WIP Welcome to the Rice Fields Mod

I'd like in game balance. If someone does decide to make a mod to make the game more "realistic", I will make a version of my own mod to be compatible. For now though, I just want in game balance.

 

I'm looking at trying to add the events I need into the Storm API, but since I know nothing about C#, the other people working on it may achieve what I'm trying to do before me. I also want to give an honorable mention to a community user named Speeder. He took it upon himself to figure out and add the events needed to add the processing machines and new keg recipes for my mod.

 

The possibilities are endless for making mods with Storm API. If you can add the correct events, you can create everything from cut scenes to a sacrificial blood altar (yeah we actually discussed that on the IRC).

 

We are actually also working on dll-less resource mods, all you would need would be the manifest containing a list of all the resources you want to replace (and the relative path to what you're replaing it with). And the main issue with XNB modding is that other mods can create conflicts between them, whereas using something like our manifest approach it would allow the user to pick and choose the files to replace with.

 

I just discovered that Daikon are commonly known as Fodder Radishes or Winter Radishes. This means that there will be at least 1 crop growable in winter. A lot of the other crops mention being planted at the end of winter, but I have defaulted these as Spring crops.

 

Speaking of Winter Crops, there are quite a few.

Crops that can survive snow and be harvested include Beets, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Chard, Kale, Leeks, Letuce, Onions, Parsnips, Peas and Scallions

 

Just curious, I love the mod but, did you only make this to make a Filthy Frank joke lol?

 

Oh no, it's going to be a full mod. I am glad to see that someone caught the reference though.

 

Neato, that's good to hear! That was one of my minor concerns.
Along with the proposed addition of blood sacrifice, as that's very important to me, culturally speaking. The Autumnal Rite can now proceed as planned..!

Glad to hear it, this is how I tend to view things as well. Here's what I'd consider the rules of thumb:

• Spring crops should be relatively cheap and not too high in profit margins, with fewer special mechanics unless they're later-unlocking crops.
• Summer crops are more versatile, and seem to have the most special mechanics. Profit margin is good, but they're a bit more expensive.
• Fall crops generally have the best profit margin, either by being great value for the cost or dropping multiple harvests/items. Expensive, though.
• Winter crops should be moderately expensive with low profit margins, maybe slightly better then foraged winter seeds; enough reason to keep them growing, but not enough to make winter more of a harsh season.

Add half of that cost to crops that grow across two seasons, and another half of that amount for crops that last three seasons. Add a token amount if it bypasses or makes something from Pierre's cheaper. Default price is 50g.
Another cool thing, like with what you've proposed for wasabi, is make certain seeds rare. Traveling cart only, only findable by harvesting with (upgraded?) scythe, crafting, random gift...
That's another thing to discus later though, but it could make rarer or seasonal seeds more valuable to the *player*; at the end, a person could farm solely parsnips and still get the farming experience after all, hahaha!
But think how cool it is to find your first ancient seed... Obviously these'd be less rare, but the option's there.

Example: Let's say we give rice a growing period of nine days, but it lasts spring and summer. 75g so far, but it also adds the ability to skip Pierre's rice, so let's add another 20g. 95g per rice seed seems about right!
That's pretty expensive, but it's also a crop that can be used for a lot of things and gotten at the beginning of the game, even with the investment of an irrigation shovel. Looking at hot peppers, we see the profit margin should be pretty low for first yield.
Perhaps sale price for rice should be 70g/80g/90g, making it a pretty good investment past the first harvest..?

Naturally, we'd have to test this. Are people going to ignore rice their first playthrough because it's too expensive? Plant nothing but rice..? But it's a good step.

 

So... I finally had a few questions answered for me about Storm pertaining to making my mod. This include me being able to have my mod read all my crop growing properties from a json so that I won't have to type out "add new crop code" for each individual crop. As of now though, adding crops and new items in general is a challenge due to how CA made his game. Half the time the game references the ID# for item, but the rest of the time it looks at the item's name. Another issue is the ID# doubling as the sprite sheet reference (OrSpeeder pointed this out to me), but from my time in the Storm IRC, adding new items doesn't seem to be a major concern for the guys making the API(my questions about adding new items are always redirected to adding items to the shop). I think cantorsdust did find a way to change a png in game through only a json file.
Another thing that doesn't seem to work fully is adding items to the shop. At the moment, every time the Storm guys try to add something to the shop, it only adds weeds. I did ask to see the code so that I could help fix it, but I simply received the mod itself that only adds weeds to the shop.

 

I will take this into account when I start doing my pricing.

 

Quick question here about your mod: I've heard that with the base game there are mutant crops which provide a bigger crop yield, it happens very rarely and some people had the misconception that it was a bug within the game ~ would the same thing happen to the crops within this mod?

 

So I do know that each crop has an attribute which tells the game that the crop has x% chance to produce y amount of extra crops. Each crop also has a condition that tells the game to increase the bonus crop amount by 1 with each level of the farming skill. A lot of the crops are set to a 1% chance to produce bonus crops. If this is what you mean, it will be in my mod. I no nothing about a mutant crop bug, but the random chance for extra produce will be in my mod along.

 

Bad word choice on my part, friend told me "mutant crop". Googled it and what came up was a post with a "Super Crop" section. Read this entire thread today and became super interested in the mod, but was unsure if these bigger crops could spawn from modded crops. Thank you for the reply, the clarification is much appreciated.


P.S. I don't recall seeing these pitched or discussed within the thread, but here goes: You already revealed plans for many crops and machines. Perhaps tea leaves as a crop or caocao bean trees, as well as machines for making a variety of flavored teas as well as mixing milk into flavored creamers for coffee? Like taking items that look like garbage (algae) and tossing them into a tea mixing machine for green tea, or something to that effect.

 

I did plan to add coffee as well as some teas. I will add cocoa to my list. I also planned to add a way to flavor fermented drinks, so flavored coffee wouldn't be a long shot. I'm just waiting for the Storm Api to be completed.

 

When Friday hits, I'll see if I can't finally sit down and play around with something other then XNBs. Until that time, hrmn, keep on trucking.
Coffee and the like depend on your hard work, fellow farmer!
(Plus, I'll have the first crop of almost certainly placeholder sprites out. Still!)

 

Awesome I've actually started working with Storm trying to figure out the thing.

 

Excellent! Time to crack our knuckles and get this ground into mulch!.. As it were.
I'll probably be doing them by inclination, so when I'm freely available I'll let you know, and you can nudge me if you need a specific sprite or something.
And feel free to discard ANYTHING. I am not an artist, I won't be offended.
Just passionate about farming, wahahahaha!

 

Completely in love with the ideas for this mod, and while everyone seems to be able to do some actual work on it, I felt that I should be able to contribute a little something. Even if it's only in the form of ideas. If the workload gets a bit heavy, I could probably contribute more via a whole list of recipes for cooking, machine recipes and the like. And sorry, but kinda copied your Google doc. into a new one, can either work off it or just transfer what little I put onto it over to yours (totally have no idea how to fill in the blanks for a balanced system):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BKjBsocPh__xCf8zn_OothzA_Fbb1DZPrEHvOaNhLxU/edit?usp=sharing

 

Looks like some awesome ideas! Once I get all the base stuff worked out, I'll definitely look into adding these.