I just want to start of by saying that I love this game. It is relaxing, full of content, and brings back some old school gaming memories from long ago. With all that being said, no game is perfect, in my eyes that is. Luckily for us, SDV has attracted such an awesome and positive community all looking to augment the game to their own tastes; I'm very happy to have come across it. I have been developing a mod to increase the longevity of the game by slowing down the acquisition of money and also by rebalancing the later game scaling of stamina. To go a bit more into detail: --Price Balancing-- -I have decreased the profits of crops (especially the heavily broken crops like cranberries or blueberries). Crops that have higher profit require a larger investment to commit to (higher seed prices); this makes it more difficult for a player to get a large mass of high profit crops early on. -Price influencers: The player can now obtain better profits from most items (forage, crops, metals/jewels, fish) as their respective skill increases. Players can also receive extra profits or discounts with shops based on their relationship level with the shop owner. Most items change price based on the season they are in vs the current season of the game (example: strawberries are worth more in seasons not of spring since theoretically supply is more limited [SDV is also known for their 100% effective food preservation techniques so rotting fruit isn't an issue! ]). Lastly, all sellable items in the game will have random price fluctuations that vary with each new day; these fluctuations can be positive or negative and are confined to a percentage of the items base price. --Stamina Balancing-- -Tool upgrades still provide more efficient stamina usage, but less than before. -Scythe requires stamina to use. -Max stamina increases from stardrop are decreased. -(Looking to add extra stamina decrease from catching more difficult fish or by the amount of time the player takes to catch the fish). --Money-- -Monthly Taxes: At the end or start of each month (haven't decided yet) the player will be notified for all taxes/bills payable and then the player's money is automatically deducted. -Taxes: This is based off the players house size, the number of buildings on the farm (silos, wells, barns, etc) and the total placed capital (machines such as the cheese press or furnace) on the farm and in buildings (not in chest though, only placed). -Energy/Electric billing: This is based off the number of light source items placed (only on the farm and not in buildings), the player's house size, and the number of buildings on the farm. -Water billing: This is based off the number of sprinklers placed on the players farm, the player's house size and again the number of buildings on the farm. -Refunds: Player receives a refund on water if it rains. Player also receives a refund on energy if it storms and the player has lightning rods. -Tax breaks: Player receives a tax break (percentage off taxes) if they are married and for each kid. -If a player has less money than what is owed, the player will go into debt (negative money). Since negative money doesn't exist in the game, the money will be displayed as 0 but will effectively be negative and wont change until enough is sold to cover debt. --Misc-- -I plan to add more crops and fruit trees to the game (Just need help with art work, unless yall like msPaint skills) -I also plan to add a whole array of mail to receive -Lots of extra dialogue triggered by different events from npcs -Extra pathing/schedules for npcs -Potentially new npcs (Just need to figure out where they would be placed [I'm thinking about remodeling the bath house, but that is a lot of work and beyond my artistic abilities]) Overall, I'm looking to not just increase the games longevity through slowing it down, but also by adding extra custom content. Currently I'm testing the balance of the game to make sure its not too slow or too fast. I also need to work a little on the display of the taxes/bills menu. After I feel good about the games balance I will begin looking to add further content. -I'm not ready to release the mod quite yet, but I wanted to get word out to get an idea for how many people might be interested in this mod or none possibly, I don't know I have unique tastes :S. -I also wanted to ask anyone interested for potential help with artwork for added content. I wanted to also add more depth to the current npcs (more story to them, etc) and would also like ideas for npc stories/content that could be added through mail, dialogue and possibly custom player to npc events. -And name suggestions for this mod would also be great. I'm bad with creativity, if its up to me, I might name it something generic and boring like "General Content and Rebalancing Mod"... lol ! Thank You for any feedback!!
I would love to help with any or all artwork involved. Could one of the crops you add be cucumber? I found it annoying that you can pickle things, but you're unable to grow the most common pickle of them all. As for the NPC modding, I have some headcanons to contribute, once I get them down on paper, and I'm sure everyone else does too. Sebastian, specifically, has a lot missing, backstory-wise. I'm going back to school this week, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have, but I'll try to come up with some stuff. I love this mod idea!
