Edengrall News

Quick Crop Report

All crops except Grapes are ready (just need making the seed and the crop entry in the xml file, its easy stuff)

UI Report

We started working on the new UI tooltips, the plant tooltip contains all relevant info about a plant, the universal tooltip will be context relevant and will give the most relevant information about anything in the world, be it a plant, a crop tile, a critter or whatever



Sketches:



Now for a more personal update, i haven’t been feeling well recently, i got shortness of breath and diarrhea, but no cough nor fever, might be nothing, but could be the kung flu, going to the doctor later today, everyone else here is feeling fine. Stay safe out there.

Slopped Tiles edition

More progress this week! The new format for the crops xml is done, we are trying to make things intuitive for modders later on, working with both performance and moddability in mind sure makes things complicated.



Crop Status report:

Turnip, Carrot, Potato, Lettuce, Cabbage, Corn, Strawberry: All done (missing seed bag icons for now)
Tomato: same as turnip and others, but is currently glitched, we are trying to figure out why (its not related to the need for trellis)
Beet, Sugarbeet, Onion, Garlic and Soybeans: Model, Materials and Data mostly done, need Animations and finalizing the Prefabs
Cucumber & Greenbeans: Same as beet and the others, but will require a special shader for the growing animation, will also require trellis
Barley, Wheat, Rye and Oats: work as wild grasses, the grass system is still not integrated with the crop system yet.
Grapes: Put in low priority list



Crop System report:

Planting: done
Growing through the 7 stages: done
Watering, Nutrition and other soil aspects: working on it
Harvesting: will be done after the previous
UI: (tooltips, panels, etc…) i will work on those after i finish the crops

We want to release a new demo in about 3 weeks, but it might take longer to finish this system.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

New crop system is evolving, the tiles now merge properly and we can grow crops again. We remade it to integrate the tiles with Unity's Entity Component System (ECS), We are trying to use ECS as much as possible because of how much it improves performance. The tiles also follow the terrain, so slopes won't block your tile fields.

Just finished the Greenbeans plant



Only 2 crops left: Soybeans and Grapes

Since there is quite a lot to make we might leave grapes for later, and maybe they won’t be in this demo, but if we have time we will add them in.

After i finish Soybeans model i will make all animations for the second batch of crops and all XML files that detail the properties of each plant, its needs and features.

Then i will work on the UI, the plant and the seed info panels. There is not much else to say this week.

I Reworked the Tomato model to work on the new more professional pyramid trellis instead of a single stick, this will be the trellis used for all medium sized crops (1 crop tile size)


I also made an arch trellis for large crops like Grapes, The player will be able to walk under it.


I have almost finished the Cucumber, we are going to use a special shader to animate it instead of making the model move itself to keep it as simple as possible, i will reuse some of it for the Greenbeans since i will use the pole variant instead of the bush one. After that i will only need to make the Soybeans and Grape (large trellis) and all plant models will be done.

My brother is finishing the new crop mesh system, should be done soon, here a screenshot of the tiles merging together

The tiles adapt to terrain and the player can cover most slopes and hills.

We want to release a new demo with the farming system next month.

Turnip, Potato, Carrot, Wheat, Barley, Rye, Oats, Clover, Cabbage, Lettuce, Corn, Tomato, Strawberry are mostly done, animations, data (planned) , drops (some crops have multiple harvestable parts), i just need to finish the .xml for each crop that will control all the crop data, i will do all crops at once, so this will be done after the new ones.

And the 8 last crops were choosen:

Soybeans: 3 harvestables: Sprouts, Edamame and Soybeans, jokes aside soy is a very versatile plant, and required to make Tofu, Soy Sauce and Miso.
Greenbeans: 2 harvestables: Sprouts and Beans
Beets: 2 harvestables: Beet Greens and Beet Root
Sugarbeet: Sugarbeet is one of the two crops that can be used to make Sugar (Sugarcane is the other, not implemented yet)
Cucumber: Generic summer crop, need trellis
Grapes: the crop that requires the most investment right now, need large trellis and 60 days to grow
Onion: Very quick to raise, very versatile
Garlic: Very useful spice

The data for those has been researched and planned already, I am now making the models.

The final game will have more than 100 crops, but right now we have to focus on those 20.

I also started planning the UI, this is what i have in mind for the crop tooltip (shows when you mouseover on crops)

My brother is finishing the new crop tile system, the tiles adapt to the terrain, allowing the creation of large fields over hills and non-flat land, we don’t have anything pretty to show right now since we are using placeholders for now.