--- title: HomeGrown Devlog: Programming the Research System description: A developer devlog covering the design and implementation of a research system for a casual farming game built on a custom engine. The developer walks through... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/homegrown-devlog-programming-the-research-system-idnaqav3f twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: HomeGrown Devlog: Programming the Research System | daily.dev og:description: A developer devlog covering the design and implementation of a research system for a casual farming game built on a custom engine. The developer walks through... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/homegrown-devlog-programming-the-research-system-idnaqav3f og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/idnAQav3f.png og:image:alt: HomeGrown Devlog: Programming the Research System og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # HomeGrown Devlog: Programming the Research System **[ThinMatrix](https://daily.dev/sources/thinmatrix)** · 19 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer devlog covering the design and implementation of a research system for a casual farming game built on a custom engine. The developer walks through a week of work including designing a point-based feature unlock system (as an alternative to linear level-gated unlocks), building the backend data model, creating the UI with feature cards and research points display, and connecting the research system to in-game content like shops and items via an action-based decoupled architecture. The system was also made data-driven via text files to support modding without code changes. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#gaming](https://daily.dev/tags/gaming), [#ui-design](https://daily.dev/tags/ui-design) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/homegrown-devlog-programming-the-research-system-idnaqav3f) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"HomeGrown Devlog: Programming the Research System","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/homegrown-devlog-programming-the-research-system-idnaqav3f","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/homegrown-devlog-programming-the-research-system-idnaqav3f"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T07:59:12.839Z","dateModified":"2026-07-19T08:25:56.501Z","description":"A developer devlog covering the design and implementation of a research system for a casual farming game built on a custom engine. 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