Silverhart's NPC Mods

[Silverhart]

Link to the Latest Arthur NPC Download ---> here

Link to the Latest Chaucer NPC Download --->here

I want to mod some more NPCs because NPCs are awesome, and the more the merrier. I have very little experience with modding or coding in general, so there's gonna be a lot of fumbling my way through, and very likely breaking things. I figured I would post my progress here, get some advice and feedback from other players, and hopefully share whatever I learn. And maybe inspire some people to make more NPCs, because I need a huge colony.

First test involved a placeholder image I had on hand, and my original Cattails character Aspen. He's my test character where I just throw everything at him and see what happens. I broke the game a lot to get to this point, so though it might not look like much, I'm proud of how it turned out. Definitely should've read the modding document rather then just skim it like I originally did - would've probably saved me an hour.

I said I was gonna get Arthur in the game and here they are! Once I figured out the basics with Aspen, I decided I would start trying to mod Arthur from the original Cattails into the game. They were always my favorite, so now I can make them look, sound and say, whatever I want! So that should be fun.

And they can bow! Since we have that extra 'special' portrait, I decided to use it to have Arthur give a noble bow.

I have the rest of their portraits sketched out, but unfinished. I really like how they came out. Although I might tweak the anatomy on the neutral portrait you see above, I think I'll be sticking with this style. It took me forever to land on what I wanted, and I feel like this is a good midway between Wildwoods' style, and my own. I referenced a lot of the portraits in game, and used my favorite pastel brush to get a nice soft look to them.

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle Arthur's dialogue, but I just finished reading 'The Once and Future King' so I'm kind of thinking of leaning into the whole 'knight of a fallen kingdom recounting tales to preserve it's fleeting memory' thing, on account of my beloved Mountain Domain. I think my colony could use a nice storyteller cat.

Both my test cat Aspen, and Arthur are in the game at the same time too, which I think is very cool. No problems with that so far. Both mods are working fine, they just need more dialogue written for them. In fact my main problem after I actually read how to mod NPCs into the game, was a problem with the language file for Aspen. I kept getting error messages. Still not sure where the problem was - certainly user error, perhaps some code I muddled - but replacing it with the Test NPC language file seemed to fix it. From there I was able to add in the dialogue and code I had originally written for them.

[-Ørymizu-]

This looks amazing so far!!! I love the portraits sm

What other npcs are you planning on adding!

[Sol]

This is so cool! Looking forward to what you add.
Adding npcs would be perfect for my lore story so this is very exciting

[Silverhart]

I'm still playing around with everything and figuring stuff out. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew right now! Like I said, I don't really have any experience with modding. For now, I'm just focusing on Arthur, and as the inspiration strikes or I want to test something I'll work on Aspen. I really should draw him a decent portrait sometime soon. I think it's just so neat to be able to put original characters in the game.

I really recommend looking into modding in new characters if you're interested. It's a lot of fun.

[Mariposa]

You're valid for the 'not wanting to bite off more than can chew' bit! But this looks stellar so far, and I can't wait to see what else you pull off with this! Also can't help but wonder what other folks' cats would look like with your portrait style, it's just THAT good!

[Silverhart]

Got two more portraits of Arthur done today! I haven't drawn a lot of domestic cats, so I'm learning a lot from studying the in-game portraits, and my reference photos.

[Silverhart]

I was busy these past two weeks with some other projects, so had to put Arthur aside for a bit. I haven't had a chance to work on more portraits. But today I sat and worked on coding in some more dialogue.

And wow! It's a lot of work to code in all this dialogue! Made even trickier because of Arthur's dialect, and the fact that I am not a good writer. So far Arthur can comment on the weather, gifts, the player's birthday, health and hunger.

[Silverhart]

I've finished all the portraits for Arthur! My favorite by far is their Happy face!

I started a new game to test Arthur out, and my new cat BottleCap is very silly looking, I know. The slender head with the large body is the best combination.

Now it's just a matter of writing out all the dialogue, and coding and whatnot. That's gonna be a lot of work. XD

[Lord Scooter]

Arthur looks amazing! I’ll definitely be downloading him whenever the mod is fully finished!

[upsidedowner]

do you do like, comms for these mods or something? like would you accept trades of characters or other stuff or something in exchange for making an oc ingame? if so i would die for one lmao, i can only trade characters for them rn sadly but i'd absolutely love to do that if ur interested in seeing some i have up for offer

[Silverhart]

I don't offer commissions, sorry. I never have time for them between all the projects I'm working on!

[Silverhart]

Whoo! Got to do more work on the Arthur mod this week. I was able to figure out the Question and Answer prompts, (thanks to Falcon for fixing the bug with that and getting it working in the new update)! This feature is so cool, I really recommend everyone go try it out with their own modded NPCs. I'd love to see what other people make out of this feature, or what ideas you have for it.

In addition I have updated or redrawn a few of Arthur's portraits. I just felt the portraits weren't as versatile as I needed them to be as I wrote more dialogue. I think the new Neutral portrait looks a lot more, well, neutral!

I've got all the dialogue for the four friendship ranks written. I read through Arthur's original dialogue and tried my best to base a lot of the quotes off that, without being a direct copy. It's a surprising amount of work! This has really given me a newfound appreciation for all the work that went into writing the characters, and making each one sound unique. My goal now is to finish the dating and married dialogue sometime this month.But I want to play through dating and marrying a cat in game before I actually write anything for that part (my main cat, Oren just started dating Fliss - they're so precious!), just so I can enjoy that part of the game before I try to write for it myself.

[Sol]

That's so cool!
and everything is looking sooo good.

[Silverhart]

Whoo! Got just about everything written up now. There's a bit more coding that needs to be done, and then just have to test everything out. Spent a week or so reading medieval love poems and listening to the 'Camelot' soundtrack for inspiration when writing all the dating and marriage dialogue (If you're a fan of either, you might find a couple of nods to both in Arthur's dialogue). Medieval poetry is actually quite beautiful - I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did.

My head is practically spinning with weals and woes, and verilys and prithees.

[Emerald]

I really love how you drew Arthur here sm. Like, they looked like they was straight up from the medieval times somewhat; like scruffy, with a beard, regally handsome in like, a cat way if that makes sense? (Also your portraits for them are so pretty, the art almost blends in! )