A futureproofing suggestion: rather than saving a boolean for collected resources and then tracking the timers separately, track a "total game time" in seconds, and whenever a resource is collected, write that to the collected resources array. Then it's easy to flip around your respawn logic to compare the current game time to the collected value, and you don't need to actively manage the timers any more. That in turn means that it's easier to tweak respawn values as you iterate on different resources, because the save system doesn't need to change.
I was about to comment the same thing. Use a timestamp with a single comparison per resource instead of an entire timer + comparison for each resource.
On that note, I would actually advise against true unix timestamps in favor of a deltatime accumulator: a game timer allows you to account for discrepancies between the time spent playing, the time the game has been running, and the time between the start of the save and now (three different numbers, especially if you pause the timer during the menu screens, which I would encourage).
I was going to suggest the same thing! It's what I do in my own game I'm developing. Time stamping stuff is much easier as you only need to keep track of the game's clock, instead of having possibly hundreds of timers counting down, you just have one counting up, and compare the item's last "harvested" time to the game clock to see if it's ready to "harvest" again. :)
For another resource, maybe you could add some mushrooms, and if you give them to some mushroom mage, they'll give you a temporary boost like life-steal after an enemy dies.
Another resource idea could be monster parts. You get them from killing monsters, and you can store them in your inventory to later use them like mini weapons that break after a single use. For example, a monster bone used as a boomerang and a monster organ being used as a grenade or bomb.
I'm always a fan of resources found exclusively through exploration. Could be something obscure like golden feathers, but they're found in hard to reach or secluded spots. They could be consumed to boost your health, defence, attack or magic permanently. Acts as a reward for players who plant the right vine, or pass under the right waterfall.
Here's an idea: When you defeat a boss it drops a resource that can be given to the Blacksmith who makes a special weapon out of it or it can be given to a Wizardy NPC that gives you a unique spell for it. The resource can only be used once so the player must make a choice for what they want, a weapon or a spell.
Some advice: make your game couch co-op on the consoles. I can't tell you how many indie games I've not purchased on PS5 because they aren't couch co-op. Many married couples enjoy playing indie games together, and you'll make a ton of sales.
I've seen this done in some other games before; maybe you could add artifacts as a resource, could be found in caves or buried in the ground, or collected from soil, and could be given to some sort of historian npc, in exchange for some lore/info on the game
You should add different types of fish. Each type of fish could have different magical buffs. For example, maybe a light blue fish gives increased movement speed for a short amount of time, or a red fish gives the fire boost for a short amount of time. This would add more value to the fishing aspect of the game and make for some interesting new strategies. Amazing game so far man, I'm looking forward to the full release.
You could add tea leaves as a resource. These, when given to the person that gives to tea, could give you temporary bonuses, such as increased damage, increased health, increased speed, or any of the jewelry effects. They would be found on tea bushes. Only one effect could be active at once. This would cause the player to choose which effect they want for certain sections.
This is just kind of a general idea, but I was thinking about a possible event - or just day/night - system. It could be like Terraria, where during the night, there are some different enemies and falling stars fall from the sky. It's a very rough idea, and if you like it, I'll leave it to you to perfect, but it would be interesting for certain resources to only obtainable at certain times, like terraria's falling stars. Also, nighttime in Moonshire would look really cool! Here's some night-based content ideas: A bug-net type weapon/item. It could be used to capture animals that could be useful to you - for example, a nighttime fox/raccoon that carries a "star dye" in a jar, or something like that - you could use it to make your character's cloak gain a starry purple color. I have some other ideas, but I'll leave you with that for now!
