[Engine] Harvest Moon Tool Kit (HMTK)

[Billy--]

Hey, do the hearts show up yet? :P I tried talking to Ann, then Elli



Some things I noticed: Picking up a chicken often gives me an error.

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Billy--

Hey, do the hearts show up yet? :P I tried talking to Ann, then Elli



Some things I noticed: Picking up a chicken often gives me an error.

The hearts haven't been implemented just yet. Most of the stuff needed in the back end is there to add it though. It will be in the next maintenance release.

I just fixed the error with the chicken (I ended up changing items/tools quite a bit after implementing animals, and since the chicken is an item when you hold it, the changes messed it up), and have updated the download link in the first post.

[Billy--]

Oh, and if I try to buy some of the tools from the tool shop, I'll get an error there, too.

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Billy--

Oh, and if I try to buy some of the tools from the tool shop, I'll get an error there, too.

Not surprising. I haven't touched the Tool Shop map in months. The events call old methods I was using to add tools (which have been removed), so it throws an error. It isn't needed though, as the toolbox by the player's house gives you a bunch of tools to mess with (including the brush, milker, and shears, which can also be bought in the animal shop and do work correctly).

I'm planning to get things really tightened up in the next release (tools, animals, the tool switching menu from HM:MM [already done], shops, villagers [affection, marriage, more villagers added, etc], and mining). As it is though, most of what everyone needs to make games with it is already there. Fixing a few missing pieces will more or less take care of the important stuff. I will probably start a tutorial and take some screenshots (and maybe even a video demo if I feel like it) to go more in-depth on the features and explain how to use the tool kit.

[Billy--]

That'd be awesome (for me anyways). I'm not the most game smart person, I'm more of an artistic guy :P

EdiT: I don't know if the snow is working properly, I sped in to Winter, and I kept getting rain. Haha

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Billy--

That'd be awesome (for me anyways). I'm not the most game smart person, I'm more of an artistic guy :P

EdiT: I don't know if the snow is working properly, I sped in to Winter, and I kept getting rain. Haha

Thanks for finding that one. Seasons used to be 1-4, but I made it 0-based recently for simplicity and forgot to change the numbers where weathers are generated. Fixed now. Also, just so everyone knows, if you dig around a bit there are some debug methods here and there to make testing things easier. I really need to go add a debug tag to them (some have it, some don't), but they are there. In your case, instead of speeding to winter you could have actually interacted with the four signs by your house (or in the mountain). They each correspond to a season, and immediately change the season so you can test things things out easier (which is exactly why they were added). They don't adjust the weather properly yet though (if you select the winter sign while it's raining, it will still be raining). Hopefully I can get that tutorial ready soon to address things like that.

[Billy--]

Once the day/night system is implemented, it'd be pretty cool to see the lighting of the windows go on :)

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Billy--

Once the day/night system is implemented, it'd be pretty cool to see the lighting of the windows go on :)

I think that would be pretty cool too. Since someone else already asked me for help with a better day/night system, I've been working some of these things out in my head and will probably end up killing two birds with one stone. It's in the works.

Also, brief update (but important enough to me that I felt I should announce it): the current system for saving tile data on the farm map (i.e. when you dig with the hoe or plant stuff, the tiles don't change back) works just fine and all, but you've probably noticed that the stuff in your field is actually gone and quickly pops back on screen after a second when entering the map each time. This always annoyed me a little, but I finally discovered how to fix it. I tried a couple months ago, failed, and it turns out I was close. So, I will be fixing the tile data switching in the next release to make loading maps significantly smoother. Also, I will be doing it so that it applies to every map in the game by storing the spritesets in an array. What this means is that making visual changes to any map should be smoother. This mostly applies to the player's house, where they will need to be able to decorate the house with different furniture (something that's already been started). And of course, you developers can make use of it as well for more dynamic mapping. So, look forward to the nominal boost in quality. It's probably a 10x bigger deal to me because of the headaches it gave me before, but it will really make it look more professional.

[Nickalooose]

A couple things I seen wrong at the moment, don't know if you know:

When buying something on Map:Tool Shop, the noise for each letter appearing, keeps playing during the yes or no phase.

The character left to this shop, when walking down changes sprite.

When picking up items, they become normal in snowey weather when they should'nt, right?

I like the seasons thing though, especially the tile changes :D
Useing Pokémon for the chickens and stuff, that's funny, I threw a Torchic around coz he annoys me haha... He still loves me though!

I just errored out buying a hoe, oops! (geez that sounds naughty)

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Nickalooose

A couple things I seen wrong at the moment, don't know if you know:

When buying something on Map:Tool Shop, the noise for each letter appearing, keeps playing during the yes or no phase.

