Vivaio Alpha 5

Welcome to the fourth devlog of Vivaio! 

The Alpha 5 development started a day after posting on the Tycoon subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/tycoon/). It was pretty awesome, as we did an improvised (and small) Q&A on the comments, trying to explain more about what are we trying to do with Vivaio. If you haven’t yet, you can take a look at the post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/tycoon/comments/gdxzn6/vivaio_alpha_4_launched_a_farm_and_shop_tycoon/.

That post received more attention that we expected, and brought new players to Vivaio (which is awesome), but it also brought our first donation. Thank you! The morning we woke up and saw it (which was the first day of Alpha 5 development) made us heavily motivated. We’re a two-people team working on the game studying game design and development at college. We wanted Vivaio to be free to let more people play it even if they can’t afford paying for a game, but we really appreciate donations as we’re working for free on Vivaio since 2019 (over a year now). Again, thank you for the donation!

For the Alpha 5 we’ve been focusing on the optimization of the game (art and code). We’ve polished a lot of sprites and re-do a bunch of systems. This means that the game is prettier and works better. We wanted to do this before starting to add new and big features. For the Alpha 6 our main objective is that: add new features. We want to add new mechanics for the shop and the farm. Due to college, Alpha 6 development will start a week later (June 8th). Until that day, we won’t decide which features to add. If you want to help us decide it, you can vote (or even comment) on the mechanics you’re interested using Trello: https://trello.com/b/yylzJIvT/vivaio.

As always, if you want to know what we’re working on, you can follow us on Twitter (no more than 2 tweets a week! For real, you can check it): https://twitter.com/VivaioGame.

Here is what we have been working for Alpha 5:

New features

• Save system. Create games and load them whenever you want! Game saves automatically every night when sleeping (around midnight). Stardew Valley, we liked that. Thank you!
• Main menu. Needed for the save system.
• UI for objects. We’ve found a way to make the product box, composter and shop table/box way more intuitive. Left click to move the object, right click to open the specific UI for that object.
• Options menu. For now, it only has three options: day duration, full screen mode and resolution. But, of course, we’re planning on adding a lot more.
• Screenshots! You can now take in-game screenshots by pressing K. The screenshots are saved on Documents/Vivaio/Screenshots.

Improvements

• Sidewalk, grass, stone and dirt sprites have been improved.
• Added more shadows.
• Stackable items (fertilizer, seeds and the rock tiles) are easier to handle now. When the item is on the hand, you can take the same item from storages, composters or floors if the stacks from both items are less or equal to the maximum stack of each item. Rock tiles, fertilizers and seeds have a maximum stack of 10. This will help when creating fertilizer in the composter, so fertilizers can be stacked in amounts of 10.
• The shop tile has been improved. Now it is called rock tile, is smaller and can be put above grass or dirt while keeping the background. Also Farmazon now sells the tiles in stacks of 10.
• Added background for items on floor.
• The way the time works on Vivaio has been improved, making it require less resources to work (which means that FPS will be more steady now). Now nights are faster, and we’ve added afternoons.
• And a bunch of improvements more related to code which are not noticeable, but there they are. And they make Vivaio more optimized.

Changes

• The map layout has been reorganized. The shop area has been reduced a bit, but the farm area has been expanded 5 blocks in height.
• Now the cash register and the bed can be moved.
• Objects can now be built inside the house.
• As we have only three available customers (for now), we’ve decided to make them come again in the afternoon. This will help make the game easier until we add enough customers.

Bugfixing

• Coin animation after customer buying not showing on the correct position.
• Stands positions for customers not getting updated after moving the stand.
• Objects not being able to be built in the basement.
• Bed and player when sleeping not getting darker.

Following our (repetitive) routine, we’ll be working on the Alpha 6 focusing on the ideas from our Trello page.

See you on the next devlog! And don’t forget to send us feedback about what you think and what you want for the game. 

Thanks for reading! For real. Writing this takes time, thank you!