@@nerdchomp It looks really amazing! Be careful about getting caught up on the details though, in my experience those are always the most fun, but lead to demotivation in the long run because it seems to be taking so long. I can't wait to play it when it's done :)
Venus flytrap enemies would be neat. Seems like a peaceful game so a little danger would be a nice change of pace but you could also implement a new mechanic to tame the fly traps instead of defeat them
Fun stuff! 0:50 I think this is worth keeping in as some kind of temporary power-up or only in certain areas or something. Either way this looks like a game I'll want to play. Good work so far!
Hi this looks very nice! I love the general feedback and bro the way this grass spreads looks fantastic! I would like so much you give a technical video on how you did this grass effect appearing, I Imagine using some RVTs but just for the beauty of this mechanic I think it is worth a video! :) I wish you good luck for your game!!
That's actually coming up very soon probably. It was the plan for my next devlog. I actually just completely changed how it works on the back end, but it still looks the same
The ability of having an area of nectar around you could be fun for maybe having to attract different insects to an area or location where they can reveal something new to the player! Loving the character animation 😄
Very unique game. In the same vein as the cave, you could have a nighttime setting. You're a sunflower so you could have a flashlight effect or something along those lines, lighting up in the dark to see. Or maybe the other flowers sleep at night and activate when you hit them with your light. For example the nectar won't drop unless you're shining light at the flower. Plants are extremely photosensitive after all. I love the pedals falling to indicate your health. If you don't want to add combat or hazards you could have it so that your pedals slowly drop the longer you spend in the barren area. Though throwing in some herbicide as a hazard would add some stakes. You should add water drops that function similar to the nectar globs, that way you have multiple resources to work with and add more complexity to the puzzles. Maybe have a way to accidentally deliver an herbicide / contaminated water to a plant instead of fresh water. I subscribed and will wishlist the game, I'm excited to see how it turns out.
Thanks for the suggestions! I'm still figuring out some of the core mechanics, so it's good to hear what other people think. You have some interesting ideas for sure
10:53 I don't know how you're doing things exactly, or how Unreal works specifically, but it seems pretty simple in theory? have a target radius, current radius, and radius multiplier on the nectar blob. Every update frame lerp the current radius towards the target radius, which is multiplied by the multiplier. Then the normal shrinking can be to multiply the multiplier by 0.75, 0.5, 0.25, 0, over time, but the laser gives it a flat increase so each of those points will be bigger.
an idea for a plant, one with leaves shaped like tubes that can carry water, maybe with the top open, and maybe when not in a nectar zone, they exist but are very weak and drop the water out of them, but carry it further when they are in nectar. that way it could add options to puzzles where you need to either get nectar around some or avoid it around some.
I'm waiting to see the future of this game, also i personally don't like the idea of combat in a puzzle game but there could be some toxic fluid maybe or other obstacles. Personal Nectar could be dependent on your health for example: if you lose all of your petals, insted of diying u could walk slower and cannot use personal nectar. And for replenishing your health u could use some water droplets from the other comment.
Very cool game. Suggestion for video: don't explain things too much. Like for example for generator and button part. You explained that too much that's what I think. It could make the video small and overall watchable
Did you make a few of these videos and then upload them all at once so that you would have a more interesting looking channel right off the bat? I suppose that shows you're serious. Anyway, this looks good so far. I'm glad to see an interactive game that looks well made who's central mechanic is something other than shoot thing or hit thing.
For the grass and leaves growing, it's all just visual. I use a sphere mask to make grass outside of the sphere transparent. For other plants that have more function, I use collision spheres that trigger overlap events to grow the plants
Damage could work, for instance the way Portal uses the Turrets, which aren't really even 'enemies' per se, functioning more like obstacles-another method of gating the player's movement without literal physical objects, where 'death' just resets them at a checkpoint nearby. A skilled player, with some speed and careful maneuvering, could maybe tank the damage and sequence-break.
Hear me out. What if the laser can be used to turn the nectar blobs into nectar crystals? Could be useful in puzzles such as: setup a laser at a point and get a nectar blob to that point to harden it into a crystal to be used in another part of the puzzle.
How about a trampoline plant, a luminescent plant, a puffball that makes a burst of wind, thorny briars, and grabby vines that slow the player and keep them from jumping?
