there are many types of gardens however a common theme between most of them have a plethora of plants including most the time a layout of different types of flowers, moss and water to make something visually apealing and relaxing.

a few types of interesting garden types include:

• zen gardens (arangement of stones moss and water)

• hedge maze (hedges arranged to form a maze)

• hon non bo (vietnamese art of miniature landscapes)

commenly between all of these gardens there were plants as the main focus and normally based on the orientation or variety of said plants to define how appealing the garden is and sometimes both.

time is a very broad topic and can be interpreted in many different ways i personally took this as the garden growing and changing over time and so with that i wanted to include a growing changing garden into my project. i aslo wanted to look more into the garden part of the theme as a focus.

construct a garden by arranging different plants of your choice the plants start off as seeds and grow over time. 

follow a single plant grow by completing tasks around the screen to grow the plant over time. the goal being to fully grow the plant as soon as possible the tasks completed correctly it adds time.

collect a score from plants that ripen over time to continue the game. the plants also wither over time so you have to go collect water to keep them alive at the end of the day youd be able to buy upgrades with your spare time or keep it for the next round

we made mind map to try and make us explore more indepth what the theme could consist of i thought of a few things mostly for gardens (garden of eden and the seasons) something i hadnt really thought about before this was the seasons of the year and the different plants that exist within them and is something i could look into further.

we went around the place and i realized there was a wide variety of plants there mostly weird looking trees but there was also a lot of plants there it was a decent walk around and really showed the ammount of different plants that exist around.

to make the pechu kuchu as we didn't need to present it infront of everybody and could pre record it i made this at home and recorded my voice over it. witch is what i did. 

going off the college timetable to include hollidays along with when different parts of the projects due to make the timetable along with the proposal. it didnt take too long to make this as most of the project consisted of preproduction and reasearch so it was easy to mark those bits down however its harder to predict what problems ill encounter and when ill move onto what part of the creation of the actuall project.

i wrote the proposal using the template that was given out to us on the brief and wrote up my idea witch i decided to go with idea #3 because i thought it fit the theme the most out of all the ones i had thought about. i then decided to call the game counting down because of the importance of time in the game. i expect for this to slightly change over the course of prepruduction as i will be refining this idea and trying to improve and make sure its doable with the time i have been given.

i wanted to this project in 3D so that i could develop my skills working in 3d as i havnt done it as often as 2d whilst being at college and feel as though it is my weeker of the two.

potential problems:  some problems that could come up during this project is once again my limited time outside of college with lengthy bus journeys home and work on the week ends this can be lessened by getting work done at college.  there are also plenty of software problems i could run into during this project as finding those appear to happen pretty frequently. i could also run into a specific problem on one thing and it take longer to fix it than i had planned but ill work around that by allowing myself some extra time at the end to make sure there arnt any lingering major problems.

in my pitch i started off with what my idea was then moved onto what i expected to get done during this project after this i moved onto software that id need to get this done. then i couldnt think of anything else to include in this presentation.

after doing that i went back and decided i didnt have enough there so i added in similar mechanics and unique selling points to add more slides. I added these slides so that it would take up more time as it is surposed to be a 5 to 8 min presentation.

(actuall presentation further down)

The style i want to go for in this project is low poly and that is to in part save time but also because i like how it looks and it can be used in many different ways. my favourite usses of low poly is when there is nice lighting to go along with it i want this to be shown in my project (bonus goal). i also want to convay the same warm kind of feeling that is in the picture here.

an inspiration for this project is stardew valley a game ive played a decent amount of but enjoyed the game the plants grow in that game over the nights that you sleep however im under the impression that the crops never go off or die so it felt decently unrealistic. 

things i like from this game is the grid based planting system it means your farm will always be minorly organized however because of my flowers giving powers i need to limit the amount you can have at a time as to not overwelm players and make it easier to find bad flowers (weeds). 

valheim - Is a popular game with a low poly aesthetic it mostly bases its look of lighting, the textures on the models are also pixelated. however its still a fun and nice looking game. there are mechanics in the game that can only be achieved because of the low poly style for example the destructable environments (trees, ground, rocks) this wouldnt be as doable with a more realistic style because of performance issues.

superhot - superhot is a normal game as well as a VR game the basic mechanic of the game is that time only moves when you do so if you stay completly still then time will practically stop and you can think of what to do next. 

