What is Little Denham?
Little Denham is a work-in-progress Stardew Valley mod that aims to add in a new village to Pelican Town complete with nine new NPCs and (to date) over 60 events.
When will it be out?
Flippant answer: Your guess is as good as mine. Honest answer: Soon. If we keep going at the rate we’re moving there will be something like a public Beta ready within the next month or two (I’m quietly aiming for early-mid August 2023). There are some hurdles I didn’t expect and I keep accidentally adding more things in as I come up with them, which is repeatedly delaying us, but it’s coming along nicely regardless.
Who is working on it?
Just me and my sister. The modding side is all me, while my sister is helping with some of the writing on account of the aforementioned biting off more than I could chew, and basically everything even tangentially related to a sprite. Well, I say the modding side is all me, but I wouldn’t have gotten this thing off of the ground if it weren’t for the East Scarp and Krobus Discords. The Stardew modding community is amazing.
What’s the scope?
You mean “what’s the scope this week”. At time of writing the mod contains five external maps, sixteen internal maps, twenty-six map patches (both for inter-mod compatibility and event-triggered dynamic changes), a little custom code which I’m quite proud of considering my general lack of ability, thirty-one spritesheets, thirty-one sets of portraits, four custom tilesheets, a custom letterhead and nine NPCs of whom one is antisocial and two start antisocial but eventually come out of their shells. The entire mod is built with i18n in mind, and the codebase is available on GitHub.
What does the version number mean?
Right now, the version number is not following semantic version numbering standards, but it will post-v1.0.0. Versions before 0.1.0 represented a time before I had all of the maps originally planned built and loading into the game correctly. Version 0.2.0 will represent the full realisation of the nine NPCs (more details on that below). Version 0.3.0 will represent what I see as the bare minimum for a Beta release; all schedules and dialogue done, and at least the events required for all of the dynamic map and schedule changes to trigger. Version 0.3.0 is also the point at which I will start sharing a Beta with the modding community to poke holes in my work. The current stable version is v0.1.1, while the current working version is v0.1.2.
Full realisation of NPCs?
Uh. Oh I did say I’d go into that, didn’t I? We’re talking dispositions, portraits, sprites, gift and movie tastes, and enough dialogue and schedule data for them to say and do something everyday. That’s v.0.2.0. So far it’s the dialogue and schedules that are holding us back (every time I sit down to work on them, I come up with something else to add in!).