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Beekeeping Devlog Video - Early Access

Here's the latest devlog video about the bees. It'll be going public on Youtube tomorrow.

HomeGrown 0.6.5 - Bees!

Since finishing the Gamescom videos I've been working on a big new feature for HomeGrown: beekeeping! Get yourself some bees, look after the hives, and start harvesting that sweet honey.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

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

You can see the bees in action in the latest devlog video.

Beehives

A new shop has opened up in town, the bee shop! You'll find it near the restaurant, to the right of the town center. Here you can buy everything you need to begin your beekeeping journey! To start with, get yourself a few of the basic beehives and put them on grass tiles in your farm.

Once you've placed a beehive the bees will get to work making honey! The honey content in your beehive will increase slowly over time, and can be harvested using empty honey jars whenever you like.

Higher tier hives can store more honey so don't need to be emptied so often. They also come with more bees, and therefore produce honey faster. The better hives are of course more expensive though, so you'll have to work your way up to them!

Stinging

When harvesting honey, there's a chance that you'll get stung! This interrupts the harvesting action, and any remaining honey in the hive is spilled. To avoid wasting produce like this you can buy some protective beekeeping gloves, which will significantly reduce your chance of getting stung.

The more bees in a hive, the higher the chance you have of being stung. Therefore, as you start working with higher tier hives you'll probably want to upgrade your gloves at the Upgrade Shop in town to ensure safe harvesting!

Flowers

The bee shop also sells a selection of wild flowers that you can grow around your beehives to support your bees. You can just plant them straight onto the grass, and they don't need watering. Once grown, your bees will land on the flowers to collect nectar. The more flowers you have directly next to a hive, the faster honey will be produced.

This boost to honey production comes with a trade-off: more manual maintenance. The flowers don't stay fresh forever, and will eventually turn brown and die. Once this happens the bees will no longer be interested in them, and they'll need to be replaced.

You can use the new shears tool to cut back the flowers. This retrieves the seeds, meaning you don't need to buy new flowers each time. The downside is simply the additional maintenance work of cutting and replanting them every now and again. If you're willing to invest a bit more money, you can buy higher tier flowers that stay fresh for much longer, reducing the amount of manual work required.

Bee-haviours

I had a lot of fun implementing the bee movements and behaviours over the last month - it really reminded me a lot of my time working on Equilinox! The animations for the bees are especially Equilinox-esque, with the whole bee entity rocking back and forth to give the impression of the wings moving, without me having to actually animate them.

The movement code is fairly simple too - I can give the bee a target point and it will start moving forwards at a constant speed, while changing its rotation until it's facing the target. It then just continues travelling straight until the target is reached. I can also mark the target as a landing node, and that causes the bee to decelerate as it approaches the target, coming to a smooth stop on the node.

For the bee behaviours I used behaviour trees - the same system I'm using for the villagers in the town area. I programmed some actions such as visiting the hive, landing on a flower, and flying around aimlessly, and then put these into a behaviour tree to get the bee to periodically switch between these actions.

Coming Soon...

Next up, I'd like to implement some simple manufacturing machines into the game, so that you can process your crops into more expensive products if you want. This will involve things like converting olives into olive oil, or fruit into juices.

Thanks for reading, and thank you for your fantastic support <3

Karl

Gamescom and HomeGrown Update

Hey everyone!

Sorry that it's been a while since my last update, but the Gamescom preparations pretty much took over my life for the last couple of months. The event went really well and I had an absolute blast, but I'm also glad to now be back home in my quiet little room where I can get back to programming in peace after all the craziness!

I've updated the download links so you can try out all the new features that I added in for Gamescom. Some of them are still a bit rough - I was rushing to get things done before the event - but I'll polish them up in the next few weeks. In the game files, check the readme.txt file for some cheats that will allow you to quickly try out the new content in the game.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

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

Maple Trees and Syrup

One of the main new features in this version is maple trees and maple syrup production! You can buy maple trees to grow in your farm, and when they're fully grown you can place a syrup extractor next to it. The extractor connects up to the tree and will slowly fill up over time. You can then fill up Empty Bottles (purchasable in the tool shop) with maple syrup!

I've only implemented the basics of this feature so far. There's still quite a bit more planned for the maple trees, so watch this space!

Tool for Removing Objects

It's somewhat overdue, but there's finally a tool in the game that allows you to pick up objects that you've placed in your farm! The Sledge-hammer tool can be bought from the tool shop, and you can use it on things like fences, compost heaps, wells, etc.

After breaking the object it will be returned to your inventory so that you can place it elsewhere. It's also going to be possible to use the sledge-hammer on paths in the future, but that's not working just yet.

Background Music

The game now has some background music! The soundtrack for HomeGrown is currently being made by Jamal Green (who also made the music for Equilinox) and there are three of his tracks in the game at the moment. More will be coming soon!

The options menu also now has a slider for music volume, so you can choose how loud you want it to be.

Dry Soil Cracks

This is just something I'm testing out at the moment, but I think it makes a lot of sense. When soil in your garden is completely dry it now shows cracks on it. Previously, the only indication of wetness was how dark the soil was, and for people who have never played the game before that made it very hard to know when exactly your plants had run out of water.

Soil colour is still used to indicate wetness, but now the cracks appear when the water has completely run out and the plants need to be watered again. You can now be sure that the plants are fine until you see the cracks - then it's time to water!

Cookie Buffs

Another new addition are the edible cookies, which give you temporary buffs. These rare items can be obtained as rewards from some of the town features, and each cookie type has a different boost associated with it. The buffs are only temporary, so make the most of them! You activate the buff and start the countdown by eating the cookie, so you can be a bit strategic about when you use it.

Travelling Salesman

The travelling salesman is a shop that will pop up every now and again in the town area, offering a random selection of rare items that you can't get anywhere else. I've only just started implementing this feature, so it's currently just a rough preview of what it's going to be in the future.

For now, the travelling salesman is available every Wednesday (of the in-game week) in the field on the far-left side of the town. For now, he just offers a choice between some of the new buff cookies, allowing you to select one. In the future though, he'll offer a much larger selection of goods.

More Tool Effects

A lot of the tools in the game have new effects to make them feel a bit juicier! Things like picking fruit, placing paths, weeding, and placing objects all have some new particle effects and/or animations associated with them.

Gamescom Videos

Gamescom was one of the craziest weeks of my life. I was totally overwhelmed by the number of people who came to say hi to me and try out the game, and the feedback was all really positive!

I was very lucky to have my partner and friends helping out at the booth, because without them there's no way I would have survived the week. The whole thing was very exhausting and I got sick right afterwards, but it was definitely worth it! It was lovely getting to meet some of you!

I filmed quite a lot leading up to Gamescom and also while I was in Cologne, and I'll be making two videos about the experience. One will be out early next week, showing all the preparations I was doing in the final three weeks before Gamescom, and the second will be out at the end of next week and will show the event itself.

Coming Soon

First I have to go back through some of the features that I hurried into the game before Gamescom and clean up a few loose end, but after that I'll be working on an exciting new feature: bees! You'll be able to get beehives for your garden, look after bees, and produce your own honey!

New Devlog Video - Early Access

Here's the latest devlog video, all about the preparations I've been doing for Gamescom. It'll go live on Youtube this weekend. Hope you enjoy!