Is there a simple way of explaining the radius that grows and shrinks the plants? Im new to Unreal but i would love to use this mechanic in my Uni Project ^^ Looove your game btw. Already wishlisted it on steam :D
Visually, for the grass within the radius I use a sphere mask, which masks out the material of the grass if it's outside the radius, which means you don't see it. That's only visual though. For the growth of platforms and other objects, I just have a simple collision sphere that grows and shrinks with the radius. When the collision sphere overlaps with the object I want affected, I trigger the object to grow in scale, and when the overlap ends I trigger it to shrink in scale. That's the simplest form of how it works in my game. Hope that helps!
I think that's really basic but how do i check what objects overlap with the radius? And how do i define those objects? Just making Actor Variables with instance editable on and assigning them? And also thanks so much for even answering. Means a lot :)@@nerdchomp
No problem, I'm happy to help. Are you in unreal or unity? I don't really know anything about unity and how you would set that up. But I'm unreal, if you're in an actor, you can add a sphere collision component, and then there is an event trigger associated with the component. If you right click the component, all of the event triggers should pop up, and you can choose "on overlap begin" or "on overlap end" and then connect that node to whichever object you want to trigger the overlap
Do you mean the physics on the sunflower? The stem of the sunflower I just have animated as part of the running animation. For the petals, I do a cloth simulation
@@SMORIGINALS most of the stuff I'm using I made myself in blender, but not all. There are some placeholder assets that I plan on replacing with my own at some point
Love the look of the flowers drooping as the nectar grows on them. Subtle yet adds so much.
For the nectar blobs, what if you made the lasers decrease the speed at which they shrink?
6 months? thats an incredible progress...also, very cool concept, and the game looks very professional even at this early of a stage...good job
500 Subscribers! Congrats!
Thanks!
@@nerdchomp It looks really amazing! Be careful about getting caught up on the details though, in my experience those are always the most fun, but lead to demotivation in the long run because it seems to be taking so long. I can't wait to play it when it's done :)
I love the damaging effect
Venus flytrap enemies would be neat. Seems like a peaceful game so a little danger would be a nice change of pace but you could also implement a new mechanic to tame the fly traps instead of defeat them
Fun stuff! 0:50 I think this is worth keeping in as some kind of temporary power-up or only in certain areas or something. Either way this looks like a game I'll want to play. Good work so far!
Love your game idea!! The grass looks amazing, I’m also working on a nature type game in Unity at the moment :) best of luck 🎉
Thanks! Good luck with your project too
Hi this looks very nice! I love the general feedback and bro the way this grass spreads looks fantastic!
I would like so much you give a technical video on how you did this grass effect appearing, I Imagine using some RVTs but just for the beauty of this mechanic I think it is worth a video! :)
I wish you good luck for your game!!
That's actually coming up very soon probably. It was the plan for my next devlog. I actually just completely changed how it works on the back end, but it still looks the same
@@nerdchomp Awesome, can't wait to see that!
The ability of having an area of nectar around you could be fun for maybe having to attract different insects to an area or location where they can reveal something new to the player! Loving the character animation 😄
Very unique game. In the same vein as the cave, you could have a nighttime setting. You're a sunflower so you could have a flashlight effect or something along those lines, lighting up in the dark to see. Or maybe the other flowers sleep at night and activate when you hit them with your light. For example the nectar won't drop unless you're shining light at the flower. Plants are extremely photosensitive after all.
I love the pedals falling to indicate your health. If you don't want to add combat or hazards you could have it so that your pedals slowly drop the longer you spend in the barren area. Though throwing in some herbicide as a hazard would add some stakes.
You should add water drops that function similar to the nectar globs, that way you have multiple resources to work with and add more complexity to the puzzles. Maybe have a way to accidentally deliver an herbicide / contaminated water to a plant instead of fresh water.
I subscribed and will wishlist the game, I'm excited to see how it turns out.
Thanks for the suggestions! I'm still figuring out some of the core mechanics, so it's good to hear what other people think. You have some interesting ideas for sure
10:53 I don't know how you're doing things exactly, or how Unreal works specifically, but it seems pretty simple in theory? have a target radius, current radius, and radius multiplier on the nectar blob. Every update frame lerp the current radius towards the target radius, which is multiplied by the multiplier. Then the normal shrinking can be to multiply the multiplier by 0.75, 0.5, 0.25, 0, over time, but the laser gives it a flat increase so each of those points will be bigger.
Yeah I'm sure I could figure it out if I gave it some more time. I might return to it and try your suggestion. Thanks!
