- Verdant Village News #4 - 29 August 2026
I’m back, and still unsure of how I want to handle updates, but I figured the old method will work for the moment at least. I’m not going to commit to once a month or something because this is a little on the fly, but I’ll try to keep some sort of frequency up. The very short update is that things are going well, certainly speedier than before. Things could perhaps be faster, but I prefer to keep processes on a leash. I’ve already had to catch and correct certain things along the way, but overall, I’m still moving much faster.As for the details I should probably start with the big one first. Some of you who have been here for a while may have heard me talk about multiplayer and how it isn’t going to happen because it would involve gutting basically the entire game. Right, so turns out AI is pretty helpful with that sort of thing. I was already doing a basic retrofit for everything I’d w…
- Verdant Village News #3 - 16 August 2026
Its been a long time since I’ve written one of these. For anyone not up to date on the reasoning behind the devlogs stopping I’ll explain that briefly although I’ve gone over it in threads and previous devlogs.In short, since the game was being remade in a new engine I eventually ran out of things to talk about that weren’t just repeats of what I’d said already. I apologize if that seemed off-putting to anyone. It wasn’t my intention to just go dark while working, but I made a determination that it was better to spend my limited time working on the game rather than writing redundant devlogs.Anyway. Here I am. This is going to be a somewhat short devlog but I’m hoping it’s the start of something. I wanted to explain because it’s something that still bothers me. Perhaps I should preface and alleviate any worries, the game is still continuing. I still have every intention of seeing it done…
- Verdant Village News #2 - 11 December 2025
Hello, happy holidays all. I figured I should do one more of these before the end of the year and since things are starting to get busy now seems like a good time. I don’t know that I’ll have a ton to say, but usually I think that and then end up writing more than I expect.I believe the last update I put out I was just starting on combat as well as writing the plotlines for the game. Those are two statements that are basically back loaded with tons of things so I’ll go over what I can here.Starting with combat, it is done-ish. It’s a bit hard to qualify specifically but I’ll try to explain. At the moment a player could get into a fight, go through the whole fight, have the battle end, and get loot and XP. There are a few qualifiers on all of that though.The first thing is that in general the UI still needs some freshening up. I’m still working with some temporary sprites for the UI at t…
- Verdant Village News #1 - 31 August 2025
Well, I’m probably pretty overdue for this sort of thing lol. Apologies that its been a while since I’ve said anything. To be brief, things aren’t perfect, but certainly better than the start of the year. I’ll keep figuring it out, but that’s not particularly important for this post.So, what have I been doing for like, what, 4 months or something? Well, a lot and also probably not as much as people would like, myself included. For a while I just didn’t have the mindset for programming so instead I went to adding sprites to the game. I’m not exaggerating when I say I probably added like 500, 600 sprites. Maybe more? Which probably sounds easy, but it usually ends up being complicated because you have to handle trimming, setting origins, converting sprite strips, managing frame speed, etc.So, I did just that for a while for two reasons. One, I’d admittedly been putting it off cause its pr…
- March News Update - 1 April 2025
Hello all, hard to believe its already the end of March. This is probably going to be a shorter devlog which seems to have been the trend recently. I feel like these have ended up being more about my life than the game itself, which is something I would like to stop. Since current circumstances and work on the game are sort of closely linked though it’s a bit tough to do that. As a quick aside for those that just want to hear about progress. This month has basically been a lot of sprite work and some stuff with combat. I definitely wasn’t at full capacity this month. What I’m sort of doing at this point is gearing up for world design which means importing tons of sprites so I have things to build the world with. So its been a lot of sprite importing and trimming…so much importing and trimming. But I’m making good progress on that front. Aside from that it isn’t super relevant yet, but b…
- February News Update - 1 March 2025
Hello, this is probably going to be a fairly short update, but I wanted to write something just to keep up my end of the bargain here. I won't bother with all the details but if you read the last devlog you will know that I've currently got some anxiety/depression issues going on since my medication stopped working around the start of the year. I won't bother repeating everything, but I've started a different medication and at the moment it is sort of working, emphasis on 'sort of'. Things aren't as bad as they were, but I'm still pretty wrung out and lacking motivation. All this is to say that I haven't done much work on the game this month. There was some work on combat earlier in the month when I had a little more in the tank, but it's still very much in progress. I'm hoping that early March is going to see the end of this and a return to normalcy, but I unfortunately can't promise a…
- January News Update - 1 February 2025
Seems like the end of January is upon us already. I hope you all are having a good start to the new year. This is going to be something of an odd devlog if I’m being honest. That said the purpose of this is to keep everyone reading informed on what is going on with the game and tangentially speaking this is very much related. To dispel any potential mounting worry I’ll start by saying the game is still being worked on and work will continue. As most anyone reading this probably knows I develop this game by myself. I have a few artists I contract, but the coding is all me. I say this to basically explain that progress happens at the pace I can manage, so if I slow down not much happens. Anyway, I don’t mind being open about this stuff so I’ll just bluntly say that I have general anxiety. I’ve had it for a very long time now. I take medication for it, and to be honest I don’t think I’ve h…
