Devlog 3: Making Progress
[h2]Changing Seasons[/h2]
Spring is in full swing here in the Northern Hemisphere, and Palm Paradise Garden is itself sprouting new shoots, with a whole host of improvements and additions to the game this month.
[h2]The Real World[/h2]
This month I finally started getting real world plant data into the game. Way back when I was coming up with the concept for Palm Paradise Garden, I bought a few packs of pre-made tree and plant models for the game, intending for these to be the basis for the plants in the game.
The last two months, my mum, who is a retired gardening teacher, has been going through these 3D models and identifying possible plants that they could represent. As well, she has been gathering some very detailed data on these plants' lifespan, flowering and size/dimension. All of which I am feeding into the game, and that data is now driving the plant lifecycles.
There is in fact more detail in the game than it is sometimes possible to find from real world plant databases - Root depth in particular seems to be something that doesn't appear on many plant databases. As well I will be tweaking some of the plant data to make the game more balanced. However it already feels satisfying to have real world plants in the game, some of which are quite famous and others obscure ones I've never even heard of!
I have also now started focusing on adjusting the plant models to look a bit more like their real world counterparts. As well, I've started to model the flowers and fruits for each plant, which are often unique and can't simply be bought using off-the-shelf assets.
The process is proving quite a lot of work, and it means there probably won't be hundreds and hundreds of plants in the final game. But there will be a very good variety of palms, as well as plants like tree ferns and cycads. The biggest challenge is now finding lots of medium and small plants to be the shrubs and ground cover to go in the shady spots beneath the bigger palms, and make the gardens in the game look more like lush jungles and less like a few big plants surrounded by bare soil.
[h2]The World Outside[/h2]
In the first devlog I talked about seasons changing in the outside world. It was a lot of fun making these small changes, so I spent some more time adding to the world beyond the greenhouse. There is now a street and back gardens beyond the walls of the grounds where the greenhouse is situated and even a tram trundling past, in keeping with the Belle Époque era setting. The game is looking much better for having those olde world lampposts and park benches and red letter boxes.
As well, I added post processing effects: A saturation filter, to make the game visuals feel more vibrant and less washed out, and bring out the varied shades of green in the tropical plants. And a bloom filter to give everything a misty-eyed, slightly dreamy quality. This also fits with the trend of the times in which the game was set of editing photographs to colourize and airbrush imperfections.
[h2]More Learnings[/h2]
I did actually make a demo for Palm Paradise Garden in time for the Steam Farming Festival, but after getting feedback from a couple of testers and a few other sources, I decided not to release it.
The biggest question on my mind for a while has been how to make the game fun. Which sounds kind of obvious for a game! But I found from the feedback I got that it's not quite so straight forward as I'd initially thought.
Essentially, what people who played the private beta version of the demo told me was that the game lacked a sense of progression. Everything worked mechanically - you could buy plants, plant them, then watch them grow and collect more "donation" money from visitors. But there were no objectives or things to aim for.
Part of this was due to the way I set up the demo. Since I've only had time to properly model a handful of plants so far, I set up the demo to have only a single medium-sized bed and a half dozen plants to go in it. This had the consequence of not only making the player have very few actually interesting decisions to make (what to buy/plant and where to plant it). But also meaning players ran out of things to do very quickly.
The game has no way to rearrange or add more beds, nor expand the greenhouse, simply because I haven't got round to coding that yet. This will partly alleviate this issue and at the same time let players feel like they can really customise the garden and make it theirs.
I also haven't implemented the growing/germinating from seeds part of the game either. This will provide some mid-term satisfaction, goals and struggles for players over simply buying in all their plants. But right now it's not there.
However, even given the above, having something to work towards is still missing. And how to solve it goes to the heart of what Palm Paradise Garden is really all about.
[h2]Many Gardens[/h2]
As it stands, the way plants work in Palm Paradise Garden is quite a hardcore simulation. I want to keep this because I think it's something relatively unusual among gardening and farming games. It doesn't infantilise gardening.
Equally, I don't want people to feel like they need to struggle through a game that can be quite difficult at times when really what they want is to just build their dream tropical garden. Indeed, it may be the same player who might be sometimes in the mood for a challenge, and other times simply wanting to relax in a virtual environment that isn't really feasible in the real world (unless you have a big garden and live in a tropical climate or are a millionaire who can build a giant greenhouse).
My plan is therefore to introduce two modes into Palm Paradise Garden:
- Relaxed mode will provide players with a space in which they can build their dream garden free from any objectives or missions. They can turn off money or time pressures, or even things like the need for watering, plant ageing and death.
- Campaign/Story mode will give players a series of different scenarios to play. They will include different greenhouse locations and setups and each will come with objectives and a story. Later scenarios will be locked until players complete the objectives of earlier scenarios.
Ideally in the campaign/story mode, I would like to also have some plants that are not yet available and which you need objectives to be completed in order to unlock. This though somewhat depends on having enough plants and not fall into the same problem as with this first iteration of the demo.
