omegasisgamedesign-blog

[omegasisgamedesign-blog]

Update: Rune Factory Crops/Modular Crops

Welp it’s been a bit over three weeks since my first update and it’s been crazy busy with school, life and modding, but the good news is that progress has been made! I just finished all of the crop graphics for my upcoming Rune Factory crops mod and all I have to do left is draw 30 sprites for seeds, and then decide on the code implementation. Originally I had my own mod done and ready for implementing the crops but I learned of a different framework that I might also use for my crops, which means I would have two version of the same mod. So we shall see. Implementing my own version allows me to do a lot of things but will take time to code, as opposed to using JSON Assets which allows me to make a few files and push it that way. Perhaps I’ll make the JA version first and release my version later, but we shall see.

[omegasisgamedesign-blog]

A new year, new content.

If you are reading this, welcome to a new blog I’m trying to start to sort of keep everyone updated on my progress on some of the work I do, most notably game design and mod development with maybe a sprinkling of some streaming thrown in. I’m going to try not to get ahead of myself just yet though.

First let me begin a incredibly short explanation for my absence in mod development for 2017. It was a hard year. Lots of personal events between moving twice, two very hard school terms, a passing of my grandmother, and trying to take care of myself since I believe self care to be important.

On the flip note though 2017 had plenty of opportunities. I made friends, traveled to Spain, and learned more about myself as a person. All of this in combined with spending adequate time with friends and family really got me remotivated to get back into what I love to do, game design and modding.

While I started this endeavor almost two years ago Most of my work was done in the first year and not much progress has been made on the neverending list of ideas I wish to develop/am developing/have developed but not released. 

I suppose I’ll talk about a bit of my work since that’s what is going to be the main focus going forward

Stardew Valley Mods:

This is the bread and butter for this blog for the time being, the main thing I’ve done and what I plan to mainly work on for some time. I’ve already released a slew of mods on nexus under the name of Omegasis with the help of Pathoschild in teaching me new things and maintaining my mods in the large year of absence. I’ve done great things like Happy Birthday, Stardew Symphony, and Auto Speed just to name a few. However this could be greatly improved upon. Here’s some of the upcoming ideas that I probably want to work on in this order.

Note* Some of these names are subject to change.

0. Stardust Core: Status: WIP

     This is the main core mod I’ve been working on for about the last year now. It’s gone through many different iterations, but the main focus is to provide a modding core for a bunch of shared functions and things I want all of my future dependent mods to work off of. This includes a generic template object that all my modded objects will inherit from, a serialization system for saving a loading all of these custom objects, and the Illumination Framework, which I’ve decided to integrate as opposed to having it be its own stand alone mod since I can use a lot of the code in the core. Also one notable feature is an animation manager where users can add in animations to their custom objects and have them run at specific triggers when combined with a code based mod. This could allow for things like fountains, spinning tops, and more! 

0.1 Illuminate/Chromatica Framework: Status: WIP Planned: Summer 2018

    This is already a really basic implementation of lots of colors that I’ve added into code to basically just make things look well...colorful! It’s in a very basic alpha stage and doesn’t do too much since it really only includes the Chromatica side of things, but in the future I hope to be able to add a lot more customizable light sources with different light shapes, interpolation, and configurations to be able to have lots of controls to add multiple light sources to an object. An example would be having multiple light sources on something like a christmas tree or a lamp that gives off multiple colors!

This crystal for example would be colored differently and give off a colored light. Stuff like that mostly.

1. Additional Crops Framework: Status: WIP Planned Winter/Spring 2018

     This is one that I’m currently developing right now. I recently learned that a similar mod called JsonAssets exists that covers some of the same features but what this one does differently is

     1.Allows the user to purchase planter boxes that can be placed down. More of these can be added in by modders for different aesthetic designs. These planter boxes will be used to plant crops anywhere in the world and allow for more features such as greenhouse effects where crops don’t die and self-watering planter boxes. No more having to have crops planted just on your farm!

      2. More kinds of fertilizer that can speed up crop growth and increase quality. This will basically expand upon the fertilizer that is already included in the vanilla base game.

Also shoutout to Spacechase0 for JsonAssets. Definitely a big fan of the work and very impressive.

1.1. Rune Factory Crops Mod: Status: WIP :  Planned Winter/Spring 2018

        This mod is being co-developed alongside Additional Crops Framework as a way to make sure it has a good set of features so that mod authors can make their own mods based off of the Additional Crops Framework. All it would take is a super simple 5 lines of code or so in a code based mod to simply tell the framework where to find the new assets. Of course I would include a tutorial of how to do so full of documentation, but the point is to make a crops mod with lots of new features and customization without having users struggle with the code side of it.

Here is some examples for my art so far, I’m a programmer so programmer art is more of my style but some of this doesn’t look to bad.

     Sorry about the size. I’ll have to find a better way to include images without destroying the quality. Also yes, the turnip crop is just a recolored parsnip right now. I’ve made custom art for the object, but there is still quite a bit more work to be done on this one in terms of art.

