Controlling Habitats - my thoughts

[Montague]

I understand the frustration some have expressed about trying to control exactly where habitats appear. I tried to do the same at first. It took a while playing the demo, and now the full game, for me to even start to understand how habitats work. The wonderful aesthetic in this game is that nature, and habitats, are organic and always interacting. Even if I try to focus on one creature's habitat, a dragonfly let's say, while placing objects and observing stat changes, I can be surprised by the appearance of a new adjacent habitat for a bumblebee, or a frog, etc. Woven into this aspect, the full game seems to have even more wonderful dependencies on other creature habitats - a dragonfly needs a specific overlapping creature habitat, and that one in turn requires another. The habitat tool is helpful in seeing how your actions are impacting one habitat, but I do not think this is a game one can hope to rigidly control the borders of everything. Yes, habitats sometimes appear a tile off from where I wanted, or I accidentally eliminate an adjacent habitat (eventually what inhabits that deleted habitat is so much better than what I had there originally). When I have been able to follow my actions leading to an unexpected habitat event, there is a reason for what happened, and I am fine accepting that as part of learning this game. As a real life gardener, I know there is no controlling nature. I learn to roll with the punches and take advantage of what happens. With more game experience, I think I will learn to how to use that complexity to my advantage more often. This a change for me. I am used to rigid planning games like Factorio. Horticular is much more a zen experience, and wonderfully different game experience for it.

[archmag]

I am currently at the stage where I finally understood how to make independent habitats exactly where I want them, but it seems it becomes more complicated as I though it will be when more complex habitats will appear. I agree that it seems that the intention is to give more complex puzzles instead of just setting up an area for an animal like in zoo sims. My frogs already destroyed one goldfish habitat so I had to remove them and move them somewhere else to fix it. And even bees tried to destroy goldfish once. Looking forward for more complicated examples.

[inDirection Games]

I made the thing so I know I'm biased, but I agree, and it was kind of the intent. You control the world of items, but the animals decide for themselves. Slightly inspired by revitalizing a real-life pond and having frogs move in! 😍

That said, I'm still very open to improvements to make it more intuitive and less painful. So I'm reading all suggestions and feedback. For instance, the original demo didn't have the habitat marker tool, but I'm very happy I added it after feedback.

> Looking forward for more complicated examples.
I look forward to making some! ^^

[archmag]

Originally posted by inDirection Games:

Slightly inspired by revitalizing a real-life pond and having frogs move in! 😍

Ahaha, poor real-life goldfishes that left that pond after you tried so hard.

[mothic]

I'm so glad this has been posted, this is very much the spirit of the game and although you can actually precision place habitats if you learn how, it isn't necessary. For anyone looking to just enjoy the game, I would recommend decorating intuitively and just not fussing about it. Make it pretty, the animals will come. It's an ecosystem simulator after all.

[Mimi]

Originally posted by inDirection Games:

I made the thing so I know I'm biased, but I agree, and it was kind of the intent. You control the world of items, but the animals decide for themselves. Slightly inspired by revitalizing a real-life pond and having frogs move in! 😍

That said, I'm still very open to improvements to make it more intuitive and less painful. So I'm reading all suggestions and feedback. For instance, the original demo didn't have the habitat marker tool, but I'm very happy I added it after feedback.

> Looking forward for more complicated examples.
I look forward to making some! ^^

I love "sim" games where the lives in the game make their own choices!

[Kinzata]

I don't usually give feed back but I have been enthralled by this game so far, and the auto-habitat movement is the only thing detracting from my experience of the game.

I'm currently trying to get a tier two catfish habitat. With the items I currently have, that requires a lot of goldfish surrounding it. I build a tier three goldfish habitat, move in the fish, then get to work on the tier two catfish habitat. In placing items, I accidentally crowd out the goldfish habitat. This causes the game to "decide" that this random tile adjacent to the old goldfish habitat is now where the goldfish want to live. I can only get it to a tier two, crushing my entire design. Even if I rebuild the tier three spot, because there is an existing "correct" habitat overlapping it, the habitat doesn't move.

This is the part of the feature that I don't enjoy. Discovery is great, the inability to craft them intentionally, if you want, is not.

[Kinzata]

So if I was to request a single change to this whole system, it would be the ability to lock in existing habitats or have a buffer of time before the animals move.

Edit: In analyzing my issue more, my issue is more with the "Empty" tile requirements. If at any point that requirement isn't met anymore (due to placing a single item over the limit) the entire habitat disappears instead of it just eating away at the quality/happiness level.

[cadfan17]

If you need to control where a habitat develops, you can for most animals.

Make sure that three of the things the habitat needs to exist are at the three places that make up three points on the square you want.

So lets say you're dealing with bees. They need five flowers and a shade (and a shelter, secretly, for when it rains). You decide to use five yarrow and a plantain lily. If you put down one of each of those at three parts of the square that you're hoping to have, and if you then put the rest inside the square, you'll get the location you want.

