Hey friends!
A slow but steady start made this month into the 3.0 content, with a bunch of little tweaks to get us started!
This post will contain spoilers of 3.0 content.
Birthday Bee!
May was a special month as it's the birthday month for APICO having been released a year ago on World Bee Day (20th May)! We had a lot of different sales + deals to celebrate, leading to DOUBLE the amount of players we'd had up until that point in one week.
(To all the new bees - welcome! I hope you enjoy this silly lil bee game <3)
Safe to say I was pretty busy running around putting out fires and answering a million questions all over the place - but I did manage to still get some development work done eventually!
Where To Beegin
One problem I have with gamedev in general is getting p. overwhelmed with how much there is todo - you've seen the list of stuff planned for 3.0 and when broken down into dev work it's even longer!
here's just some misc + fishing stuff broken down - not even the coral or ocean stuff yet!!
What I try to do is break it down into smaller sections, and then start with the "quick wins" to try and make a dent in the list first so as to not get too demoralised. When there's only one developer it's definitely a LOT (let alone the fact I have 2 other games on the go at the same time)
I started out working through some quick fixes and changes though, like adding the moon, moon phases, and a cute little pocketwatch to give more details on the top-left GUI icons you always see.
I also did some stuff like creating new natural beehives when you repopulate a species (to add to the feeling of actually impacting the world), updating some of the logic with butterflies + flowers, and adding in some new hairstyles - basically just lots of little things to help settle back into the codebase.
this one looks weirdly familiar...
With that I was starting to feel a bit more warmed up and more used to how APICO does things, so I added the first new machine for 3.0 - the fly workshop!
Fly Fishing
I've wanted to add fishing to the game for a while, as I think it's a nice "time-waster" to fill in the gaps between waiting for certain things in APICO, but didn't give much thought outside of the general concept.
When I sat down to look at it properly I thought fly fishing would be the best route, as needing to craft little lures seemed like the perfect vibe for APICO. Crafting lures would also let me give some of the special bee produce a use, as it would effect the overall lure "luck" and the player always has plenty of them.
about time we had a new mechanism huh?
The fly workshop takes hoops, twine, glue and feathers (dropped from birbs!), along with your special produce to make a little lure - the stats decided by the materials you use.
Once you have your lures you'd be able to use them along with a rod to cast into any deep water to start the fishing minigame! I spent a bunch of time deciding the best way to do this, and what I settled on was a two-parter, first cast the lure out, and then wait for fish to appear and get within "range" to grab 'em.
grab radius is based on how close you cast to the center yellow "goal"
It also took me far too long getting a nice "arc" for the lure when cast, and I wanted a nice back and forth animation to mimic the way fly fishers actually cast their lures.
i hate maths so much
With that I had the actual grab minigame todo, which will involve the little fishies coming near and attempting to eat your delicious honey flavour lure - unless you grab them in-time, which then catches you a fish!
Different conditions/biomes/weather will affect the fish caught (as you'd expect from APICO), and ultimately it'll just be an optional collect-them-all - although you will get some new special items for doing so...
I'm taking my time on the minigame as I want to get it right - and there's nothing quite like it in APICO so it's a challenge trying to make something fit correctly with what players are used to!
Once I've finished off the fishing i'll be adding Skipper's Dad, and then fishing will be done for now and we can move onto Coral Reefs!
I've got to go back to Rift Breach for a bit next month for NextFest but have set aside some time for another chunk of 3.0 goodies.
~ Ell
[This post was released early for Supporters]