It’s crazy to see how far the game has come… Also, love how you dive into the code, because there are quite a lot of mechanics that I take for granted being quite easy to implement, but, in reality, there are lots of tricks behind the scenes which make it work
Yeah! I didn't really chat about it in this video but I wanted to be able to input parameters to the Cast Meter to make it easier or harder. Should be very straightforward with the design I landed on.
Or it might be even cooler if nothing changed about the UI, but as your “fishing skill” increases, and you’ve done more in game casts, the code outputs a better cast for a given spot on the bar. So the exact same result as your suggestion, but a little more sneaky and behind the scenes. Like how health bars in some games don’t go down as fast when you are close to death. The UI doesn’t change so that you look like you have more health, because that would take away the tension of being close to death. Having the casts get better over time, given the same landing spot on the green zone would make you *feel* like you were getting better, even if you weren’t
@@DevDuck i disagree a lot. The game shouldn't simply get harder or it will just trivialise fishing. A game should become more challenging over time, not less. If it were me, i would allow players to "skip" fishing by allowing them to set a fish trap instead, but not make earlier catches easier and easier over time, specially if they become a filler/not the reward you're going for (imagine catching a 100th bass when you just want the shark or whale you're missing)
some feedback that you may find inspion from the bar should relate to the distance and angular accuracy. so stopping too soon will under cast and too far will over cast. the target position of the bar should be based off the distance between the player and the max casting distance (dictated by the amount of line you have), as should the timing window become more compressed. the player should animate the casting based off the bar's timing, with a full draw (the position its shown in in the video) being when its at the max. different tackle should affect the arc and the specific falloff for the over/under casting "gradients". some being more punishing for bad throws but better and others being less so but more cost effective. maximum cast distance defined by the length of the line up to the ciew distance. each time the like breaks an amount is subtracted from the line based off the distance cast. heavier but stronger line and heavier sinkers/tackle slow down the bar by up to 50% (so 1.5s) and redice maximum casting distance by 10%. inversely, lighter line/tackle speeds it up and increases the distance it can go to a limit of 0.8s and +10% respectively at full draw there is a slim (less than 1%) chance of hocking your pants, pulling them off (and attaching them to the hook) leaving the player character initially startled, then confused, then shocked /speechless as they blink at it and finally reeling the line back in, putting the pants in the inventory. overall for 5s of animation. this would ONLY happen at full draw and very rarely. no penalty would be imposed (no bait loss, line break or durability loss from the attempt) as this would jsut be a fun little gag for players that overcast often to make people laugh.
I'm really liking the meter-based casting system you ended up on! One small suggestion is that if you're not doing it already, one way to possibly improve "game feel" is to let the player directly click and hold on the spot to cast to and have the meter begin while it's held down. Then when they release the button, that would stop the bar from moving. I think that action is much more immediate and intuitive than clicking twice, though I realize it would involve reworking how you "target" the cast as you showed that holding down brings up the targeting arrow. If you went with the "release to cast" route I would say always show the target arrow while the rod is selected, and only show the "ready to cast" animation on the player once the meter starts popping up! You might already be planning this so apologies if this is redundant lol but one other "polish" recommendation is to let the "casting" animation play more immediately after you've stopped the meter. This also ties into the "more immediate feedback" idea and you could even show some visual feedback like changing the color of the bar, particle effects, etc. once it's been stopped to emphasize the stop action! These are just some ideas that came to mind and stuff I think about when making my own games haha. Great work so far and best of luck!
I think these suggestions are great for game feel! One other I thought of, as did some others, would be to inverse the target positioning so you "pull back" to choose the target before releasing the cast. It's like you are winding up for the cast.
I feel like a sound when the bait hits the location, maybe with some small particle effects to make the action feel weighty. At the moment it seems the fishing action is a little slow and "floaty". It could also be the animation is a little slow. Just my two cents. Keep up the good work.
Been looking forward to the new video! I love the improvements you've made to the game. Also, I have a few suggestions about the fishing system. How about making the indicator something like a fishing hook (🎣 / 🪝) instead of an arrow? It would make it easier to understand and also I think it'd feel a bit more immersive than an arrow. Someone also said that you could make the green zone in the mini game wider so that it's easier to catch the fish. I think it's a good idea but it would make more sense that the green zone's width is proportional to how far you've advanced your skill in relation to difficulty of the water you're fishing in. A numerical example of this - if the area you're fishing in requires a skill of five but you are only at three, the green zone would be narrower than if you were fishing in a zone that requires a skill of one with the same skill level.
the casting system looks really cool, maybe instead of having that mini game for the casting you can have it for successfully getting a fish or not and the rarity. kind of like startdew valley
I think that having a circle around the casting target marker that shows the possible variance if you would click now to make the check would be a great addition / replacement to show the effect of hitting the check at just the right moment or shortly after.