HomeGrown News: Gamescom, New Graphics, Logo, Fruit Trees

Hey everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates recently - I had to wait until I was allowed to tell you this news and talk about what I've been preparing for over the last couple of months. But the lineup is now official, so I'm excited to tell you that I'll be exhibiting HomeGrown at this year's Gamescom in Cologne!

I've spent much of my time recently preparing for the event, both in terms of development and on the marketing side of things. Read on to find out about everything I've been working on!

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

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

New Graphics

After my application to Gamescom got accepted I shuffled around my development plan a bit to prioritize things that I needed before the event. I had to provide promotional screenshots and a trailer for the game recently, so I brought forward my planned graphical update and have been polishing up the look of the game.

Most of the models in the home area of the game have been reworked, including almost all the vegetables, the trees, and the house. I've also had another go at the colours and lighting in an attempt to make the graphics more vibrant and appealing.

Not all the artwork has been completely updated yet, so you'll find the occasional object looking a bit off and some plants missing a growth stage model or two. The whole town area is yet to be updated, so it looks a bit different to the updated home area, and appears slightly gloomy in the new lighting conditions. This will of course all be fixed very soon!

Harvesting Effect

As well as polishing up the graphics, I'd also like to get the tool actions feeling as satisfying as possible before Gamescom. With that in mind, I implemented a new effect for when you harvest your crops, so that they now fly from the ground into your inventory.

I initially tried implementing this using a physics based approach - applying gravity and a pulling force to the flying vegetables. However, I found that to be a bit unreliable and they would sometime fly right off the screen or go into orbit around the inventory.

So I switched to an interpolation based approach, essentially creating an easing function that smoothly moves the vegetable to it's target position. That way I was able to ensure that the vegetable always ends up in exactly the right position, at exactly the right time.

Fruit Trees

This version of the game also includes the fruit tree update! Currently there's only one in the game, the apple tree, but more will be joining it soon. These slow-growing crops can be planted on grass, and the fruit can be harvested periodically using the secateurs.

The fruit trees have a new farming mechanic associated with them, which is pruning. Every now and again excess branches will grow out of the trees. If left there, these will slowly have a negative effect on the plant's health. So if you want to get the best out of your fruit trees you'll want to cut these extra branches off using the new pruning tool.

Promo Art and Logo

In preparation for Gamescom I've been working together with artist Sibylle Hell (@nomnomroko) who has been creating some of the art-work I'll be using for promoting the game. She's created a lovely logo for HomeGrown, as well as some promo art (such as the illustration above) and the banner that will be the backdrop of my Gamescom booth.

Music, Website, Steam Page - Coming Soon!

There are lots of other things in the works at the moment as I prepare for Gamescom. Jamal (who also composed the music for Equilinox) has started working on the HomeGrown soundtrack. I've also begun designing the website for the game, and the Steam page will be ready fairly soon.

That's all for now! Thank you as always for your support, and I hope to see some of you at Gamescom in August!

Homegrown 0.6.1 - Automation!

Apologies for the delay, but the first iteration of the automation update is finally ready! This introduces sprinklers, auto-harvesters, and auto-planters to the game. You can now give it a try using the download link in the usual place. As a one off, you'll start with a bunch of machines and sprinklers already in your inventory, allowing you to experiment with them from the get-go.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

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

See how I implemented these features in the latest devlog.

Sprinklers

The first of the new automation features is the sprinklers, which can take care of some of the watering for you. Just place them in the middle of your beds and they'll keep nearby tiles watered for a while.

They do however still need manually refilling from time to time. In order to properly balance the sprinklers I needed them to have some manual cost associated with them otherwise they'd be too overpowered. As you progress through the game and have more money available to you, you'll be able to upgrade to better sprinklers that need refilling much less often.

Automation Machines

After the sprinklers, I implemented the automation machines. These machines can be placed along the edges of a vegetable bed, and then they have an arm that extends out along the row, processing each tile in some way. Currently there are two types of machine: auto-harvesters that harvest plants from each tile, and auto-planters that plant seeds in each tile.

This feature took me the longest implement, as it involves several different concepts. I used behaviour trees to control the machine's actions, made use of graph theory to manage connections between machines so that adjacent machines can act as a group, and implemented animations for the moving parts of the machines.

In order to function, the machines need access to a container, whether it's to dump harvested vegetables in, or take seeds from. This is where the manual labour cost of these machines comes from, as the player has to periodically manually empty or refill the containers. You will of course be able to upgrade to larger and larger container sizes, to reduce your workload even further.

Harvesters and Planters

To set up automation for a vegetable bed, you need to place the machines on the soil tiles, preferably along the edge of the bed. Make sure they're facing the right way (I'll add some indicators soon to make this more obvious). Neighboring machines will connect together to form a group. Each group needs access to one container, which currently has to be placed on a grass tile (can't be placed on paths or soil right now, sorry!)

The auto-planters will start planting once all the in-range soil tiles are empty and there are seeds available in the connected container. The auto-harvesters will set-off once all the in-range plants are fully grown, as long as there's a connected container with storage space. For now, each group can only have access to one container (look for the visible connection between container and machine to see which one is actually connected).

Admittedly, the whole system still needs a lot more work to make it more flexible and convenient to use. There's also definitely lots of balancing needed, and although I've worked through loads of edge cases there are still many more to sort out. Also I'm not too keen on how the machines look right now - they're a bit of an eye-sore - but I have plans to fix that. Overall though I see a lot of potential in this feature, and I'm excited to keep refining it!

Coming Soon...

Next up, I'll be working on adding fruit trees to the game! You may remember apple trees being in the game once before, but it's time to implement them properly this time.

I've also started paying some attention to the marketing side of things, such as setting up the Steam page, and sorting out a website, cover art, and logo. Doing that has made me realize that I need to finalize some of the in-game graphics first, so I’ll be spending some time on that over the coming weeks as well.

Thanks as always for the fantastic support!!

Karl

Automation Devlogs Part 1 & 2

I've almost finished work on the automation update now, and I've made two devlogs about how it went.

The first devlog is all about the sprinklers and is already public on Youtube.

The second devlog covers the development of the auto-harvester and auto-planter machines, and will be released in a week's time. But you lot get early access of course ;) You can watch it here.

It's still going to be a little while before the updated version of the game and code are available though. I've got a few loose ends to tidy up and I'm going to the UK tomorrow to visit my family over Easter, so it might be another couple of weeks. Sorry about that!

Homegrown 0.6.0 - Town Features Finished!

After half a year of working on the town area, it's finally done! I've just been finishing up the last of the town features, which is all about marketing boosts that you can apply to your farmers' market stall.

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.

Marketing Boosts

The marketing boost update replaces the old trending items feature. Previously, a random set of items would be trending each week, and these items would sell faster at the market. The aim of this was to introduce a bit more strategy when it comes to choosing which vegetables to put on sale, but in the end I felt that it didn't really achieve that - the optimal strategy was always to just sell your trending items first, then any other items if you still have time. A bit too predictable!

Marketing boosts will hopefully make things a bit more interesting. Each week, the Stall Upgrade Shop has three random marketing options that you can choose from, and you're allowed to purchase one for that week. On market day, you apply the marketing to your stall to activate the boost and it remains active for the rest of that day. Check out the latest devlog for a full demo at the end of the video.

