Small and simple mods

[feneris]

What I was wondering is if anyone here would be interested in releasing smaller mods that center around certain areas of the vanilla game. Like for example, an expanded textiles mod that adds flax, cotton, and hemp, and modifies the vanilla tailor to use them with recipes like "canvas coat (hemp)" "warm coat (cotton + leather). Or for example a very simple iron ore mod that adds a small smelter and maybe a charcoal kiln, changes all the iron to iron ore, and makes it so iron working is a tad more involved.

The idea would be to have simple mods you could just attach to the vanilla game that wouldn't add huge swaths of content all on their own, but could be worked together to allow people to customize what they want to deal with. or if they want to spice up their favorite mods (like The North) without having to worry about some major conflict. Ideally most of this would just be small modifications to the base game that just add some new content. Like the apiary and creamery mods that first came out when modding was released on banished. Most of this stuff is already made, it's just a matter of putting it together in something small and manageable.

Other ideas could be:

Sugar Mod: Adds Sugar cane, sugar beet, sugar maples and apiaries to the game. Comes with small sugar boiler building that processes sugar cane and sugar beet into sugar, and maple sap into maple syrup.

Brewing Mod: Adds grapes, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, apiary, barley, rye, rice and oats to game. Comes with brewing casks building that allows you to make ale out of wheat, corn, barley, oats, rye, pumpkins and rice. Cider out of apples, pears, and peaches. Mead out of honey. Wine out of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, cherries, and grapes. Also has a small still building that produces sprits with food and firewood.

Things like that.

[taniu]

@ feneris.The idea is great and I love small mods, but it is a condition that depends only on good will and noble hearts of moderators, hard work and lots of time devoted to creating new mods. I have great respect for all moderators. Here cited by@TheOtherMicheal
"If it never happens then that's okay, we players have to remember that sometimes a suggestion is just not appealing to a modder, sometimes they have too many other things to do and sometimes they just need a break away from modding! We have to be patient and understanding of this "
I can join so great ideas I'm just a player maybe modder will positively consider this idea?

[Savidan]

The big problem is that the think you want is "merge different mods".

The problems is that there is different style from different modders and ... modders will had even more request to split part of this to made them separate.

I read from them that it was a bit difficult to handle with all the different request of players because some want "pack" some want them separetely and ... what ever they did there will be always someone to request something else...

Furthermore, I'm not sure that all the modders of banished came on this forum and that they are all agree to share what they have done.

So yeah that's complicate.

[embx61]

Indeed @Savidan

Let me first say again that there is no right and wrong here.
When I made standalone buildings I was asked many times to compile them in 1 PKM as a set as the mod list became huge with all those different mods.

When I released a set I was asked to separate several buildings/items from the set because they liked that building but never used the others.

It all depends how the players play.

It is however a pain to maintain several versions of the same. If a modder have to do a update he/she has to update the others as well.

I finally tried to find a middle of the road. Production Set 1 and 2, the storage set, the market set, and the Farm and loghouses set are an example.

Several buildings in 1 set but most of them not contain more then about 4 to 10 buildings and supporting materials.

This is also the reason I split the Small Village set up in the one what is for download currently but when the Vanilla production replacements are done I compile them into set called something like Small Village Production.

Beside that I decided to compile all what I have so far into the Unified Mod.
But it is not updated for a while but still contains everything I made so far except for the Irrigation Channels (All three of them) The Deco Pack, The Materials Store, and the Small Village set.

I hope I will be able to find time to update Unified this week to get some more latest released mods into the pack.

So I maintain two versions and while Unified will always be a couple steps behind the player can have all my mods currently with only 7 downloads

So Unified, 3x Irrigation, Irri Deco Pack, Materials Store, Small Village Set.

Even players can sometimes be confused by the many mods. I made a Hostel (Boarding House) for Paeng. But after releasing it I added more and made it into a set.
So now there is a stand alone boarding house for download but this same boarding house is also in the Small Village Set.

