WIP Making an NPC Mod

Discussion in 'Mods' started by sheetcakeghost, May 23, 2016.

  1. sheetcakeghost

    sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

    So, taking inspiration from mods like Ashley NPC, Kevin, Custom Shops, and Siv's Marraige Mods I've decided I want to try my hand at making my own, full, romancable, shop keep NPC.

    Meet Rose (name and art subject to change) the owner of the Sweet Shop on the secret beach!
    Rose.png Rose (2).png [​IMG]

    My plans for her are as follows:
    • Give her a custom shop with custom sweet food items.
    • Allow her to sell the player recipes letting them also make these items.
    • Give her cut scenes and have other characters mention her so that she can feel like a real game NPC.
    • Have her show up to some festivals (but not all as she often goes back to Zuzu city in order to spend time with her mom for major festivals.)
    • Allow her to be a marriage option.
    • Add another male NPC to give the player more choices, add in other custom items, etc.
    As you can see it's going to be quite the undertaking, but not one outside of my reach as far as writing and some art is concerned. (I'm not an artist, I have to cobble together what I can from existing art.) My biggest limitation is C#.

    Right now I'm planning on making her in SMAPI so that she doesn't need to overwrite any resources. I do not have the programs or the know how to make the DLLs that smapi needs. Between that and the chance that FarmHand might make implementing NPCs that much easier I plan on working on everything BUT the DLLs for now. There are so many wonderful tutorials and templates out there for me to use that I'm confident I can do quite a bit of the work required to make this a reality without having to create much beyond the XNBs for quite some time.

    If someone wants to work with me to help make this happen I'm more than happy to do it. I enjoy working with people more than I do working on my lonesome, after all. I won't need help with writing the scenes or the dialog, but everything else is a bit out of my comfort zone.

    EDIT: This NPC is no longer in production in favor of another mentioned much further down in the posts that eventually got named Antoine. If someone else would like to use the sprite assets I made for her feel free!
     
      Last edited: Dec 13, 2017
    • taintedwheat

      taintedwheat Master Astronaut

      Great job! I hope to do something similar! I can wait to follow your work and learn from in n.n
       
      • Karalius465

        Karalius465 Void-Bound Voyager

        While I can't help, I think she;s a super cute and would love to use it if you finished. <3
         
        • sheetcakeghost

          sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

          The maps for Rose's shop and living space are coming together now. It'll be complete with little messages and animations.
          [​IMG] [​IMG]

          I've been writing up commentary for her to give the player if you go talk to her behind the counter. Right now I'm going to have her just be in the shop most of the time like Clint is. Later in development tho I might have her venture into town and chop wood or visit the Saloon to talk to Gus.
           
          • Bubblebeam

            Bubblebeam Phantasmal Quasar

            I wish I could offer more in terms of help, but I do wish you the best of luck in this journey. I have started taking a C# online course and I'm only at the very beginning, but who knows in a year or two maybe I'll be sufficient enough to team up with.
             
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            • sheetcakeghost

              sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

              I spent some of today working on a concept portrait for the wandering merchant boy.

              [​IMG]

              By now you're probably all starting to recognize where I'm stealing art assets from. d: I'm hoping that, once this mod gets underway, some of the lovely port artists around here will clean these up for me. Or just make new ones entirely. d:
               
                Last edited: May 25, 2016
              • taintedwheat

                taintedwheat Master Astronaut

                I'm pretty good at cleaning up portraits / color toning or w.e. if you want me to take a crack at it, here's the mod lady i'm working on (lolol yeah, slowly getting there off a real Cuntry Lovin Lady in SDV a, but that's because drawing takes so long even if you're okay at it):

                no name2.png
                 
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                • cankersaur

                  cankersaur Pangalactic Porcupine

                  That looks gorgeous thus far!

                  These both sound like really ambitious projects. I'm excited to see what you guys come up with! Thanks for putting in all this effort. c:

                  I'd love to eventually give this a try.
                   
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                  • sheetcakeghost

                    sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

                    Aw that's so cute! We're definitely gonna need to make sure our mods are compatible. Heck, I've been writing Rose like a country bumpkin and if I'm reading your comment right you're doing something similar with your mod lady. Maybe they're related. d:

                    Honestly my biggest pitfall in portrait editing is shading. I just cannot seem to fathom how it works.
                     
