Harvest Moon Tool Kit (HMTK)

-Once you've got the project up and running, you can start following the steps below (if you get any errors, be sure to check the "Errors/Bugs" section above):

-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. 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.