There are lots of different types of marketing that you can get (at least there will be - I've only made six so far!) and each one affects your stall differently. For example, Evening Boost increases your sales during the last quarter of the day, while Leek Soup Boost  gives a selling bonus to potatoes, leeks and carrots, provided they're all being sold together.

These marketing types should hopefully involve a bit more decision making than simply having some set trending items. It also adds a slight risk vs. reward aspect, as you have to pay upfront for the marketing and could potentially make a loss if you haven't got the right items to sell. Plus, with different marketing options appearing each week, every market day will feel a little bit unique.

Produce Categories

I wanted some marketing boosts to apply to entire categories of produce, like Root Vegetables or Berries. To make that possible, I added a category system for all the fruits and vegetables in the game. Their category is now displayed in the item info of both the seeds and the harvested produce.

Other Market Tweaks

ordered by price, economy changes,adding to offers

Seed Icons

One other little update this month un-related to the market was the seed icons. Previously, they had use the vegetable item icon on the seed packet, but I'd always thought they would benefit from having a more simplified image of the vegetable. The 3D-ish look of the vegetable icons had always felt a bit off to me, and they were just a bit too detailed for an icon that appears so small within another icon.

So I tried swapping them out for simplified 2D vegetable icons, which I think now looks a lot cleaner. Plus, I already have these 2D icons for all the vegetables anyway (they're used on the collectible medals from the vegetable competition feature) so it doesn't involve me having to do any extra work.

Other News

In other news, I've almost finished work on the 8-bit breadboard computer that I've been building over the last few months. I recently made a short video of it running a program that calculates the Fibonacci numbers, which you can check out here.

And finally, as Spring is almost here I've been getting started planting a few vegetables that I'll be growing on my balcony this year. The tomatoes, spring onions, and lettuce seeds have all germinated and are currently growing in the kitchen until the weather is warm enough for them to move outside.

Next Up...

Next week, it's back to the farm for some more farming gameplay! Coming up soon we've got the pest system and fruit trees, but I'll be starting off next week with the feature I've been most looking forward to: automation! Think sprinklers to cut down on watering, auto-planters, and auto-harvesters to make farm life easier. I can't wait to get started!

Thank you all so much for your continued support <3

Karl

New Devlog Video

Here's the latest devlog video: https://youtu.be/WbP8hM8J9L4

It's all about the final feature for the town area, which is a new marketing mechanic for the farmers' market.

The download links for the code and game will be updated soon - I'm just finishing off some loose ends. And then I'll be getting back to the farm area for the final gameplay features!

Karl

Homegrown 0.5.7 - Shop Updates

A load of shop related changes in this update! Shops now support a couple of new features, their UI has received an upgrade, and there’s a brand-new shop in town where you can sell your unwanted items.

See the changes in action in the latest devlog video.

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.

New Shop Features

The biggest update to the shops is the introduction of shop categories! Shops can now feature category tabs along the left side of the UI, allowing you to filter items by category for easier browsing. For now, this feature is available only in the Tool Shop, but as more items are added to the game I’ll use it in other shops as well.

I’ve also implemented support for locked items in the shops. These are items that start off unavailable and can be unlocked by meeting specific requirements as you progress through the game. For now, this feature is only being tested with a couple of items, but I'll be using it for more items soon.

UI Improvements

Last week I had another attempt at making the shop UI look presentable, with some success. The most obvious change is the addition of the decorative shop frame around the left panel. I thought this might help to give the interface a more "shop-like" feel, but I'd love to hear what you think about it.

I also added a darker background to the items panel to make the items stand out more, along with a subtle drop shadow behind them for the same reason.

One thing I still need to do is to create more distinction between shops that you're buying from and shops that you're selling to. Right now, it's not very clear at all. But apart from that, I feel like the shop UI is looking quite polished now.

The Second Hand Shop

A new shop has opened for business in the town: the Second Hand Shop! This shop will buy almost any item from you for 50% of its original value. It's great for getting rid of any tools or equipment that you no longer need.

My main reason for adding this shop was to give you a safety net in case things don’t go quite as planned. Spent all your money on the wrong items and now you’re out of seeds or income options? No worries! You can just sell off a few of your regrettable purchases in order to recoup some money.

Coming Soon...

Next up, it's the last of the updates to the town area - I'm going to be revisiting the farmers' market feature to add a few of the updates that I didn't get round to last time. Then it will be back to the home area for the final farming gameplay features!

Thanks for all your support <3

Karl

Homegrown 0.5.6 - Villagers Update

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a lovely time over the holidays and are having a good start to 2025. I've begun the year by wrapping up the villagers update - they've now got a fresh new look, improved behaviours, and even some simple dialogue!

You can see how I implemented the villagers in the latest devlog video.

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.

New Villager Design

There are two main functions that the villagers in the town are meant to perform. Firstly, they're essentially "living scenery" for the town area - meant to make the town appear more alive and bustling. Secondly, they’re there to help the player by providing instructions on how to use the town’s features, such as the restaurant task system or the farmers' market.

Starting with their role as scenery, I wanted to come up with a better design than the portly placeholder character that I've been using up until now. It's not that I particularly disliked the old model, but I felt it looked a bit too amateurish because of how simplistic it was.

I don't have much experience with making human characters so creating the new design took me a while, but after a lot of attempts and iterations I finally ended up with a model that I was happy with.

That said, one part of the model that still needs work is the eyes. I tried to make them look like smiling eyes, but after the devlog a lot of people pointed out they looked more like bushy eyebrows! Aside from that though, I'm really pleased with the new design, and I think it fits very well with the art-style of the rest of the game.

Last month I also updated the rendering system to allow for a mesh to have up to four custom colours applied in the shader during rendering. This means I can use the same base mesh for the villagers but give each one unique colours for hair, skin, and clothing. For now, most of the villagers just use this base mesh with randomized colours and a random haircut, but I'll be adding more and more custom-designed villagers (like the chef in the image above) to bring more personality to the game.

Dialogue System

As mentioned earlier, the main reason for having the villagers is to help the player by providing information about how to use the town's features. In order for them to carry out this purpose I've set up a simple dialogue system.

The way it works is pretty straightforward - just click on a villager and they'll start speaking. If they have more to say, a small arrow appears in the bottom-right corner of the speech bubble, letting you know you can click again to continue the conversation.

For now, the dialogue system is very basic, and I’m only using it with a select few villagers. But the plan is that, eventually, every building in town will have a villager standing outside it, ready to explain how that feature works if you ever need a little guidance.

One thing I still need to implement is support for conditional dialogue. For example, in the image above, you can see a villager telling the player about the farmers' market that takes place on Sundays. Ideally, their dialogue would adapt based on whether it’s already Sunday, whether you’ve purchased a stall or not, and whether you’ve put items up for sale.

Behaviours

The villagers in Homegrown don't need particularly complex behaviours, but I did at least want them to do something slightly more interesting than standing completely still staring at the camera.

Thankfully, I'd worked a lot on behaviour trees back when I was developing the city-builder game so I was able to re-purpose much of that code for Homegrown. I also took the movement code from the city-builder and, with a few tweaks, applied it to the villagers so that they can move around town.

One additional feature I had to add was the ability to interrupt one action with another action. This was necessary so that when the player clicks on a villager, they can stop what they're doing and face the camera for the duration of the chat. Once they've finished speaking, they should stop their current speaking action and return to their previous action.

As documented in my latest devlog video, getting this to work was a bit of a challenge and is still in need of some tweaking, but for now, it’s working well enough to do the job!

