Homegrown 0.4.5 - Tile Examine Tool

More UI progress to tell you about! The tile examining tool has received a makeover plus there have been a few other tweaks to the inventory and button icons.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

And for Programmer Tier+ patrons the code is available here.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can also try out some simple mod creation here.

Tile Examine Tool Redo

After implementing the examine panel for the objects last time, I did a similar thing this week for examining terrain tiles. When using the tile examining tool (the button to the right of the inventory with the dropper icon) the tile information now appears directly above whichever tile you're currently mousing over.

Currently this is only useful for soil tiles, where it tells you what compost/fertilizers have been used, as well as listing any other buffs that are active on that tile. In an attempt to keep the UI as simple as possible I haven't added stats for anything that is easily visible in the 3D world (amount of weeds, tile wetness, etc.) but I can always add more info in the future if people think it's necessary.

Buff Tool-Tips

You can potentially have quite a lot of buffs applied to a single tile so I decided there isn't space to show the full name of each buff in the examine panel. Instead, it just shows the buff icon and the tier of the buff. I can't expect everyone to remember what each buff is or what each one does though, so I've provided tool-tips that show up when you hover over the buff icon.

These tell you the full name of the buff, along with a small description of what effect the buff has on the tile. This of course works for anywhere that a buff is shown in the UI, including both the object and tile examine panels. When using the tile examine tool you'll first need to left-click on the relevant tile to lock the examine panel to that tile. That will free up the mouse, allowing you to mouse-over the buffs.

Other UI Tweaks

I also had another go at some of the icons for the main UI buttons. I went for a cleaner, more rounded look and made sure to give the icons a bit more padding this time, as many people had suggested in a previous devlog.

The inventory hotbar also has a lighter design now and the item stack numbers are shown in front of a dark green background, hopefully making them easier to read. The toolbelt UI (when you have an item equipped) has been changed to match this new look too (although it still needs a bit of work). There will be lots more improvements coming to the inventory soon, as that's going to be my focus for the next update.

And finally, stripy health bars! I thought the health bars (and other stat bars) were looking a bit basic, so I've added stripes. I think it looks quite cute, but let me know what you think!

Coming Up...

So, that's all the updates this time. Not particularly exciting, I know, but important stuff that had to get done at some point. Things will get a bit more interesting from now on though. With the inventory update I'll be implementing some more functionality as well as the usual visual changes. Then it will be on to the shops and tool-upgrade system in the town, and I have big things planned for them! And after that, back to gameplay!

Thanks as always for your support <3