Character mod: Scooter

[Lord Scooter]

Introducing a fully modded NPC based on one of my cats-- *ahem*, I mean my mistress...

Download the vanilla style den here

Download the Natural Furniture Collection style den here

At long last, I am finally ready to release this, and here it is! Scooter is a snooty, no nonsense cat, with a low level of tolerance for antics, but with a proud and caring heart underneath. She may seem standoffish at first, but as she grows to respect you, she may begin to open up to you, and talk to you about her old home, and of the many kittens she's had in the past.

This mod consists of two versions: one featuring a den filled with some of the items from my other mod Natural Furniture Collection, and the other using items from the base game without mods.

Side by side comparison: left = vanilla, right = Natural Furniture Collection

Of course, to get the furniture to appear in the NFC version, you will need to also have Natural Furniture Collection downloaded as well.

Do let me know if there are any typos that need to be fixed if you notice any!

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(Original post:)

Hey all! So here's a mod I've been working on for a short while now, and I'm finally ready to announce it:
Introducing Scooter - former queen of the Butterthief Colony!

Scooter is a snooty dilute tortoiseshell with a low tolerance level for antics, but as you get to know her better, she might even open up to you a little (though still probably too proud to admit she's beginning to like you) and tell you about herself, and where she's from.
She may not seem like it at first glance, but she's really caring underneath that harsh exterior, and cares a lot about her previous kittens. (and future ones perhaps!)

Scooter is - of course - based off of one of my real-life cats, who is the queen of the house and she knows it, and I'll do my best to implement her personality in this game.



Not knowing how to draw was holding me back at first from making this mod, but I decided to give it a try by tracing pictures of the cat this is based off of, and I have to say, I'm pretty proud of them so far!

I only have three of the portraits done as of right now; the angry one (on the far right) I'm not fully happy with yet, so I'll probably do a lot of tweaking still to it, but I do have to say; for having very little art experience besides a bit of pixel art here and there, I'm very happy in how these are turning out.




I haven't done a lot of work on her dialogue too much yet, and she currently shares the same schedule with Talon (which would be an issue if I wasn't married to them), but my main focus right now is mostly on the portraits.

I'm still going to be finishing Natural Furniture Collection at some point.  My main goal with that is different looking furniture with all the necessary functions, so it won't take me long to finish whenever I sit down to finish it, but I'm currently having fun with this right now.

[Silverhart]

Oh this is lovely! I like how you handled the fur in their portrait art.

[Lord Scooter]

Thank you so much! I especially love how the ear hair turned out.

[Blue]

I'm excited to download this when it's finished!

[Lord Scooter]

I'm happy to hear that! I've been putting off downloading the other character mods like yours and Silverhart's because I want to be able to properly enjoy the effort both of you put into them, and I have a habit of putting enjoyment on standstill until I'm finished - at least content - with a project. (in other words, this)

I've been working on a few of Scooter dialogues today, though implementing her personality and adding character growth is hard with the way she is.  I've been getting there though.

[Blue]

You are not at all obligated to download our mods, okay? Do it only if and whenever you want to.

Doing your cat can be tricky. One of my upcoming characters is my own cat and she's been hard. Just know that even a little bit of progress is all good progress, okay? Sometimes you can even step away for a day or few and revisit things with a fresh mind.

[Lord Scooter]

Don’t worry—I don’t feel obligated to download them, but I am interested to see what the modded characters are like.

Taking a step back and working on something leisurely is really good advice though! I do my best to live by that standard, but I’m too much of a workaholic to remember most of the time!

[Blue]

Why thank you!

Maybe creating a schedule for your work would help you, if you haven't done that already? That way you could pace yourself and also be productive.

[Silverhart]

I also avoid downloading and playing with mods while I'm working on my own. I can't give them the attention they deserve while I'm testing my own mods!

Making characters does take a while. There's lots of dialogue, and drawing portraits also takes a while. Just take your time and have fun with it! The nice thing about character mods too is because there's so many things to work on, you can easily switch from one thing to another. Struggling to write dialogue? Work on their schedule! Bored of working on the schedule? Draw portraits!

And there's no rush of course. Just work at your own pace.

[Lord Scooter]

All right, small update: so I finally finished another one of Scooter's portraits - the blushing one!



Still got four-to-five of these to go, but I'm pretty happy with this one! Gee, art can be a little bit tedious, but the end result is worth every second of it!

I also haven't done extensive work on too much of the dialogue yet, but I have done a few lines - some I'm really happy with, such as one about Scooter getting annoyed at Spark; summing up her personality around the antics of older kittens.

[Lord Scooter]

Update: Scooter has been steadily making progress into making her way into a completed mod, but I've made some good progress still.

First off, here are two more portraits done: the thinking, (which is more of an annoyed, but it works better for her) and the happy one.



That leaves 2-3 more to go - depending on if I want to do a special portrait, and can thing of a good expression to make it, but I'm finally almost done with these! Just a few more left to go! I have also noted some inconsistencies as well while doing these, so there will be a bit of editing left to do after I've finished them all, but I'm putting that off to prevent me from possibly having to do that more than once.

I've also finished most of her dialogue for everything unrelated to dating or marriage, and she is even recruitable in the same way as most of the other cats now; just offer a few of her favorite snacks (and catnip) and she'll join your colony.

She also has a den now, though I have yet to customize its interior at all. That was a debacle though... I'd accidentally named the "buildings" file "bulidings" instead, and could not for the life of me figure out what I was doing wrong. After I noticed the typo, everything started going smoothly!

The schedule I'm purposefully putting off for last though, so that I don't have to hunt her down to make certain that the dialogue looks good and everything.

[TheSuperCat]

Looking good!

[Silverhart]

Awesome! Great to see you're making good progress with this!

[Lord Scooter]

So nothing really too specific of an update, but I have been making some good progress on this.

First off, I've finished the sad portrait:

I like the inclusion of the tail in this one, since the picture I was referencing had a tail in the background, I decided to add it as part of the portrait as well.
More and more as I do these I notice things I can do better, and until I've finished all of them, I'm not going to worry about fixing the flaws - better to fix all of them afterwards, then have to potentially redo things each time if something changes in the style.

The next big thing is that I have the main part of Scooter's schedule done. It needs some work still, but I have the largest part of it out of the way, and now it just needs some fine-tuning and testing before it works exactly like I want it to. She even takes a nap in the middle of the day.

Also, I've started a new playthrough to test all of her dating and marriage dialogue, which I'm glad I did, because I've been noticing a lack on consistency in her personality between dating Scooter and normal Scooter. I'm going to have to do a bit of thinking in how to properly write her character, and I may end up redoing a lot of her dialogue.

Still, it's making good progress. I just need to sit down and basically plan out what Scooter will think of complete strangers, to friends, to dating, to married, and how her personality will change as well. But that will just take time! It's getting there, and getting closer.

[Silverhart]

OoOo! It looks great so far! I love the new sad expression.