2.Stardew Symphony Reboot/Stardew Music Displayer: Planned for Winter/Spring 2018

     One of my personal favorites that I wrote a long time ago with not much programming experience behind me. While the mod works, it’s not terribly user friendly and the tutorials that I made for it well.... frankly put need lots of work. I wasn’t very confident streaming back then and my old house echoed terribly so my voice just doesn’t sound very great on these videos. Also what does one typically say during these things anyways? Well the point is that this mod is going to get a user-friendly upgrade. While a sister mod for it exists which is the simple sound manager and allows for simple mod sound effects for modders to use, Stardew Symphony is aimed at the general populace with no coding experience. 

     Some of my plans for it include:

     1.Making an interface to listen to music included in music packs. That way users can determine what music they do and don’t like. This will probably take form of a music box that you can purchase from Robin to keep keyboard keys clean from a million menus. This menu would also be able to customize what music would play when in terms of location and season instead of having to fudge around with text files.

     2.The Music Displayer portion is a part I already integrated that automatically parses the names of songs from the music files included in a music file. Using some nice hex parsing techniques this allows exposing all the sound files associated with any one given music pack without mod authors having to include a file saying which songs are included.

     3. Finally some better tutorials on the process from how to install the mod, to making music packs, to working the interface. This one is huge since it’s almost stupid that the ability to add custom music to Stardew has existed for so long and I just haven’t made some good tutorials for this yet. So this time it’s happening.

3.Additional Fruit Trees Framework: Status: Planned for Spring 2018

     This is the same as Modular Crops Framework and very well might be integrated into Additional Crops Framework at a later date. This essentially does what you think it does. Adds in different types of trees that will be able to produce different things for the farmer such as more fruit or different kinds of trees that maybe produce modded items. That would be fun!

4. Unnamed Cooking Mod Framework/Overhaul: Status:Planned

     Because what’s the point of having more crops if you can’t cook with them? This essentially will make cooked dishes have different/better effects or at least have a more reasonable logic when it comes to healing stamina and health.This mod would also add in the ability for new cooking recipes that can be learned in different ways. How this would all work is still undetermined. Maybe the same or maybe you research them? Also maybe include a cooking skill??? Who knows.

5. Unnamed Alchemy/Magic mod/Framework: Status Planned for Summer 2018

      This is a big one. It’s to hopefully expand on the fact that there is magic in the world of stardew but finally add on things like spell books, potion brewing, and other small magical machines and artifacts that would be able to add a bit of variety to Stardew. I’ve already prototyped a bag of holding which can be expanded with upgrades, some crystals that do different things like healing or cause it to rain, etc. Like I said, there is a lot that will be done with this one, and is going to be the big content adder.

6. Additional Animals Framework: Status: Planned for later 2018.

     This mod essentially will expand on the potential to have different types of animals that can live on your farm. Of course content mods will be made off of this and I already have an idea of one. It’ll sadly be awhile before I get to this one since I know the other mods will take me a ton of time to get around to completing, but I’m determined to add this one in too.

7.Modular Furniture Framework: Status: Planned: ????

     This is a HUGE mod that I’ve been trying to properly tackle since my early days of Stardew modding and I think I finally found a working solution to how to go about this one, but understand the amount of time it will take is going to be a task within itself. This will finally allow modders to add in custom furniture and place it anywhere. This will also allow ways to include more interactable types of furniture as well that could allow for some fun potential. 

8.Unnamed paint mod:Status: Hiatused

     This is a mod I made back in the spring and it technically works but needs some more tweaking. It essentially allows you to paint on a canvas object with different colors and place that painted tile anywhere in the world. This is pretty much the same way Animal Crossing does it with their designs from the Able Sisters. While I could probably get this mod up and running pretty quick it’s a bit lower on the priority list right now.

9. Additional Buildings Framework: Status Hiatised/Planned to resume LATE 2018

This is a mod that I’ve already made a variant through XNB content modding, but I need to update it to be more compatible to SMAPI since this mod was made on a patched version of Stardew Valley I made as an experiment in the early days of modding. This would allow for different buildings to be placed on the farm such as a bathhouse, warp hubs like subways to go to new custom maps, different aesthetic barns/coops etc. I want to get back to this one but it’ll take a ton of time before I can get here.

Anyways that’s what I have PLANNED for 2018 but the scope of some of these might even flow over into 2019 depending on a ton of factors such as multiplayer, code complexity, and the amount of art I would need to do. Not to mention I have a life where I go to school, am social with friends and family, and like to do other hobbies to. If I can complete even half this list though that would be amazing!

Unnamed Story that actually has a name:

Now this is a story I’ve worked on a long time ago for a game I was making in good ol’ RPG maker VX Ace and while I might not get around to making the game anytime soon, I really want to get back around to writing this story.

Game/Code Streaming:

Since I already play games in my free time and I spend so much time coding  figured I might as well try my hand at streaming again. It could be a fun way to pass time and maybe bounce around ideas from streamers about things I could do with my mods. We shall see where this all goes.

And that’s the very first and VERY long update.

I’ll try to see if I can stick to a bi-monthly update schedule where I’ll update every two weeks or so with my progress that I’ve been making and hopefully next time I’ll have more graphics to show on the specific mod I’m working on. 

Util next time.