The character left to this shop, when walking down changes sprite.

When picking up items, they become normal in snowey weather when they should'nt, right?

I like the seasons thing though, especially the tile changes :D
Useing Pokémon for the chickens and stuff, that's funny, I threw a Torchic around coz he annoys me haha... He still loves me though!

I just errored out buying a hoe, oops! (geez that sounds naughty)

I didn't notice that first one, since 90% of the time I have stuff muted. Especially since the message beep was like violent ear rape (the one in the actual games usually has a lower pitch and is more tolerable). I'll get right on that (I think I know the problem already).

The sprite of that character changes because I only ripped a few frames. I found it's a pain to rip their sprites since they're terribly slow and never take more than one step at a time. Some don't move at all. So yeah, if anyone has some charsets, please share them.

The items probably should reflect the season when you hold them, but again I need more graphics for that. I've done plenty of sprite modding on the fly and ripping stuff as I go, but it's a bit of a hassle. So once I have some images, I'll get on that (but only for normal outdoor items, like rocks, sticks, and foraging items. others should remain unaffected).

And the error you got was from the tool shop. I think I mentioned that it uses old method calls that don't work anymore. Ignore it, since all the tools you need are in the toolbox by your house. Oh, and notice that if you want, you can place your chickens outside (I think you can put them on any map) and they'll stay there. Very slick, if I may say so myself.

[Nickalooose]

Ah okay, you do know I can help you if you ask



This fixes that waman! She can now walk

If you need anything just drop me a line haha!

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Nickalooose

Ah okay, you do know I can help you if you ask ;)



This fixes that waman! She can now walk ;)

If you need anything just drop me a line haha!

Thanks for that. It came from the sheet on The Spriters Resource right? I had started turning the sheet into charsets, until I found that several were missing some frames. So no more gender changing every time she moves now.

Also, progress report: I'm working a lot more on graphical interfaces for stuff now, and polishing things up where I find the need. The next release will be a bit larger than the others, so it will take a bit longer than normal to get it all ready. I'm also trying to simplify some code to make things easier to understand and edit, and planning a tutorial to release at the same time. Be sure to make whatever suggestions you feel like so I can get on it for this release. I'm also considering change the graphical style to something a little more recent. If you have a preference, name it (some rips to go along with it would be great too. I'd like a complete set of graphics before making any graphic changes so it's not such a patch job).

-------------------------
HMTK Basic Tutorial

I decided to write up a quick and dirty tutorial on some of the basics of the project, so that those of you who are confused as to how it works or are just unfamiliar with Harvest Moon in general can get a better idea of what this project is all about. It's a little wordy (when am I not?), but it will walk you through step by step what you can do in the project so far.

First, the controls:

W - store item in rucksack
A - equip first available item from rucksack
S - switch equipped item (temporarily eliminates the need for the A key)
D - use an equipped tool
X - Press to cancel / Hold to run
C - confirm choices or interact with things

Getting Started:

Once you've clicked Playtest and got the project running, there's a number of things you can do.

-Go outside and check out the farm. You'll see a toolbox outside your house. Open it (It won't be in the next release).

-Now that you have some tools to play with, head over to the field full of rocks, sticks, and weeds. You can cut sticks and stumps (currently, it only takes one hit to break stumps. that is temporary) with your axe, and you can similarly break rocks and boulders with your hammer. The scythe doesn't work yet, so you can't cut those weeds. BUT, you can grab and throw them to weed your field. You can also pick up those sticks and rocks and place them anywhere else on the field (and only on the field).

-Once you have a nice clear spot, equip your hoe. Dig a nice 3x3 square, stand in the middle, then equip some seeds (the white bag is turnips. try those out since they grow faster). With your seeds equipped, press the D key to use them like any other tool and watch them cover that 3x3 patch. You've successfully planted your first crops!

-With your crops planted, you have to take care of them now. If you were lucky and did this on a rainy day, they are watered already. If not, equip your watering can and water a couple (don't water all of them, because you'll run out. I haven't added a means of refilling it just yet). Now, head back inside, interact with your diary next to the bed, and sleep. Go back outside, water the same couple you did before (unless it's raining), then go back to sleep again. Do this a few times, and you should notice your crop has grown a couple times. When it's full grown, you can pull it out of the ground. From there, you can sell it or give it to someone. Or just throw it on the ground to get rid of it. You're now an expert at farming!

