Birthday Behavior Custom Dialogue and Schedules for Birthdays Are you a Stardew Valley Socialite? Do the interactions you have with characters have great weight to you? If you are, then you might have noticed something quite off-putting about the way the game handles birthdays. To be blunt, it doesn't. You see whose birthday it is on the Calendar, you give them a gift, and that's it. They don't acknowledge their own birthday through dialogue, and no one else seems to really care that it's their birthday. To anyone who values the sense of community that Stardew Valley builds, that's quite abnormal for the intertwined lives of the Valley citizens. In addition, this system makes it ridiculously easy to miss a birthday and not realize until 3 days later. Since birthday gifts are extremely essential in boosting your friendship with each character, missing a birthday means a whole year until you can give the character a meaningful gift to help them warm up to you faster. This mod aims to fix both of those problems by making birthdays have a lot more weight in the game. The most notable feature of this mod is that each character will have custom dialogue on their birthday, and that other characters (family and friends) will also have custom dialogue pertaining to that character's birthday as well. Each dialogue is specifically tailored to each character to bring forward the strong aspects of their personality, and the dialogue of their friends and family helps build a more immersive relationship between the two. This feature applies to every NPC, with dateable NPCs getting custom marriage dialogue for their birthdays as well. As an additional bonus, several characters will have a unique dialogue if you are married to one of their friends on that friend's birthday. Even more important is that some characters may even suggest gift ideas to give to the NPC whose birthday it is. The second notable feature is altered schedules to fit with each character's personality and how they would behave on their birthday. Some characters prefer to stay alone, while others might socialize and have fun with their friends. Some characters might even appear in places you've never seen them before. This feature will add more exploration to the world and will help build an even more believable community. Though the first iteration won't contain this third feature, another plan is to have custom dialogue based around the mini-events that occur through the altered scheduling on the following day. This will cause characters to address not only their own behavior, but the behavior of others as it correlates to their schedule behavior, thus creating a more realistic community. The third feature is a massive dialogue addition to Lewis' character. Lewis will now tell you whose birthday it is if there's a birthday on that specific day, and give you two gift ideas based on items that the NPC in question loves (except for Pierre, who only has one unique Love item). This serves as an easier way to discover whose birthday it is and to avoid missing the important Friendship boost, in addition to the custom dialogue of other NPCs. With this mod, birthdays should, hopefully, feel a bit more important than they currently do. Compatibility This mod is theoretically compatible with all XNB mods through the use of the Event Injector, as none of the original content is deleted and content is only added. Schedule-wise, I cannot ensure compatibility with any XNB mods that add custom schedules on a character's birthdays, but overall, it should be compatible with modified schedule files. Marriage dialogue files should also be fine, as they are also additions. Any XNB mod that adds dialogue on the specific days mentioned will likely be incompatible with this mod. Though not planned for any possible releases, it may be possible that I modify mail.xnb in the future, in case I would like to use mail to further the depth of the interactions. In that case, the same rules apply above, unless there is mail added for that specific birthday in the XNB mod in question. Screenshots Development Process #1 (minor spoilers) Lewis talking about Kent on his birthday. This dialogue changes when Kent returns. Jodi talking about Kent on his birthday. As you'd suspect, this dialogue also changes when Kent returns. Lewis remembers his birthday. Note that birthday dialogue supersedes rainy dialogue, so even on rainy days, NPCs will use their custom birthday dialogues. Answer wisely... Progress Dialogue: Finished up to Maru's dialogue Schedules: Not started Extra Features: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Suggestions If you want to see something specific in this mod, please, let me know! I'm open to nearly anything. I might be particular about any suggested dialogues because that's just who I am as a person, but I won't outright reject them without at least considering them. I will definitely look into any suggested features/mechanics, however. I won't switch this to an SMAPI mod so don't ask, please. Credits CA - Creating the game Chucklefish - Publishing the game and creating these forums xnb_node.cmd developer - Because I need this to actually make the mod Notepad++ developer - Same as above Stardew Valley Wiki - For documentation of text codes and birthday/friend/family info Alpha_Omegasis - Same as above minus info Me - For hating how birthdays were handled and wanting to change it XL Pink Raspberry Lemonade Gatorade - Because you're delicious and I want everyone to know this
Hey all. Just a quick update regarding the release schedule/in general. I've finished up to Maru's dialogue, so progress is going steady. My plan is to release the dialogue files as an alpha version, and then release the schedule files for the first official release. The dialogue files should be done within the next week or so if I continue to work on them as I am, but schedule files will take much longer. I'm not too worried about it, since the dialogue files can operate independently without the schedule files, but if you all would prefer to have them both before one is released, let me know and I'll take it into consideration! Thanks.
Honestly, it's your mod, you should release it has you see fit! Personally, I prefer when I release everything in one go so I feel my job is done, but since this is still in development and you're interested in feedback, maybe release the dialogue files first and then the schedule files? Either way, great job, thank you for sharing this with us