That's a nice casting system! A great addition would be if the acessories on the fishing pole would influence the place of the "perfect spot" on the cast meter, or the length of the gradient.
I love the feeling your videos give me! They feel calm and relaxed, yet so informative! Also (this is just a thought) but what if you would implement a scenario for when you get snagged. For example: there’s a sunken ship and you cast on top of it and when the player try’s to reel-in they are given a meter or bar that they have to time correctly to get un-snagged or their line breaks.
I suggested this last time, but maybe instead of a stamina bar you do a stamina wheel inside the border of the watch. This would look kind of like a fit bit which I think is cool. I am also trying to make a game, and watching you is my inspiration. Thank you for such good content!
Math geek: Drooping fishing lines and the like don't form parabolic arcs, they form catenary curves. They look pretty similar, so it's not a _huge_ problem, but...well, it's a Wikipedia page you can check out if you're interested.
This is awesome to watch, since I was planning to a do a really basic fishing game for my first project and it's cool to see how you approach problems. Just been doing some tutorials for fun so far, I'm a frontend web dev.
The arc your bait travels is indicative of you forgetting that line also slows down the speed of the bait. The line is rubbing against the rings of the fishing pole. I have seen a lot of fishing and all the casts I saw look like a logarithmic function towards the end.
I think the sling shot method probably feels funner to use. You could leave the new code as is and just calculate the target position from the inverse vector of the mouse's position from the player. The input would be like hold the mouse to pull back, release to lock in and bring up the meter, then click to swing.
I definitely thought this about game feel as well. Just inverse the target positioning (as if you are winding up to swing) and I think that would help with making it seem more involved in actual casting!
This devlog has definitely become my happy place lately, always love seeing the b-roll of the shrimp, the dog, and it's super relaxing. On the fishing side of things, I was wondering how you're thinking of theming it around saving wildlife whether it's something like catching fish to purify and release them, catching invasive species of fish and relocating them to a better environment or something like that.
Nice work. One note of feedback is that the clean and vector-perfect fishing line doesn’t feel at home, to me, in the pixel art world. I would try making it as thick or exactly half as thick as other lines before trying to interpolating it to sharp pixels somehow, that’s a whole mess of weeds. But as the only thing that thin, the line stands out.
Good job with the casting system. I can't tell from the video, but is there a limit on how far you can cast, or is it across the entire screen? I feel like a slight limitation would make most sense. Also, I feel that with a casting system like this, there should be an actual player incentive for casting in specific areas, whether that be a bubbly zone with more rare fish or what not.
There will be a distance limit, based on your equipped fishing setup. And don't worry, there will definitely be incentives to cast into specific places!
I think it could be great for UX to add an indicator in the inventory that you can right-click the fishing rod to open it's menu, this would help new players to show there is more and won't be in the way for players who do already now.
I like the casting accuracy bar. Only thing I would change is have the gradient on both sides of the perfect cast line. That way it’s the same in accuracy on both sides but one side just has more area of inaccuracy than the other.
That’s a pretty great system 😎 Will you be implementing something for players to target on the water? Like Animal Crossing’s fish shadows or something.
This was great!!! I feel like these are the real lessons people need when developing and I'm glad that you put it out there... looking forward to your continuing journey.
I'm sensing this game has a mishmash of ideas (fighting, diving, exploring, sailing?, fishing), but a lack of cohesion. I would love to see you focus more on the core experience and then maybe start branching new systems.
Though I love the look of the final casting cursor, curious to see what it would look like if combined with the initial parabolic curve that you had. From the tip of the rod to the point you want to cast to could look rather cool, a nice fusion of the two. Regardless keep up the awesome work!
I dont know if you've put much thought into an options/configuration menu but players may want to decide between a double click for starting the cast and then timing the cast strength meter, vs a click and hold to start the cast and then let go of the mouse button for the timing.
Really nice work with the fishing, I think having the freedom of where you cast is really cool! For the game, I like that a lot too, feels very different, I would say from an accessibility standpoint, maybe have ways of decreasing the speed / increasing the size of the UI to make it easier for people?
You are a much greater inspiration than I guess you probably think you are. As a developer, and as a warm, healthy and grounded human being. Thank you for the video and keep up the amazing work!
Great Devlog! Perhaps the fishing rod it could have a variety of uses that keeps players invested in using it. Besides it's obvious function of fishing, you could use it to wrangle infected creatures which immobilizes (or slows, for bosses) them. If you're planning on adding more cliffs in the game, you could also make it work as a kind of grapple for climbing. To increase the challenge of using it, you would have to actively toggle inbetween each mode, and perform different types of skill checks for each one, with fishing have the easiest and climbing having the hardest. As you've set up a system which relies on equipping parts to the fishing rod, unique parts could be more useful for one of the modes whilst worse for another mode; basically a trade off system to ensure one part isn't stronger than the base part or any other sidegrade. Good luck on your future development!
