4 Seasons

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Brief:
Complete inspired on Harvest Moon and maybe a little bit of The Sims, this game it's an adventure farming game. The player can grow crops, fishing, mining, take care of animals, decorate your house and your farm, craft better tools and new items, cook different foods and many other things...



Pictures and features on posts.

Get the alpha:


Links:
Track it on indiedb
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Development Blog

Gameplay test (Old):

GO TO FIRST UNREAD POST

 

Looks great man! I think your grass texture might need some more variation though

I'll become a watcher!

 

Hey thanks! You're right, I will work on it!

 

Very nice looking game so far! Is this your first game you've made?

 

Hey Liggles, actually, this is my 3rd game, but the first and the second one was very very simple games (you can see them on the link of my signature). This one it's a little bit more complicated...

 

There's something undeniably pleasant about farming. I'll be watching this.

 

Hehe, I think the same man!
I am also tracking your project, you make some real solid progress and I like your character very much!! ^^

 

So, I restarted everything over, all the scripts was kinda a mess, many bugs... Then I decided to do that and I changed the graphic style too...

 

No one tested?
I think I will make a gameplay video then...

 

It looks like a promising start for sure!

It doesn't look like there is much to test in the web player, lack of indication of what controls are and such.

Anyways, keep on with the project! I really liked rune factory frontier, and the harvest moons and im sure you can draw some great inspiration from those.

It's good to see this type of game with modern graphics.

 

Thanks for testing it man! Sorry about the controls, it's behind the link on the first post now.
So, about the demo, you can only interact with some things like the door, bed, etc. Also, you can plant seeds, the plants will grow if you water them everyday (I know that nobody got time for test that but it's there too ), I'll make more updates soon...

 

phew, after hours I could finish the animation system for the player actions animations... but for now, only the hoe has an animation but it will easlily expanded.

 

Made some updates, now the tool renderer switch to the right one (disable all the others and enable the right one, I'm thinking of use the material for all the tools and a texture atlas for them and change only the mesh filter when switching tools), also, it will sync the tools on database with the tools on the scene hierarchy automatically, then it will disable all the renderers and activate only the renderer of the active tool, that was kinda hard for me to do because I needed to search automatically on the scene hierarchy (child of the hand transform of course) all the renderers the player has on his hand, store on an array according to the database tools array order, so I can enable and disable the right renderer using an enum (the same I use for acess the right tool data on database) as index of the renderer array, then everything becomes dynamic and well organized.

TEST IT, and give me some feedback.

 

Ok, now I have something cooler to show:






Sorry about the flood tho...

 

I really like these kinda games, looking for updates

 

Looking cool : )
Will it just be a farming sandbox or will there be any story elements in it?

 

Hi, updates soon!

So, I don't know yet, but I think I'm going to do some story elements, but the emphasis is on the farm...

 

Hi Rodolfo Rubens
Looks good .
From the first attempt I hadn't grown anything , but I'll try again later.

 

lol
You need to use the hoe, then the seeds, then the watercan everyday, it will grow. ^^
Thanks for test it though!

 

Omg... Honestly.. I searched these forums for months looking for anything to do with Harvest moon and found nothing. All of a sudden like 3 threads pop up! Ive been working on HM/Animal Crossing Multiplayer games for awhile and never hit the successful version yet! lol. Yours is looking very good and wish you well! Ill be checking back.

Check out some of my videos aimed at this game genre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gMjfNvD7yI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDDFdUJXEZw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtMSt0tHoG4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uz0a3MuE3o

 

Wow, nice progress!! I like it, I was wondering how someone would do the multiplayer mode - and what you did is pretty cool! Congrats. I'm planning to make a offline singleplayer for mobile (ios,android,windows,bb10), do you have a twitter so I can track your progress?

 

Thanks. ^_^ I just use youtube and post here on the forums. Heres the link:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/180644-Online-Animal-Crossing-Harvest-Moon-style-game!

If you need any tips on anything feel free to ask, I've recreated most of the system for this kind of game several times. Multiplayer I'm using Photon Networking plugin. It's multi-player but it isn't In a sense. It's suppose to be a single player game where players own land, but the town is the public zone where all players end up to buy seeds and do learn skills (No drop zone for items), and each player would be able to travel to a friends land zone and help out farming etc. Was really the only concept where players wouldn't interfere with each other or block / litter the land with their own stuff but still be able to interact. I haven't worked on it in a week or 2 due to software updates at work but hope to make more progress soon!