The style for the game is really simple as all the environment is white, all the enemys are red and interactables are black this is all done with a low poly theme again using a lot of lighting to make the game stand out along with the enemy characters shattering when you defeat them.

Risk of rain 2 - in RoR2 a low poly art style is used however it is backed up by some amazing looking VFX to complement it for example in the image the flying enemys have fire around them, the player has a blue glow around them.

A thing i love a lot about RoR2 is that whenever you pick up an item it makes an appearence on the players character somewhere it adds an extra level of immersion as your character slowly gets covered with a bunch of different items.

For the gameplay i wanted it to be a rougue like so that there is some concequence to making mistakes and if you do too many times youd have to start over. the basics of the game is your given 5 plant pots and you have to plant different seeds in them to feed your main tree providing you with more time to play the game and get things done. plants can be upgraded but will eventually die (unless they have a perk against it) 

Rouguelike - As i said before i wanted it to focus on being a rougue like however i didnt want it to be combat that kept the player alive however managing your resources and increasing quality of them to outlast the growing needs to survive.

for my target audience because there isnt going to be any combat, i believe that a 7 is a fine rating as the worst thing that'll occour in the game is some curse flowers that give negative effects and destroy your other plants.

I think having this as my age rating allows for a lot more people to play the game as there isnt any real limit. for finding the right target audience is a difficult task to achive while in college as everyone is around the same age and into the same stuff around you. making it pretty difficult to actually get any good information around who likes the game and what else they like.

we had our first workshop over the fmp duration this first one being on substance designer a way to make procedural textures using a node based system, through the tutorial we made some wood planks then were left to mess around with it so i managed to add some color using a directional noise texture as an opacity map to blend 2 colors.

i presented infront of the class my pitch and i believe it went better than some previous ones i've done, however i completly forgot everything i had planned to say once i got into the room so next time i believe i should write down some notes on each slide that i can refer myself to keep me on track and make sure i cover everything.

some things i forgot to include were: streach goals this could have been easily implemented in the what i want to get done section however it hadn't crossed my mind while making the presentation. however some of these being sounds and music included aswell as more plants and items for a wider variety of activities and more to find.

After presenting i was given some feedback and advice, some advice i was given was that i could use some asset packs to save time modeling backround assets that wouldnt be seen much witch i thought would be a good idea that i'd do at the end if i needed to. I was also adviced to do some reaserch into different types of flowers.

thinking about the asset pack advice i decided against it because what i was planning to model was few things only the things needed for the game in that moment and so i wont need to model much.

when looking into different flowers i decided i wanted to start by looking at the most commen flowers (that'd appear at the start of the game) then moving on to more exotic flowers (that'd appear at the end of the game) just so i could split it up.

I looked into flowers because i wanted each plant in my game to have a unique effect and after looking into the flowers i could find something that fits with the flower for example the sunflower giving a boost during daytime. looking into flowers also came with the benifit of seeing witch flowers could go together and what could not as not all flowers thrive in the same environment.

• sunflowers - sunflowers are a common flower mostly seen as the yellow and brown flowers however they also have other color varients.

• bellflower - bell flowers were originally believed to have been surrounded by dark fairy magic and if you heard it ring youd be visited by a BAD fairy and die.

• buttercups - is a common flower and known for its imaginary way of telling if someone likes butter or not. although if modeled wrong they could look just like sunflowers so to make them different theyd have a different size and the flower would be facing upwards.

• rose - Roses come in many colors mainly known for being red or pink but also come in white, yellow and more they're a popular and well known flower.

• chocolate cosmos - this flower is rare because its natural habitat was destroyed from deforestation and it doesnt produce any seeds and only reproduces from root division

• jade vine - this rare flower only shows its colors when it blooms and the rest of the time it blends into the dark green. these are also going more extinct because of deforestation. these rely on bats for pollination.

