(Last update: 2025-04-24 11:05)

New Horizons data
Collected thoughts
Villager submission form

Project Special K

Big list of ideas

• Mod support (Kawa)
  • Obvious.
• Play as an animal (Kawa, katzeregi, beargirlstink, mezzofurrte, probablynothing)
  • Very popular, especially playing as a cat.
  • May cause difficulties involving clothing.
  • Tumblr post here.
• Romance options (Kawa)
  • And I do mean romance. Check your Ankha memes at the door.
• More animal types (katzeregi)
• Train sets (lustrous-orb)
  • Individual track pieces to place free-form, Minceraft style.
• Way more cats (Foone, Letrune, gryffintheparrotcat)
• Farming (bobvarioa)
  • Bob didn't know New Horizons introduced this.
• Mining (bobvarioa)
  • Bob didn't know New Horizons introduced this either.
• Swim in lakes (krusebruce, Lancette2201)
  • Let's extend this to baths, too.
• Proper jerks (ray10k)
  • Personality type, worse than Cranky.
• Ability to kill (delusionbait)
  • Denied. Even if it's a jerk.
• Advanced house building (bobvarioa, 0xb00b5, howimportantisausernameanyway)
  • Not just extending the main room size and adding north, east, west, up, and down rooms, but having each be any reasonable size and having their own further exits.
• Recycling (sweetcremereblogs)
  • Reverse DIY, reclaim component parts from objects.
  • Turn some wood into a table, take the table apart to get wood, turn it into a chair.
• More personalities (razzdrgn)
  • With only four personalities per gender, I split 'em up:
    • Boys: plain, lazy, jock, cranky, smug, spacey
    • Girls: normal, chill, peppy, snooty, big sister, weird
• More furniture (unusedcactus)
• More specific dialogue (demifiendcruithne)
  • I may have impressed Cruithne by rambling about the dialogue substitution system in Noxico.
  • I mean, we should totally have that system here, too.
  • Tumblr post here to publically introduce the implementation.
• Denser population areas (pontaoski)
  • City Folk has the town area where the regular gameplay happens, and a route to a city where the stores are.
  • That's as far as I understand it.
• No wallet cap (Kawa)
  • Let me carry around half a million bells without losing precious inventory space to the overflow!
• Content filters (yirrgzmb)
  • Not suggested by that name specifically — I think they meant that the romance options should be able to be turned off?
  • But why stop there, right? Disable jerks, disable everything but cats, disable whatever.
• Changing your name (yirrgzmb)
• Wear anything as a hat (spades-gameing)
  • Excellent idea. And if you trip or otherwise are not upright, the item can fall off as a drop.
• Streamlined inventory (justmeemawthings)
  • It depends on what you mean by "streamlined", could go many directions.
• More invertebrates (shrike-dyke)
  • Not just octopi.
• Advanced designer (mikailborg)
  • In the sense that Mikail wants to go for the normals.
• LGBTQA villagers (Letrune, shiftergirlslappy, Andrea)
• Custom map size (Kawa)
• Non-realtime option (bossbutch in a fashion, jelloapocalypse on YT)
• Choice of where to restart (Kawa)
  • When you resume the game, where do you appear? In front of your door, in your house's main room, on the last bed you used? Wherever you quit last time?
• Rideable vehicles (Lancette2201)
• Mock building parts (Lancette2201)
  • Very yes, would go well with custom-sized large maps.
• Buildings for visitors (Lancette2201)
• Online shopping (Lancette2201)
  • Via in-game laptop/desktop/whatever furniture items so you don't need Resident Services.
• Metal detector (Lancette2201)
  • To find buried stuff that doesn't get a star marker.
• Wrench tool (Kawa)
  • To bolt placed items into position so you can't accidentally pick them up while aiming for a drop.
• Sprinkler (Lancette2201)
  • To keep your crops hydrated, obviously.
• Animal tracks like in City Folk and New Leaf (several anonymous voters)
  • Optional, should have tweakable settings.
• Quicker non-blocking messages for catching creatures and breaking tools (Kawa, lizardywizard)
  • First time each event happens, use a regular dialogue. Every other time, use a Doom-ish corner message.
  • Make it a setting.
  • Tumblr post here.
• Pet the villagers (Kawa)
  • Inspired by this Bluesky post from Panken.