for another resource maybe you could find special rain drops in the sky area that can bring life back to plants or help dehydrated NPCs for a quest or desert area. maybe tease a shortcut with dead vines that can be revived with the rain drops or use them with the seeds to get better or more rewards from plants
For some reason i really like the idea of rare enemy drops in games, but i know alot of people dont like grinding too much. So maybe there is 1 rare drop per enemy (but not too rare) that can be given to the blacksmith to make weapons with different attributes. then after you get that 1 rare drop and the materials needed you can always make it again for free from the blacksmith like the other weapons. It would give it a feel of uniqueness in your loadouts even more and i think it would be quite fun but hard to balance correctly i suppose. anyway loved the demo played it through 3 times now :D
Ideas for resources: Monster pulp: Just a default drop from monsters you kill. Could be used for trading or weapon crafting if theres a blacksmith in town that would make monster versions of weapons. You could take this several layers deeper adding variety in monster drops (fur, claws, teeth, wings, bones, etc) but then you'd need to justify it. Mushrooms: Sometimes found inside hollow tree logs or in caves and could be used to craft consumable potions to grant you stats like damage, speed, resistance, etc. Magic beans: Very rare drop from flora that when planted on magical soil will have a random effect like growing a new resource, spawning monsters, treasure chests, weapons, etc. Monster egg: Rare drop from monsters, it will spawn an egg that follows you but breaks upon taking damage. After a set amount of time the egg hatches and you gain a randon familiar (bat, rat, frog, crow, etc) that attacks and has a set amount of HP. Enchanted fabric: Maybe found in chests or as a very rare drop from monsters and could be given to a merchant in town to upgrade your cloak to grant better stats. Maybe X amount of material lets you get a new cloak and you get to choose the effect it gains (speed, resistance, damage, etc)
WOW! I want to say that I love your demo, finding stuff feels rewarding and it immerses me to the adventure aspect of Moonshire. But one thing I don't like is how there are only two trees. It makes the game like a farming game where you have to wait for the resources to grow back. But it might be because I already finished the main story line. I just wanted to say how underrated you are and you inspire me to try to create games :)
For the resources, you could add a rarer, more valuable resource for each basic one. Eg, seeds = magic seeds, gold = platinum, etc. These types of items could be found only in chests or from bosses, and could be used to incentivize exploration and fighting bosses. Magic seeds could be used to grow magic beanstalks to unlock new areas (maybe the cloud area) or other plant related things, platinum could be used to upgrade weapons, and so on. This way, the basic resources act like currency, and the upgraded ones are like reusable key items, like the rancid eggs in hollow knight (except actually useful)
An idea from one of my games I’m working on, a currency in my game is voice recordings of other people who have explored the area. It works in my game because there’s limited inventory space and an audio log takes up a whole slot, so you’d have to make trips out to collect the audio log and bring it back. But the main idea is still there, using lore snippets (in your case it’d probably be text) as currency. I think it makes people pay more attention to what it’s saying because once you spend it, you don’t have access to it anymore.
Since seeds will become abundant, a certain amount of seeds can be traded with a npc or 2 npcs for an object that raises Ur magic level or magic meter. An even higher amount of seeds can be traded for access specific spells / abilities. An idea I came up with
The next resource is "appreciation" or "happiness", that is given by villagers that want help, and it can be used to heal things or do other spiritual things :D or something
Doing great job. Since this is a fantasy world and the focus is weapons, what about planting weapons? Like some magic seeds that sprout a weapon that you can use in that instant and it's unique to being "grown". You could also implement the weapons with the resource collecting. Like hitting a tree with a club or a sword gives seeds or fruit, but hitting it with an axe gives wood, or things like that. I feel like the weapons and the weapon system is one of the main focuses of your game, so it'd be cool to have more interactions with them. Anyway, you are doing great job. I've bee using Unity for years now and I see you making great progress. Keep it up!
Not a resource idea, but it would be cool if certain spells could be used to collect certain resources, this would also make spells more useful and not just weapons.
Wow, amazing progress (as always)! Not exactly sure what it would be called, but you could have a resource that occasionally spawns when dodging through those "spikes." This would promote exploration, which is always good. Maybe it could be called a thorn? Not exactly sure what they'd be used for, but one idea is they could be used as an alternate currency to purchase consumables at the "checkpoint/save" locations. Anyways, great work!
Hi Challachade, i know you'd probably wont see this, but i just feel like telling you how happy i am looking at your growing game. Ive been watching ALL your devlogs, etc, etc.. From the start, before all of this new things. Right now, im surprised of how many improvements has been added to the game and how much effort is put by you and others, i would definitely love to play it when it was fully released
A fully fledged farming system would be so cool, and maybe instead of seeds, the blacksmith could take ore from caves or gold. maybe farming could take time in game to grow crops for gold and other resources including healing items like food. I think also the ores from the caves could be given to the blacksmith to craft more permanent weapons for boss fights and such, buckets for watering crops, etc.
Here’s a suggestion: You could add bait which can be used in water to attract fish. You could even add a secret boss that has a very small chance to spawn when bait is used.
That looks very fun, My game is more of a management style, but I can definetely feel inspired by this. Specially since you are also doing devlogs while you work on it, it has been very challenging to keep motivated with that. Good luck!
