Welcome to Plumpet Island!
Making of Plumpet Islands
We were not quite happy with the design of the previous harvesting island (see blog post). Problem with the design was that it was not scalable enough. We intended to add lots of stuff along the way, but the shape and size did not support this. Our Art Director did some new design sketches…
Although this design did make it more intuitive what the player could do, it was still not modular enough. So he made another where he split the different sections apart into separate islands.
This was a much better design for several reasons. We can now add new islands as we se fit. Also note how the harvesting island and mountain are built by combining simple rocks. We began to make pieces and assembled Plumpet Island (the island with the windmill above) and Barnacle Bay.
The house will be replaced with another, but we have simplified the production process without loosing visual quality.
In the previous harvesting island we made before christmas, we had the barnacles grow in the garden, but seriously – barnacles grow in the turf. With the new design we spilt spud production and pearl production (ammo for each Spud gun and pearl cross bow).
Both the mountain on the beach above and the island walls of Plumpet Island are constructed based on 7 different rock meshes. We have used Unity’s vertex paint shader to enable the green grass texture on the rocks.
That is it for now…
Harvesting Gameplay
Hi, I’m Bendik, the Producer of FoM. I also work on the game design from time to time.
I would like to share with you how we are planning to implement harvesting work in Project FoM.
In general all consumables needed in this game will either be mined or harvested. You shall of course also be allowed to buy consumables should you run out or not like farming in general, but we will strive to make this gameplay super fun.
In games like FarmVille you will need to come back to harvest your crops at a certain time or your crops will die. This is referred to as Appointment Gaming. It’s a binary solution where you either get a reward for returning to the game or a penalty for being too late. We will first of all stick to in-game time, so while you don’t play, time will not pass.
Secondly we don’t like to punish the player for coming back to the game – even if he/she is late. At the same time great rewards should have risks and costs so we will have a slow degration of your harvest should you neglect your garden. E.g. If you are late, your spuds will jump out of the ground and run about and maybe eat your plants. You should still be able to catch most of them if you remember to close the gate to the pen. The fungus might spread and take over nearby plants. So expect the unexpected should you be late, but don’t expect a dead garden.
We will have 3 types of species that can be planted, grown and harvested:
- Plants (Various types of herbs used for healing and curing)
- Fungus (Consumables for buffs and debuffs)
- Magical Spuds (Concious Vegetables that will be used in the Spud Gun for ammunition)
Above is a concept illustration with various examples of the 3 species. Most are based on weird real plants, mushrooms or corals.
For the more advanced farmer, there will be a subtle complicating factor that is that Plants like to have Fungus around them, Spuds like Plants and Fungus like Spuds. Technically this is a Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship between the tree species allowing the player to sacrifice quantity for quality with one species over the other.
That is all I will share for now.