Roadmap (sketchy)

• Player character walking around
  • Not exactly "walk" yet, and there's no collision detection, but... technically?
• Villagers also walking around
• Interaction with villagers
• Inventory
  • Inventory is technically there, but without a user interface.
• Equipping outfits
  • Clothing can be rendered onto characters.
• Placing and taking objects
• Equipping tools
• Time
• Trees
• Floor types (different step sounds, water blocking passage)
• Using tools
• Buildings and interior maps

Mock-ups and such

Actual screenshots

Special JSON rules

First of all, we allow // and /* */ comments. This is 2024 for crying out loud, get over it.

Values meant to represent strings may be in one of three forms:

1. just a string ("Kitty")
2. a map of languages ("EN": "Kitty", "JPja": "ショコラ", ...)
3. a reference string ("ac:kitty")

Namespaces

Used in reference strings like "acnl:nattytee" or "l10n:yes". Some examples:

• ac: Animal Crossing in general
  • af: Animal Forest
  • acww: Wild World
  • accf: City Folk
  • acnl: New Leaf
  • acnh: New Horizons
• psk: Special K
• l10n: Localization tables

Namespaces may be nested by using multiple :.

Any regular string without whitespace in it and at least one : is considered a namespaced reference.

Example JSON content files

Villager: lolly.json

<br />

Furniture: corkboard.json

<br />

Directory structure

With regards to mods

Say what you want about how its developers handled Starbound after it came out, but they knew a thing or two about making games mod-able. And because I (Kawa) am a creature of habit who's copied the general methodology behind Starbound in his own projects several times over, why stop here?

To that effect, the above JSON files are to be stored in one or more archive files, probably .zip by some other name, and in folders under /mods. The base game's data goes in one particular spot with a very specific file name, while the rest (in archives or folders) goes in /mods. Internally, they'll all mirror the same folder structure.

On startup, all asset sources are enumerated, sorted, and checked for dependencies. Then, a master asset list is compiled by going through this sorted list, finding each file's path relative to the asset source, listing the asset's file name, source, and if it's in a .zip archive, its location in said archive.

Here's where the magic happens.

If, during the creation of the master asset list, a file path is found that's already listed, the one that's already there is discarded. Therefore, if you have a villagers/lolly.json in the base game data and a mod provides its own villagers/lolly.json, any attempt to load Lolly will pick the mod's over the base game's.

If the requested file path has a .json extension, we can add an extra bit of magic from Starbound's playbook: we run through the master asset list to find any entry that has that same path with .patch added to the end (villagers/lolly.json.patch), applying each according to RFC 7396, like so:

//This would be something like "mods/example/villagers/lolly.json.patch"
{
  "name": "Pop"
}

For the sake of speed and sanity, this patching should be done while the game itself as a whole is starting up. So when you start it up, the game loads all villager and item data in one go (excluding models, textures, and sounds which are done on demand and can't be patched only replaced), and that's when the patching happens. After all, we're supposed to see them on the title screen so why not?

Stuff like taking Kid Cat's helmet off would involve texture replacements, which are covered by simply having a mod with the proper file paths.

