Adding a Mining and Combat System to My Farming RPG 🌱 | Devlog #2

[@Bekah_Penguin]

I like how you are keeping the combat separate and making sure the game isn’t too punishing for failing

[@DajuSar]

The amount of progress from the first video it’s really amazing. One thing about the combat system would be the ability to toggle between auto aim and manual aim, like League of legends does on swarm, this would be helpful in later stages where there could be big beafy monster along side weaker enemies that way the player can decide and aim to target high priority monsters and not being subjected to relay on auto aim at all times. About the mining I think having different sized minerals would be a nice addition it could be repetitive to always have the same minerals in the same sizes, some clusters of mineral of the same or maybe multiple minerals could be fun to add, they would take longer to mine of course and they will help to enrich the environment. Wish you the best ^^

[@LeisurelyGames]

Wow, I didn't know there's a new swarm mode in league! I just gave it a try and I can definitely see the usefulness of manual aim. I still want the combat in my game to be simple since it's primarily a farming game, so I want to make sure that players can progress without needing manual aim, but it'll be a good option to add for players who want more control in combat. I really like your ideas on mineral varieties and will definitely work on them. Thanks for the suggestions!

[@IndieGameDreamer]

Very nice devlog Shirley! Your game is looking really cool!! Greetings from Brasil =)

[@LeisurelyGames]

Thank you from Canada :)

[@IndieGameDreamer]

@@LeisurelyGames You're welcome 😄

[@MeRancic]

I am curious as to what your goal of the game's scope is. It sounds like it's going to be rather big, at least by what you have said so far. Are you not concerned about it collapsing down on you? In my experience you either A) need to build huge frameworks that work robust enough and can scale, or B) work quick and dirty in expense of collecting technical debt. The former taking a huge time and the latter just resulting in inevitable refactors.

[@LeisurelyGames]

The game will have a large scope, probably similar to Stardew Valley, so I'm really careful about how I build the project. Right now I'm basically doing the option A that you mentioned - building a robust framework, which is why I haven't added much content to the game yet (1 crop, 2 skills, 2 enemies, a few items, etc.). But the framework that I've built makes it easy to add content later without much additional coding. Code maintainability is super important in a large-scale project like this one, and I think in the long run it actually saves more time than the "quick" and dirty way.

[@MeRancic]

​ @LeisurelyGames I see, that makes sense when you are thinking in the long run. Though why are you trying to bring all the features into one game already? As far as I understood you don't have too much experience with making games? In that case, why don't you develop games that focus around just one or two core mechanics of your final game and bring them all together once you have finished those. So for example just making a game about farming, or a game just about combat or mining or whatever. I suppose the biggest problem is that you couldn't sell these small games as they are more something like toys and lack content/size (although I think there might be some way to monetize them). The problem with building frameworks so early is that the problem space is usually not well defined and that you have to change your backend sooner or later anyways because you simply didn't account for certain things (which you simply couldn't). Refactors just become a problem over time in any software dev field. What are your thoughts on this? Though to each there own. I am just trying to figure out how to make large games myself, stories like that of concerned ape are just wild to me.

[@LeisurelyGames]

I don't have much experience with game development, but I'm familiar with working on large scale software, so I feel comfortable building a large framework (and refactoring it if necessary). I think it'll be financially difficult to continue doing gamedev full-time if I practice with toy games, and putting them together will also require extra effort. I think building the game framework first without adding too much content makes it easier to refactor, so I'm not too worried about it.

[@MeRancic]

@@LeisurelyGames Sounds reasonable. I am approaching this from a very different angle, so I am looking forward to how your game dev journey will go.