If you are looking to add more work for yourself with very little benefit, I would suggest having the error of where the bait lands be non-random--having greater error in the near-far axis than in the right-left axis. Also the magnitude of the error should increase with distance.
I think that holding down the left mouse button to choose a location and then in release clicking again might feel a little weird as a player. What if instead, left clicking would enter placement mode and then holding it down would trigger the accuracy bar/ letting go would stop the bar on the green zone. You could right click to exit the casting mode too if you didn’t want to actually cast out. That might feel more natural. Keep up the amazing work!
Bro your way to confident with that Crab thing lol. Mush have some balls to go up close to it i would be scared and just swim away scared xd. Anyways great job on the development really liking how the game is going so far :) 0:23
I'm still in school, and before this video I thought my physics class would be useless for the gamedev careen that I want to pursue. BUT when you used the things I learned 2 months ago for the casting line I was shoked.I guess physics is important after all
I think a addition to the “mini game” could be the more accurate the stop is the better chance you have to get a more rare catch. I’m assuming you will be adding a rarity to this game with this suggestion, just an idea! I love the progress you’ve made to this game, keep up the good work!
Great job with the implementation here! Though I do have to say that my initial reaction with the "aim check" was 'why?' I had to delve into the comments to find out that having skill in aim was going to become relevant later on rather than being here just because other games have it - something a lot of developers can fall prey to. I suggest in future devlogs to briefly mention why a feature is being added so that viewers know what the intent is as well. It may even help with feedback on the feature as we'll know what it's for rather than it just being there. I hope this makes sense to you and I apologise if I've said something offensive. I tried not to but I can't always tell. I look forward to the continued development of this game and can't wait to play it when it's out!
I love how when you're explaining the game concept at the beginning and u say hes a marine biologist trying to save the ocean and its inhabitants while the video shows him obliterating a crab on the beach
That casting mechanism is super clean. Like I have been wondering for a minute how you were going to pull this off in a ~game~ context (like programming and user interface etc) and the 2 clicks to confirm the location and to the set the slider on the accuracy bar is perfect. 11/10 keep up the good work :)
The final product looks amazing man! There are probably some ways to simplify the code, you have a log of trig functions in there. Specifically, I would suggest looking up Bezier curves in the future. The only thing it needs now is a nice little splash sound when the bobbers hits the water. :)
It amazing to see the progress. I don't remember how long I've been following this project but it has been over a year if I'm correct. I am looking forward to buying it someday!
The greater the distance of cast, the faster the bar moves. Makes it harder to get the good fish in deeper water. Also, could the bar show when you first hold left click to cast, then move mouse to position and then release mouse when on green zone. That would remove the extra click? Hold, move, release at right time
Love the new meter. I'd replace the green bar with an outline box and the player have to land inside it. Then different combos of tackle and locations and skills can affect the size of the target box and the marker. Great video.
The system looks awesome! The only thing I could say, is that the fishing rods line looks out of place with how "sharp" it is. Maybe you could make the line thicker and apply a pixelation shader or something to make it match the environment a bit more
The system looks pretty interesting, the math especially was really insightful One thing I do want to note is that at 14:14, It looks like you stopped the bar exactly on the line, but the game registered it as an inaccurate cast.
I think you need to make the solid green zone before the gradient a little bigger, as well as increasing the accuracy overall, There were a couple times in the demonstration where either you would get the marker on what *looked like* solid green, and it ended up being super inacurate, or you would end up at the gradient right after the green, and it wasn't as accurate as you would have expected considering the gradient, also when you *did* get it on the solid green it still wasn't perfectly accurate witch also tripped me up. Either that or make the marker 1 pixel wide so you can actually see where you landed better
Great to see how you've implemented this. To be honest I usually prefer passive systems where you don't have to interact with it (like runescape) OR completely active systems where you have to interact with the fish (like sea of thieves). This accuracy check feels like an odd middle ground and I'm unsure how it'll work in conjunction with the rest of the game.
The freedom in fishing is very refreshing, Animal Crosding is the only game I enjoy fishing in and I think it’s partially because it’s a little more free in direction What if there was a cursed lure that made it so you had to do poorly on the check to be accurate
I actually preferred the casting without a meter. Usually in games where you have to fish (minecraft/wow/etc) you do it for hours while watching youtube or something.
This is looking really cool! Tho, for this timing check to be useful, there needs to be an incentive to be accurate. Are you planning on implementing some kind of "fish silhouette" system for fishing?
The casting animation looks amazing and the possibilities it opens (like wind blowing the line away, etc) are endless. As far as the QTE goes, I don't think it is needed on the casting step to see where the hook lands. I believe it fits much, much better at the moment a fish bites the hook, like in Pokemon. Especially if there is nothing that limits how often/much you can fish, the QTE for a "perfect landing" would become a bit tiring. Whereas if you save the QTE for when the fish bites, the player loses something if they miss it, which is the bait they used since the fish managed to eat it.