Keep at it, your's is shaping up great. I haven't even added farming back into my latest re-creation yet heh.

 

Hi people!
So, here is a list of a somethings that I’ve been working on the 4 Seasons project:

Some trail on the tool being used (if there is movement)


Some new crops (and its plants)


Some fx when using the hoe on the ground (there is some mud particles being spreaded but it’s not very noticeable)Image


When switching items, the current items get shrinked and then it disappear and the item that will be visible smoothly grows and them appear (like the Harvest Moon games for wii)


The time system, the only way I found (on mobile) to show the player in a visual way what time is was popping up the shading on the characters, among other objects) where the light is hitting and gradually changing the directional light color between stages of the day. The last frame is actually the moon light, when the clock hits around 6:30 PM the sun light starts to fade off and the moon light starts to fade in, and then when the sun light intensity hits 0, the sun light is disabled, the same is made on the moon light.

(these shots are from the editor but it runs smoothly on mobile, 60fps)

The NPC dialog, still pretty simple but


I made many more things like the planting system that is working perfect (well, for me), you plow the soil, throw the seed, and water it everyday and the crops starts to grow there, pretty simple and it’s working ok (until some random bug pop up from nowhere). The portals system for other maps it’s working okay too, I little fade out – fade in on camera for the transitions. A persistency script so we do not see duplicates (like a singleton I guess) and also, the soil variables will persist when going to other levels. There are mooore things, but that’s it for now…

Thanks for your time!

 

Very nice work, Happy to see you're still making progress!

 

Hi ExDeaDguY! Thanks man. Sorry for not replying you last reply before this one I was going to sleep...

So I saw your lastest videos and subscribed to your channel! You're doing great, I found photon very complicated to use, actually anything related to client - network it's complicated for me Thanks for your support man, I will do that, maybe on a future "4 seasons friends" for facebook lol.

 

Yay ! I think you did well on setting the day time lighting, its easily distinguishable and the night isnt to dark.
And I like that you provided a playable version from the beginning on ! Hats off, it works solid !

 

I really like those new pics, but any chance to see how the first version looked like? I wanna know how much it's changed.

 

@rbx775
Hey, thanks man! ^^ And I saw your project, the graphics, concepts and etc, all amazing, I'm tracking it!

@Reefer
The only pics I have of how it was before are those on the first page :/

 

There are still some minor bugs, but it’s working very well.


The furnitures can be selected on the current scene, a selection box appears around the selected one.


It gets red when the selected furniture gets obstructed by another furniture.


There are an special inventory for the furnitures that the player have but he doesn’t want to place yet…


… here it goes…

And of course they can also be removed from the scene:



Thanks!

 

niiiiiice ! I like that very much, nothing more to add
Does furniture will have any use /effect on something ? Or are they just for decoration ?
(Well, they certainly have an effect on me ! pretty awesome one ! =D)

 

Hehe, thanks man!
So, some of them: yes, like beds, storages (fridge, chests), stoves... I don't know if I put simple things like, on chairs and sofas you can seat, video-games you can play... the game will start to become a little "simlish"... Or maybe I do that... I don't know... what do you think?

 

Great job with the game so far. I played allot of harvest moon growing up so I can really appreciate this style of game. Best of luck with further development. Ill be watching

 

Great work as usual! I really like the placement in the housing environment. You've definitely made more progress then I have lately! I'm stuck on making server authoratative code. Its a pain in the rear end xD. Keep up the good work! You're gonna be adding livestock and what not right? Can't wait to see more!

 

Same thing for me.
Also its so much fun to watch you guys (also iKonrad's River Town) projects come together !
Since our projects have something in common its pretty cheering inspiring.

Of course im also aware of yours eddy

 

Hey guys, thanks for the replies!

Thanks Euphoric, give a 'watch' on the indiedb project if you like too!

Hi ExDeaDguY, man I wish I know how to code these network stuff! So, yes, that's on the list, cows, chickens and sheeps, there will be only these 3 animals that yield you items to sell, I guess...

Hey rbx775, hehe, I'm tracking all the 3 too!

 

Hi, I got something new to show, it’s the dialog system and the label system.

The dialog system, like the name says, let you create dialog “trees” like in an RPG, and the label system let you create something to do when in a determined moment, like add an item to the inventory after you speak with an npc, or open a door and etc, I’m calling it like this because of the RPG Maker.