I haven't really put the behaviour system to full use yet. Most villagers are still just hanging around with a simple idle animation, while a few are strolling through town or moving between market stalls. I’m sure I’ll find the time to make better use of these behaviors down the line, but for now, there are bigger priorities!

The plan for 2025

The town area is very close to completion now. Starting Monday, I'll be doing a bit more work on the shops and then I'll be revisiting some previous features, like the farmers' market, to implement some of the feedback that I received after the devlogs. That will probably take up the next couple of months.

Once the town features are wrapped up, I'll be shifting my focus back to the farm area, to implement the final remaining gameplay features that I have planned, as well as iterating on a few older features.

After that, the core gameplay of Homegrown will be complete! My goal is to have a beta version ready later this year, so I can then organize some more extensive playtesting while polishing up the game in preparation for the main release.

Longest Ever Devlog

In case you missed it, at the start of December I filmed every day for a couple of weeks which turned into my longest video ever! Instead of the highlights that get shown in my usual videos, this one gives a more realistic look at the ups and downs of everyday life as an indie game developer.

You can watch that devlog here.

Thanks as always for your fantastic support, and have a great start to the new year!

Karl

New Devlog - Early Access

Hey everyone,

Here's the link for the latest devlog video: https://youtu.be/h3L9KE-A3j4

It's the longest devlog I've ever made! In the video I show the progress I've made on the villagers in the last couple of weeks, including new models, a behaviour system, and some simple dialogue. Plus I show how the 8-bit computer project is coming along!

I'll upload the updated code in the next couple of days.

Karl

Homegrown 0.5.5 - New Tree Features!

Over the last month I've been implementing various tree related features, including cutting trees, raking up leaves, and growing saplings! Originally this was going to have more of a connection to the town area (hence it's part of the "Town Gameplay" update that I'm currently working through) but I ended up changing my plans a bit. Oh well - I decided to implement these tree features now anyway because I'd been really looking forward to them!

You can see how I implemented the trees in the latest devlog video.

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.

Cutting Trees

First up, I've added a way to remove trees from your farm, which you might wish to do to make more space for growing crops. Just buy yourself an axe from the tool shop and get chopping!

Different trees take different amounts of time to cut down. There are only two tree types currently in the game but I'll definitely be adding more. In order to cut down the higher tier trees you'll probably want to upgrade your axe a bit first, which you can do at the upgrade shop in town.

Selling your Logs

A new shop has opened up in town: the Raw Materials shop! Here you're able to sell any logs that you've gained from cutting trees, along with other raw materials which will be added in future updates.

I tried out a slightly different building style for this shop's model. I'm still not completely decided on what the buildings in town should look like, so I'm experimenting with a few options. I quite like the look of the roof on the new shop, so perhaps I'll switch to that style for all the other shops too. Once I'm finished with all the gameplay features I'll be doing another big graphics update, so I'll finalize the looks then.

Falling Leaves

Now that there's the option to cut down trees it might seem like the obvious thing to do; just cut down every tree you come across to make more space for farming and sell the logs. That's a bit boring though, so I wanted to add some sort of benefit of keeping trees in your farm so that it would provide the player with a more interesting decision to make.

In the end I decided that the tree could act as a good source of "plant waste" - an important resource in Homegrown as it's used to make compost which many plants require to grow. Most farming actions already give you plant waste as a by-product, but the trees will be a useful renewable source of this compostable material.

They do this by dropping leaves every now and again, with the leaves collecting at the base of the tree over time. You can then use the new rake tool to rake them up into your inventory. There's a maximum number of leaves that can collect under each tree though, so you will need to rake occasionally to keep the source of leaves flowing.

Upgrading your Rake

Homegrown is all about scaling and growth and that applies to your need for compost as well. As your farm expands and you grow larger numbers of higher tiered crops, your compost requirements are going to increase quite significantly. In order for the leaf dropping feature to stay relevant, there needed to be a way for the leaf supply to scale up as well.

One way that this will naturally occur is that you'll acquire new trees as you purchase new plots of land for your farm. This will certainly help, but it won't scale in the exponential way that your need for compost will.

So to help with this, I've added an "Efficiency" stat to the rake which can be upgraded. The higher your rake's efficiency, the more plant waste it will collect when raking up leaves.

Saplings and Growing Trees

I also added tree saplings to the game this week, so you're able to grow your own trees. However, I'm still undecided about how and when you should receive these sapling items.

I'm not sure if buying them from the shop would be too easy, and it might be hard to scale properly as your farm becomes more and more profitable and the sapling prices become easier and easier for you to afford. I'll probably add them to the reward pools for the restaurant task system and the vegetable competition, but for now the only time you get them is when you cut down a tree.

When a tree is chopped down you receive one sapling for that type of tree. This means that removing a tree is not permanent - you'll be able to grow it again. However, the saplings take ages to grow (currently around 30 mins, but I need to do more play-testing and balancing) so the downside is you'll be without that source of falling leaves for quite a while. I thought this could allow the player to be strategic about when they cut down trees, depending on their current compost supply situation.

Coming Soon...

Just a few more town features to do before I move back to the home area to implement the final farming features. Next I'll be working on the villagers, then I have a few more shops to add to the town, and to finish I'll be revisiting some of the earlier town features such as the farmers' market.

Thanks for reading, and thanks as always for your support!

Karl

Homegrown 0.5.4 - Vegetable Competition!

This update is all about the town's vegetable competition! Available every market day, the competition allows you to gamble your best vegetables for the chance of winning a variety of prizes, including some collectible medals that increase your farm's reputation!

You can see how I implemented this feature in the latest devlog video.

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.

Premium Vegetables

To enter the competition you'll need some premium quality vegetables. These have already been in the game for a while; they're the blue star vegetables that you very occasionally get while harvesting healthy plants. Make sure your crops are as healthy as possible to have the best chance of getting some. Up until now you've only been able to sell them in the shop (for a lot more than the standard quality vegetables) but now you'll be able to enter them into the competition for a chance to win something better.

Once change that I've made to the premium vegetables is that they each now have a weight value. The competition is judged by weight, so the higher the better! To make things simple, all the weight values go from 1-100. Currently each premium vegetable spawns with a random weight (using a triangular distribution centered on 50) but in the future there will be fertilizers you can use to increase your chances of harvesting larger vegetables.

The Competition

The competition tent can be found in the farmers' market field every market day. The way it works is very simple: just choose which vegetable you want to enter and then the competition will begin. Your vegetable will be joined by four random opponents and they are then all ranked by weight. If you come in the top two then you'll receive some prizes and if you come first you also get a gold medal.

Bear in mind, you won't get your vegetable back, regardless of how you do. The prizes you can win are definitely worth more than the vegetable, but if you lose you'll get nothing. So, based on your vegetable's weight, you'll need to consider whether you think it's worth the risk. You could of course play it safe and instead sell the vegetable at the shop for a nice sum of cash, but you'll be missing out on a chance to win some big prizes!

Collectible Medals

One such prize are the collectible gold medals. There's one for every vegetable type (12 currently in the game) and you get one every time you win a competition. If you want, you can simply convert them to cash by selling them to the store - they fetch quite a high price!

Another thing you can do with them is collect them. At the tool shop you can now purchase a medal display table, which is an object that you can place in your farm. This allows you to display your gold medals for all to see!

