Friday, August 29, 2014

It works... Enough

//DO NOT CALL!
public void Complete() { }

The game is functional (haha get it?) but nowhere near done.  Trading, growing, and all the essential parts of the game are in, but there is much more to be done.  Next up, I'm going to work a little more on balancing and adding new plants.

Because this post is pretty short, I'm going to give a short description on how plants are made!
The above is an example of the data that is needed for a plant to be valid (Mental note: make the program not crash when loading invalid plants...)
The first item is the name of the plant, followed by the name of the plant's "seed".  The seed is both what is planted to create more, as well as what is bought and sold.  Next comes the yield size.  This number is the average number of seeds you'll get from a harvest.
After that is the growth factor.  This is the average amount of growth per day.  After that is the average value for sale and purchase, respectively.
Finally, there's the description, which, as you might guess, describes the crop.

Come to think of it, that's rally not as complicated as I initially thought.  Oh, well.

UNTIL NEXT TIME, ON: NINJASHEEP<>

To market, to market

bool doesMarketExist = true;
bool doesMarketWork = false;

I'm currently in the process of implementing the market, but due to my sloppy code I can't figure out the math for the costs and stuff (For instance, you get 21 coins for 2 apples, but only 11 for 4).  Once I get that all sorted out the game will actually be PLAYABLE!

Meanwhile, the item system is up and running.  I will make it so plants generally give you more than one seed (which as of right now is also the product.  I may change that in the future), but die when harvested.

The costs in the picture are more accurate, as I thought of a fix while writing this.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Continuing on

for(bool done = false; done; done = false) { continue() }

Well, some progress has been made.  The farm menu and inventory menu are both done, and it is now possible to create plants for the program to use (though it's difficult to do without extensive knowledge), and I'm going to start on the market soon.

So far, the most difficult part has actually been deciding how plants will get "yield".  I decided to go a more simple route, where plants grow a certain amount each day, and when the growth gets above a certain amount, the plant gets a certain amount of yield.  The growth then reverts to zero.

I think at the end of each of these updates, I will post a picture showing my current progress.  Here's the first! (Click on it for full size)

>BEGIN PROJECT 01 {The Farming Game}

My first project (on this blog, at least) is a farming game!  It will start out extremely rudimentary.  I am going to be making it in Windows Forms in C#.

The main menu will have a list box that will contain all of his/her plants, as well as their growth state.  I think I will also have another one with their inventory.

The most important part of the program will be the trading window.  The in-game currency will be coins, but the player will also have access to item for item trades as well.  One of the major parts of the game is getting "trade loops" where you can basically get an infinite amount of something assuming the trade never closes.  Of course, trades WILL eventually close after a certain period of time, but I think there will be a mechanic to "buy" more trade options in an effort to create more loops (I may call this something like "upgrading the market" or something).

The game will be turn-based in that you will press a "sleep" button at the end of each day.  This will randomize the trades and unlock new ones.  It will also have the plants grow.

There will be no real end of the game.  The goal will be to prosper, so to speak, bu there isn't going to be a point where you can't keep playing.

Hopefully, in the future, I will make a way to mod it.  I think it will read .txt files and compile the data to create a new plant or animal or something.

More posts to come once I actually make PROGRESS!