When I saw you pick up the bones in the water I thought it'd by funny if you introduced a water boss by having just a ton of bones clustered in one place and the player would be like "huh, this is a lot of bones" and then the area would close itself off and the player would be like "oh no"
Here’s some feedback on the game that I thought of, - When you break the stone you should have a chance to acquire a gemstone that you can sell at the shop for coins or maybe make it so you can make better and stronger tools with the gemstones - When you break stuff, it is fun to see all the particles but I think it might be better if they faded away after 15 seconds or something like that
In terms of functionality you can judge but off the top of my head: Rocks to combine into making a platform (potentially to traverse water) Sticks to combine into a raft (again water traversal) Shells as a barter resource Flowers for decoration (placing in areas where the player frequently visits to liven things up) Fish for setting in specific ponds (say a harmful fish is guarding an entrance, but you feed it other fish to pass on by) etc etc, might add more if something else hits me.
I'm looking forward to this game coming out! Here are some thoughts. Pro gamers might not take damage in the tutorial and won't be able to see how the healing system works. What if when you heal at full health it powers up your weapon to do times two damage but the next hit will break it. That would reward pro gamers for not taking damage. The apples could use a little animation when they hit the ground after falling out of the tree where they split open and the seed replaces them to make it more clear why you get seeds instead of apples. Creating the vine from the seed is great and memorable, but some of the other seed locations aren't so memorable. What if instead of giving you bones it gives you a tree or a beanstalk that leads you to a small cloud island with a challenge like balloon popping or a mini boss and you get a prize like dye or gold at the end. It could be cool if you could have gold nuggets like in Minecraft that you could combine into gold bars. That way you could give the player small rewards for small secrets and large rewards in the form of gold bars for larger secrets. It would serve the same functionality as the pieces of heart containers in the Zelda series.
You could add a golden beetle. It could be found very rarely under rocks that you can smash. This could also add in stones and other ores that could drop from smashed rocks, and the golden beetle could be worth a lot and be exchanged for gold pieces
one resource idea i thought of were berry bushes (idk if someone already suggested this) and you can harvest them, which you can craft into berry jam. struggling to figure out exactly what it will do tho, but you might be able think of some ideas
I think a (slightly) less hacky way to make climbing is to only have the climbing region and disable collisions while the player is in the climbing region. With that system, the player can also stop climbing whenever they want by simply moving off the ivy wall to fall down
A reward for a continued dedication to collection of plants, ores, etc, could be npcs that track your progress in how many of each you’ve collected, and give rewards relating to them. (For plants it could be an arrow pointing to the nearest spot to plant, ores might give more of themselves or respawn faster, etc)
Wow the groundwork for your game is incredibly similar in concept to the one i want to make i will definitely be supporting your game and im glad to have found this
Breaking weapons (healing) could give you various weapon parts. Maybe these could be used in some sort of crafting system to unlock new forms of weapons or entirely new gear!
After a player loots a room's resources, it could happen that they return to the room while the cooldowns for certain resources have passed and others haven't, even if they looted everything within a relatively short timespan. It could potentially be confusing for players to find only some resources have respawned. Maybe it could be interesting to have the cooldown be for the entire room instead of for indifidual resources, or to have all resources respawn at once if their cooldowns started at roughly the same time.
🌾Maybe you can get corn from seeds you planted, which in turn can be used at dedicated fishing spots. Fishing spots would have specific unlockable spells and weapons tied to them which would make visiting previous areas more rewarding
With lots of resources, the numbers ticking down could impact performance. I would save the system time when loading and leaving a game, and save the timestamp when a resource was collected. Then you can do the calculation only when loading the resources.
I know you already solved the decaying weapon problem with breaking weapons for health, but breaking weapons for shards (or another recourse) can equally help the incentive to explore and gather more weapons.
3:50 i love this so much. i don't have a massive repetoir of games so all this reminds me of is ocarina of time, which gave me a nostalgia flashback for the bean stalk stuff
I think it would be cool if a resource was wood that would be more valuable and took twice as long to respawn (or how ever long) but since there wouldnt be a tree the seeds couldnt grow on it. It would be an intresting choice for the player
Not a new resource but I think that for seed patches there could be some more information on what they do. I'm not sure if there was something I missed but it seemed like you put seeds in and something happens, could be a tree growing or a shortcut. I think some more information could be given to the player, maybe the patch looks different or a symbol appears when nearby so they know what they are spending their seeds on.
