Homegrown Version 0.2.5 - Terrain Update!

Hi everyone! Hope you've all been having a good start to 2023. I've started the year by making some changes to the terrain system in Homegrown, to make it fit in better with the overall art-style of the game.

Gamer Tier+ patrons can download and play Homegrown here.

And for Programmer Tier+ patrons the code is available here.

Rounded Grass Corners

The big change I wanted to make was to round off the edges of the grass, because they were previously very sharp and didn't fit in well with the rest of the game's art-style. To do this I used the "dual-grid" system - a really interesting technique in which the terrain mesh tiles are offset by half a square from the main grid. It sounds like that would complicate things, but it actually significantly simplifies the process of generating rounded corners for the terrain.

I talk a lot more about it in my latest devlog video, which you can check out here. 

Paths and Other Terrain Types

As well as rounding off the grass, I wanted to ensure that I still had support for unlimited other terrain types. To do this I settled on the idea of generating a little brick border between any two non-grass terrain types. This meant I could avoid having to sort out custom transitions between different terrains which I think would have become unfeasible with many terrain types.

Each terrain type can have its own border bricks and I also plan to allow for other border types when I next work on the terrain, such as rows of stones, wooden edges, etc. There are currently only two path types in the game: the tile path and the dirt path. You can buy the materials to make these paths from the tool shop in the town area.

Currently there's not really a good reason for having pathways in your farm other than aesthetics, but that will change soon in an upcoming update. I have quite a few ideas of how pathways could benefit your farm, such as tools working faster when working on tiles near a path, weeds growing slower or soil drying out slower when near to paths, or perhaps certain buffs to your plants if they are in a bed completely surrounded by path, with different path types giving different buffs. There's lots of possibilities and I'll be trying them out in the game soon.

Up Next...

Tomorrow I'm going to begin work on the next part of the graphical update which will be to add some "clutter" to the garden area, such as little bits of grass and flowers. I already have these little decorations in the area surrounding your garden, but it's not yet possible to have them spawn on the editable terrain, so your initial farm area currently looks very bare and lifeless. That update should be pretty quick to implement, and then I'll be working on improving the scenery of the area surrounding your farm.

Thanks for reading :) If you get the chance to try out Homegrown, please let me know of any suggestions or feedback you have!