- December News Update - 31 December 2024
Hello all, happy new year! This is obviously the last devlog before the end of the year. I’ll try to keep it short. I think there probably won’t be too much to discuss anyhow. Lots of work happening, but this has been one of those months where all the effort goes into one system so there isn’t a wide variety of things to talk about. Admittedly, December is also one of those months where things are a bit touch and go because of all the holidays. So, to get into it this month was about combat, as I believe I talked about last time. Good progress has been made, but there is still plenty to do. As a basic refresher the combat is going to be turn based. Below is an image of what the general battle screen will look like. As usual, you’ll have to ignore the temporary sprites. My drawing skills peak at using the fill tool to color in a box. Even the sprites that look completed may have another…
- November News Update - 30 November 2024
Hello all, we have a lot to talk about today. Nothing bad, lots of concepts. This has been a very conceptual month if you will. Before that though I’ll start with the concrete stuff. To be honest, a lot of this month was spent pondering and planning rather than coding. The first part of the month did see a few things get done however. So as far as things added, there was work on the item quality system to work out a few kinks as well as assign quality to fish that you catch. In addition, the cooking UI was finished up. I believe all I really had left to do at the start of the month was finish up fish filleting. Its more precise than what is in the live version. Fish give one of two types of fillet and those fillet’s have quality levels. On top of that different fish give different amounts of fillets. You can also tell what you are filleting, because for some reason I don’t think you can…
- October News Update - 1 November 2024
I never know how to start these. Maybe I need to develop some sort of greeting like ‘Hello Villagers’ or something. That sounds weird, probably not going to do that. On the plus side this odd tangent has served as a way to start this devlog, so at least one problem has been solved. This month was one of those ‘only one thing got worked on all month’ months. Suffice to say cooking is a fairly involved system. On top of that I was sick for a week which really didn’t help matters. To start I should say that cooking is (basically) done. I have quite literally one final detail to write into the system to display some icons which I’ll be taking care of after this. So, I’m going to go ahead and call it done. Going into cooking I figured this was going to be fairly simple. After all its really just a couple of menus that search for ingredients and let you combine them into food. Realistically,…
- September News Update - 30 September 2024
It looks like its time for another devlog. This month I feel like a lot was accomplished. The tasks were a little more on the backend rather than new systems, but when you see what they are I would guess you’ll agree that they are necessary. To start at the beginning, last month the dialogue system was implemented. While it was basically done I did have a few things to clean up at the start of this month. So, the first bit of time was spent fixing up a few UI issues, patching several bugs, and adding a little more functionality to the system. All of this was pretty minor and only took a few days, but I think the system in general has turned out nicely. Next was the bit that took up the most of my time this month. I believe I’ve mentioned it before, but up until now there has been no save system for the new version of the game. As a consequence, there was also no load system obviously. T…
- August News Update - 1 September 2024
Just like that August is over. I say that a lot, but I really feel it this time. This month was hampered slightly by other events. To be brief, I attended a wedding in Europe which meant I lost about 10 days of work. And since that person is potentially reading this right now, I should clarify that I don’t regret my decision to attend at all, however it did mean a little less got done game wise. So, let’s jump into it because despite the loss of time there are a few updates to give. I believe at the end of the last update I mentioned that the dialogue system would be next in line. I’m happy to report that, bar a bit of UI tuning, that system is complete. This is another situation where that sounds like very little, but its actually a fair bit of progress. Before we get to what’s new though I should preface with the old. If you’ve played the current version of the game you’ve probably ta…
- July News Update - 1 August 2024
Tomorrow is the start of August so let’s jump right in. This is one of those months where a lot happened, but it was condensed into just a few systems so on paper it feels a bit sparse. As usual, I’ve basically been continuing with the reimplementation of various systems in the game. I was also trying to do some research into future systems and tuning up things where I thought it was needed. So, let’s start at the beginning. Last month I had most of the end of day recap in place. As a quick explanation when the clock hits midnight the game will pause for a moment and show you a variety of information about the day that just passed. You can check the previous post for details, but its generally things like money earned from shipping, animal and crop statuses, etc. The start of this month was spent finishing up this system, or at least finishing it to the point that it can be done. At lea…
- June News Update - 30 June 2024
