A rather vloggy devlog this week - there's not a whole load of dev content to show while I'm redoing the UI. Only one or two more UI devlogs to go though, and then it's just gameplay features and new content all the way till launch!
Include the descriptions. If people need the reminder of what it does, it's there (and the player doesn't have to go all the way to the shop to find the description again). If they don't care, then human brain is extremely good at learning how to ignore things - as long as it's always in a consistent place then, try it out yourself, you'll very rapidly learn to focus on the bits that matter and will stop even seeing it's there. (And it's one of the WCAG accessibility principles. You should always be able to work out the context from the item itself, so that there is no reliance on a cognitive function test. In other words, not including the descriptions means you're relying on people's memory. Don't do this unless it's intrinsically unavoidable.)
@@tornado3007 As do I. I have lived in the country my whole life but it's Australian countryside and tends to be... drab. It's fascinating to see a more European countryside and helps me appreciate what I already have.
One suggestion, please make it so the items go into the inventory even if the hotbar is not full as it makes it feel messy I think. If you like it like this, leave it, just a suggestion.
Should definitely have some way of seeing the description of an item after you buy it. If nothing else, then for the case of someone doesn't play the game for a while and comes back to it, they may no longer know what something they bought before the break does. Love the videos, games making amazing progress
had the same thought. There should be some way for people to read up where to use their tools if they've put the game down for a while. I kinda wish all games had this in general, because jumping back into something you were already in the middle of is so hard it often puts me off trying to play the game in the first place 😅
Exactly what I was about to say. You can always make it expandable, like after some time with mouseover that item, or maybe key modifier like Shift, or simply additional Game Option to toggle them on and off.
Regarding the item descriptions, a common compromise I see in-games... (1) Hold down Alt while mousing over an item, to see the "Detailed View". When your not holding down Alt, you get the "Compact View".
@@z0bi_ from what he said in the video, the right click brings up the tooltip already. So if you have 2 different view options bringing up one of them would require a modifier.
Hi, I have two ideas, one is to make a sort inventory button, it would be very useful in my opinion. The other one is related to item descriptions, you could make a small button in the tooltip with a question mark, when the player clicks on it the description will appear. The game is looking awesome, keep up the good work!
I honestly think a basic looking inventory is better than a too-interesting looking one. Since the player is going to be seeing it a lot, I'm of the opinion that you want the player to not even notice the inventory, for it to just be perceived as a natural part of playing the game. And for that you just need something that looks serviceable and basic, while fitting the overall UI visuals that you went for in the game. I wouldn't stress too much about how the inventory looks, and instead just focus on how using it feels for the player and ensure that it feels easy and intuitive to use, since the player will be using it a lot. Great work! Edit: in terms of item descriptions, I think it's best to show the item's description as well when the player inspects it. You never know if for example a player is coming back to the game after not playing it for a while, and doesn't quite remember what every item does. It's useful to see the descriptions in the inspect panel, and it'll just be basically not noticeable for players who are just looking for the item's stats.
The UI is looking pretty good! My only tip would be in the item display, you could show the name of the item when hovering, and the stats and description of the item when right-clicking. That would remind the player what the item served for. This is just an opinion, because once you put many hours into the game and with a lot of items bought, it can get overwhelming to know every single item by head. But keep up the good work can't wait to play the game! :D
Your devlogs are so captivating that they inspired me to make my own cozy farming game haha. I am suuperr excited for Homegrown and I wish you all the best! 💌
Hi! Not sure if you'll read this - I love your devlog series, it's food for the soul! And I really appreciate your filming and editing style, it all fits so well together with your balcony and the cooking and the walks with Rufus, just a really great series! Not sure if your audience overall would be interested in this, but I recently started learning Java (web dev rather than software, though), and I would really love to learn more about how you're building games from scratch, how you made camera and graphics work, your sound system - anything like that. In my brain there is a big yawning chasm between, "oh yeah, I can get game logic to work and print it to the console (or maybe have a super simple gui with javafx or something)" and going to a fully fledged game with just, you know, plain Java. I know videos are a lot of work, and it may not be the best thing for your channel, and I definitely appreciate any and all videos you make, so it's of course completely understandable if you didn't want to make a video about it! Just if you ever wanted to talk about the under-the-hood stuff, there's at least one subscriber who'd geek out about it! Thanks for all the work you put into this!