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                    • taintedwheat

                      taintedwheat Master Astronaut

                      Oh I meant that I was using the of Haley and she can be kinda bitchy hahahah

                      Funny enough though @lannihamm suggested her name be Ivy! Lol, but maybe we can do that, I wanted her to trying to be a business savvy, urbanite in medicinal mj coming out into/back to the valley for more space to grow and sell the like.

                      How are you doing it now? Do you use selective color as well as replace color? I think messing with the "curves" is important as it deals with highlights and shadows much more dynamically than the shadow/highlight toggle itself
                       
                      • Ribbonain

                        Ribbonain Pangalactic Porcupine

                        Wow pretty dang cute!! Love the pink haired man blue haired lady X3 house is adorable thats for sure!
                         
                        • sheetcakeghost

                          sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

                          Thanks, Ribbonain!

                          Also, right now? I'm just drawing on the pixels with photoshops pencil tool and hoping it looks like shadowing should. I'm kinda useless as an artist. I just fake real good at it with existing assets and years of practice. My strength is more in writing.

                          Ha ha, that does kinda work as Rose's backstory r/n is that she was adopted by a nice old set of farmers who treated her really well and encouraged her love of baking. They died a couple of years ago and she went out to find her real mother, who turned out to be a professor in Zuzu City. That's why she doesn't show up for the major festivals as she's in the city reconnecting with her mother.
                           
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                          • Ribbonain

                            Ribbonain Pangalactic Porcupine


                            I am looking into making custom npc's too I want to make two little ladies that run the bath house since seems so dead >_>; but I am looking into the xnb way of doing it doesnt seem to hard just so much dialogue wish knew how to use smapi so didnt have to mess with them break them some how.
                             
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                            • sheetcakeghost

                              sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

                              Making SMAPI mods looks easy enough, but you need Visual Studio to follow the existing tutorials (which I can't install due to lack of space) and you have to understand C# which I just do not. Indeed putting together the xnbs needed is the easier to do bit, and not out of the question for making a custom NPC. SMAPI would just be more convenient for other players is all.

                              Also, YES! We should have someone running the bath house! I wish I'd thought of that myself, honestly. Or maybe we could make the place haunted by Junimos to give the empty atmosphere some weight.
                               
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                              • Permafrostrocks

                                Permafrostrocks Tentacle Wrangler

                                I can have a look into creating and controllig npcs via SMAPI. I am still in the entry learning phase when it comes to this API but at least spawning an NPC and moving it kind of works for now. My goal was to create dynamic npc behavior to begin with, so we might as well collaborate. It remains to be seen where the limits of SMAPI concerning npc behavior are, though.
                                 
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                                • taintedwheat

                                  taintedwheat Master Astronaut

                                  Ooh! Dude that's cool! They could have a rocky relationship that the player should ask about and try to fix n.n

                                  I originally wanted it to be that Maru hated a newcommer girl with better glasses
                                  Jinx and Advise are going to like help put an extend area for new store maps for nightmare's weapons, jinx wants a salon, a resturant or food court area, and a pug-owned art gallery thats across from a Swede's furinture (also decrotative, basically furinture) home appliance shoppe.
                                   
                                    Last edited: May 25, 2016
                                  • Entoarox

                                    Entoarox Oxygen Tank

                                    Limits are quite unlimited ATM actually, as long as you dont mind a few here and there, you can do quite a lot with your NPC's :)
                                     
                                    • DJ_Zapple

                                      DJ_Zapple Pangalactic Porcupine

                                      Looks like you're making more progress than I am. I can't work put how to do squat beyond editing player stuff!
                                       
                                      • sheetcakeghost

                                        sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

                                        I'm more than happy to join in on that, and have my shop in that area rather than on the secret beach. My only reasoning for putting it there is that I thought it'd make it a nice bonus for the player to unlock when they fix the bridge, rather than just being able to buy a nice necklace.
                                         
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                                        • sheetcakeghost

                                          sheetcakeghost Weight of the Sky

                                          Thanks loads, hun. I know that the Ashley NPC I link in the 1st post does some of that and has a source code to look at. Siv's mod proves that you can make them marriageable since they're doing it with already established PCs.
                                           

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