Doing so will increase your farm's reputation. The more medals you collect, the higher your reputation! You can click on the medal display with an empty hand to open up the UI to check your current reputation points. As your reputation increases, the shop in town will pay more for your produce, so collecting these medals will help to make your farm even more profitable.

Ideas for the Future

I'm already quite happy with this feature but I'd definitely like to do another iteration on it at some point. I feel like it's currently just a bit too reliant on random chance so I'd like to add a few more things that the player can do to improve their odds.

One obvious addition is to add fertilizers that the player can use to increase the chance of obtaining heavier vegetables or perhaps make it more likely for them to get premium quality veg in the first place. I've also been considering boosts that can affect the competition itself, such as sweet treats that you can earn elsewhere in the game that you can give to the judge to "encourage" him to weigh your opponents' veggies a little less generously. Things like that to give the player a bit more control, while not removing the random aspect completely, so that you can feel like your really earned the medals, rather than just getting lucky.

Coming Next...

Up next I'm going to be doing a quick update about trees. Finally there will be a proper way for you to remove trees from your farm to make more space for planting, but there will also be some new benefits to keeping them around.

That's it for this update! Sorry again that it took a bit longer than usual. The next update should hopefully be much faster. Thanks as always for the support <3

Karl

New Devlog Video - Early Access

Hey everyone!

The latest devlog video is now available to watch for Patreon supporters: https://youtu.be/OH8ghi2bwwY

Sorry it's been a while since the last update! This was quite a large feature to implement, plus I had a busy September outside of gamedev. The next update won't take as long!

Updated links for downloading this version of the game and code will be up very soon (later today or tomorrow). I'm just finishing up some loose ends.

Thanks for your patience!

Karl

Homegrown 0.5.3 - Restaurant Task System!

Another new gameplay feature for the town! The restaurant has opened for business and is making orders for vegetables. If you complete these orders you'll earn some extra cash and bonus rewards.

You can see the restaurant in action in the latest devlog video.

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.

Restaurant Orders

You'll find the restaurant just to the right of the town center. When you start the game it's closed, but it opens at the beginning of the second week. Every week on Monday the restaurant will provide you with a list of orders for specific vegetables. Completing these orders will earn you significantly more money than if you'd just sold the vegetables to the shop.

If you can complete all the orders before the week is up then you'll be able to claim a bonus reward, which is some extra cash plus some useful items.

Upgrading the Restaurant

As your farm expands, you'll find the initial tasks may become a bit trivial and the rewards no longer particularly enticing. This is when you might consider lending a financial helping hand to the restaurant owner, so that the restaurant can scale up its business and provide you with more meaningful orders!

You'll find the restaurant owner standing outside the restaurant waiting for your donation. Paying him will instantly upgrade the restaurant and provide you with larger orders which will include higher-tier vegetables. Bigger orders of course also means bigger rewards! You'll need to decide when you think it's worth upgrading - it's a significant cost but if your farm's able to handle the larger orders then it'll be worth it!

Coming Up Next...

I'll be working on the vegetable competition next. This will take place once a week on market day, and will allow you to enter your premium quality (blue star) veg for the chance of winning some prizes. After that I'll be working on the villagers, giving them different looks, implementing some basic movement for them and making it possible to talk to them.

Thanks as always for your support!

Karl

Homegrown 0.5.2 - The Farmers' Market!

It's the farmers' market update! It took a little longer than expected but there was a lot to do - it's probably the biggest feature I've added to the game so far. You can read all about the new feature below.

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.

Market Day

First up, there's now the concept of time in the game. The day of the week is now shown in the top-left of the screen along with a clock/dial that shows you how far through the day it is. Currently each day lasts around 4 minutes, but I'll be experimenting with different day lengths to make sure the balancing is just right.

At the end of every week is market day! The town gets all nicely decorated and various gameplay features will be available to the player, for one day only. I've only implemented one of those features so far, and that is of course the farmers' market.

Farmers' Market

The farmers' market is held once a week in the field to the right of the town. Here you can purchase a stall which will then allow you to put your fruit and vegetables up for sale. Choose which items you want to sell and choose the price you want to sell them at, and then leave them to sell throughout the day.

You can go and collect your earnings at any time during market day. After market day you can collect any left-overs from the "collection box" which is left behind in the market field.

For now, time is paused when you're in the town area, so items will only sell while you're in your farm.

You can see a full demonstration of the farmers' market in the latest devlog video.

Trending Items

Every week a few items will be trending at the market. These items sell 50% faster than usual. If an item is trending one week then there's a 75% chance it will be trending the week after too, so you'll have a rough idea of which vegetables may be trending. Prioritizing the sale of trending vegetables will definitely help you squeeze more profit out of market day.

Upgrading your Stall

You're able to sell your vegetables at the market for a higher price than you would usually get by selling them to the store. However, at the market your items take time to sell and you only have a limited time before the farmers' market closes for the week, so you might not be able to sell everything.

As you farm grows you'll be producing more and more vegetables and you'll need to upgrade your market stall in order to match your increasing supply. You can find a "Stall Accessories" shop in the town field where you can buy some useful upgrades for your stall.

In the future this shop will sell all sorts of items that will allow you to improve your stall in different ways, but for now it sell just two. There's the "Produce Box" which you can place on your stall to add more selling slots, and the "Stall Upgrade Kit" which increases the demand for your items by making your stall more impressive (right now it just changes the colour, but it will apply more significant visual changes in the future).

What's Left to Do

This was only the first iteration of the market feature, to implement the basic functionality. There's a second iteration already planned where I'll flesh out the feature and spend time on the little details and balancing.

There are a couple of visual improvements that I plan to make in the next iteration. The main one is that the upgrades should have more of a visual impact on your stall, so you can really see it becoming more impressive as you upgrade it. I'd also like you to be able to see the vegetables that you're selling on the 3D model of your stall. Currently it does display some vegetable-like objects when you put items up for sale, but they don't actually match the specific vegetables that you're selling.

There are also going to be lots more upgrades and boosts that you'll be able to apply to your stall. I especially like the idea of purchasable boosts that only last for a single market day. That could add a lot more strategy and also a bit of risk to your decision making. You'd need to decide whether it's worth it to get a boost that week, depending on the situation. For example, there could be a one-day berry marketing boost that would increase your berry sales for one day. It may or may not be worth investing in that, depending on how many berries you have to sell that week, the quality of berries that you've harvested, and whether the berries are trending or not.

Coming up next...

Up next, more gameplay features for the town! I'll be starting work on the restaurant task system tomorrow, then after that will be the vegetable competition, and then I'll properly implement the villagers.

Thanks a lot for your continued support and sorry that this update took so long!

Karl 

New Devlog Early Access - Farmers' Market!

Hey everyone!

I've been working loads on the new farmers' market feature over the last few weeks. It's not quite finished yet so there's no download link right now, but I can give you early access to the next devlog video: https://youtu.be/Ld9qvxoaB6Y

If you're just looking to see a demonstration of the farmers' market in action, you can watch from 16:05 onward in the video.

Let me know what you think!

Karl

Homegrown 0.5.1 - New Town!

Over the next couple of months I'll be adding a lot of gameplay features to the town area. In preparation for this, I've been overhauling the town scene to get it ready for the upcoming updates.

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.

Check out the new changes in the latest devlog video.

Why change?