-Next up is your animals. Some animals have already been provided for you as a courtesy, so you can get a feel for how they work. They aren't finished yet though, so it's a little rudimentary right now. First, go up to each of your animals in the barn and press C. You'll notice a little heart appear. If you press C on that animal again, nothing happens. Why is that? Because you've already showed them a little affection, so they're used to it. Otherwise you'd be able to make your animal completely loyal and happy in just a day. BUT, you can come back tomorrow and do it again to score a little more affection points. Not much to it so far though. Animals need food though, so head over to the right side of the barn, press C on the box protruding from the side, and you'll suddenly be holding something (unless you already have something equipped. if so, unequip it). This is fodder, and animals get sick (and will eventually die when I maliciously program them to) if you don't feed it to them. But slow down there cowboy! You can't just run up and stick it in their mouth (yet). Walk up to those conspicuous boxes you see next to them. There's one for each animal (and a couple extra), so place the fodder in those. You just have to stand next to one, face it, and press C with the fodder in your hands. Easy.

-Now that you've seen the animals in your barn, run over to the next building: your chicken coop. There's already a few in there waiting for you. One thing you should notice right off when you interact with your chickens is that you show them affection in a different way. You pick them up, the put them back down on the ground. Now they're happy. It's a Harvest Moon thing. You can also grab a chicken and take it outside. You can even take it completely off your farm to some obscure place and drop it off. When you come back, it will still be there (I need to program something like wolves eating them when you do that though. It was in the SNES version after all). Normally, leaving chickens outside on your farm will encourage them to scavenge for their own food so they don't starve (well, they can't starve just yet). However, they haven't been programmed to do so. So leave them inside for now. Chickens are pretty simple really. But wait, how do you feed them? You should already have some handy dandy bags of chicken feed in your bag. Just press S until a brown bag with a chicken on it pops up. Now that it's equipped, face the little feed stalls behind where your chickens first appeared. There's one per chicken, so put feed in one for each of them (just press D). You can come back the next day to get eggs from the chickens you fed.

-Now, go outside and leave your farm. You'll be at a crossroads. From there, go left to the town. There's three shops there: the tool shop (don't go there, they have defective products :p), the restaurant/cafe (it's locked though. no food for you), and the animal shop. There's also a church, but it's not finished yet. Head to the animal shop (notice the little cow icon on the building that gives it away), and once inside grab the three items on the counter. You'll have to pay for them, but that's okay. You have nearly $10 billion. With your new toys in hand, there's a few more possibilities open to you now. First, equip your brush (Just press S until it pops up). Then head to your barn and use the brush on your animals. They love it. This allows you to score a little more affection each day from your animals (certain things require your animals to like you. such as getting better produce from them, or winning certain festivals). Once you've brushed your animals, equip the milker (the funny-looking yellow and white thing). Guess what it's for? Milking your cows (that was a tough one). So, get milking! You can take the milk you get and sell it, give it to someone, or throw it away. If you don't feed your animals, they'll get sick and won't produce anything though. Also, cows that are too young can't be milked either (but your cows are already mature enough). Next up is the sheep. Pull out the shears and get clipping. You'll be awarded some wool that you can do the same thing with as everything else so far. Normally, you can't shear them every day. But they're programmed to regrow their wool every day for now, so don't worry about that just yet.

-Now what? You'll probably notice that there's a few more tools in your bag. Most don't work though, so don't bother trying them out just yet. So next, leave your farm again and this time go north. You're in the mountains. Early on in your game, it's common to come here to forage for wild food to sell. It's not worth as much as milk, wool, or crops, but buying animals to start with is expensive, and both crops and animals take time to grow before you can get anything of value from them. So, this is the alternative for making a quick buck. You can grab some items laying around and, like everything else, ship them, give them away, or throw them away. You should also see four signs side by side. You can interact with these to change the season (just for fun). Doing so will change which items are available to forage. Next to these signs is a little pond. You can use your fishing pole here to catch fish (or sometimes junk). It's a little awkward right now, but fishing does work. Cast out your line, and sit tight until you get a bite. Quickly press B when you get a bite (hit it repeatedly if you have trouble) and you'll hook a fish. You can do the same thing with that fish as anything else. It can be sold, thrown away, or given away.

-I bet you've been dying to explore that cave (if you haven't already) over there. Well, go ahead! Once inside, you'll notice that's it's pretty empty. Boring right? Equip your hoe and dig around a bit. You can find items in the ground, and even old ladders that take you to the lower levels of the mine. On the next levels down, you should see some rocks all over the place. You can break these with your hammer to score items as well (well, not yet. All you'll get is a pop up message telling you that you got one). Dig around some more until you've found enough ladders to take you to the last floor. There's a nice pond you can fish in there. All you'll get is a "rare" fish all the time if you fish in it though. To get out, run back over the ladder and climb out.

