coding help [Seeking Help] Adding objects that are similar to others (A tree and sapling-like & a custom Chess Piece)

[Jonloo1]

As the title says, I'm struggling finding a way to add entities (or objects? Mobs? That's how you know how little I know about working with these things.) to the game for my custom character. I already tried looking into the prefab files for some of the items that are similar to what I want to add, but trying to understand those just left me with more questions than answers. I know essentially nothing about working in Lua and truth be told I'm not that interested in learning Lua as much as I'm interested in learning how to work with Don't Starve Together as well as the original Don't Starve (though DST is my priority right now).

One thing I'm trying to add is something I presume is a lot more simple; Adding a Chess Piece. I want the statue to be unique to this character, though as far as I'm aware that can be done by simply adding a recipe for it to the game tagged similarly to how any other character unique item would be so I'm not too worried about that part. Would adding a unique Chess Piece require somehow adding to the chesspieces.lua prefab, similar to how one can add strings of dialogue to a character's speech lua file from the modmain.lua? Even then, how could I make that added Chess Piece load custom sprites? If they aren't just the one image unlike trees, how do I even find how to put these sprites together?

This next thing I want to add is more complex; a plant that can grow into various states of "bushiness", similar to how trees can grow taller. I don't want it to have a seed or be something that spawn naturally, I want it to be another thing that can only be crafted by the one character. I'm hoping I can give it animations much like how a bush goes from unfertilized to normal, and from there have it grow into various states of bushiness (no leaves, a bit bushy, then very bushy). This is the worst part, I want this bush to be something that can be targeted and attacked by mobs, with its bushiness determining how many hits it can take. I don't know if that means this bush would have to be a mob or if being something attack-able can be changed with a few lines of code or what. Maybe its bushiness is determined by its health, and it gains health overtime? I also want this to be something that can be shaved like beefalo, with the bushiness of this plant determining how much loot it drops. Maybe shaving sets its health to 1, so it starts growing all over again like how a sapling or a berry bush would after being picked.

 

I know this post mostly seems like just me asking for someone to code these things for me and if I'm being honest that is essentially what it is but what I really want is some kind of direction for these, a way to know how these parts of the games work and how I can work with them. I don't just want the code that makes it happen, but I want to know how it works and why it works the way it does so I can hopefully figure out these sorts of things myself soon in the future and not resort to asking about them here. Maybe these are all insanely obvious and I'm just too stupid to figure it out, I don't know, but I would like to find out what it is I need to learn to make these happen for myself.

Thank you for reading. If you want to message me directly about this, my Discord tag is Jonloo1#7228. I hope I can find the help I need here.