I have been reminded about this channel by a different video (Sasquatch B Studios) mentioning you and I have to admit that your content was one of the first devlogs I've ever seen. Subbed, not to loose it again :) good luck on your project and thank you for such a great content
For the item descriptions it would be super useful to have in case we have gaps in between playing. Maybe you could have a hotkey to get extra info on the tooltip that contains description / max rolls for stats similar to ARPGs? Great video this week. Always excited when the notification pops up for the devlog!
I think it's always nice to have an easy way to see the description of the items. For example, even though I've been playing Pokémon since forever I always find myself checking the description of moves and items to see what they do even though I probably used them thousands of times before. Also, in my gamedev journey, I found that you can't always rely on the player's memory, in some of my playtests I saw players completely lost even though the game had explicitly told them what to do prior
I love this! I think it would be really nice to have a button that sorts the items in some way. I love having an organized inventory in games but doing that manually would become a pain at some point. Great video😁
If you plan to make the inventory infinite, I would definitely consider implementing a search bar along with a sort/filter button! Definitely would make a huge difference in QoL.
For the inventory and hotbar, I would have made it 1 array or list. The first 12 elements would always be the hotbar and after that is the inventory. This makes dragging and dropping a lot easier. Also, when dragging and dropping is implemented for the hotbar, maybe clicking an item would show it's stats and description to the right of the inventory.
I was thinking the same thing. And you can make it also visually be the same list in the UI. When you trigger the inventory button, the hot bar moves up and reveals more rows underneath it instead of a disconnected window. Maybe you don't even need boring borders around it!
In Stardew Valley we can use Tab key to iterate the hotbar over the rows of our inventory. It's really useful when esspecially with this type of gameplay where you manage many resources and opening up the inventory is tedious after a while. I highly recommend you implement this. Of course this means a fixed size of row in your inventory and overhauling the inventory management. But just wanted to let you aware of the situation. I love your content and follow you since the middle of the development of equilinox.
As some previous comments suggested, the inventory needs some sort of sorting. But instead of a sorting button, I would add tabs for tools, vegetables, furtulazers etc. The reason is, when you will add more content to the game, the inventory will be cluttered. Imagine having 50 different seeds, plants, fertilizers and 15 different tools all displaying on one screen.
This game is looking more and more fun every video! I was watching when you made the new items go into the inventory and I think it would be nice if a pop-up appeared above the inventory button telling you how many of what item were stored :D
I know it would be a bit of a bigger change but you could make it that the hotbar is the actual inventory and then you have boxes or other storage containers that are placable, forcing the player to not have 500 items on them but choose the ones that they value to have on in the moment. This could lead well into some processing of raw resources (like carrot bread, or raps oil to fuel some machines)
You could even make it so that the hotbar does have limited space, and you can only access more inventory slots if you buy a shed or similar from the market?
Finally had a chance to watch the video! Recently moved from the UK myself to Denmark, so its been a bit hectic! Loving the UI updates, as for whether you should show descriptions, I'd personally say yes or to have another way of finding out the information somewhere, without having to go the shop, maybe like a journal or something?
FINALLY I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR A NEW VIDEO ^_^ ! you inspired me to start learning and creating my own game engine. I've always wonder why and how you looks like you know everything while me struggling to even figure out my own obj loader :D. I will work hard so I can be like you thanks for making such a great content ^_^. Cant wait to play your new games soon ^^
You neeeeed the item description in the inventory!!! Plenty of people forget things fast and also the idea of someone coming back to the game and forgetting what everything in their inventory does is very discouraging!
Your devlogs are a huge inspiration to me. I love your laid back style, simple editing, and the cozy feeling. I'm taking notes, as always. Developing your own UI framework has got to be the most soul-sucking aspect of this project. Any time i see you dealing with a monumental task like that, it gives me newfound motivation to tackle whatever problem I'm dealing with. As for the inventory being basic looking, I think that's fine? It's going to be filled with all kinds of colorful and interesting stuff. So maybe less is more there.
i was just talking to my partner how i want to create a cozy game, and i used this as my argument. Love watching your updates, this is looking absolutely beautiful.
For item descriptions, what I have seen in other games and I enjoy, is for mouse over to show a small mouse over (just important information). And then if you hold that for long enough, the mouse over expands to show everything.
