Some time ago (announce 2944) we announced that we were looking for a pixel artist to help us on a mysterious project - which happened to be Farming! And now we're pleased to show you what that was all about.

But first, a big shout out to Peiry (also known as Deer on discord) who was the artist we worked with on this! Peiry was absolutely amazing to work with, and blew our expectations out of the water in the best possible way.

So what have we made? Using the graphics Peiry made for us, we have a package for Mudlet that you can install that will translate your field map from this:

o-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-o
| |
- #~#~&&#~~#~~~ -
| ~#~#~~~~#~~## |
- #~###~~###~~~ -
| -^----~#~~~~~ |
- ~##~~#~~~~~## -
| ~~~~~~#~#~L#~ |
- ~#~#~#@~~#~~~ -
| |
o-|-|-|-#-|-|-|-o

Into this: https://imgur.com/a/w9eduYW


One of the big problems we highlighted early-on while planning out the Farming system was the density of information you need to train yourself to recognize from all the different symbols/colours of your field's text map. So we had a crazy idea: Let's make graphics for it!

Our goal with this was to lower the barrier for getting involved with the Farming system, using a fully OPTIONAL graphics addon to help you better understand at a glance what's going on in your farm.

The graphic map sits as a small display on your Mudlet interface that you can drag around and position it where you please, and will show up automatically upon entering the farmland, and disappear again when you leave.

This is only available on Mudlet right now, and we'll be working to get a Nexus version of this available ASAP. There's unfortunately a few more complications getting something like this onto Nexus vs Mudlet, and we didn't want to delay the release of the Farming/Production system anymore. We have no plans to expand support of this to MUD clients other than those two.

So how do you get it? First, make sure your Mudlet is on the latest version (3.22.1 at time of this post) or head to https://www.mudlet.org/download/ to update. This package should (in theory) work on Mudlet versions later than 3.10, but it was developed and tested on 3.22 so we can't promise it won't break.

Once you're on the latest version, there's two ways you can get the package.
1) The easiest way, simply enter the command 'get_farm_package' in-game and Mudlet will download the package from our servers and install it automatically. You'll need to make sure your Aetolia profile for Mudlet has the 'Allow server to install script packages' option checked under Settings->General.

2) If that doesn't work for some reason, you can download the package manually from https://www.aetolia.com/local/download/aetFarmMap.zip then in Mudlet click on 'Package Manager' and install the zip file (DON'T EXTRACT IT!).

You may need to save your profile and restart Mudlet once this is done, but in most cases it should work straight away as soon as you enter your farm plot or QL if already in the farm.

Hold the top-left button to drag it around, and the three top-right buttons can be used to adjust tile size to either 16x16 or 32x32, and bring up the config.

And that's pretty much it! This is very experimental for us, and we'd love your feedback on it so please pop onto the forums and let us know what you think.


Penned by my hand on Quensday, the 7th of Haernos, in the year 481 MA.
Discuss this post on our forums:
http://forums.aetolia.com/discussion/3235/announce-post-2985-mudlet-pixel-map-for-farming