Homegrown 0.3.7 - Paths

Sorry for the delay on this one! It turned out to be quite a difficult update, both in terms of the design decisions and the implementation. I got a lot of feedback on the recent devlog video about this topic, and based on that I made a few tweaks and changes and I now have a system that I'm about 80% happy with for now. But with a few more future adjustments and a bit of  balancing I think the paths will end up providing some interesting and worthwhile gameplay decisions for the player.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

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

Why Paths?

Homegrown is a very mechanics-driven game, so it felt a bit wrong that entire layout of your beds and pathways in your garden had almost no impact on the gameplay at all. If you wanted to play the game optimally there was no decision making required - you would simply dig up all the land that you had available to make one giant bed for planting vegetables. That was very clearly the best, and only way, to make full use of your land.

The aim with this update was to give the paths between the beds and the different path types some meaning, to make deciding on the layout of your beds a bit less trivial. I'm not completely set on the ideas that I've implemented here so I'd love to hear your feedback, especially from anyone who gives them a try!

Terrain Inspection Panel

Firstly, there's a new UI option that allows you to inspect terrain tiles, which is very useful for the new path updates. The UI for this however doesn't look great right now. The thing is, I'm going to be starting the big UI overhaul next week so I didn't want to waste any time making it look nice when I'll be redoing it anyway. So I'm afraid you'll have to put up with the rather unappealing formatting of this panel for now!

To turn on terrain inspect mode just click on the button underneath the inventory and then mouse-over a tile to see information about it. It will show things like how wet the tile is, what fertilizers you have on there, and which other boosts and buffs have been applied to that tile.

Bed Combo Bonus

This is the update I'm least sure about, so do let me know your thoughts! In an attempt to provide some benefit to having smaller beds I've added a combo-bonus that you get if you carry out an action on every tile in a bed in one go. It's a pretty simply concept but a bit hard to explain in text, so check out this part of the devlog video for a demonstration.

The combo bonuses give little boosts to the action you just carried out (e.g. the compost-combo boost means that the compost you just placed will last a bit longer than usual) and you'll find that they are easier to get when your beds are manageable sizes. As you progress through the game and upgrade your tools and equipment you'll find it possible to get the bonuses on increasingly larger bed sizes, allowing your bed size to increase as you progress.

The aim of this is not to force the player to have smaller beds. You may still decide that one giant bed is the more profitable way to use your land. But there is at least now some decision making required, and no one layout that is clearly optimal.

Pathways

Next up, I wanted some use for the actual pathways, such as the dirt and tile paths (there will be many more path types available in the future). What I've settled on (for now) is that any beds that are surrounded by path tiles and connected to the house receive a speed boost, so your tools work twice as fast in the affected beds.

I like this quite a lot because you end up laying out your paths in a fairly realistic way, connecting up different parts of your farm with pathways. In the future I plan to have objects other than the house that will provide buffs to connected beds (and machines), which will essentially give the player a way to purchase permanent buffs for their farm. Previously, the only buffs came via compost/fertilizers which were temporary (the compost gets used up) and only applied to plants/soil, whereas this new system allows for me to create buffs that affect your tools and machinery.

Cleaning Pathways

As you carry out work in your farm, nearby path tiles will start to collect dirt. The dirtier they get, the less effective they become, reducing the speed boost (and, in the future, other buffs) that they provide. The effectiveness of a surrounding path is shown in the terrain inspection UI when you mouse-over a soil tile in the relevant bed (it's the "Path Condition" stat).

To remedy this, you can simply give them a good cleaning. Purchase a broom from the Tool Shop and use it on a path tile to clean it. Once your path is clean you'll get the full benefits from it once again.

Different Path Types

I made some slight changes to how this works since the devlog, so it's a bit different to what I showed in the video. All path types now give the same speed boost (2x faster) when used to surround and connect a bed to the house. However, the more expensive path types get dirty less quickly.

At the start of the game when you're working on a few small beds you'll have no problem maintaining paths of the cheapest path type as you're not creating much dirt. Later in the game however, you'll be working on a much larger scale with faster and bigger tools creating heaps more dirt, and the basic path types will become unsustainable to maintain. You'll either lose the buffs or spend all your time cleaning the paths. Therefore, as you progress through the game you'll find it necessary to invest in the more expensive tile types which don't get dirty so quickly.

This increases the cost of receiving the tool speed boost to match your increasing earnings, thus hopefully keeping things balanced (otherwise getting the speed boost would either be impossibly expensive at the start of the game, or pointlessly cheap in the late game).

New Collectible

As always, there's a new collectible trophy which this time is a bit of abstract art for your garden. 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.

That's all for now

So that's how the paths work for now! These updates still need a lot of balancing and much more visual feedback for the player (like some visual indication of which beds get the speed boost when you connect a pathway to the house) but I think it's a good start! I've been play-testing it a lot and I've personally found it quite enjoyable to put more thought into the layout of my beds and for it to have some meaningful impact on the gameplay.

Next up it's on to the big UI overhaul!

Thanks as always for the support!