Vine Ropes, bouncy mushrooms, Thorn traps, Flowers that distract the bee, Venus fly traps
It might be fine to have plants that share simular functions, just to add more variety in appearence
an idea for a plant, one with leaves shaped like tubes that can carry water, maybe with the top open, and maybe when not in a nectar zone, they exist but are very weak and drop the water out of them, but carry it further when they are in nectar. that way it could add options to puzzles where you need to either get nectar around some or avoid it around some.
You should add an animation of mud flying from the pot when you take damage.
I'm waiting to see the future of this game, also i personally don't like the idea of combat in a puzzle game but there could be some toxic fluid maybe or other obstacles. Personal Nectar could be dependent on your health for example: if you lose all of your petals, insted of diying u could walk slower and cannot use personal nectar. And for replenishing your health u could use some water droplets from the other comment.
i had a project similar to this one however i got stuck on the level design part and could not finish it
1:14 make the little nectar aura around you a power up.
A directional cone of nectar might be interesting for finding solutions but not necessarily being able to use them for say platforming.
That's an interesting idea. I may have to play around with that
Very cool game.
Suggestion for video: don't explain things too much. Like for example for generator and button part. You explained that too much that's what I think.
It could make the video small and overall watchable
Did you make a few of these videos and then upload them all at once so that you would have a more interesting looking channel right off the bat? I suppose that shows you're serious. Anyway, this looks good so far. I'm glad to see an interactive game that looks well made who's central mechanic is something other than shoot thing or hit thing.
How do you make the interactions with the sphere?
For the grass and leaves growing, it's all just visual. I use a sphere mask to make grass outside of the sphere transparent. For other plants that have more function, I use collision spheres that trigger overlap events to grow the plants
@@nerdchomp thanks, I'm more of a Unity dev and I thought there was a deeper shader dark magic at play than I can see 😅
Damage could work, for instance the way Portal uses the Turrets, which aren't really even 'enemies' per se, functioning more like obstacles-another method of gating the player's movement without literal physical objects, where 'death' just resets them at a checkpoint nearby. A skilled player, with some speed and careful maneuvering, could maybe tank the damage and sequence-break.
That's the way I'm leaning right now, using traps as obstacles instead of enemies
Hear me out. What if the laser can be used to turn the nectar blobs into nectar crystals? Could be useful in puzzles such as: setup a laser at a point and get a nectar blob to that point to harden it into a crystal to be used in another part of the puzzle.
That's an interesting idea, I'll have to think about it
How about a trampoline plant, a luminescent plant, a puffball that makes a burst of wind, thorny briars, and grabby vines that slow the player and keep them from jumping?
Is there a simple way of explaining the radius that grows and shrinks the plants? Im new to Unreal but i would love to use this mechanic in my Uni Project ^^
Looove your game btw. Already wishlisted it on steam :D
Visually, for the grass within the radius I use a sphere mask, which masks out the material of the grass if it's outside the radius, which means you don't see it. That's only visual though. For the growth of platforms and other objects, I just have a simple collision sphere that grows and shrinks with the radius. When the collision sphere overlaps with the object I want affected, I trigger the object to grow in scale, and when the overlap ends I trigger it to shrink in scale. That's the simplest form of how it works in my game. Hope that helps!
I think that's really basic but how do i check what objects overlap with the radius? And how do i define those objects? Just making Actor Variables with instance editable on and assigning them?
And also thanks so much for even answering. Means a lot :)@@nerdchomp
No problem, I'm happy to help. Are you in unreal or unity? I don't really know anything about unity and how you would set that up. But I'm unreal, if you're in an actor, you can add a sphere collision component, and then there is an event trigger associated with the component. If you right click the component, all of the event triggers should pop up, and you can choose "on overlap begin" or "on overlap end" and then connect that node to whichever object you want to trigger the overlap
Im also in unreal with Uni i meant University :D
Thanks for your help i already got it working^^
How did you make all the plants physics? Or it's part of any assets ?
Do you mean the physics on the sunflower? The stem of the sunflower I just have animated as part of the running animation. For the petals, I do a cloth simulation
@@nerdchomp ohh that's great I thought you use assets well it takes too much time I guess? And all of the assets you made them by yourself?
@@SMORIGINALS most of the stuff I'm using I made myself in blender, but not all. There are some placeholder assets that I plan on replacing with my own at some point
Youll learn a million things once you get a test group together