[h2]Connections[/h2]
The other major feedback point I got about the demo was that it was not just the lack of a longer term objective that was making players feel like they weren't progressing. It was also that they didn't understand how their actions were affecting the game.
As already mentioned, each plant has a host of statistics and data relating to it, and this can be really overwhelming, especially when trying to decide what to plant and then where to plant it. It's actually a common problem for games and apps, and the solution is two fold: Only display information that is relevant to what the player is doing or deciding at that moment. And having multiple layers of depth to the information. I won't be getting rid of any variables or stats, but I will be placing a lot more of that information behind a "more details" button.
Once players have made a decision of what to plant and where, they then need feedback on whether they made a good decision or not (so they can correct it and/or learn for next time). This connection between action and outcome is very weak at the game right now. Plants take some time to grow or to become poorly and eventually die. Meanwhile it is not clear at all how the plants in the greenhouse affect the income the player receives from visitor donations.
Part of the solution is in giving many small indicators. For example, a simple floating "+1 Beauty" appearing when a flower blossoms, and a corresponding flashing of a Beauty count in another part of the UI.
The other part is to connect the feedback to the in-game characters. In games like Rollercoaster Tycoon, this is done by having NPC characters wander around the theme park and go on rides or react with sounds and animations. You can tell how good your rollercoaster is by how many people are stood in the queue, and you can hear them grumble and look in disgust when they see overflowing trash cans as they walk between rides.
I will have a similar system for Palm Paradise Garden, in which you can see the visitors to the garden/greenhouse walking around and looking at the plants, making idle comments and adding in the ability to "talk" to those characters to get a sense of their mood and impressions.
[h2]What's Next[/h2]
Even though I'm not releasing it yet, there were some real positives that came out of making and then testing the demo. I fixed a lot of bugs, and that hard work really showed by the relatively small number of bugs then found by testers. The tutorial system which I wrote about previously also proved technically robust and good at teaching players the game.
I want to now improve the demo based on all the feedback, with the Steam NextFest in the 2nd week of June being the new target for releasing that. That demo version 2 won't have anywhere near all the things I've mentioned in this blog, especially when it comes to the different modes and number of plants. What I hope to achieve instead is more to tighten up the game and fix the user-experience issues. And to make enough of the campaign/story to give a feeling of progress, even if that progress is then only so far as the demo allows.
As always, if you have any questions or thoughts, please do say in the comments below!
Spring is in full swing here in the Northern Hemisphere, and Palm Paradise Garden is itself sprouting new shoots, with a whole host of improvements and additions to the game this month.
[h2]The Real World[/h2]
This month I finally started getting real world plant data into the game. Way back when I was coming up with the concept for Palm Paradise Garden, I bought a few packs of pre-made tree and plant models for the game, intending for these to be the basis for the plants in the game.
The last two months, my mum, who is a retired gardening teacher, has been going through these 3D models and identifying possible plants that they could represent. As well, she has been gathering some very detailed data on these plants' lifespan, flowering and size/dimension. All of which I am feeding into the game, and that data is now driving the plant lifecycles.
There is in fact more detail in the game than it is sometimes possible to find from real world plant databases - Root depth in particular seems to be something that doesn't appear on many plant databases. As well I will be tweaking some of the plant data to make the game more balanced. However it already feels satisfying to have real world plants in the game, some of which are quite famous and others obscure ones I've never even heard of!
I have also now started focusing on adjusting the plant models to look a bit more like their real world counterparts. As well, I've started to model the flowers and fruits for each plant, which are often unique and can't simply be bought using off-the-shelf assets.
The process is proving quite a lot of work, and it means there probably won't be hundreds and hundreds of plants in the final game. But there will be a very good variety of palms, as well as plants like tree ferns and cycads. The biggest challenge is now finding lots of medium and small plants to be the shrubs and ground cover to go in the shady spots beneath the bigger palms, and make the gardens in the game look more like lush jungles and less like a few big plants surrounded by bare soil.
[h2]The World Outside[/h2]
In the first devlog I talked about seasons changing in the outside world. It was a lot of fun making these small changes, so I spent some more time adding to the world beyond the greenhouse. There is now a street and back gardens beyond the walls of the grounds where the greenhouse is situated and even a tram trundling past, in keeping with the Belle Époque era setting. The game is looking much better for having those olde world lampposts and park benches and red letter boxes.
As well, I added post processing effects: A saturation filter, to make the game visuals feel more vibrant and less washed out, and bring out the varied shades of green in the tropical plants. And a bloom filter to give everything a misty-eyed, slightly dreamy quality. This also fits with the trend of the times in which the game was set of editing photographs to colourize and airbrush imperfections.
[h2]More Learnings[/h2]
I did actually make a demo for Palm Paradise Garden in time for the Steam Farming Festival, but after getting feedback from a couple of testers and a few other sources, I decided not to release it.