Proposed structure

📀 <asset source root>
├─ 📁 animations
│  └─ 🦾 Animations
├─ 📁 cinematics
│  └─ 📁 <one folder per item>
│     ├─ 📄 JSON
│     └─ 🖼 Textures
├─ 📁 hobbies
│  └─ 📄 JSON
├─ 📁 icons
│  ├─ 📁 items
│  │  └─ 🖼 Textures
│  └─ 📁 reactions
│     └─ 🖼 Textures
├─ 📁 items
│  ├─ 📁 outfits
│  │  └─ 📁 <one folder per type>
│  │     └─ 📁 <one folder per item>
│  │        ├─ 📄 JSON
│  │        ├─ 🦾 Model
│  │        └─ 🖼 Textures
│  ├─ 📁 furniture
│  │  └─ 📁 <one folder per item>
│  │     ├─ 📄 JSON
│  │     ├─ 🦾 Model
│  │     └─ 🖼 Textures
│  ├─ 📁 tools
│  │  └─ 📁 <one folder per item>
│  │     ├─ 📄 JSON
│  │     ├─ 🦾 Model
│  │     └─ 🖼 Textures
│  └─ ...
├─ 📁 music
│  ├─ 📁 bgm
│  │  ├─ 📁 interiors
│  │  │  └─ 🎵 Streams
│  │  ├─ 📁 clock
│  │  ├─ 📁 events
│  │  └─ 📜 Connective data
│  └─ 📁 kk
│     ├─ 📁 live
│     │  └─ 🎵 Streams
│     ├─ 📁 hifi, retro, cheap, phono
│     └─ 📜 Singalong data
├─ 📁 personalities
│  └─ 📄 JSON
├─ 📁 schemas
│  └─ 📄 JSON Schema files
├─ 📁 sound
│  ├─ 📁 ui
│  ├─ 📁 voices
│  ├─ 📁 effects
│  └─ 📜 Connective data
├─ 📁 species
│  └─ 📁 <one folder per item>
│     ├─ 📄 JSON
│     ├─ 🦾 Main model
│     └─ 🦾 Outfit models
├─ 📁 villagers
│  └─ 📁 <one folder per item>
│     ├─ 📄 JSON
│     ├─ 🦾 Specific model, if called for
│     └─ 🖼 Textures
└─ 📁 scripts
   └─ 📜 Lua scripts
(more to be defined)

Some big tricks:

• Though items of a given type must be stored in their own folder which is itself in the folder for that type (to allow standardized texture names etc), exactly where in that type's folder doesn't matter. <root>/furniture/dev/greencube is as valid as <root>/furniture/greencube, but just <root>/furniture is not. In the same vein <root>/villagers/special/tomnook is as valid as <root>/villagers/cats/ugly/tabby.
• So long as two different items with different paths also have different namespaces in their IDs, there's no problem.
• As such, mods need to take care to copy their target's path exactly lest they affect the wrong green cube or whatever.
• Game text is beyond paths. On load, every single i10n.json file, as well as every file named like a language code (en_us.json, nl_nl.json etc) is loaded and stored in a big old map, together with every relevant string such as the names of villagers and objects. Names given as simple strings ("name": "Lolly") or as maps are replaced by references with auto-generated names in the i10n namespace, and the originals added to the map by that name ("name": "i10n:ac:cat18name" or something).

Script example

Take one

Let's assume for a moment we'll use S-Expressions, because I'm a weirdo who likes easy parsers like that.

(say
  (react "smiling")
  "Aaaaand check it out! It's " (an #new)
  (get-reward) "!" (delay 20) #new
  "I hope you like it!"
)
(give-item #to-player the-item)

Basically a direct translation of an entry from GE_Quest_LostProperty_End.msbt.

1. The an function returns nothing, or rather an empty string "", and sets a few flags for functions like get-reward to catch on to, in this case "we want an article in front of the next word, depending on the next word", and remembers the one argument it was given.
2. The get-reward function and its ilk then pick up on these flags and gets to figure out in however way if the item name should be "an" or "a". The article flag was set, so the appropriate article, the remembered bit to put inbetween, and the item name are concatenated and returned. If the "capitalize first letter" or "capitalize everything" flags were set, those would be applied first, so "check it out!" (an #new) (capitalize) (get-reward) "!" would return "A new car".