For the item description you could have a side panel in the inventory the same way you have it in the shop when selected with one click. And if you want to equip it in the lower bar, you could double click. Great video and work! 🎉🎉🎉
Very good vibes from your video, as always! So motivating and chilling! For the tool tips in the inventory, I'd not put any additional info by default, but I'd rather add a small icon with a question mark that allows the player to show the additional info in a secondary panel, if needed.
As a UI designer I think you’re missing a categories level to your inventory. Imagine going to the supermarket and every item is in the same aisle. I suggest thinking about the action the user is trying to perform when they open the inventory. Eg ‘I want to plant a seed’. You don’t need to see all the other categories of items, this gets in the way of finding what you want. Animal Crossing has a hard limit on the number of items a user can hold so it still runs into that problem but it can mitigate.
Absolutely amazing work! It is insane how far you have come since I started watching you feels like forever ago now. Keep up the amazing work I cannot wait until I can play this!
Hey Karl, regarding the user interface decision about the description box. It is always a good habit, to show contextual detail info where applicable so showing it again might not make sense from a programmers mind or point of view but does for a lot of users. The reason is that, if the UI is snappy and works well, people tend to think they know and move fast across our UI but then realize that they still need the extra info at the next interaction point. So it is a nice courtesy to show it again. :) It will help your users and their acceptance level will rise. I'd say, try it out. :) If you really think, power users would be distracted by it then add an option in your UI preferences dialog as they as power users will maybe use that to disable the detail info box.
I absolutely love these videos, it's like they were made specifically for me. Coding, gardening, foraging and cooking! So wonderful. It would be good to have a sorting feature in the inventory. If there are going to be as many items as you had in your showcase, it would be useful to be able to sort by type, value, recent, etc. Also, wondering about how you structure you work days - do you have an allotted time that you will stop working, or do you just go until you have had enough. I've never worked for myself, so I find it interesting how you'd structure you workday!
I'd say the coolest are extentable tooltips. First minimal toopltip appears after like 200ms, but if you keep the mouse hovered, after like 5s the tooltip extends and shows more info
It's very good progress so far. It's worth the wait for your new Devlog.😉 Anyway, I'm so excited to know that you've been visiting to Thailand (cause I am Thai🤭) And I'm glad you were having a good time in my country!🤗
For the inventory it would be neat if all the items had color coded backgrounds based on category and there was an auto sort button that organized things based on category, so you'd have sections for different things.
I agree with WakanaSora, if someone doesn't play for a while and comes back they might not remember the description. You could make a smaller name plate for just scrolling over an item then if you right click or tap a button it could give a whole description. Loving the game so far, been a huge fan of your work for years now
For blank slots in inventory, maybe a ui checkbox to let the user decide if they want to have blanks removed or not. People like to organise their inventory in special ways, and having a blank can let them do that
With dragging items in the inventory/moving them to your hotbar - maybe add an empty slot (empty grey box) to fill the currently empty spot? Love the videos
I think it's still a good idea to have item descriptions in at least some form, especially if someone hasn't played the game in a while or just wants a quick look without having to go all the way back to the shop
I like the way Baldur's Gate does drilling down into information and explanations on screen. Some tooltips have underlined text. To hover over it, you can press "F", which keeps the last tooltip locked on screen so you can mouseover the "link" with more info behind it. Holding a modifier or having it as a setting (maybe during the tutorial) would also work.
Another option for the descriptions could be a second right click. The first click would bring up stats, and the second click would bring up the description.
I would make Alt/Shift/Ctrl modifiers when held down show the additional description. I would also use one of those modifiers. Probably shift as a hotkey to move items faster between the inventory. Etc.
Definitely a yes from me on the item description in the inventory itself. It would be really annoying to come back to the game after a break from playing, having forgotten what the items do, to have to go back to the shop in order to find out.
Some sort of sorting of inventory or even dividing inventory into different categories (tools, seeds, compost, etc.) would be useful. Great video as always!
I think you should definitely show the item description, it looked really good while also providing some more information. I'm not a garden expert therefore I would quickly forget what certain items do.
Other comments may have mentioned it, but my number one desire for any sort of inventory like this is a way to sort (by type/category/weight/value etc.) and filter (search for specific tools or items). That kind of functionality would be hugely appreciated!