-If you didn't earlier, you can talk to Ellen and Ann in town to see how the message system works and the different dialog patterns. You get a greeting when you first meet them, some generic filler text (you only get one or two of these common dialogs per day. two for right now), and then an ending phrase to indicate that there's nothing more to talk about. All dialog will increase that villagers affection level a little, but only the first time you hear it each day. So after you see the ending text once, talking to them again will do nothing until their dialog is reset the next day (I think I've programmed it to reset anyways). They'll just repeat their ending text over and over.

That's more or less all for right now. There's a whole lot more to it in the background, but you don't need to worry about that until the project is finished up and a tutorial on how to use or customize certain features is written up. When that time comes, you can take the role of a developer and start building your own Harvest Moon with your own (or just your favorite) characters, in your own towns (or ones you liked in the official games) and add as many new items, features, animals, or characters as you want.

I'll also be adding this to the first post for now.

[Nickalooose]

I drew that picture myself haha! I'm more of a HG/SS styled overworld, so this wasn't easy to do for me, without reverting to HG/SS style haha... But I think it came out alright.

Nice new update, will check this out a bit later, I don't have time right now, but I'll play later :D

[Billy--]

Very nice description :) I actually made a map of the Valley from HMDS...I only got to make the village area so far....It's kinda just another text map for me to work things out... It'd be kinda cool if there was a spawn wild items code, like you have on the farm with the sticks and, stones. Excited to see the hearts, and day/night system too!

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Billy--

Very nice description :) I actually made a map of the Valley from HMDS...I only got to make the village area so far....It's kinda just another text map for me to work things out... It'd be kinda cool if there was a spawn wild items code, like you have on the farm with the sticks and, stones. Excited to see the hearts, and day/night system too!

I supposed I could make items spawn randomly, but the official games usually have the items in static locations every day so you know what to expect (the 2D ones anyways. and this is a 2D project). I supposed I could even add it in and make it optional (I've done that with a few things so far).

Also, if you or anyone else wants to donate some maps to show off some of the features, that would be great. Maybe if/when the game gets a graphical upgrade, some maps from the official games could be used. I believe you mentioned you could rip some HMDS graphics. If you can get a full resource set, I will upgrade the graphics for in the upcoming release with it. It would be a huge help. Menu rips, item icons, facesets, tilesets, crop stages, and charsets (for animals too) are what's needed. Some of them are on TSR, so you could use that and fill in the blanks if you want. Otherwise, I might get to it eventually. If there are any other graphical styles anyone has in mind, please make note of them here (except FOMT. I do not like FOMT graphics for some reason. Also, I tried them before and they don't fit well in a grid using 32x32 tiles, which is what RMXP uses).

@Nickaloose: I actually didn't notice that the charset was different from the official one until I compared them. It was good enough to fool me at least, so good work on that.

[Billy--]

Ohh, in HMDS, on the town plots, random items such as sticks, stones, wild grasses, grapes, and mushrooms appeared on them...They were farmable plots like on the main map for the farm :) Oh! I can gather up some HMDS face sprites if you'd like.

Here's the marriageable characters from HMDS...I had most of them already since I was ripping them for another project, but didn't finish them...

http://s195.photobucket.com/albums/z...arriagable.png

[IceGod64]

Gonna check this out. I have minimal knowledge of Harvest Moon but in base concept it reminds me of Animal Crossing.

[KitsuneKouta]

Thanks for that Billy--, that should help out for now. And I see what you mean about making the items spawn now. The current scripts will spawn things on only one specific tile (the one you can till), so it should be really simple actually to change it to spawn things on other maps with that same tile as well. Which makes me think I probably need to add multiple selectable farms to the kit, and only setup the house on the one you pick. I may also remove the barn and coop, and make them purchasable and positionable on the map. I'll probably work on that at the same time as the house decorating system (since the algorithm is pretty much identical). I was also planning on adapting that system for Essentials as well (for secret bases).

@IceGod64: I guess you could say it's like Animal Crossing. They're both non-violent games that are more or less about everyday life. There are some common features between them too (in some HMs you can change clothes like in Animal Cross, both have fishing, and you interact and build relationships with the townspeople in both, as well as some other things probably). I added a general overview of what Harvest Moon is to the main post for everyone who doesn't know what Harvest Moon is.

Also, I will be working full time starting next week, so updates will be slowed a bit further. I'll still be checking in periodically and working on the kit though. The next release will be enormous if I finish the to do list I have for it.

