I am a great fan of seeing console games emulated by starcraft. A few of my favorites are civilization and Empire Earth. So I thought why not make an attempt to create the hit “get a life on the farm” Harvest Moon game in SC. Anyone who is interested in working on this project with me plz send me a pm. If you have any ideas or feedback please post it here.

-=CONCEPT=-
-4-6 players
-each player runs his own farm
-different zerg building correspond to veggies
-Seasonal Timer
-each activity/time spent on farmland reduces stamina
-overworking renders your farmer sick and unable to work the next day
-different veggies available in different seasons
-veggies take several days(gametime) to fully grow
-players can harrass each others farm/crops with different tools(pitchfork,fire)
-players recieve 1 pet dog(zling) to guard there farm
-option to buy animals(cow,chicken;Bling,ultra) which produce daily source of income
-Interactive town
-Wilderness where various rare items can be searched for
-First player to reach a Point Total wins(combination of money,animals,Marital status,etc...)
-any other ideas you guys have post em here

-=Finalized Aspects=-
1. There will be five players
2. Seasons will be divided into 15 minute timers
3. Vegetables will be represented by zerg buildings

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Nov 13 2009, 9:07 pm by 13Stallion.

Whoa! Déjà vu!

Although, I still would like helping you out with this project, Harvest Moon is a fun map idea, and I'd love to see more players.

Seems vaguely interesting, but there's no way in hell I'm working with someone who can't take the time to spell out "you".

This is EPIC. By far one of the best N64 games there was. I will provide any assistance I can (Besides actually making the map for you...)

yea ive seen that map but heres the problem, read the description "this is a long map so get ready to save the game a few times". The reason that map never became a hit is because nobady on bnet would ever host a game that would take rediculously long to finish(map states 3yrs of gameplay). Im trying to create a harvest moon game that delivers the enjoyable gameplay of harvest moon but will not last longer than 2 hours at most. I will probably create a money goal for players to reach.

What I would do is allow the players to pick their goals, maybe even leaving room for a 3 year goal, or a shorter monetary goal if the player's choose.

hm i understand what you are saying, but i was thinking about implementing a global goal for all players(money,marriage,animals, or even a combination of those) I think it should really be a competetive game(although this contradicts classic harvest moon games) or else there will be no "point" to the game except for experimenting with the different features. In the end it would turn into a Harvest Moon RP, which actually wouldnt be that bad of an idea I may make 2 versions of the game(1 with victory,1 endless)

Well, yeah, a global goal, but I think at the beginning of the map they should pick that goal, basically, picking what type of game they're going to have.

Yes, Let them either pick the goal, or pick how many years of play and the winner is whoever has the most points (which you can assign by relationships, farm size, money, animals, house...)

That map doesn't take 3 years... There's a timer in the game and when it hits 0, a new season starts, After 12 seasons, the game ends. That map above takes less than 2 hours. I suggest you try it and see what you can improve on from that map.

That map doesn't take 3 years... There's a timer in the game and when it hits 0, a new season starts, After 12 seasons, the game ends. That map above takes less than 2 hours. I suggest you try it and see what you can improve on from that map.[/quote]

The map above includes 3 yrs of gameplay, each year divided into 4 seasons, and each season separated by a 45-minute timer so i believe that is a grand total of 9 hrs of gameplay. Heres what i plan to change

- i will make the seasons considerably shorter, so people will not kill themselves from performing the same tasks for so long. Im thinking either a 15/20 minute season length is decent. Not too long so you lose interest and learn every possible trick, but long enough to keep you entertained.

- i plan to make this game look like your're actually running a farm by using zerg building to correspond to different vegetables, while in the above map turnips were represented by burrowed lings, you would harvest the turnips by killing them with your scv( doesnt give a "farming" feeling to the game).

Pulling out a vegetable = zerg unit unburrows. You should use powerups for vegetables.
Come to think of it, if you make the owner of the burrowed zerg units a computer player, attacking the unit will cause it to unburrow automatically.

That's actually exactly what the other map did

I honestly think a 20 minute season is too long. Maybe 10 minutes would be more appealing to me, and the average b.netter might even want it shorter.
Thinking back on A Wonderful Life (Harvest Moon for GCN) each season was 10 days. How are you going to be doing a day/night system, if at all?

Ive decided to use seasonal timers rather than a night/day cycle as a night/day cycle will tough to implement and just cause more headaches than the benefits it would provide. As of now im testing gameplay out single player and a 20 minute season doesnt seem that bad, but it ultimatly depends on the vegetables you growing. Plants like turnips take 2 minutes to grow and are the fastest growing plant.turnips keep you quite busy, while plants like cabbage or corn take 4-5 minutes to grow and can make you impatient. I feel that growing a combination of fast and slow plants is a good balance to make money and stay entertained.

In the end i will probably cut the 20 minute seasons down to 15, but any shorter than 15 and the planting,growing,harvest cycle will happen too fast and the game will lose the "farming" sense it has. I do agree with you in the sense that the bnet crowd has very low tolerance and patience levels, perhaps i can allow the host to choose the length of the seasons?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 13 2009, 6:59 am by 13Stallion.

did you ever find a solution to that problem you were telling me about on bnet

Yes, players will harvest their crops by using their corsair(basket) to sell vegetables by using Dweb on them. This ensures that only one vegetable should be targeted at once. Should a player purposly target more than 1 crop, all targeted crops will be removed while the player recieves credit for only 1.

Forty-five minutes in a countdown timer is only thirty real minutes, so it's 6 hours of gameplay.

wait wait wait. craftstar did you actually play 12 seasons worth of that ums? LOL. I think the most ive played on that map is like 5-6 and then the triggers started getting out of sync. It was a really fun map though. although player 3's incubator was broken iirc.

Just use an inverted location a bit smaller than the smallest unit, that way any not directly on the units will simply be ignored.


You might've tried a different version than the one I posted in the DLDB, because the one I posted has some bug fixes from another mapper who I got it from.