You could basically have "Jack's magic bean stalk", where you plant a seed and it grows beyond the view camera. Then the player could climb up it to a secret place above the clouds. Maybe even fight a giant that has a special treasure like a blueprint for the blacksmith or a weapon, spell, etc. Another idea for the seeds could be that they grow a monster plant that when defeated offers something special
I poured over the last update and have a few suggestions. Put rocks on the water instead of an invisible wall. Then Graz will know that there is no point in trying to sail to that place. The seeds should first be placed next to the place where the shortcut will be planted. Because I'm looking for them all over the map and before I even got them at the very beginning. And waiting for the fruit to grow to have seeds is irritating. I loaded an old save and first wandered through the tunnels, and when I wanted to use a shortcut I couldn't because I didn't have any seeds. And when I harvested them, I found a guy who teaches how to sow and I lost them all. Which meant I couldn't take the shortcut again anyway because I had to wait, but I didn't want to because I was wandering around too much. I guess updates should move the saved state to the starting location so that the player can go through it again and appreciate what he is supposed to appreciate. Or at least in this case. You can't minimize the game. I know the game is in development, but the world map makes no sense. What I mean is that I bought it from a merchant and it doesn't show where I am when I'm in caves and clouds. Moreover, the appearance of the map does not in any way suggest that it is possible to pass under the waterfall in the initial location. If I were looking for undiscovered places, I certainly wouldn't look where the game begins. Although I think the location is good, the map should make it clear that there is a location (maybe it's bigger) in such a place. It would be good if the visited areas were marked in color on the map. As if you were discovering a map of one location. Because building a maze, especially a location in the clouds, is cool, but without a map it's extremely tedious. Similarly with the underground, you can go without a map for the first time, but then the whole area is too similar and it's easy to get lost. If you built a map like a star where the village is in the center and each path, some of which are later accessible after discovering specific skills, it would be great. In this case, you can create entire large mazes of locations, and shortcuts in the form of growing ladders/plants or waterfalls. You can freeze the waterfall or swim through it, which is nice for a short while. I also really liked the shortcut hidden by the tree in the previous version. Overall, the game looks good and the music is great. Torches are still not very useful, but I understand the game balance. I wish you good luck and success. Good luck.
if you ever have a desert biome you could add those tumbling weeds that drop loot like in dont starve, they could be fun to catch and could have a variety of loot
For the fish, maybe there's a monster npc that you can feed fish to, and it gives you other resources for feeding it. It could be a percentage chance, or a preprogramed loot table that gets progressively more powerful
Weapon shards Found: just about anywhere; inside rocks water, chests, breakable barrels etc(not in things like trees for obvious reasons) Purpose: Used to unlock new weapons or trade in to have a selected weapon Types: any weapon made has specific shards and; eg. those specific shards could be trade 5 sword shards for a sword. Also to unlock new weapons from weapon shards would be much rarer for new weapons
For a new resource, you can add dandelions that spawn rarely and randomly in some grass, and the player can use it as a consumable to give themselves a 2 second shield from all damage. You can also only hold 1 at a time
You may combine certain resources to simulate environment useful objects then create a circle of use for items during exploration. Let me elaborate. let us say you get 2 pieces of stone and 1 piece of 'elemental modifier' (which should in fact be rare). During a dungeon exploration, if you find an empty firecamp you could combine those piece to create temporary fire, then use that fire to get heat on your weapon. This would add a layer of planning and resource management. Another example could be, picking up seeds and spawn places to grow fruits to recover your health then reducing the number of weapons available to get and used as health restoration option. The same fish you got in the river then can be used as health restoration mechanism in a dungeon after setting the campfire you just ignited moments ago. So yo as you can see you can be as flexible as your imagination can be when you loop resources but involves careful player's management.
From a gameplay point of view I would suggest either removing the seed cost or adding seed spawn by the shortcut ladder. There would be nothing more annoying than reaching the shortcut point just to realize you need to backtrack to the last seed spawn and wait 10min for it to respawn before you can unlock the shortcut. Otherwise, people will just stockpile seeds just in case a shortcut needs one.
During my playthrough of the demo, which was incredible BTW, a boss dropped more than enough seeds leading up to the shortcut. This fixes the worry of getting to this point and not having enough seeds but also felt like there was not much real reward for the boss fight, other than a shortcut I may or may not use
recommendation: you can make an ingame timer , 1) it can be used to show how long the player played the game 2) it can be used for re-spawning items (instead of having timers for each item) need re-spawn time for each item and compare them every once in a while (like every 10 second) or compare them on entering new areas , its more efficient and you only need one timer ticking instead for each item
I think a area where you have a place to rest almost like being able to buy a hut where you can use seeds to create a farm for extra cash they could also be used for a quest or eating them to heal potentially and make it so you can edit your house i love games where the focus is adventure and intresting but theres always a place where i can go to chill calm down and just gather without worrying about healing finding loot it's just a peacful atmopshere
A resource Idea: if you keep the cloud area at the end of the game, it would be cool if you could collect Harpy Feathers. If you take enough to the blacksmith, he could give you a pair of wings. Since this is late game things, It would simply make it faster if the wings allowed you to fly over water without needing a bridge. It also adds opportunities for airborne combat to be added.
