#meadowasks

Aw thank you! The good news, anon, is that the mod is coming soon! Here's a final preview while I wrap things up for publishing 👀

Hi, I use Aseprite. You can buy it from Steam or compile it on your own for free - there's a couple YouTube tutorials for that out there! If you can't use Aseprite, there's alternatives like Resprite or Pixquare (iOS only). Both of these are built off of Aseprite.

Anyway, what mod are those boxes from?

(asking as if i didn't have an unhealthy amount of mods JHADFHJASG)

Thank you!

I'm doing very well, thank you for asking!

Firstly, I'm sorry for not making an announcement about it anywhere - I was rather upset at the time, and quickly got swept in other projects. But to answer your question, I've hidden Meadowbrook Falls because I am no longer happy with it.

I know that Little Falls was my first Nexus upload, but Meadowbrook was my first map to be made from scratch. The map was janky in terms of design and code, has fallen far out of my current aesthetic standards, and is a replacement farm, which in this era of full custom farms is just sad. However, the worst part to me was that Meadowbrook remained my most-endorsed map well into my mapmaking career, and was only very recently overtaken by Blossom Crest in terms of endorsements. That made me upset, because I've put so much more work into Blossom Crest and the maps after that. I even made the first few assets for my tilesheets for Blossom Crest specifically. Even Cliffside Cove was better in my eyes, and that was my first custom farm type.

Meadowbrook Falls no longer brings me joy, so I decided to set it to hidden. I also will not provide support for users that experience issues with that map any longer.

Hi anon! I'm glad you asked this question. This is going to be a VERY long answer so bear with me!

To me, making farm maps is a balance between one's technical skills (mastering how a map works, like map properties, location data, etc.) and aesthetic skills (your eye for design; basically how to make your map look good).

You can be good at making a map work in game but people don't find it aesthetically pleasing, or vice versa. Both have their own niches - me personally, I would never use one of those really big, empty maps, but people whose goal is to earn as much as possible would - but it's always good to be able to strike a balance.

Reading through the modding wiki will only help you so far in making maps. It will help you on the coding aspect, to load your map in game and make it function - but it won't help you on the aesthetic aspect. You have to study and practice for that. Find farm maps you consider aesthetically pleasing. Dissect them. Inspect the elements that you like to see. It could be how the cliffs are done, the shape of the rivers, etc. Download the map and open the files in Tiled, see what tiles are used to build which element.

The new 1.6 outdoor tiles (spring_outdoorsTileSheet2.png) has the 2-tile height cliff faces and water-dirt border tiles that works wonders for making natural terrain and river bends/pond shapes. I've gotten a LOT of mileage from those tiles!

(On a more personal note, I've been helpfully informed that in literally every game I play that has building elements, I become a full-time builder. Let's just say I have 'work experience' through building in Sims 4, and way before that, experimenting with parallax maps in RPG Maker VX Ace. Those are very different things in terms of technical aspects, but it definitely improved my eye for design.)

As for putting your ideas together - I find the easiest way is to start from a list. Before making my maps I think of what the basic concept for the map is, then what features I want to add, and work from there. For example, here are the earliest sketches for Blossom Crest:

You can see that I emphasized the planning mainly on terrain shape, feature elements (the suspension bridge), the gameplay elements (minecarts in), and the position of farm map features (e.g. grandpa's shrine). Only after I have determined these will I start adding terrain details, and I trust where the process takes me!

I highly recommend developing a structured workflow as well. When I worked on Meadowbrook Falls, I fucked myself over because I keep jumping from part to part on the map, and worked on all map layers on each individual section instead of one layer on the map as a whole before moving on to the next. Now, my priority after finishing the sketch is to lay down all terrain shapes on the Buildings layer, then filling in the water/dirt/grass parts, then terrain detailing (adding paths, dark grass patches, etc.), then decorating (deco bushes and trees, etc.), and finally the Paths layer (debris spawns, berry bushes, etc.).

TL;DR: Read up on the modding wiki to get you started on the technical aspects of map-making, dissect other people's creations to improve your aesthetic skills. Develop a structured workflow to make sure the creation process goes as smoothly as possible, and to minimize having to redo parts of the map in case of errors.

I've recently discovered all your gorgeous farm maps, and am having a bit of choice paralysis in figuring out which one to start with. I saw a recent post on your tumblr mentioning you were disappointed that one particular farm had a lot of endorsements on Nexus, even though you'd put a lot more work/love into others... so I was wondering: what's your personal favorite of your own farm maps, and the one you'd most like to see others experience, enjoy, and endorse?

Have a great day, and thanks for all the hard work you put into your beautiful mods!

Hi Anon! Thank you for your kind words, I'm happy you like my farm maps!

My personal favorites are Mystwood Homestead and Blossom Crest, not just because of the visible improvement in my skills as I made them in terms of design and code but also because of the gameplay features I added. As far as personal recommendations go though, I tend to be biased towards my current most intricate map - which is currently Mystwood, haha.

All of my maps are designed with a specific purpose in mind, so here's a short breakdown to help you with choosing a farm to play on:

Cliffside Cove is designed for Lyris' save (fisher) and geared towards keeping fish ponds. You can fish from almost every fish catch pool, except for Town river fish.

Secret Grove is my experiment in progression-based unlocks without needing any extra frameworks; that aside, it's just your usual smallish cozy forest farm. My first, and possibly only, small custom farm (as I've decided to specialize in Vanilla-sized farms).

Blossom Crest is designed for Vega's save (slime rancher), and is made for mining + minecart transport. Relatively speaking, there's not much crop space, most of the areas are designed to keep animal buildings.

Azure Springs is designed for rice/taro farming and river fishing. It's essentially a prettier Riverlands farm, with some extra berry foraging spots. The watering holes are toggleable and designed for farming crops that need irrigation.

Wildflower Acres has the optional Hidden Woods area that has rare monster forage. Like Azure Springs, it's essentially a prettier Wilderness farm. The large field area on the left is for crops, though it's good for a tree orchard as well.

Mystwood Homestead is my experiment with Unlockable Bundles - it's perfect for a witchy playthrough and also has bundle-based progression. There's plenty of land for ranching because it's a map commissioned for a magic ranching-oriented playthrough!

Hi hi! I made Cheri's wiki in Carrd, because I don't really have the time and energy to learn how websites like wiki.gg works with my IRL and fanart workload.