow, give more/less produce or they dont get destroyed once harvested. It's a completely new system. I tested it, but there might be some bugs, so be sure to report them if encounter any.
Another thing I wanted to do for a long time. Old description boxes were small and were pretty much broken since I switched to bitmap fonts, cutting some longer text early. This not only allows me to make longer and more detailed descriptions, it makes it pretty much imposible for the text to be cut off early.
Inventory screen changed a little too. The "ALL" tab was removed and replaced with "USABLE". Usualy when you go to your inventory, it's to eat some food or use some other item. I also rewriten the default way items in inventory were rendered. In older version, when you had large amount of item types, the game could take several seconds to load your inventory. Now items are loaded on demand, which makes inventory loading pretty much instant.
Equip screen also has the expanded description box.
Same goes for the trade screen.
And the crafting window.
I also added a small hint to this window. You can scroll the ingredient portion by pressing Q or W. Most items still use default description text, but I rewrote them for all edible food items and for all drugs/drinks.
Again, this is a prety big change to the core game. It is quite possible there will be some bugs. Report them if you encounter them.
That's pretty much it. I also did some minor changes to other parts of the game, but nothing major.
Next update will most likely take longer to make. It should contain the war system. I will either try to polish it as much as posible and release it later, or I will make only the bare esentials work and release it sooner. I will most likely do the second option. I don't like releasing something too unfinished, but I also don't want to spend weeks working on something only to find out nobody likes it. The sooner I get some feedback, the better.
Full changelog: