... Because silos are rustic, right? What is this?: So, you're probably like me and truly enjoy Stardew Valley, but have a few things you'd like to see better. The game's scope is huge, and a lot of these things are pretty subjective in nature; for me, I wanted more NPC's and more depth to 'em. A few people have already looked into dialogue replacements for either their favourite or specific NPC's, and that's great. Me, I'd like to add a few more visitors to the Valley, and I hope to share them with you. NPC's will be 'done when they're done' and though I've got pretty ambitious plans, until the excellent community SMAPI is done, a lot of what I'm going to be doing is going to be very bug-ridden and limited by d̶e̶s̶p̶e̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ingenuity. I won't put that in a list, because otherwise I'd be aiming for the stars and delivering little. The base of what you can expect: Fully-featured NPC's with reactive dialogue and hopefully interesting stories of their own. NPC's will be visitors from places neighboring the Valley. They might not be present all the time, and won't have residences. This should serve to prevent potential map extension problems later down the line, though that's one of those 'nice-if' goals... My ideal goal is having players pick the options they like most instead of the ones that get the most benefit, or do the least harm. Hopefully, the dialogue'll allow for this. Not all NPC's will be marriageable, but I'm aiming to make marriage feel more like the big step it is, with another 'nice-if' of having two seperate paths, a friendship and marriage path that splits at five hearts. NPC's will be alternated by gender; I can't promise you'll find any particular NPC (marriagable or no) to your liking, but I'm sure hoping you can find one or two you'll feel right at home with. Updates should be weekly, or bi-weekly when I've got the time. Ceterum censeo, Shane est amor, Shane est vitam. Thelma: A butcher from Point Innis, a larger town perhaps an hour away from Stardew Valley. Likes to come to the Valley in the evenings to relax. She's very rough around the edges, but doesn't take offense at much, either. Prone to introspection and occasional bouts of melancholia, especially about the passing of time... As cool as some of the attempts to restore butchering and leatherworking into the game are looking, Thelma will run off the assumption that your farm is primarily an agricultural and animal-byproducts ranch. She may good-naturedly rib you about this from time to time. Has quite a few interests outside the Valley, and might be an interesting source of news. Might do something nice if you're struggling to make ends meet in the beginning of the game. Is significantly less prickly during Autumn. Progress: Decided to hit the ground running and start with the stuff I hated most, spriting. Four-directional walking sprites are done, and not half as ugly as I thought they'd turn out. Still'll want feedback and advice on prettyifying them, but next up's portraits and then I can get to the fun stuff. Adding situational sprites'll wait until later, as they're fairly low in terms of importance. Portraits seem more expressive, anyhow. Am thinking of having relationship progress outside of the 'hearts' social meter. Might be more easy to rig what I have in mind that way, and it prevents the clunky decay feature... - Will probably add a semi-changelog to pastebin or something later. Pixelart is a pain, even for a talentless & gormless hack like me; still, almost done with that. Hoping to get portraits done and dialogue started by next weekend. What I'm asking from you: Yep, you. Thanks for reading so far. I've got a few questions - would folks prefer better if I Uploaded what I have as I have it, even if it's piecemeal dialogue, spritework, so on... Or wait until significant progress is made before posting updates? Secondarily, if you've got good tips for making the portrait and spritework match the style used by the game, I'm all ears. Art isn't my forte, so anything helps. Thanks for your time, and hope you're enjoying Stardew Valley.
Hey, i would like to see the progress of all that with something like "Patchnotes" what you have done etc. And i would take the second option of yours or kinda like the first option i dont know what you ment with "upload what i have" one NPC ready to play you upload the files and then wait until another NPC and upload again like this? Or did you mean something else? I am realy looking forward to this mod.
This seems like a really cool idea, and i hope you keep up your ambitions for developing I think it would be best if you released an update every time you update an NPC or have an NPC done enough for it to be functional in the game
I'd prefer working, non-buggy NPCs over rough, incomplete, and unbalanced ones personally. I'd be more than fine with waiting for an actual release, provided I/we could see bits and pieces of the development.
First of all, thanks to everyone who replied; you've got no clue how glad that makes me, as my own view towards modding tends to be that talk is cheap; I'd rather update you all once or twice a week on what I'm doing, avoid over-bumping this thread and then get a real post going when I've got art, dialogue and whatever else I want done integrated to the point that (even if the user is aware it's a mod) it feels like something you could've stumbled upon in game. A few people I know have used github, pastebin, or the like for mod maintenance and nightly versions of mods. I'm not against this in anyway, and it'd let people 'read' the dialogue I've got so far or help me catch my own spelling/coding mistakes, but I also think it's a bit much for a mod in development; at least ones made by me. This was my default goal, but I really like this game, and I like the community from what I've seen of it. I'm not one to spend a lot of time talking to people online, but I'd like to work with the community, and not against it. If that had meant a huge demand for posting updates everyday that the player could jump at the bit to read earlier, even if they weren't 'done' I would've tried to accomodate that. As it stands, it looks more like editing this post and adding new posts only with complete information is what I can do, and again; really glad to hear that. As it stands, I'll probably edit the main post with patch notes, and add a new post to the thread itself when I've got an NPC done/updated in a significant manner. Hotfixes for done NPCS, we'll figure that out when we get there. Thanks for the support and the feedback; I hope to have good news for you soon.
