Garden of the Sea (VR) News

Work is continuing on the next update to Garden of the Sea which we are calling the Merchant and Trading patch!



beyond the Merchant and their wonderful wares, we are also doing some work to create more growth in the game, not just with plants! We've added in new "levels" for your house - so you start with a small tent, and will work to upgrade and decorate it with crafting, trading, and gardening!



Some work is being done on the backend to help make our performance futurerproof, even if you, for some reason, decide to grow an army of plants on your island ;)



We love all the ideas and feedback we are getting on the game from all the folks over on our Discord Server, and encourage everyone to join the discussion!

While we are continuing work on the upcoming merchant and trading patch, we have also fixed a few bugs and tweaked a few mechanics to make sure everyone has a good time exploring the recently added fishing mechanics, painting system, and new quests! Today we are patching those changes, we hope they help!



[h3]Patch Notes:[/h3]

• Fishing music no longer stops playing after you load a save file.
  
• Puffkin sounds work again.
  
• Fixed issues with crafting recipes that were not working.
  
• Added smooth camera mode for recording gameplay videos (activated by pressing "P" on your keyboard).
  
• Other minor fixes and tweaks.
  

We appreciate all the help our community has given us with testing these experimental changes before they went out live to everyone on the default branch, Thank you so much!

//The GotS team at Neat Corp

Gosh y’all - it’s been a while since we released a whole big patch for Garden of the Sea, but here we are with not one, not two, but three really big updates for you, bundled into one handy-dandy patch! We’d love to take a moment to tell you about all the juicy new code behind these updates, and what it means for you.




TLDR;

• Fishing mechanic/gameplay added.
  
• Painting system for all crafted items.
  
• New quest to unlock the boat, painting system, and fishing rod.
  
• Save system rework.
  

At the beginning of 2020 we began work in earnest on reworking the system in Garden of the Sea which handles the Save Game data. This was a huge undertaking, since we quickly learned that we would need to create a save system which future-proofs (as much as possible) for future content updates, and doesn’t just save stuff that’s been built in the past. That way everyone who has bought and played the game in the past can easily open up a newer version of Garden of the Sea and their save data will be intact, their progress saved.




Once that was done, work started on our Fishing Patch. Alongside this, we also began work on what we are calling the Painting System. Both of these systems are designed to broaden the interaction possibility with the other systems currently in-game, and provide little moments of fun and customization that we felt fit really well within this universe.




The painting system allows you to utilize the vibrant colors of several plants you’ve cultivated, mirroring their hues on any crafted item you have unlocked and built in the world. Make your house truly spectacular with bright purples and blues, or maybe set up a row of pastel fences around your precious radishes (you can never be too careful with those cheeky puffkins around). We really want to open up the door to even more customization and personalization in your garden, and making this island your home.




The fishing system was a natural extension of the in-game boat (our ode to smooth locomotion) and something that we always knew was going to exist in the game, but we were never sure exactly _how_ it would exist. Would you have a hook? Was the game easy with no skill-check? Was it difficult with no fail-state? Was it frustrating, or relaxing? In the end I think we landed on a good balance of the above, in large part thanks to the help and feedback of our wonderful Discord community. The fish also have a pond to help nurture the fishies you’ve found and brought home to your island.

So without further ado - here are the patch notes for this Fishing, Painting, and Save System update for Garden of the Sea:

[h2]Bigger stuff[/h2]

• Save system overhaul (now built to be far more robust for future updates).
  
• Fishing mechanic first version implemented (yay!).
  
• Fish system for pools of fish in the ocean of varying types.
  
• Quest-line implemented for unlocking the boat.
  
• Painting system for customizing crafted items implemented.
  
• Quest-line added for paint blob recipes and functionality.
  

[h2]Smaller stuff[/h2]

• New pot-pot animations added and implemented.
  
• Art polish and tweaks on several plant types and textures in-game.
  
• Fishing pond added near home to house new fishies.
  
• Fishing rod island for acquiring fishing rod implemented.
  