• bleeding heart - bleeding heart may be the most interesting flower ive seen with its unique shape clearly giving its nickname, these flowers are short lived. so this could translate to their lifespan in game.

• ghost orchid - The ghost orchid is a nearly extinct species of orchids in the uk its unique in that it doesnt need sunlight and feeds off a fungi meaning it doesnt have any chlorophyll so its a mostly white flower.

when looking into exotic or rare flowers i looked into ones that had weird or unique looks as well as ones that were near extiction and 

• poison ivy - poison ivy causes skin irritation through touching it and can grow up to 2 metres

• stinging nettle - nettles also causes skin irritation to people making it an unideal plant to have in your garden and can also grow to 2 metres

• deadly nightshade - deadly nightshade is a poisionous plant that used to be used as a anesthetic

when looking into bad flowers i mostly looked into plants that were harmfull to humans or known for being bad,

when starting to design the game i decided to start writing a GDD so that i could have all my information in one place making it easy to get things done, i started writing this in word. i wanted the plants to feel unique and be able to be told apart when thinking about their effects i wanted them to have something to do with the actuall plant for example the ghost orchid producing the same amount of value all the time instead of others that need sunlight.

we followed along with ryan using unity to create a basic wind shader that could be used in trees and other plant life for our projects. this was all done in unity. 

i think ill try to use this in my project for my plant life (flowers, hedges and bushes) 

ryan showed us a usefull way of texturing reusable assets we started off in blender making a plane then splitting it into a few different parts we only finished one part during the tutorial then we added some details to a heigher poly version keeping a lower poly version as well then we imported the lower poly one into substance using the higher poly one for the height information.

I learnt that trimsheets can be used to have less files in a game witch could be usefull for my project. i think id use this for all the backround and extra things that'll exists in the scene.

i want the player to feel like theyre finding something new when planting a new plant and so i think the best way to find out the abilitys of the plant is to have a log book in the game that will fill itself out when your new plant blooms for the first time.

the picture next to this is something from ark:survival evolved and was my inspiration for making it a log book for the plants as i think displaying information with a picture and writing is a scrap book kind of way is appealing to look at while aslo giving you the information you need.

We did another workshop this one took place in minecraft education edition where using redstone the instructor of the lesson had created a memory game that worked but had taken some parts out for us to go and fix, through this i learnt that tracing back issues was a lot harder without knowing the skills needed however near the end i started understanding some of it; However i believe this wasn't that usefull a workshop for me as the minecraft skills wont really help in unity and for solving the actuall problems themselves was pretty simple as it was mostly repeating circuits so i could just copy the thing next to it. 

i decided to make a list of all the models id need for this project this list will live on my trello so i can add and remove things i dont think ill get done. for now the models i want to get done include: player, shop, floor, bushes, central tree, sunflower, bleeding heart and stinging nettles.

i think these are doable for the time i have, however if i were to continue the project id want to create more assets to exist around for the environment.

i decided to do the same with mechanics intended to be in the game during this project including: movement, planting flowers, flowers lifecycle, garden value, shop, items.

it would be nice to get all this done. i listed the mechanics i wanted to get done on my trello page so that i could tick them off as they were completed and make sure i was staying on track and getting everything done in time.

when thinking of items to add to the game i wanted them to be fun and unique i think there should be an item that'll give you more speed, higher growth rates, longer plant lives and so on. if i were to fully develope this game id make a lot more items than whatll be in this project. the insipiration for these items comes from risk of rain 2 where you can build up an unlimited amount of items as long as you have the money.

when thinking of growing times i knew i couldnt go directly off real life as making you play 80 days for a sunflower to grow would be a bit outragous and so ive decided to make all flowers grow within 15 days with each day lasting 15 mins and the night lasting 5. i also wanted weeds to be something the player has to lookout for as at the start they're small but if left alone some will quickly get out of hand.

