beetmods

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Fall vibes. (Why yes, I am very proud of adding a new paint color for the house! Plus beehives. Because who doesn't love beehives?)

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Me: Ooh, I could add a hothouse mechanic, wouldn't that be cool??

Also me to me: You're still working on getting the game functional, stay focused on that. You can always add a hothouse later on.

A couple of hours later...

...So I guess this game is getting a hothouse now. Oops.

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...and here we are in Year 2!

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Almost done with Year 1! Here's a little glimpse of the revamped Star Night Festival (where you can visit all the locations in a single night!)

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I've made it to Fall Year 1 in my playtesting so here's another sneak peek ;)

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I've made it to Summer Year 1 in my playtesting! (Now that I've gotten the bugs smoothed out of a lot of the basic mechanics it should go faster, although there's still a lot to do....)

To celebrate, here's a little sneak peek of one of the new characters!

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All About Children!

Quick follow-up to my previous post about marriage: what about kids?

Spoilers under the cut again; however, if you find pregnancy upsetting or are worried about dysphoria while playing I recommend reading this write-up to make sure you don't accidentally run into something triggering while playing the game.

The SNES game is one of the few games in the series to allow you to have two kids, so I obviously wanted to keep that mechanic. I find it boring that in most games your kids don't progress past the toddler stage, so I also wanted to build in letting your kids grow up into...actual kids.

The basic mechanic for having kids in this game is, at some point after marriage, your spouse will ask you if you want to have a kid. You can answer yes, not right now, or never. If you answer "not right now," they'll ask you again in a month or so.

If you answer "yes," then they'll ask you how you want to have your kid: farmer pregnancy, spouse pregnancy, or surrogacy. Note that every spouse/farmer combination will have these same options: I wanted to make sure everyone's headcanons about gender, trans/cis status, etc, can work! Depending on what you choose, there will be dialogue related to the pregnant character or surrogate, and the birth scene will fit the option you chose.

HOWEVER: there is a second, hidden mechanic you can also use to have kids but avoid the pregnancy question altogether! If you are married OR you have already told the Harvest Goddess you are never getting married, then you can give her a specific item (I won't spoil more than that!) and she will give you the option of adopting a baby. If you say yes, the baby will show up in your house immediately.

Note: in order to get all of the endings, all of your rivals need to have gotten married and had children, but you don't actually need to be married or have kids yourself!

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All About Marriage!

We're officially in playtesting mode! As I mentioned before, this will probably take a while, so in the meantime I thought I'd provide a few different looks at the game mechanics for those who are curious.

Spoilers under the cut!

The original Harvest Moon SNES was pretty marriage-focused, as you might remember: sure, you COULD stay a bachelor, but you couldn't get the best ending that way. I wanted this game to be more inclusive, so you have a few different options for marriage:

Use the traditional Blue Feather to propose to one of the marriage candidates (all farmers can marry all marriage candidates, no gender restrictions). (Note that all marriage candidates have something you need to complete before they will agree to marry you, usually bulletin board requests, events, or carpenter expansions. Many of these cannot be completed until at least Spring Year 2, making marriage a later event than in the original game.) Once you get married, you can fill requests and view events that will eventually lead to the rest of the marriage candidates pairing up, too. If you don't want them to pair up, then don't fulfill their special requests on the bulletin board.

Don't propose to anyone. None of the other marriage candidates will pair up if you don't get married first.

OK, you can't marry the Harvest Goddess in this game (sorry!) but if you show her the Blue Feather, she will give you the option to never get married. If you agree, then you won't be able to get married anymore, but then you can pair off the other marriage candidates in the same way you could if you got married first.

Hopefully this will give folks some different options so you can choose what suits you best and not feel pressured into getting married or not. Next post will talk about children, if you're curious!

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It's hard to believe, but I'm almost done building this mod! (Then comes play testing, which will probably take me a while, but still...exciting!).

The biggest remaining thing I have to finish are the Endings - I heard from several people that they appreciated that HM SNES has these endings, but that they also wanted to be able to play after 2 1/2 years are up. So I think I've come up with a good compromise...more under the cut.

Your parents will still come and the game will still "end" on Summer 30 of Year 3, showing you all of the endings you've earned...and then you can keep playing, and use an added feature (hint in the picture...I won't spoil more than that!) to go back and look at those endings and see any new endings you may have earned. I've also added a whole bunch of new endings (and edited or consolidated a bunch of the original ones) so it should be fun to see them even for veteran players.

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Happy Pride from Harvest Moon Rainbow!

I hope everyone's enjoying the new edition of Harvest Moon SNES that's now out on the Switch! I'm still adding lots of fun new stuff to this mod, and I can't wait to share it whenever it's done :)

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This is taking a WHOLE lot of scripting and coding, but I’m really excited for how the town request system will eventually turn out!

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Player Options

One aspect of this mod I’m very excited for is some additional options for player appearance!  Along with the usual Pete character, I’m in the process of creating three more characters you can play.

None of these characters have a gender - they’re not referred to as any particular gender in dialogue, and any farmer can date any marriage candidate - so it’s all about whichever one looks the best to you.

BTW, these are all the player options I’m going to make for the mod (it’s a lot of work!) but if anyone has another specific player they’d like included, I’m happy to post spritesheets you can modify and send back to me and I’ll include your character too.

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Harvest Moon: Rainbow

A new “mod” in development for Harvest Moon: SNES!

Featuring:

New crops and animals

New areas to explore

New options for player appearance and gender neutral play (no pronouns are used to describe the Farmer in dialogue)

New marriage candidates, with no gender restrictions on romance

Rival marriages, including LGBTQ pairings, and children

Spouses and children have schedules and can help out on the farm

Mining, cooking, and expanded fishing

New festivals

Other things I might think of to add?  (I’m also open to suggestions!)

Some background: Harvest Moon SNES was my very first Harvest Moon game, which I played obsessively until HM64 came out, and the rest became history.  I still have a ton of fondness for SNES, despite its shortcomings (wives completely losing their personalities after marriage, no fall crops, etc...) so I’m testing out my game-making abilities by creating a new version that basically makes it into my ideal (simple) Harvest Moon game.

Because I’m not really a modder, I’m actually rebuilding the game from the ground up (and learning about the ins and outs of game dev in the process), but it will function like a mod in being an expansion on the original game for fans to enjoy, not a totally new game.  

So far, I’ve built most of the game’s basic structure, and I’m currently working on some of the more complicated mechanics, plus creating new sprites and writing new dialogue and events.  I’ll update this blog with details about some of the things I’m changing and adding along the way, and I’ll post the “mod” itself here once it’s ready to go.