[Billy--]

Originally Posted by KitsuneKouta

Thanks for that Billy--, that should help out for now. And I see what you mean about making the items spawn now. The current scripts will spawn things on only one specific tile (the one you can till), so it should be really simple actually to change it to spawn things on other maps with that same tile as well. Which makes me think I probably need to add multiple selectable farms to the kit, and only setup the house on the one you pick. I may also remove the barn and coop, and make them purchasable and positionable on the map. I'll probably work on that at the same time as the house decorating system (since the algorithm is pretty much identical). I was also planning on adapting that system for Essentials as well (for secret bases).

@IceGod64: I guess you could say it's like Animal Crossing. They're both non-violent games that are more or less about everyday life. There are some common features between them too (in some HMs you can change clothes like in Animal Cross, both have fishing, and you interact and build relationships with the townspeople in both, as well as some other things probably). I added a general overview of what Harvest Moon is to the main post for everyone who doesn't know what Harvest Moon is.

Also, I will be working full time starting next week, so updates will be slowed a bit further. I'll still be checking in periodically and working on the kit though. The next release will be enormous if I finish the to do list I have for it.

For the House Decorating part...If there is ever an option to get married in this, wouldn't you have to be careful where to place stuff since the husband/wife/kid needs room to walk around in the house? It's something that popped in my head. It would be pretty awesome if you could buy multiple barns, chicken coops, and some other buildings, like in HMDS, and put them anywhere on the farm!

Here's a small sneak peak of one of my maps :P It took hours to do, but I made the one part of the Valley from HMDS...Notice the mountain area, it looks very choppy and such, it needs to be worked on :)

http://s195.photobucket.com/albums/z...ent=HMFarm.png

[Billy--]

How good is the update coming? :)

[4rcanine]

This looks amazing. ;n; I've been trying to make my own Pokémon Harvest Moon spin-off (seem's I'm not the only one,) and this will make things so much easier. I would definitely love to use this starter kit once you've gotten tons of the bugs out, or perhaps I might wait to see if you decide to implement some of which you planned. c:
Good work, I'm really excited to see this done. I'll probably be checking in a couple times a month.

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by 4rcanine

This looks amazing. ;n; I've been trying to make my own Pokémon Harvest Moon spin-off (seem's I'm not the only one,) and this will make things so much easier. I would definitely love to use this starter kit once you've gotten tons of the bugs out, or perhaps I might wait to see if you decide to implement some of which you planned. c:
Good work, I'm really excited to see this done. I'll probably be checking in a couple times a month.

Glad to hear it. The more users of this kit the better. Hopefully in a couple months I'll have things patched up and more or less complete.

A quick update for everyone with regards to the kit: I did start working and so I have very little free time now. Development will have to be more or less restricted to weekends when I'm off, but I have still made some progress on the kit and plan to continue with it until it hopefully gets finished. Also, for the sake of getting things done, I probably won't be updating the graphical style unless someone can compile a complete set of resources in a format that RMXP can work with (i.e. arranging tilesets and charsets properly). Ripping and arranging resources takes a lot of time that would be better used on development of systems, so unless I can just plug it in and it works, I probably won't be changing any graphics aside from ones I have to mess with to implement different features.

[Bladethorn]

I have a weird question about this AMAZING tool kit. Can it be added to other kits? Like Pokemon Essentials? My friends and I are working on a game that mixes Pokemon and Harvest Moon. This kit would be fantastic to add, but I'm not sure how one would do that. If you could give any tips or suggestions that would be amazing!
We don't plan to share this with anyone but our close friends, however if we can use this kit I'll be adding a credits-in-title screen and within the end credits

[KitsuneKouta]

Originally Posted by Bladethorn

I have a weird question about this AMAZING tool kit. Can it be added to other kits? Like Pokemon Essentials? My friends and I are working on a game that mixes Pokemon and Harvest Moon. This kit would be fantastic to add, but I'm not sure how one would do that. If you could give any tips or suggestions that would be amazing!
We don't plan to share this with anyone but our close friends, however if we can use this kit I'll be adding a credits-in-title screen and within the end credits :)

It should be possible to add it to Essentials. In fact, thinking about it previously I figured that it would probably just need some small edits to be compatible with the way Essentials sets up the player, and the slight change in naming conventions for stuff regarding the tilemap (that would probably only require a line or two of code to fix though). I may look into it eventually. Aside from those two things, it should otherwise work fine, since the scripts were created to be independent and can more or less just be copied from HMTK to wherever (though other custom scripts might conflict with it). I may see about working on that hopefully soon. Haven't had time to do any development for weeks because of my job.

[romhunter]

I know this have been around for a few months, but can you make something which was in a lot of harvest moon but not yet in here? It's the stone ( Kappa stone, Goddess stone... ). Hope that you're still here