Exhaustion, struggle, etc.... (beginner modder with too many ideas)

[NPCMaxwell]

I don't know if this actually BELONGS into the modding forum, but as a person who just NEVER modded before and got a random inspiration streak just from watching one Don't Starve Toghether mod in progress youtube video, I immediately realized I knew exactly the mod /I/ want to have for my game since the beginning of my Don't Starve experience. And now this in-progress mod I saw, is exactly the motivation and inspiration I needed, as I want my mod to be my personal addition to the concept.

So.........to make it short: My project involves creating a custom character, basically I am using the ESC-template as help. I must say: So far the barebone of my mod is actually no problem at all and I managed to overcome starting problems, also thanks to distracting myself by reading through other mod threads and fandom threads in the DS/T forums.

Now the downside: Whenever I read the forums here I randomly get the idea to search the workshop for mods, that I could use for my future DST gameplay, or even more interesting: To base future mod ideas I have on. Now sadly my "future mod ideas"-folder is exploding! I can't stop making notes and folders in which so far I have put mainly cosmetic / audios to be used for my ideas, but also notes what functions could maybe archieved by coding, lines I have found during my dive in this forum, tutorials, and mainly files from the workshop mods, that I may have to rely on, since so far my coding experience is zero. I know most of my mods, including my character mod, will simply be for my own fun, and therefore mostly humorous, without much actual gameplay-"use", but still my mind takes this whole thing much too SERIOUSLY, and like always can't find a balance between creativity and what I can actually create.

TL:DR

My problem is: My first main mod I am working on is rather intense although my main focus is character art only. (the character strays a lot from the ESC sample besides obviously using the sprites pngs categories. Lucky enough I figured out how to use waxwell's sprites as guideline. But even here it is difficult since thanks to my own stubbernous of not using standard proportions, I am forced to redraw everything from scratch always making a compromis between what I planned to archieve and what I am able to archieve.)

My question is: How on earth are other modders / beginner modders able to actually /WORK/ on their mods, without getting overwhelmed by a thousand ideas / tutorials. I mean is there a sort of "life-hack" for way too excited beginner artists like me to actually just keep focused on /one/ task / idea at a time, instead of switching between too many mod ideas at once / overcollecting inspiration.

Also if anyone happens to know a way to recompile sprite-changes (mainly small ones) IN-GAME without having to quit and restart every time, I would actually be happy. Because I seriously struggle with trying to connect the redrawn body parts to each other atm. And so far it always means re-opening the game just to play one emote / an animation over and over to see if I e.g. have to move foot-4 (or insert every other sprite here) a tiny bit upwards.  Spriter sadly is no option for me, as I have already read tutorials for custom animations based on standard animations, but esc-template canvases being upscaled destroyed my plans. (yes I have tried to edit spriter files in notepad++, it didn't go well, probably because I could only figure out how to edit canvas size, not the other values. so I have given up on the custom animations for /now/ and rather torture myself by checking animations in-game manually.)

[Haruhi Kawaii]

On 5/20/2024 at 12:00 AM, NPCMaxwell said:

Also if anyone happens to know a way to recompile sprite-changes (mainly small ones) IN-GAME without having to quit and restart every time, I would actually be happy. Because I seriously struggle with trying to connect the redrawn body parts to each other atm. And so far it always means re-opening the game just to play one emote / an animation over and over to see if I e.g. have to move foot-4 (or insert every other sprite here) a tiny bit upwards.  Spriter sadly is no option for me, as I have already read tutorials for custom animations based on standard animations, but esc-template canvases being upscaled destroyed my plans. (yes I have tried to edit spriter files in notepad++, it didn't go well, probably because I could only figure out how to edit canvas size, not the other values. so I have given up on the custom animations for /now/ and rather torture myself by checking animations in-game manually.)

I have this way that can help you work faster with Spriter

 

[NPCMaxwell]

6 hours ago, Haruhi Kawaii said:

I have this way that can help you work faster with Spriter

 

Oh thanks this actually looks extremly helpful to speed up the dreadful progress of viewing small changes. At least from what my tired eyes can tell right now! i will definitely look into this method as soon as I am awake enough to continue drawing this guy. C:

* a giant thank you! *

[NPCMaxwell]

On 5/21/2024 at 10:18 AM, Haruhi Kawaii said:

I have this way that can help you work faster with Spriter

 

I've been just trying out this method and I must say, thanks once again, a thousand times! "some long guy"-character is finally on his way to make some progress.

This is one of the most helpful advice I found in this community so far.

[NPCMaxwell]

EDIT: autocompiler has stopped complaining about missing files now. Spriter opens the edited scml file. But whenever I test the edit animation in-game (renamed it to customanim now and restored the original modmain.lua) the character once again turns invisible.

 

........I am so confused. So I somehow found out how to edit a spriter file........finally....somehow at least..... Now I thought it was a good idea to use this template I found on steam workshop (I think it's linked somewhere in this forum as well) to have templates for the animation files 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898572674&searchtext=animation

. So I used the template_centered folder's scml files, specifically I used player_acting.scml as my base because I wanted to see if I was able to make my tall-character-template have a small (that means fitting for his head size) hat when having the hat space occupied and doing the player_acting animation.

Now the basics looked ok in spriter, then I thought: OK let's test it inside the game.

