The friendship mechanic is really unique, i love it! I agree just gifting the same stuff over and over again is weird and boring, i really like this system!
I just wanted to say that, too. Great stuff, could you mail that idea to the Animal Crossing team? haha Seriously very creative idea on the friendship concept. And a surprisingly "simple" solution.
I love it too, hope it won't become an abusable feature like just using npcs when doing tasks, I think he could combat that by the NPCs taking the items that they get when with you, and maybe they will give you some of the items when you are friendly with them, that way it would only become rewarding after investing time in being with them but idk maybe it works even without that.
yeah, i like it too,, had an idea where the npc could check for free time on their schedule for an activity and maybe postponing some stuff depending on priorities but that may be too complex for the game
Sorry that mechanic is too fun for me not use the same idea in some form at some point years in the future. More games should have that kind of simplistic depth to their interactions.
I love the friendship mechanic, it is a really nice concept but it is a little bit weird how they just accept to follow you for an entire day when then may not know you, sometimes at all. Maybe if you could help them in some way before so they get to know you and have an actual reason to follow you around. But mostly keep on going, I love the art and your videos!
I think the easiest solution for this would be to check for a minimum friendship-level before the following-option gets enabled for each npc. Maybe this could be combined with some character-traits, if you'd like to expand the current personalities to reflect more than just the behaviour in combat... Like some npcs being more adventourous and outgoing and therefore requiring a smaller friendship level to accept the invitation, opposed to shy npcs who need to gain a little more friendship-points first, but maybe increase their frienship points faster afterwards, to make it worth the effort?
I think a friendship quest should be the way for all NPCs, but it should be a least medium level. After completing the quest you gain their trust and can interact more with them.
Maybe you could have a 'Trust' variable and when it gets higher they will want to hang out more. And at the beginning when they dont know you they will only follow you if they are going to their current event or are done with their events for the day
The idea of having NPC friends follow you instead of just getting items or rewards from them is super cool! Definitely something I have never seen before.
I think your friendship option should be more like “If you do things they like, they hang out with you more, but if you do things they don’t like, they’d leave”, and say a fearful character gets into a fight, they’d cower and run and you’d have to protect them, but if they get hot then you lose friendship with them
I have to echo everyone else and say your NPC friendship mechanic is brilliant! Maybe in certain situations you could have multiple people follow you? For tough fights or maybe story set pieces? So many cool opportunities and such a unique idea! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with :)
okay I have 2 suggestions. The first is some goblins hang out with eachother as part of their schedule and you can ask to join. They only do things both of them like so you can easily know what those 2 like to do and they will both follow you giving 2 npcs friendship. The second suggestion is another way to gain friendship, community theatre. You build an elevated platform (maybe you can upgrade to get masks and costumes) and you play a story with a goblin like movies in stardew. They have stories they like and characters they like to play. the audience may also get minimal friendship, seems a bit op, right? but there's a catch. every play has a battle where you avoid projectiles. if you don't dodge properly, the friendship point gain is decreased or maybe some is lost. also, the building can change npc base clothing to the costumes. maybe costumes are collectables or are a rare one time drop for each enemy (like one in 500 or something) and looks like that enemy, something you could get from it or something keeping with the theme, so a slime might drop a slime mask or contact lenses that change eye color
For anyone who wants to add multiplayer to their game I recommend they read Factorio’s dev blog on the subject. It explains how to keep a local instance of the game for responsiveness and a server copy to prevent the issues discussed in this video
The multiplayer is really cool but that friendship mechanic stole my heart. I always thought those gift mechanics lacked depth. It might be interesting to allow gifting as well, but if you don't have a good relationship, it isn't a special day, or if you've already done it too much, it would hurt your relationship. There should be a variety of ways to interact with NPCs, not just one great way. I think a final thing that could really give them life is have them do tasks that you could help with. Maybe one will go fighting and appreciate the help, but maybe one likes to fish alone and won't enjoy the company unless you're already close.
Made me giggle multiple times lol, love the new features, the bow and arrow is so simple yet makes complete sense, and the roll animation is hilarious but also makes total sense. Looks like everything is going in a great direction!