I've always had a bit of an issue about the way that you navigate around the town. It uses the same camera controls as in the farm area and that always felt slightly off to me. Right from the start I removed the ability to rotate and zoom the camera in the town - I realized that these were unnecessary complications when browsing the shops, but I don't think I went far enough in restricting camera movement to the bare necessities. Having so much freedom with the camera movement has always felt iffy to me.

I think this is probably because of what the town's function is. Essentially, it's a menu where you choose which shop/service to use. And a 3D camera is a weird way to navigate a menu. This hasn't been much of an issue up until now as the town was small enough to fit onto a single screen - no moving required. But with the upcoming expansion to the town area I decided it was finally time to make the change

The Solution

I came up with this solution about a year ago and I've been waiting to work on the town again to implement it. I decided I needed to lean into the whole menu thing and restrict movement to just one axis, so that you can easily scroll through the shop options.

The way this works is that you now look at the shops from the front. The camera movement is essentially side scrolling, with arrows on either side of the screen allowing you to go left or right (arrow keys on the keyboard also works). You don't have to hold them down and scroll - there are fixed viewpoints in the town and clicking left or right will move you to the next viewpoint, where you'll see a whole new set of shops.

I personally think this makes a lot more sense for navigating the town in a game without a movable character. It gets right to the point of showing your shopping options directly to you, allowing you to easily browse through them like a menu, while also hopefully still feeling immersive. I also like that you can clearly see the shops from the front now, whereas before you saw a lot of roof when viewing them from above.

The actual scene still needs a lot of work. I haven't spent much time on it yet; I plan to do that when I next work on graphics (after all the gameplay updates). It's also going to evolve a lot in the coming weeks as more and more features get added to the town. But it's a decent starting point and hopefully it gives you a taste of what I'm aiming for.

Sky Rendering

Another bonus of this new town system is that the sky is visible in the game for the first time! Currently the sky is rendered onto a simple full-screen quad, which is sufficient seeing as the camera can't rotate in the town (so no need for a sky box/sphere).

Nevertheless, I convert the quad 's vertex positions to world space before using them to generate a simple gradient and apply the cloud textures in the shader. This is so that the sky doesn't get squashed or stretched when you change the size of the display (which changes the size of the full-screen quad).

I also added a bit of noise to the gradient to fix some slight colour banding that I noticed. This dithering helps to make the transition between individual colour values in the gradient less noticeable.

Inventory

Seeing as you can't use your tools in the town area, I decided to remove the inventory hotbar from the UI when in the town. I do think you should still be able to check your inventory while you're out shopping though, so there's a button at the bottom of the screen which opens up your entire inventory.

Coming soon

The next updates are going to be all about market day! At the end of each in-game week (about every half hour) there will be a market in town. This will include a farmers' market where you can sell your produce, and a vegetable competition that you can enter, among other things. This will take place in the currently empty field on the far right of the town.

The town restaurant will also be opening up soon! This is the building you can see just to the right of the town center. Every week it will have a new menu and will have orders for specific vegetables that you can choose to fulfill.

You'll notice that there are a few villagers in town already, but they don't seem to be very friendly! In fact, I'm not even sure if they're currently alive. But I'll be breathing some life into them soon and they'll move around a bit, making the town seem more lively. I might also use them for giving helpful tips about how to use the town features, e.g. you'll be able to talk to the chef outside the restaurant for a quick explanation of how the restaurant order system works.

That's it for this update! Do give it a go and let me know what you think. Thanks as always for the support!!

~Karl

Homegrown 0.5.0 - UI Overhaul Complete!

Work on the game's UI is done...for now. Over the last month I've been cleaning up all the little UI related loose ends as I prepare to move back to gameplay. I'm pretty satisfied with the result, but there's definitely still room for improvement so I'm sure I'll keep tweaking and adjusting it as I go. For now though, I'm more than ready to turn my focus back to adding gameplay features!

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.

Upgrade UI Makeover

First up, I had one more UI panel that needed to be updated to the new style, and that was the upgrade shop. So I gave that a quick makeover and tidied it up a bit. Nothing particularly exciting but it hopefully looks a bit cleaner than before.

This time I experimented with putting a few subtle textured elements around the UI, such as the screws in the corner of the panel. I thought it might be nice to add these decorative touches to make each panel look more themed towards what it's used for, so that the UIs don't end up all looking the same. I'll add more things like this to the other panels in the future.

Miscellaneous Updates

Other than that, it's just been a lot of little tweaks here and there, tidying up loose ends, and just generally bringing the UI update to a close. The biggest changes that I made this month are:

• More Icons: Almost all the icons in the game now have the new style, including all of the seeds. Only the fertilizer icons haven't been changed yet - I'll update them when I work on the upcoming changes to the compost system.

• Descriptions and Stats: All the items in the game have their description and relevant stats shown in the shop.

• Hotkeys: You can now use the number keys to select items in your inventory hotbar.

• Mouseover Tooltips: The item tooltips now show up when you hover over the item with your cursor. No need to right-click.

• Plant Stats: When examining a plant you'll notice the health bar has a new, more compact look. There's also a new second bar showing the growth progress of the plant.

• Tool UI: The visuals for the currently equipped tool UI are now a bit cleaner, especially when displaying the action progress bar.

• Item background colours: Vegetables with star or premium quality have a matching background colour wherever the icon is shown.

• New Trophy: There's a new collectible trophy to purchase from the tool shop.

Upcoming Gameplay Features!

I'm very excited to be finally getting back to gameplay; I've been looking forward to it for a while! The update will be split into two parts, with the first set of new gameplay features being centered around the town area. The three pillars of the gameplay loop are farm-sell-upgrade, and the selling part has been somewhat neglected so far. Therefore, many of the upcoming features will involve new methods of turning your veg into profit. The main ones are:

• Farmer's market: At the end of every in-game week a farmer's market will take place in the town. This will provide a slightly different way of selling your star-quality (gold star) veg for a higher price than you would usually get at the shop. You'll be able to upgrade your stall in various ways to maximize your profits!

• Restaurant task system: Each in-game week the restaurant sets a new menu and requires a specific set of star-quality vegetables! It's totally optional, but if you can fulfil these orders before the week's up you'll receive a sizable payment in return. A good reason to grow a variety of crops on your farm!

• Vegetable Competition: At the farmer's market each week there will be a vegetable competition. Enter your premium-quality (blue star) vegetables for a chance to win a range of prizes!

That's it for this update! Sorry that there's no devlog this time - I wanted to just power through the last few UI updates quickly so that I could get back to gameplay, so I decided not to film this month. I'll start filming for the next devlog tomorrow as I begin work on the town features!

Thank you all for sticking with me through the rather boring UI process over the last 6 months! I'm expecting things to progress a bit faster now that that's all done.

Thanks as always for your support <3

Karl

Homegrown Update 0.4.8 - New Icons!

Recently I developed an icon generation system that can programmatically create the item icons in Homegrown. Not only has this allowed me to quickly update a lot of the old icons, but it also allows for tool icons to update when you upgrade their stats!

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.

Upgradeable Tool Icons

The new icon system assembles a 3D model of the tool behind the scenes and renders it to a texture to create the icon. The tool model can be assembled and coloured in different ways, leading to many variations for each tool icon. This allows me to generate a slightly different looking icon for every possible stat combination for that tool, so now when you upgrade your tools you'll see the icon changing to reflect that!

