March 6 - Bit o polish

Did a polish pass this week. You know, balancing numbers, adding some nice small touches, tightening the graphics on level 2, that sort of thing. Got tired of the placeholder trees and plants, so I added some variety to the trees. Now there are some birch trees, fir trees, that sort of thing. Biomes will see a much greater variety, but it's a bit nicer to look at now isn't it:

A lot of crops have gotten new appearances as well, so your farms should be a bit more lively. There's other things too, like butterflies in the spring, fireflies in the summer. The grass and dirt texture have gotten some improvements. Plants will sway when you run through them, and I've added a new effect for when you water them. Oh, and a fireplace:

Got to have chimneys in town after all. It's a more refined version of the campfire you can craft when you've got a more respectable homestead. I also added a trash slot to your backpack, so you can permanently throw away things you no longer want instead of tossing them into a big pit and waiting for them to decay. While that was perhaps more realistic, I don't think building your own landfills was something anyone had requested. If you want to do it that way you still can, but you won't, because an easier option exists now and you can't help yourself.

Finally a lot of work was done on villagers and personalities, though none of it is ready yet. I had to get a waypoint system set up for the various jobs they'll do and places they'll visit during the day and also a lot (a lot) of writing. A lot of games tend to have really uninteresting characters that prattle off the same thing over and over again like a robot, or only have anything interesting during specific cutscenes. My goal is to have it so you actually want to talk to the villagers, and get to know them over time and have a relationship form via these interactions, rather than someone you dump gifts onto until they marry you. Granted, it takes a lot more writing, so I've been doing that in the evenings. Hopefully we'll come out the other end with interesting people.

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