We’ve reached the end of the month again and so as usual I have an update on what’s been going on with Verdant Village. For the first time in a while I feel like I’ve actually made progress. If you’ve been reading these dev logs you probably know I’ve been working on custom house interiors for a while. This month was the first time since I finished that system. So, I actually have a list of things that got done, which always feels better than just saying you’ve done work on one huge system. Best to start at the beginning though. So, in order I first cleaned up the tool tip logic just a bit. There are a number of systems that are in place but might be missing a minor piece of code to polish it. I tend to program large swaths of a system and then make some notes before doing a second pass a little later to spruce things up. I find its better to give a system a little bit of time to breath…
- May News Update - 1 June 2024
Hello all, I can’t believe it’s already June. In retrospect I suppose I thought my May would be fairly quiet, but it really turned out to be anything but that. I should probably expect that sort of thing at this point in my life, but somehow, I’m still being surprised that things come up and take up time. As mentioned above I had a few things happen that slowed my work a bit, however I did still get things done. Namely the interior design portion of things. I really can’t express how glad I am that its done. I don’t like to get stuck working on systems for long stretches of time. I don’t really mind it from a working perspective, but it just makes progress seem so slow when you look back and realize you’ve been working on the same system for weeks. So, what is the interior design system I hear you ask. The short answer is that it’s the system that allows you to modify your house layout…
- April News Update - 1 May 2024
It is already the end of April, which is rather alarming. I feel like the month just disappeared but that’s nothing new. I was hoping things would be a bit different by the time we reached the end of the month, but it is what it is. As such this will probably be a shorter update. As you might remember from the last update there is a change happening to the player house interior. For a brief refresher, in most games (that I know of) like this you can upgrade your house to expand the interior. Generally speaking, this means another room is added onto the layout, or perhaps an existing one is made larger. The point being that every player ends up with the same house layout. I thought this was something of a missed opportunity so I took it upon myself to try something different. What me of the past didn’t account for was just how complicated this would end up being. I tend to convince mysel…
- March News Update - 30 March 2024
I’m slightly early this month cause of the weekend, but here we are. Things didn’t go as expected this month. Not in a bad way, but I wasn’t really expecting to work on what I did. I think in the last update I talked about maybe moving towards combat. I nixed that decision pretty quick, but we’ll go in order. The month started with finishing up livestock. That ended up taking longer than expected honestly, about half the month if I recall. That was effectively the system that just kept on giving. Every time I thought I was done there was another thing to add. The majority of what I needed to do was replicate what had already been done across all other animals. At the start of the month basically only chickens functioned. Since then I’ve added in ducks, geese, cows, goats, sheep, and pigs. On top of these there are 1 to 2 forms for each type of animal which I won’t spoil. So they needed…
- February News Update - 1 March 2024
As usual its time for another dev log. I did a bit of looking and actually it has been a year since I announced I would be remaking the game in a new engine. I didn’t think that I made the announcement at the end of February 2023 but apparently, I did. Looking through a few of the subsequent logs though it seems I didn’t really start coding until May. So, its sort of been a year, sort of not. I’m happy with the progress so far, but obviously I wish things were going faster. However outside of giving up sleep I don’t think there is any additional time left in my days. The progress of the game is sort of hard to judge, but I think I have more done than it feels like. It just seems strange because the world doesn’t exist at the moment. Its just a few test rooms where I just implement systems. I remember when the old version of the game was like that and once I actually built the in game wo…
- January News Update - 1 February 2024
Hello all, it feels like it’s a been a bit since a wrote one of these, but I suppose its just that a lot has happened. As usual it’s the end of the month so its time I regale you all with what’s been going on with Verdant Village. To be completely honest, I’m looking forward to February because January turned out to be rather busy with some stuff getting in the way of development. Thankfully, February looks a lot more boring, which means more time to get stuff done. So, as I sort of just mentioned less got accomplished this month than I would have liked. The holidays sort of ran over into the first week of the year. I was then out of town for work for a week, and what would a going out of town be if I didn’t catch some sort of cold afterwards for like a half week. Anyway, I’m not here to make excuses (although I sort of just did), but I wanted to give a bit of perspective as this wasn’t…
- December News Update - 30 December 2023
To start things off, happy new year! It’s been quite a year for myself, and Verdant Village in general. I’ve said it before, but I can’t say I was expecting to be in the process of remaking this game at this time. A lot of the framework for the game has been laid since I started in a new engine earlier this year. We’re getting fairly close to the point where the more complex systems are in place and hopefully after that development will speed up a bit. Now, as for what happened this month, I regret to say it wasn’t much. December is always sort of a weird month just because of the holidays. This year was busier than usual for me, and I also had the pleasure of being sick for a bit. I did make some progress on ranching, but admittedly this month was a bit of a wash. That said January should be far more normal, and I can return to getting things done. While I didn’t get around to that muc…