A while back when you first added destructible weapons i was a little on the fence, and while you covered pretty much all my problems with it in the video my biggest problem with losing the weapon is not knowing if i can get it back, maybe there could be small ore deposits in caves that you could use to buy 'insurance' on a weapon that you've picked up before? that way you could always get the weapon that you like back just by going back to town and talking to the blacksmith or something. maybe you could even have a decently large training range where all the weapons are, and the more weapons that you buy the 'insurance' for the more weapons appear in the training range, kind of decorating it.
It would be cool if some of the seed spots grew into additional game save flowers outside of important battles. This would incentivise players into collecting the seeds
Nice game ! I'm also still building my top down rpg game and some features and solutions you used in your game to overcome specific challenges are inspiring :) The faster combat for example is something I'm still looking into for my game as imo it feels like your battle style feels a bit more faster still 😅 Nonetheless, the animation work also needs to be considered hence why I'm still looking into some clean solutions like you do :) Since seeds can be planted now, not sure if a day night cycle is already in place, otherwise this could be the time to add it into the game
For collecting resources, you could introduce an Arena where players can fight numerous waves of enemies, and are rewarded with resources for their efforts. These Arenas could be placed in your levels, and would need to be found through exploration and puzzle solving. Maybe even some resources can only be earned by completing these arena battles.
having a light hunting mechanic where the resources dropped from enemies or certain types of animals can be traded to an witch/wizard npc for darker type spells or rarer obscure weapons .
You could add slime that drops when you kill slimy enemies like eyeballs and slimes. Then you could make a snail merchant that you can trade slime with for some cool stuff, like sticky swords to slow down enemies or a little snail shell that gives you some good defense when put into a necklace or ring
As a Disgaea fan I especially enjoy comedy type items. Maybe you could find old boots or candy bar wrappers or comic books just laying around as a resource for some odd reason. Also personally I don't mind exploiting game mechanics, for ref farming bushes for rupees in Zelda, or hunting for MissingNo in the oldest Pokemon games which is actually fun. But nothing wrong with your timer direction either, just my own opinion as a fellow indie game dev is to not worry obsessively about game balance on smaller stuff.
If youre planning on one-way shortcuts for some sections, it would be cool if the seeds are used to grow a phirana plant that swallows and spits you out, making you land in a previously inaccessible area.
An idea could be to collect special objects from monsters and use them to learn special attacks. For example you can make that once you have collected 100 pieces, as an achievement, you get a special attack
I suggest that you don't add any resources that you have to do something with. For example, if you added iron ore, you shouldn't have to smelt that to make iron ingots. That would just add unnecessary steps that would slow down the feel of the game. This also applies for seeds, don't make planting an annoying task that is required, just make it a convenient way to get extra items with little time commitment.
you could add a phishing rod that lets you play fishing minigames. This way it's fun to look for phising spots and players will have fun grinding for fish if they want (but it could also be 1-chance-only type minigame)
Instead of keeping track of every resource's timer, you could consider having 1 timer that runs all the time (you might wan this for some kind of stats screen anyway), and just store the time when the player collected the resource. Then you can check if 600 (or whatever amount of time) seconds has passed by comparing the global timer to the snapshot. I don't know how intensive it is to keep track of everything, but it might be worth thinking about this Visually, it might also be nice to spread some green around the patches where you grow, so instead of 1 tile becoming a plant, the surrounding ones are also filled with grass or whatever you like
Day and night system. Place rare, small moonbeams in special locations that you can collect in a jar. Such a precious oddity would surely be of some value :) 🤣
Resource idea: Glass How is it created: a chance to be created if you use a lightning ability while standing on sand terrain(or if any sand is visible on screen). What to use it for: Windows (if there were a build mode), Weapons and armor, so many different items could be made.
If backtracking is encouraged in this game it would be awesome to have random small events, like monster parties, special resources, and maybe even unique NPCs who appear just by sheer luck. This might come along great with a luck stat.
Idea: Berries All berries do different, purple one gives you health, lavender one takes 2 health from you and gives everyone burning (except for you) etc These berries have combinations, if you make a succesful a combination, you get a potion of that combination. Potions. Are. Expensive
What if you had thinner trees that you could chop down for wood, which you could give to carpenter npcs to build stuff? It could be used to spawn things like new buildings with shops or minigames, etc. Maybe there could also be places where you build bridges, ladders, harbors, etc. to act as shortcuts back to previously explored areas, like what you did with the climbable vines.
