farm – Staxel

Staxel Reporter – Issue #17

Hi everybody, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we talk about animal manure and created a guide on how to make use of the new ‘Palette System’!

Manure

If you’ve been following us on twitter you’ve probably seen a few interesting screencaps. That’s because Bart’s just finished up the code that gets our cows pooping! Let’s have a look at what role manure fulfills on your farm.

Manure is an optional part of the crop crowing process, your crops can grow just fine without it. However, just a sprinkle of this golden brown fertilizer could be all it takes for your crops to go from good to A grade! Using fertilizer will make your crops grow faster and improve their overall quality once harvested. That’s definitely something a resourceful farmer should keep in mind.

Fertilizer will likely be purchasable from a local store, but why buy what your animals produce for free? “You’re telling me I can get dung off of the ground for free? No way.” I hear you saying, but I’m serious! Once you have livestock on your farm you can just pick up their fresh manure and BAM – free fertilizer! Some animals may produce more manure than others, right now we’re thinking pigs will produce the most.

It’s proving to be quite a challenge to resist all the jokes coming to mind so I’m going to end the article here. I hope I’ve given you a good idea of the benefits manure will have in your farming career!

Colour Palette Creation Guide

A palette is basically an optional colour scheme for a given accessory model. Models do not necessarily need to support palettes (you can have a completely unpalettable model designed to only have one colour scheme), but models which are designed to support palettes can essentially have any number of colour schemes limited only by the number of palettes defined

On a basic level, in the model designed for paletting, we use a set of colours which are then mapped to other colours which will replace them in the individual palette files.

It’s also worth noting that if you have a palettable model, not all parts have to be switched out with a palette colour – only the parts defined in the swap colours

Step one of paletting is to create a model with a set of colours that you want to represent what’s being switched out. (We use ugly greens as the base since they’re unlikely to be desirable as part of the actual colour palette and we recommend that you do the same.)

It might look something like this, where the greens are the colours we want replaced, and the others are colours that should always stay the same.

Step two is to create the .palette and accompanying images:

They always have to be defined in pairs of 16×16 blocks (one from colour, one to colour). Of course, you can define as many to/from as you want in a single palette image.

You also need a 12×12 icon for displaying the palette in the character designer, like this:

Now that we have our palette, we need to make the corresponding .palette file, which looks like this:

{
“code” : “staxel.palette.orange”,
“icon” : “staxel/palettes/orangeicon.png”,
“palette” : “staxel/palettes/orange.png”
}

Final step is to add the palette to the list of supported palettes in the accessory itself

In the .accessory file you’ll need to add some code that looks like this:

“palettes” : [ “staxel.palette.black”, “staxel.palette.darkbrown”, “staxel.palette.brown”, “staxel.palette.blonde”, “staxel.palette.grey”,
“staxel.palette.red”, “staxel.palette.orange”, “staxel.palette.yellow”, “staxel.palette.green”, “staxel.palette.blue”, “staxel.palette.purple”, “staxel.palette.pink” ]

And voila, you’ve made a palette!

Palettes can be used on any part of the playable character. That mean’s you can use palettes on skin, eyes, hair, and any piece clothing including hats and accessories. Hopefully this guide has been helpful to those of you looking to mod in your own palettes for existing models or your own custom made ones!

That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

Staxel Reporter – Issue #16

Hey everybody, in this issue of the Staxel Reporter we talk about the new farm animal designs and have a look at the new (but work in progress) character creation screen.

More Farm Animals

Conor has been working on designing more farm animals. The first farm animal is nearing completion and we’re all getting pretty excited! Right now, we’ll be taking a look at the farm animal designs as they currently are. Just remember that these designs may or may not change in the future!

D’aww, how cute are these pigs? They have chubby, rosy cheeks and, if you ask me, they already seem to have a lot of personality! I can’t wait for these little guys to be in-game makin’ cute lil’ oinking sounds! (Pigs are my favourite farm animal… very excited!)

These sheep look ready to be sheared, of course, sheep are a special case as their appearance will be completely different depending on whether they have wool or not.

As you can imagine, sheep give you wool which will have various uses in-game.

Yup, we have ducks planned as a farm animal! They’ll most likely behave a lot like chickens. Laying eggs, hatching eggs and so on. I love their current design. They have a cheeky, mischievous look to them!

I’ll just come out and say it, I’ve never trusted ducks… or birds.

I hope you’ve enjoyed taking a look at some of our planned farm animals’ current designs. If you have any suggestions or input on these designs feel free to post them to our forums!

Character Creation Overhaul

If you’ve launched Staxel recently you’ve probably noticed a rather big change to the UI, especially the brand new Character Creation screen. We touched on it a little bit last time but now that we have a better idea of what we’re doing I thought I’d expand on it a bit more.

If you’ve played Staxel before then you’ll most likely remember this screen. This was the old layout for your Character Creation options, and while it served it’s purpose well, it was only ever meant to be temporary and has been replaced with the new UI which currently looks like this:

As you can see there are a lot of changes. The biggest change you’ll notice are the three tabs at the top of the interface, these will allow you to focus on the three different stages of character creation individually.

The first tab is where you’ll choose your character’s gender and species. Not much has been revealed about this yet but for now you’ll be able to choose between human and elf, the biggest difference being, well, elf ears.

The second tab is for customising all of your character’s body options. As you can see this is where you’ll choose your skin type, hairstyle and colour, and eyes.

The third and last tab is for changing the individual parts that make up your character’s outfit. You can already choose between a big selection of shirts, dresses, trousers, shoes and hats! Accessories are also being worked on so you’ll be able to mix and match for a unique look, remember, always dress to impress!

It’s worth noting that the Character Creation menu is still a work in progress. It’s all coming together nicely but there’s still a lot that needs to be done. As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas on things we could improve on, don’t be shy! Head by the forums and drop a post in the “Suggestions” section.

That’s it for this issue of the Staxel Reporter. You can grab ‘Staxel – Seedling Edition’ at www.playstaxel.com/store.

Thanks for reading!

–EGadd

Staxel

Tag: farm

Staxel Reporter – Issue #17: Manure & Palette System Guide