when thinking of what currency i could have for the shop i decided gold would be a good currency where you can sell flowers for gold however if the flowers past its peak the value will slowly decreas to none at its end of life.

this is a common and simple way to create a currency and i think it would be pretty fast to include.

i think the shop should be a wooden cart pulled by the owner with only a few items in each time that are randomized the img i found for it is a great representation of what i want and will use it as a reference when modelling the actuall thingi dont plan to add much more to it apart from some color, a shop keeper and the items

I think representing the shop like this would make sense as its only available some of the time with a different stock so its gone around to other places and sold them the items and restocked then came back.

after this i dont think id have enough time to complete any more of the game however there are a bunch of things ive designed that would be added if i decide to continue this project after im done a few being:

• seasons

• events

• more flowers

• more items

• different garden themes

• sounds

• music

• log book

i put everything onto a trello page and added some discriptions to each including the effects and how to obtain some things along with different types of events that would be there if i was to finish the game i did this so i could easily track what i need to get done and what ive done.

i started production in easter break so not much got done however this time was dedicated to making sure everything was going to look nice so that i could save time doing that later on and get it out of my mind early on while still having all of my college time to work on the actuall gameplay and features of the project.

I started this by going into blender and moddeling the things id need for the environment first then moving onto the core element of the game the flowers and shop. after moddeling these i threw them together into unity and followed some tutorials i found to make it look better.

during easter break i got a small amount of work done. i didnt get done as much as i had expected because of some things that came up 

i started modeling in blender and first of made the garden starting with the floor then the bush's then finally doing the central tree, after that i decided that would be enough for the main garden and moved on to a simple plant pot for it so i could quickly get into making the gameplay

for the outline i started by bringing my first model into unity then i followed a youtube tutorial on how to add a outline to my objects and while following along i created a shadergraph that would add a outline to a object when i put the material on it. however there are some issues with it appearting more on one side than others i will try and fix this if i have time in the future.

when starting on gameplay i first went into unity with the garden in it and started with adding player movement, for this i didnt need much like the ability to jump so it was decently fast i just followed some instructions becuase i was a bit unsure as to how to make the player move with their rotation.

i found a free asset from the unity asset store that fit the style i was going for so i used it in my project to save time, and it wasn't all perfect as i found out that the lighting from the skybox didnt interact with the shaders i have on my models witch is something i had to decide between. i decided that id keep my shaders that i had followed but id also keep the sky as it was also fitting even without the lighting.

with the first week of production i didnt get all that much done however i did set up the initial environment in unity and made everything look decently alright acording to my standards

some personal problems arose and i havnt got much work done for the first 2 weeks, i thought id write this because it isnt something i predicted happening during this project and is something ill have to work around ill try make up the work i havnt done at home.

Mewtogithub. (n.d.). Player-movement/Player movement 3d at main · Mewtogithub/Player-movement. GitHub. Retrieved April 28, 2025, from https://github.com/Mewtogithub/Player-movement/blob/main/Player%20movement%203d

i started making the plant growing during lesson i think i set most of it up to work right it grows like in stardew valley over days not time in game so ill have to add someplace for you to rest for the night as i sorta forgot about it. i have to add a few things before i can finish this like interactables and sleeping so the plants know when to grow, be planted, be harvested or replaced.

to make the interacting i did something that i used in my last fmp however i understand it a lot more now than i did then using a raycast from the camera with a certain range if it hit something with the tag "plant pot" you could then click and plant a flower witch at the moment was just a cylinder as a placeholder i needed this to plant the plants 

with making sleeping came a few problems that id have to face later the first being that to currently interact with an object it had to be tagged as a plant pot but i fixed this to make it an interactable tag instead and in the script on it have a bool for what it was. i also realized id have to update everyflower and im not sure how im going to run a function on them all without it being really annoying to set up ill think on it for a while. i thought about it for not that long i speak about it in the next part.