Take two

The above doesn't work well with localization, which is one reason why New Horizons has all the things in that say statement be defined in a localizable MSBT list, but actually giving the item is done in the Event Flow script that invoked it. With that in mind, let's redo this in JSON.

{
  //...
  "GE_Quest_LostProperty_End_033": "<react smiling>Aaaaand check it out! It's <an>[nl]<get-reward>!<delay 20>[nl]I hope you like it!",
  //...
}

And then call it from Lua:

dialogue ("$GE_Quest_LostProperty_End_033");

Works much more like EF+MSBT would.

Silly content ideas

Villagers

Items

Furniture

Namespaces

• psk: Original to Project Special K
• acs: Animal Crossing Specials, special characters as regular villagers
• ag: Animal Grossing, erotic stuff
• fnaf: Characters and items from Five Nights at Freddy's
• fps: Characters and items from First Person Shooters
• pnc: Point & Click adventure games

Map generation

Different Animal Crossing games have their own geographic quirks.

(Document them, dumbass.)

Acres

Acres are 16×16 tile blocks, arranged semi-randomly. (Look into waveform collapse?). In Animal Forest, the screen stops scrolling at the edge of the currently visible acre, then flips to the next when crossed.

Acres include:

• Train tracks (AF, NL) running along the top edge
• Train station (AF, NL) at the center of the top edge
• Specific building acres (AF)
• Beach along the bottom (all) and east or west edge (NL)
• Cliffs (AF)
• Blanks (NH)
• ...

In Animal Forest, the entire 5×6 acre map is built from a semi-random selection of tiles. Each acre comes in a set of two variations, three if there's supposed to be a building. Rivers and cliffs always connect. Acres meant for buildings have their buildings spawned on town generation. Since all of these acres are distinct singular 3D models, you can't meaningfully alter the landscape.

In New Horizons, a 5×4 acre map is first filled with the Blank option. A ring of Beach acres is semi-randomly selected -- again, they all connect. On the south edge, two Airport acres are placed in the middle and a Pier at either corner. One river mouth is added to the south edge, and another at either the south, west, or east edge. This will inform how the rivers will flow. Because Blank acres have no model of their own (they consist of 256 individual tiles), rivers and cliffs can have any shape. I'm not sure how this is determined, they might be pre-made.

Bugs and fish spawning

From Wild World on, bugs and fish spawn in acres outside of viewing range, one of each per acre.

Map sizes

Map size and generation in Special K

It is suggested that the map in Special K be any size the player wants, from a minimum of 4×4 acres to let's say 16×16, generated using imitations of the various Animal Crossing systems. The maximum amount of villagers may be a function of the map's size.

Variant characters in Special K

It is technically possible for a single character to be defined twice. You could well have two different versions of Isabelle — one based on her New Leaf appearance and one based on New Horizons. This is because one of them would have the fully-qualified ID acnl:sza while the other would be acnh:sza. I suppose the content filter settings would have to prevent both from spawning, or perhaps the New Leaf map generator will place a Town Hall that includes one version of Isabelle, while the New Horizons generator will place a Resident Services with the other. In fact, Town Hall and Resident Services can share an ID too, in the same way.

Things to do each day

Be it at 5:00 AM or when you first start the game that day, in no particular order:

1. Spawn a rock if there are less than six on the map.
2. Pick a money rock.
3. Reset luck effects.
4. Move around villagers in some way.
5. Pick loadout for Nook's Cranny and Able Sisters.
6. Spawn special visitors.
7. Regrow the animal tracks.
8. Progress on building constructions.
9. Grow flowers and trees.
10. Place up to four fossils if less than six are already there.
11. Place a gyroid if less than four are there.
12. Place a small rock if there is none.
13. Remove glowing spot if one, place a new one.
14. Decide on weather pattern for the day.
15. Check if it's Sunday, update the stalk market if it is.
16. Maybe place an item in the recycle box (45% chance, only if less than ten).
17. Reset daily flags.