There goes some pictures:




Talking to the npc, unlocks the door house…




Gifts!


…also, multiple choices to answer, each choice can leads to different answers or they can lead to multiple answers:



And they can also different speeches on different situations (for now only for seasons, but soon places, hours will also influence on different speeches):




The system is still pretty simple but it’s working well, I wish I knew how to create nice editor inspectors to edit these arrays, it’s getting really hard to set these! :/

It's a bad costume to post the exactly the same thing I posted on the blog here too?
Also, forgive me for flooding with so many images!

 

I really like where this game is going.
My only observation would be regarding the ground textures.
Indeed simple textures would suit the overall art concept of the game, but something is a bit off with the ground textures for me.
Maybe it needs to look more hand painted and colorful? Can't say for sure.

As for the rest, you have a solid mix of features that keeps me interested in the project.
Good luck!

 

Hi primus88!
I'm still very confused about what to do with the game art style, I was thinking about something like minecraft, idk at all... although, every single element is just for prototyping because I'm very focused on programming the modules, for now...

Thanks man!!

 

Hey guys, I got a little video of the gameplay, unedited, very buggy and unpolished, and the grass still sucks, but I want to share anyways!
[video=youtube_share;r7wjRLXndOs]http://youtu.be/r7wjRLXndOs

 

wow, its coming together quite well !
These animations are great, especially the watering animation, also the camera delay while running
gives it some sort of dynamic, which I like very much.

Great Progress man !

(and I also like he music that plays along with the footage, lol)

Oh btw: Sry for not answering to your furniture question...
"Or maybe I do that... I don't know... what do you think?"
- I dont know either, at some point such stats / effects decisions
can be really annoying for players.
Because there would be an additional thing they have to consider and outweigh
where they maybe just want to creatively decorate in peace.
On the other hand its of course a question of complexity,
If they are solely for interactions, without any side-effects, its totally fine imo !

 

Thanks man!
The music was provided by youtube, I hope I can find some music like those for the game, but only instrumental!
Agreed, I think I'll let some furnitures with some interactions only, there will be some storages, tv, calendar and etc. that has some side effects anyway.
And, the quality is better here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/4seasons/videos

 

Wow, Still looking good! You're making great progress! I wish I had your ambition. I get bored and lazy and stare at the editor for hours without actually doing a damn thing. lol!

 

Thanks again man!
Lol, I do exactly the same thing! I created a list with many modules to program, another for 3d assets to model and other lists with different subjects, also, any.do installed on my phone when I suddenly get any idea about anything and to set what to do next for the game, but even with all this "help" I do that sometimes!

 

hey Rodolfo,

Looking great man, I like the feel and the personality of the game that's coming through. I like the different lighting for the different times of day as well.

I hear you about keeping on track. I've been using this system called Personal Kanban which is pretty useful, it works well with the online tool Trello. I also have used the Pomodoro method of working with a timer which can help keep me on track.

Keep it up!

 

Hey newb_quest! Thanks!
I was trying something like pomodoro but it kinda make you pressure yourself with the timing thing, I like the things spontaneous, and, wow, I think I already saw this trello somewhere but this is the perfect tool for me, I just wanted a bigger widget for the android app, but it's cool anyway! Thanks for let me know this!

 

zomg, i didn't notice the animal models on the first post until just now. They r so pretty ^_^

 

Oh, yes yes, I forgot to post them here! I posted them on twitter, the blog and the indiedb page but I forgot to post here, hehe, sorry and glad you liked it!

 

Not sure if it was mentioned but.. How did you do day and night cycle? Ambient Light or Directional light? In mine I'm using toon shaders which aren't effected by light (I dont think ambient light either). So what I did was put a 1 face model in front of the camera and gave that plane a black transparent texture and I just alter the alpha depending on time of day. Its really crude

 

I use directional light, so, if you have a clock that is in float, let's say it goes from 0 to 1440 (seconds), what you can do is create a directional light (the sun) and put an animation in it, from 0 to 60 seconds it makes a complete round (30 seconds = noon) , in this animation you can make anything you want, for each part of the day you can set a different color, intensity and if it is enabled or not, then on script you tell the animation speed to be 0 aaand the animation.time will be yourClockNormalizedFloat... My English is not so good so I don't know if I was clear, let me knwo if you get it.

 

Some new pics!





I'm working on the mining system right now, soon I'll have news, stay tuned!