Homegrown 0.4.4 - Main Menu Improvements

The final update of the year has been largely code based, with work on game initialization to allow for a loading screen on start-up, improvements to game-state management and controls, and a new system for handling custom cursors. In-game I also made a host of small improvements to the main menu; mostly quality of life changes.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

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

Main Changes

• A loading screen is now shown on start-up. The screen itself is a placeholder, but at least you no longer have to look at an empty window on launch, wondering if the game has crashed or not!
• Redesigned the delete button in the My Farms page. Still no confirmation for deleting saves, but at least it's not so easy to miss-click on it now.
• Mouse-wheel scrolling in the save slot panel (if you have a lot of saves).
• You can double click on a save slot to load it, instead of having to click the "Load" button.
• Game sounds fade out when in main menu.
• The game is paused (and is no longer rendered) while in main menu.
• Slightly improved the font quality in the main menu.
• In the "New Farm" page, you can press the enter key to begin instead of clicking the button.
• Did some work on Game State - mostly code based but a few improvements in game can already be seen. For example, while rotating the camera the mouse can't interact with objects it might be moving over.
• Custom cursor - mostly just set up the system in the code and added a basic cursor for now. This will be put to better use in the next version!

New Collectible Trophy

There's also another new collectible trophy available in the tool shop - a festive snowman! Don't forget to copy across your achievements.dat file if you want to keep any previously unlocked trophies. All unlocked trophies will spawn in your house storage when you start a new game.

Coming up in 2024...

It should be a big year for Homegrown! With most of the fundamentals of the game already finished I'll be putting much more emphasis on the gameplay features and game content next year. Well, once I've finished the UI overhaul that is!

Once the UI is sorted it will be onto some big new features, mostly focusing on the town area. After that I'll be doing some graphics work to make sure all the farming actions feel very juicy and satisfying, and then I'll be concentrating on filling the game with loads of content: vegetables, compost types, tools, items, upgrades, etc. and doing my best to balance it all out to make the game an enjoyable and interesting experience. After that the game should just need a bit of polishing and then it will be ready for release!

I'm hoping that most of this will happen next year. I'd at least like to get to the stage where all the content and features are in the game, but it's probable that the final polishing and launch will have to wait till 2025. I don't want to rush it! But who knows, we'll have to see how things go next year. Perhaps I'll have overestimated how long things will take - that would make a nice change!

Happy Holidays!

So that is it for this year! Thank you all so much for the support here on Patreon, I really appreciate the generosity of each and every one of you. I hope you all have a fantastic time over the holidays and a great start to 2024!

See you next year <3