For a full explanation and demonstration of the system, check out my latest devlog video.

This new feature will go some way to making the upgrade system feel a bit more satisfying. Plus, with your tools physically changing with every upgrade you should hopefully feel an improved sense of progress. You start of with rather dull, broken tools, but as you progress through the game and spend more money on them, they become more and more impressive.

I've spent quite a while making model variations for the tools, but I haven't done them all yet. Most of the tools currently have visible changes up to around tier 6. I also haven't quite figured out how to use the colour changes yet. For many of the tools the tool material is controlled by the speed stat, so as you upgrade the speed of your tool you'll see its colour changing. This is probably what I'll do for all of them in the future, but there are currently a few exceptions.

Other Icons

Many of the other icons in the game have also been updated. They now have a cel shaded look and a dark outline. A definite improvement over the old icons!

A few haven't been changed yet though; mainly the seeds and the fertilizer items. These icons are slightly trickier as they have an image on them - a picture of the plant for the seed icons, and the tier number on the fertilizer icons. These icons currently can't be generated by the new icon system so I'm still working on a solution for them.

Coming Up...

This week I'm starting work on the final UI that needs to be overhauled: the upgrade shop. Just a few improvements to make there, and then the entire UI update will be complete! Then it will be back to gameplay for the next few months :)

Thank you as always for your continued support!

Karl

Homegrown 0.4.7 - New Shop UI!

A big update for the shops in this version! They've got a new brighter design, more options for choosing how many of an item you want to buy, and some satisfying visual effects when you sell your vegetables.

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.

See how I implemented the new updates in the latest devlog video.

Shop Updates

Aside from the new look, there are also a few functionality changes to the shops. The main one is the way that you choose the number of items to purchase (for stackable items). You can use the text field to type in the exact number, or use the buttons below it to choose the amount without using the keyboard. Scrolling the mouse-wheel also increases/decreases the number. The "x" button next to the text field can be used to reset the amount to 0 and the total value of the purchase is shown on the buy-button.

When selling your vegetables it's a bit different. I decided a slider would make the most sense for choosing how many of the item you want to sell. You can also just type the number into the text field if you prefer. It's a bit useless right now as there's no reason not to just sell them all, but in the future there will be other things you can do with you veg.

You can also shift+left-click on items in the left panel to quickly buy/sell them, without having to choose the amount in the right-hand panel. This instantly buys one of the item or, if you're selling, it sells the full stack of items.

Fancy Effects!

My favourite new feature in this version is the new visual effect that happens when you sell your vegetables to the grocery shop! The items now explode into coins which get then pulled into the coin pouch in the top left. The higher the value of the sale the more coins are emitted so selling you produce gets more and more satisfying as you progress in the game!

Implementing the sound effects for the coins going into the coin pouch posed an interesting problem. I wanted each individual coin to emit a "ting" sound effect when it reached the target, but with potentially hundreds of coins flying into the pouch the game was unable to play that many sound effects at once (there's a limit to how many individual sounds can be playing at a time).

So I instead created multiple sound effects containing the sound of various numbers of coins. For example, I made a sound effect of one coin, another of two coins, another of four coins, another of 8, and so on. Then, when the coin effect is carried out, every 0.2 seconds it plays the most fitting sound effect depending on how many coins reached the coin pouch during that period. You end up hearing roughly the right number of tings, with only five (or less) sound effects being played a second. The sound effects are all very short (around 0.3 seconds) so it means there are never too many overlapping sounds and the game can handle it without a problem.

Land-Buying Panel

The panel that pops up when you're buying more land has also been updated to the new UI style. That's officially all of the UI panels in the home area redone now!

UI Scaling

I've had a go at improving the automatic scaling of the UI, so that it fits better on different display sizes. I've only been able to test it on a couple of computers so far though, so let me know if the UI looks too big/small on your display and I'll do a bit more tweaking. You can still manually change the UI size using the + and - keys on the num-pad.

Auto-Saving

The game now auto-saves your farm every few minutes, so if the game crashes (which it hopefully won't!) you won't lose much progress.

Coming Soon...

Just one final UI panel to redo now: the upgrade shop. Before I do this though I'm going to do a bit of work on the item icons. I'm hoping to create a system that can generate the icons on the fly while the game is running. The main reason for this is that I'd like tool icons to change visually when you upgrade the tool's stats, but there are far too many stat combinations to manually make an icon for each one. So I'm hoping to solve this with an icon creation system and a little bit of procedural generation. Should be fun!

Thanks as always for your support!

Karl

Homegrown 0.4.6 - New Inventory!

Getting close to the end of the UI overhaul now! This time it was the turn of the inventory to receive a makeover, with a new design and some improved functionality to make it more user friendly.

You can check out all of the new updates in this week's devlog video.

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.

New Design

The look of the inventory has been updated to match the new UI style in the game, giving it a much brighter look. I've also added a scroll-bar for when you have so many items that they don't fit in the panel. Probably not something you'll encounter at this stage, but when there's more content and items in the game this will be more relevant!

Rearranging Items

One of the big changes to the inventory functionality is that you can now rearrange your items. Just left-click and drag an item to the desired slot. If there's already an item in that slot they'll switch places.

Item Inspecting

Right-clicking on an item now brings up a tool-tip displaying the name of the item and any relevant stats. These stats show slightly more info than they used to, and I'll continue improving them as development progresses. For example, you can now inspect a seed packet to see the average growth duration of the plant.

There are still a couple of things I'm undecided about here:

• Should the inspect info show up on right-click, or on mouse-over? My thinking was that you won't need to see the stats that often, so having it appear on right-click saves you from having UI panels popping up all over the place when you're just rearranging your inventory. But let me know what you think.
• Should the item inspect panel also show the item's description? Or are just the stats enough, seeing as you'll have already seen the item description when buying the item from the shop.

Inventory Functionality

There's been a change to the way the extended inventory and the inventory hotbar work to make inventory management a bit easier. Previously, if the inventory bar was full you couldn't receive any more items until you put some of your items into storage.

In this version, the storage is now an extension of your inventory. If your inventory bar is full then you can still receive items, and they'll automatically go into the main inventory. Also, when selling items to the shop it now searches in both the inventory hotbar and the main inventory to find suitable items. So no need to move the items to your hotbar first.

Item Stacks

One final little update - item stacks now do a little bounce animation when items get added to them, and the stack numbers are now abbreviated when they go over 1000 (to make sure the numbers still fit in the UI).

Coming Soon...

Just a couple more UIs to overhaul in the town area now: the shops and the upgrade system. Then I've got an interesting update planned for generating the item icons in the code, and then I'll be getting to work on the final gameplay features that I want to get into the game before launch.

Thanks as always for the support <3

New Devlog Video - Early Access

Hey everyone, here's the latest devlog video: https://youtu.be/lfYfmqKbPM4

I'll probably be putting it live tomorrow, but as Patrons you can check it out right now.

Have a good weekend!

Karl

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

Homegrown Update - Basic Mod Support & UI Work

Happy new year! Hope you're all having a good start to 2024. I've been getting back to work on the UI overhaul with some new pop-up info UIs for the entities. I also spent a bit of time during the Christmas break looking into adding mod support to Homegrown!

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.