a game in early access is currently doing coop update, they had a problem where if your friend opens a chest, you have to wait until its closed since it pauses the whole game I guess that's one of the reasons multiplayer is considered to be such a huge hurdle
I'm always amazed how much progress you make between each devlogs. The new changes look amazing! Love the new artwork and I'm happy to hear that the multiplayer feature didn't messed things up! This is definetely a BIG improvement for the game! :) I also love the friendship mechanic! I was planning to implement a similar one in my own game, but had not the time to start working on it yet... And also my pathfinding needs some refactoring first... 😅 If you ever plan to do programming tutorials, I would be very interested in your solution for this feature! Keep up your good work! I'm soooo looking forward to play this game! 🥰
Maybe add compliments/flirting, but if you do it with a low friendship the NPCs might find it as weird or awkward. Maybe add a negative friendship so if you attack the NPC or do things they don't like, it can go below 0. I would love for there to be a way to "get rid" of NPCs by having -10 friendship and them asking to leave. You could always add some sort of wizard to bring them back to your island if they leave. The reason I want negative friendship is because I want the player (one would be me) to see the consequences of their actions and for the player to have true freedom. Maybe the less the friendship is the less you can do with the npc. For example, if you slowly get more negative friendship they won't want to follow you, help you or even talk to you. A way to get back to good terms with an NPC is to give them a gift or maybe a "sorry" postcard. Obviously won't work straight away. Going back to the wizard concept, you could go back to 0 friendship levels by talking to the wizard and perhaps paying a lot of money. Anyways I hope you enjoy my ideas.
I tried for so long to figure out unity multiplayer and have literally cried myself to sleep over it. I'm so envious of people skilled enough to figure stuff like this out. Good for you, man. 😢
No but these videos are actually so hard to watch because of how many hundreds of hours I've spent trying to do this only for everyone else on the internet to have absolutely no problem doing it. I'm so sad
Make voice acting for the NPCs. They don't have to say exactly what the dialog says, but basic grunts, sighs, groans, cheers, and laughs to add emotion, and personality, the recording can just play with every new script of dialog, or even just when you first click on the character. Give them different voices so they all feel unique and individual. I feel like it'd add a lot to the aesthetic of the game.
Wow okay, initially I thought this would just be a simple open-world story survival game but with just the few things you did today you really set your game apart from the crowd
Omg i just had this idea where after a certain amount of time, there is a raid of humain and you could gather around all the NPC from a belt. Then they could follow you to beat the raid. I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but idk, sounds fu. Great game, great progress!
How dare you say that about NH 😭😭 we have....A GORGEOUS VIEW IN THE FALL! 5:10 Awesome looking game by the way. Definitely going to keep watching! Love the videos. I was super surprised to click on a random game dev log and see a New Hampshire sponsorship hehe
i just randomly found your channel and im immediately intrested to see this game being progressively cooler and fun looking, and the friendship mechanic actually makes sense, instead of gifting them things and they become friend, you actually hangout and do things with the goblins.
The gift system makes some sense because, well, there is a love language for gifts. I definitely do not respond to that at all, so I’m glad for finally some representation
Im really happy with the direction you're taking the game! I was a little worried about the random generation but it seems as though you're thinking of all the things when making it work for the game! The friendship mechanic is super cool! Maybe a combination with gift giving and maybe quests could add a little more life to it. I just know I only hang out with people to go fight monsters when we've been chatting for at least a few days.
Instead of packing all the data and then sending it to a connecting client, I recommend just sending the seed that was used to generate the world and then generating the world client side. Changes that are made to the world can be sent under a separate packet which will hardly ever exceed the data limit.
I'm actually really excited for this game and amazed at how well you've been able to make it. I've only partially gotten multiplayer working and the method I used is now broken. I feel like I'll never be able to do any of this but I'm only 15 so I think I need to realize that I have time. I do plan to get a computer science degree though so I don't struggle with your similar issues. I hope you're able to figure something out and I'm very excited for the game to release. I'll be playing it the day it does.
As far sending world data over the network: if you're doing procedural generation, you can just send the seed and then store any changes made to the world which should be significantly smaller than sending every block.
I think you should add events for all the npcs or some of them so they can become comfortable around you before they just hang out with you no questions asked. I also find the gift friendship boring but, you could make it so that their friendship meter grows faster if a present is given. It could be op but you could add a timer to stop people spamming say in stardew you can only give people gifts once a day twice a week.
I really like the friendship mechanic you made where the npc actually hangs out with you. I can vividly imagine getting immersed into the game and attached to npc's with whom I spent time with. Genius idea!
I must admit, when you originally announce the change in direction I was a bit skeptical But after seeing a few devlogs on it now, I'm way into this new conecpt over the old one! Looks like it's going in a super fun direction!
This is my first time seeing your content, I really like your game and can't wait to be able to play it with my friends during our game nights! I really think it's unique and fun looking :) You got a new subscriber and another wishlist on steam 😀
How can you make the NPCs interesting in new playthroughs? Eventually personalities, dialogue, and faces will repeat and once that happens the immersion will shatter. Also how can we procedurally generate interesting characters in the first place? That's what happened to me with Wildermyth. That and past events and characters especially are never mentioned again. Looking forward to see your continued development!