• Seagull creature added to indicate fish regions.
  
• Cave area added on back side of tallest island.
  
• Colors for all crafted items implemented.
  
• Colors for tools now implemented.
  
• New VFX for fishing, painting, and potpot anims implemented.
  
• Pre-populated planter box recipes added.
  
• Several new fish types added with dynamic fish colors for fishing system.
  
• Sound and music for new mechanics and systems implemented.
  
• Updated to latest version of gestrument.
  
• Rumble haptics fixed for most hardware.
  
• Index grabbing functionality tweaked to feel better.
  

Good to know
Save files are now saved in %userprofile%/AppData/LocalLow/Neat Corporation/Garden of the Sea/Saves instead of your Documents folder
It will not be possible to load your old save files, even if you copy them to the new directory

Since we are a software company, we are able to support our devs in working from home during these times by providing software and hardware to help bridge the distance that we are all experiencing now. That way we can continue to provide games and experiences for people to explore worlds in VR that take them beyond their home.

During this period, we are very happy that we've been able to release content updates to Garden of the Sea, and performance patches to Budget Cuts and Budget Cuts 2: Mission Insolvency

While it hasn't all been straight forward, and some of our workflows have had to change (or even slow down) in order to accommodate our new work style, we do consider ourselves very lucky to have a studio and team that supports us in being able to work from home during these times.



We made sure that anyone who didn't already have a VR capable PC at home could get their desktop sent home from the office, and that everyone got VR kits and hardware at home in order to continue work on our current projects - Budget Cuts for PSVR (which will also get physical copies thanks to our buddies at Perp Games) and our (way too) early access game Garden of the Sea (which now also has its own merchandise over at TheYetee!).

Can you guess which setup belongs to which neatcorp dev?



We also delivered (from a distance) care packages to our developers which had snacks, supplies, and some fun projects that we could do together during our time off from work (like face masks for movie night, and snacks for an animal-crossing gaming evening!)



bonus neatcorp (neco! get it?) cats who are also "working" from home!

Bug-fixing and interaction tweaks are going strong over at our home-offices on the Fishing Patch for Garden of the Sea.



Meanwhile, a couple of our artists have started working on our next update: the Merchant Patch!



The Merchant Patch is going to feature a trading system, which helps provide goals and value to the resources you are growing (beyond their creature-feeding and island-beautifying ones, of course!). For example, you’ll be able to trade flowers for a fancy new glove (perhaps one with an upgraded inventory!), splurge on that rare vase that goes perfectly on your newly crafted shelf, or save up a bunch of fruit to finally be able to trade for that new wallpaper you’ve been wanting. The traded items are meant to help enhance and evolve your growing, crafting and exploring and make them even more personal.



We will also be adding in smooth locomotion, and a few other quality of life updates to make sure that we continue to support every type of player who wants to have their very own Garden of the Sea.

In the future, we want to add a deeper interaction system with the creatures, a day/night cycle, support for more hardware, more islands with new plants, quests, and recipes, along with new systems like wearables, breeding, cooking, and more. This list of things we want to build for Garden of the Sea is ever-growing and ever-changing with the feedback and conversations we have with all of you, our Early Access-ees (is that a word? It is now!) over on our discord channel. We’d love to hear from you if you have suggestions for future features or tweaks!



We’ve also taken the time now at Neat Corporation to look over our price points on all our titles, and are going to be adjusting them all very soon. Some will be reduced, while others will be raised. As we’ve written about previously, Garden of the Sea is going to increase with price with every large content update, and the Fishing Patch is one of them. With this patch we will be raising the price to $11.99 USD (€ 9.99 EUR). We plan on rolling out this new price in a couple weeks (most likely on June 1st) along with the release of the Fishing Patch on the public branch of the game. The new price is meant to not only reflect the amount of work that has gone into the game, but also help us get closer to what we believe the final selling price of the game will be once it goes out of Early Access.

Thank you for helping us get to this point, we can't wait to build what's coming up next alongside you all!