i modeled a flower at home as the first one, i then modeled a seed in college and reused the model for the tree as the withered version when making this i wanted it to work for all the plant slots that were going to be available for you to use so while coding it i made a array of the different plant locations and used a for loop to check if they had plants in and if they did then it would call the next day function on the plant making it grow a day and in those plant script there is checks for if the plant should bloom or not depending on the days required and the days it has lived you can set all those numbers in the prefabs along with what models itll use for blooming and withering making it pretty easy to set up new ones in the future

i started modeling the cart for the shop in class time so you can find the seeds somewhere. To make the shop I started by making points that the items would spawn at then added intractable scripts to them, these scripts contained the price and that was about it once you had bought the item it would disappear from the shop witch randomly restocks everyday there will be up to 3 items at a time right now there will only be basic seeds available because I havnt made anything else yet but I plan to incorporate more types of flowers before I'm done with this project so they'll be added to the shop I dont think I'll get the time to include many items in the shop but I'll try to include at least 1, 

for the seeds i originally wanted each one to have a unique look so you could tell all the flowers apart but im not sure if im going to do this because it would take up a decent amount of time that i dont really have at the minute but i can quickly do this at the end if i needed to

The outline tutorial i followed seems to not work great on more complex models and will start ofseting itself this isnt the biggest problem for me so i can fix it later if i have time. i also tested having multiple plant pots and it didnt quite work right away

at this point in time its the midpoint assesment and on my trello i have roughly half of what i planned to get done done im a small bit behind on a few things like the coding parts as i planned to get the models done way earlier so theyve been taking up some of my time. after going through the list though ive realized i had player as something to model however i dont think this is necersary right now as its a first person game anyway. 

my trello has a list of things i need to get done by the end and with work done around the palce i seem to have catched up to where im ment to be at the minute.

i learnt that you can pretty quickly make lower poly versions of models that arent a main focus/ dont need a lot of detail. this lesson could help with my fmp for some models i may make im not entirly sure ill need it right now. if i wanted to intergrate this workflow going forward id model the high poly first transfer the height data over to a low poly version then continue as normal.

at first multi pots didnt work because of me ending the for loop if something was null making it so if the first pot was empty it wouldnt do any of the rest i fixed this pretty easily by geting rid of the else so itll always check 8 pots even if you dont have 8 it gives a few errors but i cant see anything broken so its fine.

i learnt something new during this project while reading the movement script i found an easy way to keep my code organized with regions instead of comments they're both usefull but comments can be used for a single line while a region can surround a bigger part of code that can then be colapsed, so ive started using them to organize things. this will also make it easier to come back to and know what does what when i try comment everything at the end.

when making garden value i decided that you shouldnt just die imediatly if you got rid of your plants or they died so when the flowers bloom theyll add their whole value to your garden but when they die theyll remove half of that so you only keep half of it permanently. i then just threw that in the same place i updated the money to update the text and it worked fine.

the shop works however every flower currently has the same chance of occouring and thats not good also its not set up for the teirs to work as i dont plan to include them during this fmp time period.

there are also some missing things that'd be usefull for a shop like displaying the prices this is something id add in the prefab of each seed with a text box displaying the price.

ive realized while making sure everything works together there is a lack of things to do during the day, like minigames or anything this is a problem because its kind of just something were you can plant a flower sleep 5 days straight and buy more seeds to fix this if i have time after doing everything else ill make some stuff to do during the day like watering plants to keep them alive. but im not sure ill have time to do that during this fmp. 

i had just came into college opened up my work and started working on something and when i went to play test it it just kept loading the shaders again and again witch it had done before i just had to close it all and re open it so i do that to open my project to it all being a pinky color this is an unexpected problem and it will take a bit to fix so i may not have the time left at the end to include my item. i fixed this by redoing the shader and putting the materials back together.

im starting to finish production now what i need to do after this is make the video showing what ive done as well as the presentation that i need to do. ill make the video at home and start work on the presentation when i get back from half term. 

i finished production and decided id make an itch page for the game so that people can see what ive made and try it for themself. I made a video at home to show what i had gotten done by the end of my project.

i'm making my presentation on google slides and im going to present it next week after hand in.  so i wont be able to talk about how it went here however i think it wont go horribly