The biggest question on my mind for a while has been how to make the game fun. Which sounds kind of obvious for a game! But I found from the feedback I got that it's not quite so straight forward as I'd initially thought.
Essentially, what people who played the private beta version of the demo told me was that the game lacked a sense of progression. Everything worked mechanically - you could buy plants, plant them, then watch them grow and collect more "donation" money from visitors. But there were no objectives or things to aim for.
Part of this was due to the way I set up the demo. Since I've only had time to properly model a handful of plants so far, I set up the demo to have only a single medium-sized bed and a half dozen plants to go in it. This had the consequence of not only making the player have very few actually interesting decisions to make (what to buy/plant and where to plant it). But also meaning players ran out of things to do very quickly.
The game has no way to rearrange or add more beds, nor expand the greenhouse, simply because I haven't got round to coding that yet. This will partly alleviate this issue and at the same time let players feel like they can really customise the garden and make it theirs.
I also haven't implemented the growing/germinating from seeds part of the game either. This will provide some mid-term satisfaction, goals and struggles for players over simply buying in all their plants. But right now it's not there.
However, even given the above, having something to work towards is still missing. And how to solve it goes to the heart of what Palm Paradise Garden is really all about.
[h2]Many Gardens[/h2]
As it stands, the way plants work in Palm Paradise Garden is quite a hardcore simulation. I want to keep this because I think it's something relatively unusual among gardening and farming games. It doesn't infantilise gardening.
Equally, I don't want people to feel like they need to struggle through a game that can be quite difficult at times when really what they want is to just build their dream tropical garden. Indeed, it may be the same player who might be sometimes in the mood for a challenge, and other times simply wanting to relax in a virtual environment that isn't really feasible in the real world (unless you have a big garden and live in a tropical climate or are a millionaire who can build a giant greenhouse).
My plan is therefore to introduce two modes into Palm Paradise Garden:
- Relaxed mode will provide players with a space in which they can build their dream garden free from any objectives or missions. They can turn off money or time pressures, or even things like the need for watering, plant ageing and death.
- Campaign/Story mode will give players a series of different scenarios to play. They will include different greenhouse locations and setups and each will come with objectives and a story. Later scenarios will be locked until players complete the objectives of earlier scenarios.
Ideally in the campaign/story mode, I would like to also have some plants that are not yet available and which you need objectives to be completed in order to unlock. This though somewhat depends on having enough plants and not fall into the same problem as with this first iteration of the demo.
[h2]Connections[/h2]
The other major feedback point I got about the demo was that it was not just the lack of a longer term objective that was making players feel like they weren't progressing. It was also that they didn't understand how their actions were affecting the game.
As already mentioned, each plant has a host of statistics and data relating to it, and this can be really overwhelming, especially when trying to decide what to plant and then where to plant it. It's actually a common problem for games and apps, and the solution is two fold: Only display information that is relevant to what the player is doing or deciding at that moment. And having multiple layers of depth to the information. I won't be getting rid of any variables or stats, but I will be placing a lot more of that information behind a "more details" button.
Once players have made a decision of what to plant and where, they then need feedback on whether they made a good decision or not (so they can correct it and/or learn for next time). This connection between action and outcome is very weak at the game right now. Plants take some time to grow or to become poorly and eventually die. Meanwhile it is not clear at all how the plants in the greenhouse affect the income the player receives from visitor donations.
Part of the solution is in giving many small indicators. For example, a simple floating "+1 Beauty" appearing when a flower blossoms, and a corresponding flashing of a Beauty count in another part of the UI.
The other part is to connect the feedback to the in-game characters. In games like Rollercoaster Tycoon, this is done by having NPC characters wander around the theme park and go on rides or react with sounds and animations. You can tell how good your rollercoaster is by how many people are stood in the queue, and you can hear them grumble and look in disgust when they see overflowing trash cans as they walk between rides.
I will have a similar system for Palm Paradise Garden, in which you can see the visitors to the garden/greenhouse walking around and looking at the plants, making idle comments and adding in the ability to "talk" to those characters to get a sense of their mood and impressions.
[h2]What's Next[/h2]
Even though I'm not releasing it yet, there were some real positives that came out of making and then testing the demo. I fixed a lot of bugs, and that hard work really showed by the relatively small number of bugs then found by testers. The tutorial system which I wrote about previously also proved technically robust and good at teaching players the game.
I want to now improve the demo based on all the feedback, with the Steam NextFest in the 2nd week of June being the new target for releasing that. That demo version 2 won't have anywhere near all the things I've mentioned in this blog, especially when it comes to the different modes and number of plants. What I hope to achieve instead is more to tighten up the game and fix the user-experience issues. And to make enough of the campaign/story to give a feeling of progress, even if that progress is then only so far as the demo allows.
As always, if you have any questions or thoughts, please do say in the comments below!