Entity Info UI

When you have nothing equipped (right-click to unequip current tools) you can mouse over objects in the world to see extra information about them. Previously this has always come in the form of a very dull brown box in the bottom right corner containing stats about the object. With this update the info is now shown above the entity, and is hopefully somewhat more pleasing to the eye!

Previously almost every object in the world could be examined, with most just giving an empty info panel with the name of the entity. As my aim is for the game to have a rather more minimalistic UI, I decided that only objects with something interesting to say will have an info panel and will then only provide essential information.

New Health Panel

In the spirit of making the UI a bit more minimalistic, I had a go at trying to make the health UI a bit less congested. It used to be full of little health bars, one for every environmental factor affecting the plant. Here's what it looked like:

After thinking about it, I realized that I only used these extra stat bars when there's a problem with the plant, to find out what the issue is. So in the new UI I decided to take a more direct approach. If the plant has a health issue, warning messages will now be shown in the health panel, telling you exactly what's wrong. Once you've fixed the issue, the warning goes away. Hopefully this makes the health panel less cluttered and easier to read at a glance.

The warning messages are also colour coded and ordered by severity, so that you know what to prioritize.

Very Basic Mod Support

When Homegrown gets released (one day!) I'd love for it to have full support for modding. Unfortunately, this isn't a topic I have much experience with. So over Christmas I spent some time learning a bit about it and began making the game code a little bit more mod friendly.

Admittedly, I haven't got very far yet! But it is at least now possible to add custom plants and objects to the game without having to edit any of the game files. It's just assets for now, you can't write any custom code for the game just yet, but that will be the next step.

If you want to give it a try, check out this post here which explains how! You can also try out Homegrown's first mod, made by Patreon supporter "LeBogo", which adds pumpkins and strawberries to the game.

Coming soon...

More UI work! I need to redo the terrain tile info panels next, which shouldn't take long as they're very similar to the entity info panels. After that the inventory and hotbar will be getting an overhaul before I move on to the town area and start work on the shops.

Thanks as always for your wonderful support!

Make your own custom plants for Homegrown!

It's now possible to add custom plants, objects, and items to Homegrown without having to edit any of the game files! Eventually I'd like to add full-blown mod support and this is the first small step on that journey. For now, the mod support simply allows you to provide the game with custom objects and items. The mods can't provide extra code yet unfortunately, so for now your creations are only able to make use of functionality that's already in the game.

I'll be aiming to make the whole process a lot more user friendly soon. Be aware, right now it's the absolute bare basics and a bit rough around the edges!

An Example Mod

As an example, you can check out the mod made by Patreon supporter "LeBogo". He created a mod which adds strawberries and pumpkins to the game, along with their corresponding items. You can download the mod here.

To try it in the game, just unzip it, take the folder called "LeBogoMod" and pop it into your "mods" folder in the game files. Then just launch the game and the mod should be automatically loaded. Take a look in the seed shop in town and you should see strawberry and pumpkin seeds for sale!

Create your models in Blender

If you'd like to make objects or plants for Homegrown, you'll first need to make the models for them. Here are some example Blender files for plants currently in the game.

The models don't use textures - you need to apply colour to them using materials. If you're making a plant with multiple model stages then each stage needs to be a separate object. The model should be centered on the origin. One tile in Blender is one tile in-game.

You can name your object in Object Properties to provide some extra info that will be used during model conversion. You can name them like this: fileName!xOffset!

fileName will end up being the name of the model file. xOffset is an offset that gets applied to the model's x position during conversion. This allows you to space out your model stages along the x axis if you want to, instead of having to stack them all on the origin.

Exporting from Blender

You need to export your models as OBJ files. Here are the settings you should use when exporting:

You can export multiple models at once into a single OBJ file (useful for exporting all the model stages of a plant). Just make sure they are all selected before exporting.

Converting to the Homegrown model file format

Homegrown uses a different model format, so you'll need to convert from OBJ to Homegrown's format using the Model Converter Tool, which you can download here.

It's a very basic text based program. It will prompt you to enter the name of the Entity you want to create and will then allow you to add models to that entity. Make sure you put your OBJ files in the "ObjFiles" folder before starting. Check out the "Help" folder for more details and examples. There are also some test OBJ files provided in the ObjFiles folder. Let me know if you have any trouble with the program!

Creating Entity and Item Files

The newly created entity files end up in the "Entities" folder. The model converter tool outputs an entity folder for your entity, containing the model files and an empty info file (named EntityInfo_name.cba). You'll need to input the entity information into this text file, which unfortunately has to be done manually for now. I recommend just copying the entity info of a similar plant and changing the relevant fields. In the Model Converter Tool's "Entities" folder you'll find the entity info for the Carrot plant to use as a guide.

The data fields are mostly self explanatory but let me know if you have any questions! You'll definitely need to change the modelFile names in the RENDER component to match your model file names, and you may need to change the modelStages indices in the GROWTH component if your plant has a different number of stages. The seed stage always has to be the first model in the list, unless you specify otherwise.

Text

In order to provide text such as entity names or item names, you'll need to first create a lang file. Name it en.csv and put it into your mod's lang folder. Check out LeBogo's mod for an example. Put any text strings that you want to use in this file. You can then reference them from the entity and item info files.

IDs

To link to text-strings, items, or entities you need to reference their ID in the following way: modName:itemID

For example, if you look in the pumpkin's entity info file in LeBogo's mod, in the HARVESTABLE component, the pumpkin item is referenced like this: LeBogoMod:pumpkin

"LeBogoMod" is the name of the mod, and "pumpkin" is the ID of the item. If for some reason you want to reference content from the main game you can simply leave out the mod name.

Good luck!

Let me know if you have any difficulties with this at all. And if you do get the chance to make a mod then please show me! I'd love to see your creations.

A big thank you to LeBogo for helping me with mod support and for creating Homegrown's first mod!

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

Homegrown 0.4.3 - Main Menu

The latest version of Homegrown with the new main menu is available for Game Tier+ patrons here.

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

The new main menu finally allows you to have multiple saves at once. Just click the "My Farms" option and there you'll see a list of your save files. You can create new ones, delete old ones, or load up any of your previous saves.

Be warned, there's currently no confirmation for the delete button so be careful not to miss-click! I'll be adding that very soon. There's also currently no way to rename you save files - that's another feature that's on its way.

The options menu is a bit lacking at the moment, but there are at least a couple of options to change the sound volume and an option to toggle between full-screen and windowed mode.

Over the next weeks I've got a bit more work to do on some main-menu related topics. Managing input controls is a big one - determining which part of the game is currently "in-focus" and using the inputs. For example, scrolling the mouse wheel in a UI scroll panel should move the scroll bar up and down, while scrolling the mouse wheel outside of the UI panel should zoom the game's camera in and out. I'm implemented some quick fixes for this for now, but I need a more scaleable general solution.

I'm also going to do a bit more work on the game initialization process and work on having a nice loading screen showing while the game is setting up. After that it will be back to the in-game UI as I continue the big redesign.

Thanks as always for your support!

Karl

Main Menu Implemented & Early Access to Devlog

Homegrown finally has a main menu! It's fairly basic for now but it at least provides some functionality that's been very lacking, such as some audio settings and the ability to load, delete and start new save files!

The updated version of the code and game will be available very soon - I'm just finishing up some loose ends in the code. 

There will be a devlog out tomorrow showing the main menu in action, but if you'd like you can check it out early here: https://youtu.be/DKkzRmgaK4c

All the best!

Karl