To keep updating this all is a hassle and lots of time wasted. Time I rather spent on updating bugs, and create new content

So there are many mods from me scattered all over the place that I not even know anymore about which one is updated and which not.
My God, I am happy I only make my mods available through WoB (With a alternate link to Google Drive) as to upload them all to steam and other sites would be a nightmare for me

The general rule is this.
Besides the Unified Mod which is always behind. it is better to download a set with that building in it then the stand alone version.

Most of the sets are rather small so I see no need to separate more buildings out of them.

The Small Village with all I made so far is just close to 21 Megabyte That include the 3 production buildings (Forester, Wood Cutter and Fishing Dock) as I compiled the temporarily with the set.

So Hostel, School, TownHall, Hospital, 6 F Key Houses, 5 Tradeports (Using the same mesh), Chapel, Barn, Well, Fising Dock, Forester, and Wood Cutter, and a market.

Some of my sets are even smaller then this.

-------------

Now that the Natural Irrigation Channels are in a playable state (Still need some updates) I thinking about it to let the In the ground Irrigation go,
After all The concept is exactly the same and the Natural ones are way more realistic that I don't think many players will still play with the in the ground ones but instead play with Natural Irrigation system instead as they contain also the Gutters, an idea what came from @QueryEverything
I will leave it up for download but will not update that set anymore.

[embx61]

I missed the last sentence.

Yes, most modders share what we all have done so far.

There is a special hidden part on WoB Forums where the modders can share the meshes, graphics, files, everything they want to share.

Indeed very helpful.

I give some examples why.

First of all Modders can take some parts (Or all, but that rarely happens, if at all) out of another modders meshes for use. Leave it as it is, or change a bit.
I used Red's Flowers as Deco, I used Red Firewood Stack for the woodcutter.

Sure, I could have modeled it myself but it would have looked about the same as Red's anyway.

It saved me time as all was there, the textures, everything. I did change 1 part of the texture (Not because Red's texture is bad)  but because the scaling of my wooden logs was off so I needed a better scaled texture. Why reinvent the wheel if it is there for use?
Another thing is code.

When I made the Trade ports for Small Village I never made a Trade port before.

I took the Template file from Kid's Huge Trade Port and it was just a question of Copy/Paste and change some links to string tables/spreadsheets. Done!
Then I loaded his FBX file into 3ds Max to see how the dummies were done because I did not know how the bought animals in the little pasture are done and did not know how to call the trader boat.

Now I could see how it was done. Just boat_001 and a create_001 dummies. How easy can it get? This saved me quite some time instead of figuring out myself how it was done or ask through PM or on the forum to other Modders

Same with the Forester. How do the dummies work. I loaded Red's Hunter FBX and besides the build dummies I saw only 1 use dummy so it took me less then a minute to know.

So long story short. Sharing is the best thing since sliced bread. It saves time and some things what have a close look anyway from Modder to modder are there to take and use, even after changing it just a bit.

[Turis]

...I read from them that it was a bit difficult to handle with all the different request of players because some want "pack" some want them separetely and ... what ever they did there will be always someone to request something else...

This is the reason I stop making requests to modders. I fell in love with the North mod, but, some mods don't work with it. Imagine the workload for the other modders if I request they change their mods. I would surelry cause some problem and I don't want them to think that I don't appreciate their mods as they are when they design them.

[embx61]

Just request stuff what you want to see added to the game @Turis

Us modders like requests but are just unable to fulfill them all so we have to go with how we feel at the moment to decide what request to create out of the many.

We currently have only about 9 modders that I know of. Black Liquid, Red, Kid, Bartender and Despo, Discrepancy, Tom Sawyer, Necora, Tany, and me.
Hope I not forgot one, if I forgot a modder I apologize.

With Black Liquid MIA, Discrepancy having a burnout, Necora and Tany are currently too busy with real life the current list of active modders is quite thin.

There is always a change if the mood of a modder is right and he/she have the creativity and the drive to do it the request will be fulfilled

Of course is there always a change the modders not feel like it or put it on the back burner but by making no request's you can be pretty sure your idea never get added unless someone else request the same idea