[vampy3k]

Originally posted by Kinzata:

I don't usually give feed back but I have been enthralled by this game so far, and the auto-habitat movement is the only thing detracting from my experience of the game.

I just spent a half hour trying to get everything lined up to draw in a catfish. Finally get the goldfish, catfish buddy moves in, and it looks like I created a frog habitat at the same time. That's awesome! Except the frog auto-shifted the 2 goldfish to a tile that only supports 1 goldfish so now the catfish has left because I can't move the goldfish back. The goldfish is almost gone because I can't move the habitat because they're HUGE and I'd have to build a whole new pond to do the weird habitat shifting thing and in the meantime I can't get rid of this stupid frog even though I've removed all the water and plants from the entire habitat and I've even killed it with banish but it still counts as "there".

I don't mind habitats developing naturally, I think that's pretty cool. But having so little control that a single mistake upsets basically my whole ecosystem sucks. I feel like I just wasted a half hour and now have to spend another half hour trying to course correct. Additionally, the game makes it SUPER hard to check on surrounding habitats to make sure you're not colliding in unintended ways, but honestly, I don't want to micro-manage habitats anyway, I just want to plant things and make friends with all the critters.

[Brimystone]

I feel like all I'm doing is micro-managing habitats when I wish i was just enjoying the game. Attempting to master catfish is extremely frustrating because the game constantly shifts my goldfish/catfish habitats when I place an item. I simply don't understand how the habitat system works, which sucks because it's a major aspect of the game and i wish it was more intuitive but it feels like i'm fighting it constantly.

[Broseidon]

Originally posted by vampy3k:

Originally posted by Kinzata:

I don't usually give feed back but I have been enthralled by this game so far, and the auto-habitat movement is the only thing detracting from my experience of the game.

I just spent a half hour trying to get everything lined up to draw in a catfish. Finally get the goldfish, catfish buddy moves in, and it looks like I created a frog habitat at the same time. That's awesome! Except the frog auto-shifted the 2 goldfish to a tile that only supports 1 goldfish so now the catfish has left because I can't move the goldfish back. The goldfish is almost gone because I can't move the habitat because they're HUGE and I'd have to build a whole new pond to do the weird habitat shifting thing and in the meantime I can't get rid of this stupid frog even though I've removed all the water and plants from the entire habitat and I've even killed it with banish but it still counts as "there".

I don't mind habitats developing naturally, I think that's pretty cool. But having so little control that a single mistake upsets basically my whole ecosystem sucks. I feel like I just wasted a half hour and now have to spend another half hour trying to course correct. Additionally, the game makes it SUPER hard to check on surrounding habitats to make sure you're not colliding in unintended ways, but honestly, I don't want to micro-manage habitats anyway, I just want to plant things and make friends with all the critters.

Yeah, I want to agree with this post. I keep having habitats form, which disrupt other habitats, and due to the way the game is designed, it has a tendency to cascade.

[Ghosty]

Originally posted by Broseidon:

Originally posted by vampy3k:

I just spent a half hour trying to get everything lined up to draw in a catfish. Finally get the goldfish, catfish buddy moves in, and it looks like I created a frog habitat at the same time. That's awesome! Except the frog auto-shifted the 2 goldfish to a tile that only supports 1 goldfish so now the catfish has left because I can't move the goldfish back. The goldfish is almost gone because I can't move the habitat because they're HUGE and I'd have to build a whole new pond to do the weird habitat shifting thing and in the meantime I can't get rid of this stupid frog even though I've removed all the water and plants from the entire habitat and I've even killed it with banish but it still counts as "there".

I don't mind habitats developing naturally, I think that's pretty cool. But having so little control that a single mistake upsets basically my whole ecosystem sucks. I feel like I just wasted a half hour and now have to spend another half hour trying to course correct. Additionally, the game makes it SUPER hard to check on surrounding habitats to make sure you're not colliding in unintended ways, but honestly, I don't want to micro-manage habitats anyway, I just want to plant things and make friends with all the critters.

Yeah, I want to agree with this post. I keep having habitats form, which disrupt other habitats, and due to the way the game is designed, it has a tendency to cascade.

Yup same thing is happening to me. Started a catfish/goldfish habitat and frogs messed it up. Should definitely give the freedom to players if they choose that they want to manually move habitats around. Like in my case, I could slide the frog habitat over a few tiles and the fish would be unbothered. In the habitat overlay, an option should be added that lets you drag habitats around the area they are located. It could show the percentage of how effective the habitat is as you drag it like how it shows when you're interacting with animals.

[cadfan17]

Easiest way to keep out the frogs is to make the border of the water a straight line. Frogs need 4 land and 4 water. You can't get that if you have a straight line border. You can only get 3 and 6 one way or the other.

Another way to deal with it is to start make your pond just a tiny bit bigger. Then make sure that the goldfish habitat spawns first, and set it's location manually by putting in goldfish items starting at the four points of the square you want the goldfish in. You want the goldfish to have a one space margin of water around their habitat. That's where the frogs will go.