So I used this other mod: (there also is a forum thread but it was last replied to in 2022 so I thought it wasn't a good idea to write a reply there. In fact I have read the thread a thousand times and still don't know what I am doing wrong)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1607403248&searchtext=animation

added a folder named player_acting, inside I put the png folders and the edited player_acting spriter file. Then changed every customanim in modmain with player_acting aaaaaand...........my character turns invisible when I test the animation. I seriously don't know what I am doing wrong. (it probably is something obvious but I'm so tired I can't figure it out.) I suppose I'll upload the folder how the customanim folder looks like in the custom animation testing mod's exported folder as a zip file here, although I am not sure if this will be of any help. If I open my edited player_acting renamed to customanim.scml in spriter everything looks the way I want it to

 

 

customanim.zip

Edited May 30, 2024 by NPCMaxwell
final attempt.......still invisible, new attachment.

[NPCMaxwell]

I wish there was a method to at least somehow tell the game to play my edited animation in some other way, just to see if the character still turns invisible doing it.

[NPCMaxwell]

basically this mod is the only reason why I decided to become active in this forum so I may create a new post being more specific with the animation problems another time. I suppose I will take a break from editing spriter files then, if they turn invisible when testing anyway, and focus on fleshing out the character sprites art instead. Maybe there will be SOME way to adjust character animations at the end, after all I just want hats / facegear to be the appropiate size and fix some clipping / floating limps / weird face position during some animations. Anyway if anyone has an idea what went wrong I'd really be happy, if there was some solution after all. If not my character will probably have to live with looking weird occasionally and being forced to wear invisible hats.

[Haruhi Kawaii]

I use machine translation, so I don't fully understand everything you say. If you are only working on characters, I think you shouldn't edit the SCML files if you really don't know what you're doing. I remember that you can check the animation with the following command 

ThePlayer.AnimState:PlayAnimation("player_acting")

and those animation zip files only contain anim.bin, without files like atlas or build.bin, so delete them when you finish compiling

[NPCMaxwell]

3 hours ago, Haruhi Kawaii said:

I use machine translation, so I don't fully understand everything you say. If you are only working on characters, I think you shouldn't edit the SCML files if you really don't know what you're doing. I remember that you can check the animation with the following command 

ThePlayer.AnimState:PlayAnimation("player_acting")

and those animation zip files only contain anim.bin, without files like atlas or build.bin, so delete them when you finish compiling

Thanks i will be trying that. If it still gives me an error I will indeed take a break and work on learning to make custom animations for him another time.

[NPCMaxwell]

4 hours ago, Haruhi Kawaii said:

I use machine translation, so I don't fully understand everything you say. If you are only working on characters, I think you shouldn't edit the SCML files if you really don't know what you're doing. I remember that you can check the animation with the following command 

ThePlayer.AnimState:PlayAnimation("player_acting")

and those animation zip files only contain anim.bin, without files like atlas or build.bin, so delete them when you finish compiling

You got me one step closer to the solution, thanks! It was indeed the atlas and build.bin files that turned him invisible! Now tallcharacter does the adjusted animation (only tested acting_1 so far)........the only problem is: He seems to have 4(!) arms and the adjustment for smaller handheld items and worn hats are gone, means he holds a giant item and wears a giant hat again. But the giantness of the items isn't a problem right now. I am rather disturbed by the additional arms. (I've seen this error a lot on the forum but I couldn't really find out what people did at the end to solve the problems with the arms not hiding)

[NPCMaxwell]

So I started the project new, editing the player_acting template scml file with only the symbols that are actually used for the animation. Turned out adjusting the size of the handheld item was actually way easier then I thought. His handheld item is now the appropiate size. But the tallcharacter-template is still having 4(?) arm_lower arms (darkgreen) / 3 arms when standing still and 3 arms when doing his animation. As seen in this screenshot: (just posting this for future reference on how to get rid of the additional limbs. I'm going to focus on character art now once again to untemplatetify this guy. But it would be nice to know what to do in case I go back to customizing at least some of his animations.)

 

Using a different scml.exe from this post didn't make a change, sadly.

Edited May 30, 2024 by NPCMaxwell

[Haruhi Kawaii]

1 hour ago, NPCMaxwell said:

So I started the project new, editing the player_acting template scml file with only the symbols that are actually used for the animation. Turned out adjusting the size of the handheld item was actually way easier then I thought. His handheld item is now the appropiate size. But the tallcharacter-template is still having 4(?) arm_lower arms (darkgreen) / 3 arms when standing still and 3 arms when doing his animation. As seen in this screenshot: (just posting this for future reference on how to get rid of the additional limbs. I'm going to focus on character art now once again to untemplatetify this guy. But it would be nice to know what to do in case I go back to customizing at least some of his animations.)

 

Using a different scml.exe from this post didn't make a change, sadly.

I don't know much about anim, if things are too difficult try DM with people who are often active on the forum, if that still doesn't work try joining Cherry Forest's discord, anyway they have a large DST community with many modders there

[NPCMaxwell]

3 hours ago, Haruhi Kawaii said:

I don't know much about anim, if things are too difficult try DM with people who are often active on the forum, if that still doesn't work try joining Cherry Forest's discord, anyway they have a large DST community with many modders there

Thank you! I will keep this in mind and will reach out to those in case I plan to learn how to properly make custom versions of default animations. You have still helped me a lot to figure out some basics! It was a fun way to experiment even if I may not actually use it for my character mod.

EDIT: For now I have found a small alternative to editing default animations specifically for my tall character by instead simply making him such a powerful magician that all the items he equips automatically turn invisible (with the exception of the "whip" prefab so far. I will probably add some other prefabs that stay visible...at least those which imo look the least ridiculous when he's holding or wearing them.)

Edited May 30, 2024 by NPCMaxwell
edited tall character's prefab file as an alternative to custom animations