Help with modding!

[blizzard]

I want to creat my own npc's when the game comes out (unfortuetly I missed the kickstarter ) and I've been reading the modding stuff and making examples in a doc but I have really no idea how to start and how I would have to write any help/ideas?

[Blue]

When you get your hands on the game, you can copy a character's files and modify them into your own character. There's two main files to a character-their overall data, such as appearance, voice, gift preferences, and schedule, and their dialogue sheet. These particular files can be open with Notepad (if you have Windows. Unsure on Mac and Linux)

You currently don't have access to the game's folders, but you can download and look at the mods that have been released and see their files for reference. Fortunately they're pretty accessible and easy to follow. Silverhart's Arthur mod is currently up to date so that's a good place to look. You can also look at my Moth and Cloud mods if you want, but they haven't been updated in a couple months. Although, all they're really missing is stuff that probably isn't relevant to you right now so you should be fine. (I will try to update these mods as soon as I can, but I have finals/graduation soon and I have work).

For now, just focus on doing the dialogues. At least the ones where their purpose is obvious. I'd also try to draw a design for your character(s). It doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to be coherent for when you actually code your character's cat. Once that's over with, you could also do the various portraits for them, if you'd like. Try not to worry about everything else.

Sadly you really can't do everything right now, and you probably won't be able to finish your mod until you actually get the game. But, working on all of these can give you a head start.

Best of luck. I look forward to seeing your mods in the future.

[blizzard]

Thanks for the ideas! This really helps!

[Silverhart]

That's all great advice Blue shared! Especially about focusing on writing and art right now, since you can't really reference or test out the code.

You're welcome to use my mod for Arthur as reference, though their dialogue has some extra bits and bobs I added to it (like branching dialogue and stories, and a few extra lines here and there).

You can include as much or as little dialogue as you like, and you can make it so characters are befriendable or marriageable or have them be neither. If you want them to be befriendable and marriageable you'll probably want to write more dialogue and have more portraits than if they weren't.

If you want them to function like the NPCs in game though I will say that each character has 5 unique dialogue options for every rank of friendship, dating and marriage, and that's the main bulk of writing (there are four ranks of each, so that's a total of 60 lines of dialogue). There are also 5 unique dialogue options for when the character is in their den, for friendship, dating and marriage. There is also one unique dialogue for rank 0 of friendship, dating and marriage. There's three unique dialogue options for early morning, and three for night. One unique dialogue for every weather pattern, and two unique dialogue options for each season (one for the beginning of the season, and one for the end of it).

There's also festival dialogue, gift giving dialogue, birthday dialogue, wedding dialogue, accepting/rejecting a rose dialogue, and buddy dialogue - there's a lot of dialogue! XD AS well as your character introductory dialogue which is very important.

Hopefully that gives you some idea of what to write and how much. But again, you're free to have your characters speak as much or as little as you like, choose what triggers certain dialogues, what portraits to use, etc. My other NPC download currently has very little dialogue and just serves as a festival shopkeep., so it's really up to you how much or how little you want to include.

Also if you're trying out coding you might want to check if it's valid, and jsonlint.com/ is a good place for that (it's also linked in the modding document). The modding document also has a few mod examples you can download and look at. They're very simple so they're a good place to start learning. You can check them out here. Test NPC is probably where you'll want to start.

[blizzard]

Ok! Thanks I'll take a look at that!