Here’s an idea, increasing the saturation or changing the colour palette of the Players, since currently their soft green skin blends in with the soft green world. Games like Halo use bright primary colours on their enemies against soft or desaturated coloured backgrounds so they pop out more.
you have really impressed me with what you have added this week. Multiplayer is no small feat, then you just casually added a livable NPC system? awesome work!
the npc should check if you are fighting with him or just waiting until he kills an enemy(to gain or lose points in the friendship), that would be interesting
I think the power of the bow should creep back down after reaching full draw power. As it would be both more immersive and add some timing skill to it. Holding a traditional bow intended for combat at full draw is actually pretty hard to do. The whole holding your draw thing can only be done for a few moments irl. So you could make it so releasing the bow as it hits the peak deals full damage, but loosing too early does less damage and travels less distance the earlier its released. And holding the shot for too long also reduces its power and range. Giving you a skill based sweet spot for loosing the arrow.
Added to my wishlist Im a multiplayer guy that always looks for games to play with my friends We like to try new games sometimes and i would really like to try this one once it is released with multiplayer!
I've been enjoying the ride for a while, just wanted to chime in and say thanks for all the videos. Love the art style, storytelling, and the lessons you let us learn vicariously through you. Good luck with the game, and excited to see the next update!
It's really not a surprise that Concerned Ape did not want to write the netcode for Stardew Valley. But it's far cleaner to add now than it is after release. I like the follower friendship mechanic, the gift mechanic is always funny, but it is a bit silly.
You should have it, so if you consistently bring an npc to do something that they dont like, they occasionally don't want to follow you or learn to like the activity over time.
SNHU has some great classes getting started in IT related fields, I enjoyed it when I went. Also enjoy seeing the progress in the videos you post too for the game!
The npc follower mechanic is something I think more games need. Not just as an aid to combat, but they actually participate in what you're doing/develop a relationship with you
3:36 dem jiggle physics though like GGGGYYYYYYYAAAATTTTTTT DYYYYAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM, also nice work im excited for this game(+goblin ball) and patient enough to wait however long for it
I think you could just delete the block and drop an item on the ground asynchronosously, no need to wait. The server then can keep track on who will recieve the dropped item in inventory. To make things appear faster you could do some predictions/determinations.
Awesome update, been following you for a bit and this was really cool to see. Not planning multiplayer for my stuff until a game or two into the future, but it's awesome to see how you got it working. Keep it up!
I hope you can add back some of the old walls and trees and stuff to make it look a little more varied, it gets a little stale right now, and I love the ols pixel art.
I wished to ask: You talk about correcting a block being broken between two users at the same time. What about everything else? A monster hitting someone at the same time someone else kills it, two people talking to the same NPC (maybe asking it to follow them at the same time), etc.
Pretty much everything of importance has the same setup (opening chests, talking to NPCs, picking up items, etc). Thinks like monster hits I leave alone though since it (right now) doesn’t really matter who actually deals the final blow to an enemy
I feel like for when it’s day you should change the black outer area that shows beyond areas into maybe a more fog like white grey and then when it’s night you have the black. Just a suggestion, and the progress so far on this cool game is really great so far, can’t wait to see more locations and enemies added. Keep up the great work. :)
The arrow shouldn't slide on the ground if the sprite is going to change to look like it's impaled! I think that would make it look/feel much better. Otherwise, love the direction, keep up the great work!
I know I'm repeating everyone else's comment here, but the friendship mechanic makes a lot of sense and I think it'll actually feel a lot less engineered and more natural. Just the way you want it to be.
Since colors can be used to represent emotions or danger, I think it would be cool to add a slight overlay color to the npc that correctly represents their personality, it can also be used as a guide for when you spot npc, you can instantly tell a little bit about their personality by what shade they have, a more violent person being a darker more brooding tone to their clothes or body, and a purer kind person having a brighter tint to them.
Idea: you could also gain friendship by talking to the NPC and getting to know eachother better, depending on the NPC they'll have a different befriending pace Just an idea
not sure if someone already said that, but you actually wouldn't need to transfer the whole map over if the map is procedural generated, you would only need to send the initial seed the host used to generate the map, and the client could generate it from there now you would only have to sync user placed/removed tiles and buildings which should be way less then the whole map :D
I commented this when you first posted this vid, but I just wanna say it again: Thank you so much for making your content, I love it! I really hope you pursue this gam until finish!
imagine if the npcs gave YOU items once you reach a high enough relationship. These items wouldnt HAVE to be obtained but IF obtained they could add small QoL improvements to the player... like for example an npc that likes fishing gives you their favourite rod adding a sentimental value and a story on the tool you just obtained along with slightly better stats 👀
Can not stress how happy I am with this new version of the game. And online multiplayer (Excitedness to high to show in comment section). Most games devlog games i dont want to buy, but this I want to so bad. Keep up the good work
