Lifecycle of a tree

This is my entry for bevy jam5 "cycles". It simulates the life cycle of trees/a forest. The game has some user action that certainly change the way the game plays out, but there is no real strategy with the implemented mechanics. Assets are not really finished, but considering I did them myself the end result would probably not be much better :D.

Controls: With either touch or mouse select a tile on the board and use the button in the bottom right to do your "season action". If you have used up any "action points" proceed to press the same button to start the simulation for that season.

Cycles: In general the life cycle of a tree or rather a forest. Also plays around with the cycle of the seasons.

The Game: Gain as many points as possible in 3 years. Each winter you gain 5 points for each mature tree felled and 6 points for each overmature tree felled. Points are tripled if the corresponding tree is on nutrient soil.
Trees follow a certain logic to see if they grow or die. Apart from winter, trees will always try to grow. They can do so if the level of their 8 neighbour trees does not exceed a level of 2. Apart from summer, trees can die due to overcrowding. They do so if the level of their 8 neighbour trees exceeds a level of 4. Seedling, immature and mature are level 1, while overmature is level 2.

Issues:

• 1280x720 is ideal. Larger resolution with the same 16:9 aspect ration should also work, but the board does not scale - sorry :P.
• Any other resolution might result in certain stuff not being visible.

Other stuff: This is my third game jam. Originally I wanted to join a small team and submit something together, but for multiple reasons that did not pan out. Overall I am happy with what I shipped. It is far from perfect (or even good), but I can see definite improvements over my previous submission. As a running theme, this game is as well balanced as any of my other games (which is not at all).

Takeaways: 

• bevy_quickstart with the github workflows is awesome.
• bevy_ecs_tilemap - Very nice library that does roughly what I would have expected. It is sometimes a bit clunky to use (everything needs to be added/removed from the tilemap storage), but apart from that I would use it again anytime. Maybe that is something that can be "fixed" with observers.
• I ended up rewriting a lot of stuff to allow for already planned, but not implemented features. It would have probably made sense to have a more full-fledged architecture/design ready for the game concept, but the concept still evolved a bit, but I still lack experience with bevy and the plugins. So realistically not something I could have done.
• Again we were able to use any and all assets, which was nice. But yet again, I still opted to create my own sprites. While awful, I was simply not able to find anything that fit. I need to put some time into learning how to find assets and maybe already include that in the brainstorming session.
• Having time is very important (and that worked out better this time than last time), but even more important is motivation. Between my day job and other obligations, I was certainly struggling a bit.  I had planned to "balance" some stuff towards the end and finish the assets and ui, but I was kind of drained by end of saturday. So I skipped on the last 2 days.

https://github.com/KirmesBude/bevy_jam_tree

Credits:

• Bevy icon
• https://github.com/TheBevyFlock/bevy_quickstart
• Music: https://www.youtube.com/user/Vindsvept