Amazing work. For the item dragging between the hotbar and the inventory what you could do is get the closest inventory spot to the mouse and make a temporary slot at that position shifting every item after it. Additionally, leave the description in there, on hover would probably be better aswell (just, not instant)
This is going to sound really silly, but seeing the slightest peak of runescape gives me so much confidence; i often get angry at myself for playing games instead of being productive; but seeing someone as talented as you "switch off" and have some time to chill it's a breath of fresh air :)
I think its a nice way to refresh people's memory if they come back after a few eeks off (tool tip decriptions), you don't lose anything from having a short single sentence descriptor, and you might lose a little from not having it so you might as well.
One idea I have for the descriptions would be to show it in your inventory, but not in your hotbar. My thinking is that if it's already in your hotbar, you probably know what it does, but you might not know what some random item in your inventory is. Anyways, great video as always.
I always push for options, especially if you are stuck between design choices: If you would like your default hover behavior to just show the item title in the tooltip, that is okay. However, perhaps in an options/settings menu for UI elements provide a way to turn on "extended" tooltips or something to that effect. Let's the player decide what they'd prefer. I think being able to see a detailed description for the item is important after purchase. Great update video, can't wait for the feature/content videos!
For real, I do this all the time with small, non-gameplay-changing features. Someone else has an opinion on how it should work? Add it to the config file and call it a day lol
Looking good!! I think it would be nice to have some kind of filter for item types or any other relevant field in the inventory. If it starts to grow a lot it will be difficult to find what the player is looking for.
It might be nice to have two inventories, one for tools and one for crops and seeds. You could even have them both on screen when you open the inventory. So instead of 1 square box in the middle of the screen, there would be two separate areas allowing for more options for visual design. Oh you could even go similar to the save file design, two solid backgrounds for the separate inventories with a larger transparent background tying them together
Having the description available in the inventory would be nice, and it wouldn't be necessary for the pop ups in the toolbar to have them. It allows your players to refresh their knowledge if they forgot. Yeah they can go back to the shop, but their will be a natural game play cycle in which a player wants to check items in their inventory and might wonder how to use them or what some do again.
About the tooltip, it's always great to have one, but remember, the icon should be enough to understand what ther item is supposed to do. (blue = water, rouind = good, spikky = bad, ...)
To your question whether or not show the description in the quick info: I would show it, because it would lower the mental overhead of remembering each items description. To save space it could be collapsible and down the line it could be hidden by the users preference either from the options or with a little option on the storage inventory screen.
Looking great! I think maybe the item counts would match the rest of the UI better if you used dark text on a light background, instead of the other way around.
The UI is looking great so far :) My suggestion about the tooltips - maybe have a toggable option in gameplay settings to show item descriptions in tooltips or not? then you give the choice to the player
at the end you asked about the item description box - i was thinking maybe change it to show the info window on mouse over and then also show the description while holding right click, with a little "hold right mouse for more info" indicator, for people that forget what something does :)
I would suggest that, when adding an item to the inventory, the scrollbar automatically moves to put the item in view. You could do this only when adding a completely new item or also when increasing the stack of a pre-existing item. Not sure if that would get annoying to the player, but it would at least be useful when adding an item to the bottom of the inventory.
idk how often you get this, but I really think you should revisit that RPG you were working on 8-10 years ago. I still go back and watch those videos from time to time. it's so cool how you were able to make a game like that in java
12:18 hover to show pop up, then CTRL, that expands the pop up to show description. That means of the time you can avoid the clutter. But if in does you can see what it does by tapping control.
As usual, very intesresting devlog. I think that you can add a searchbar in the inventory to look for items, when you have many items, it could be easier for the player
I think the addition of a greenhouse building would be cool. For growing tropical things like oranges, bananas, or pineapples or something. Also, farm animals please!
Hey, I'd have a video suggestion, partially bcs it would probably (or at least hopefully for you) beneficial and also VERY much interesting and helpful to share with people curious about that topic and looking to pick up something from your vast experience! Namely, a vid where you would perhaps go into at least the overview level of your engine architecture or even a bit deeper depending on how comfortable and/or amount of effort you would max want to pour into such a topic/vid. Because, by now your SURELY have a vast and amazing experience in how to deal with architectural issues especially on such a scale and given your exceptional organisational skills, I am sure we could learn from you that is of course if you are/would be willing to share this with us - your community :D Hope you have an amazing, lovely and HEALTHY time! Cheers!
"...if you've bought it, and you own it, then you must already know what it does..." Bold of you to assume I remember what I had for breakfast let alone what an item in a game I haven't played in a week is for, lol.