Cucumbers! Of course, all I need are the sprites/textures for any content and I can easily add them into the game... Since SMAPI is still limited on what it can do, I'll be pairing the mod .dll with some xnb file mods as well; the goal is to rely as little as possible on xnbs for content, but for some stuff it will be necessary until farmhand is released. Working with the Npcs will be one of the more challenging features of the mod so that may take the longest time, and I think there is room for improvement with all the npcs, so a lot of work could be done for them. -I just watched it and I'm very excited to hear about the end game content, I also love the idea of different farm layouts (the flat square of our current one is, in my opinion, a little dull, happy that he did something with it)... With that being said, there was no mention about balance... He can add more buildings, more items and even some more story to npcs, but without balance to the item profits a player will always be able to hit that exponential growth that allows them to surge in money, effectively ending a lot of the games purpose/drive to do things like fish or mine. I loved the feeling of the first two months where I had not enough time nor stamina to manage a large crop, fish and mine all at the same time... but when I hit that huge growth in money, I had no reason to really fish or mine unless I needed something specifically. I want to extend the time it takes to hit that growth, make the growth smaller and generally keep the player playing the game to make money so that a player doesn't have to start ending their days before night just to move onto the next day to have something to do. -It doesn't make sense that a single cranberry seed can become a plant to net you over 1000 gold in that month... with sprinklers, and a large amount of preserve jars / kegs you could turn that 1000 into around 3000 per plant over the course of your first fall/winter, with almost no work. 60 plants started on fall day 1 means nearly 180000, enough to fully upgrade your house and backpack, and still have almost half of it left over. And because cranberries are much greater than other plants, there is little incentive to grow anything else. -Content adds to longevity and has harsh diminishing returns -Balance multiplies to longevity
I made a little cucumber sprite. It took about 3 minutes, so don't worry, it's okay if you want me to change anything.
Thats really good.. a great texture for the item itself, id need to compare it to the rest of the items. My biggest concern is that items added feel related to the art work of the game. Just need a seed packet, and the sprite for the plant and its growth stages. Since you're doing the art work, feel free to determine for yourself how you would like the object itself to function (how many days it grows, regrow, season, etc) I'll take your lead on it.
Hello, really looking forward to your mod. Not trying to sound too impatient, but I was wondering if you are close to releasing it soon? I`m planning to start from scratch on one of the new farms and it would be cool if I had your mod from the beginning .
If the game had natural soil quality (can use plants and till (Using a hoe on fully grown crops) them into ground for better quality, and growing the same plants in the spots will deteriorate) like in the RF game series, then it would be a bit more reasonable. Unfortunately, there isn't much I can do to cater it to be like that. I'm more into the RPG aspect than what this game is, so it can't go all my way.
This mod is exceedingly appealing to me. I wanted taxes to slow the progression in the game and found this, which goes beyond that I hope it will be ready soon.
Yes, It is very close to being done and is nearly ready for public testing. I've done a pretty solid play test to tweak any balance and so far it all seems to fit well with the game. 1.1 however, has slowed me down a bit as I have not yet updated my game so I'm unaware of how much I'll need to do to make sure the mod works; if anything at all. The mod was 99% ready for 1.07 and I could have released it then, but with 1.1 so close I wanted to wait. It likely wont take long to get things going for 1.1, but I want to make sure that I have set aside time to address and hotfix any issues I may have missed. The first release will include price balances, stamina balances, and bills/taxes. I plan to regularly update the mod with content additions, hence this is about longevity not just slowing the game down. I also look forward to feedback that I can use to help allow more customization in the future to players. (Example: customizable options to decide just how much the game is slowed down)
I'll probably use all the features, always though this kind of game was way too quick/easy to max out and this mod will help a lot on that end, but I think a neat idea would be divide the mod in modules or be able to toogle on/off each part so each player could adapt the mod to their gameplay style. Like, say someone wants the price and stamina rebalance, but doesn't like the idea of having to pay bills/taxes.
Love the idea of all of this! If you are going to add new crops, would you please add more cooking recipes? SO many things to cook with in this game but so few recipes. Harvest moon had tons and loved it, love to cook in these types of games lol.
This looks boss. There comes a point in the game where it gets totally boring, but I agree with @DatRaph dividing up the mod, or giving you like, checkbox options for your particular playstyle would be rockin'. I'm pretty decent with pixels, so if you need some icons, sprites, whatever, hmu!
This looks great though I was wondering if when you release it you could break it up into multiple mods. I'm interested in the rebalancing stuff and the taxes for example but stuff like extra npc content and crops doesn't appeal to me personally so it would be great to be able to pick and choose which aspects we want to use.
Yes a configuration will be something to come after the initial release. Testing for balance in any game can be difficult given the number of possible outcomes to account for. I need to first make sure that everything works all together firstly, then I can move on to allow players to pick and choose their favorite parts. I appreciate the offer. After the initial release I will only have content to add. If I need help with artwork I will most definitely hold you up to the offer! Yes content is more a side project that will be added later on. The idea with the first part is to increase the game's longevity by slowing down the game's mechanics. Adding content is good flavor, but doesn't really hold up over time and has a more harsh rate of diminishing returns.
May I ask how this is going? Did the latest update add a lot of complexity that has to be worked out for the mod?
