0 of 0

File information

Last updated

Original upload

Created by

Messajah

Uploaded by

Messajah

Virus scan

Safe to use

Tags for this mod

About this mod

Makes villagers react to Joja's improvement projects in the town, for a much more immersive Joja playthrough.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Changelogs
License: Public Domain. Do anything you want with it.

Copyright: Public Domain. Fair Use Protected. Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something. It doesn't contain any text or assets whatsoever from any other mods, and all writings in this mod are placed in the public domain. All characters are created by ConcernedApe, the author of Stardew Valley. Every line of dialogue for the characters in this mod are brand new dialogue that fits with the vanilla game's writing style, and works completely standalone without any other mods. This mod uses the game's own modding API to simply overwrite a few lines of game dialogue, for an immersive Joja questing experience. The only person who has any copyright claim to these characters is the author of Stardew Valley, who has graciously allowed modding for these fan-created stories.



What is it: Provides immersive Joja dialogue for the Stardew Valley characters. Pierre, Jas and Vincent are currently implemented. More characters will be added in upcoming releases. Nothing is being rushed, since rushing would just mean that rewrites would be required later.

All new dialogue follows these rules:

  • No conflicts with the official story.
  • Everything must closely follow the vanilla writing style and vocabulary for each character.
  • The new dialogue must be related to the various town repair projects.
  • Characters should only discuss subjects that they would personally think about and care about. For instance, the kids wouldn't know anything about the town politics.
  • All dialogue which describes events must be logical for the daily schedules and personality of that character.
  • There will never be anything that confuses the player about what the character is talking about, or makes them think there's a hidden game secret/mission (such as "I hope I can find a message in a bottle at the ocean").
  • No references to days such as "Yesterday", since the conversation topics can be discussed later than the actual repairs.

This ensures that you can enjoy the new dialogue without any worries about clashes with the official game story.


Currently works well together with Joja Immersion (Joja Needs Nuance) too, which fills in the other characters until they're implemented in this mod. It's a pretty fun mod for people who are doing Joja playthroughs, since it makes the villagers react to Joja's town improvement projects, but it has some questionable writing and storylines in many places. This mod is currently compatible without any conflicts, and installing both mods is therefore possible but not necessary.

This Joja Story dialogue mod was inspired by the following conversation on another page, but is completely standalone and will continue to grow with more and more characters from the Valley.

All rise for the glory of Joja Cola! A Joja Cola a day keeps Pierre away!

Regarding Jas and Vincent: I just extracted their vanilla dialogue XNBs and read through it and I don't agree that your mod follows their style at all. Your sentences are up to 3x longer than the vanilla "kids" style, and use more complex and awkward sentence structures, while the vanilla sentences are super short and basic. And even little details stand out, like how vanilla Vincent dialogue never really says the player's name anywhere and at most uses "Hi there, mister! / Hi there, miss!" (without any player name), while you write out a weirdly capitalized "Look, Mister @! / Look, Miss @! / Have you met the man who lives in a tent, Mister @? / Have you met the man who lives in a tent, Miss @?" in yours (which is a greeting he never uses in vanilla, and even the capitalization is wrong, as is the fact that you're making a kid end a sentence with an awkwardly inserted "Mister Jacob" out of nowhere, which almost makes it sound like it's Mister Jacob who is "the man who lives in the tent, Mister Jacob"), or how vanilla Jas uses "..." to begin/end almost every sentence in vanilla, while you don't use that anywhere.

There are also lots of really awkward sentences for the kids, such as "Guess what! Yesterday Sam took me to the bus stop!" which would flow more naturally as "Guess what! Sam took me to the bus stop yesterday!", or at the very least putting a grammatical comma between "Yesterday" and "Sam", like "Guess what! Yesterday, Sam took me to the bus stop!"... And then there's all the long and clunky sentences, such as "Look, Mister Jacob! I got to keep a souvenir when Sam was working on that big rock pile by the lake!" which isn't how any kid let alone any human speaks (try speaking that sentence out loud and feel the tongue-twisting, droning awkwardness that would bore any real kid), which could be simplified to something more flowing and more boyish and child-like, such as "Look at this! Sam found a cool rock and gave it to me. He was playing with a big rock by the water!".

There's also some really weird sentences, like when Vincent says that he was "hanging out" with Linus: "I was hanging out with him because Sam said the bridge was too dangerous", which just draws attention to the weird concept of Vincent and Linus "hanging out" alone together (something we never see in-game since Vincent is basically glued to a leash by Penny), and is also a weird choice of words for a little boy. He wouldn't say that he was "hanging out". That whole sentence doesn't fit the game at all

Most of the kid's sentences feel awkward in various ways. Take this Jas sentence for example: "Vincent and I made a house for snails for you."... That's such a weird sentence structure, and would flow more naturally as "Vincent and I made a snail house for you."

It's also super weird that every Vincent line is about all the cool things he did after every repaired project, but 3 of the 5 Jas lines after each project is about how "Vincent did that cool thing with XYZ, but Shane refused to let me go with them" and Jas being sad instead of happy after each construction project... And Vincent is happy that he's gonna go see a movie when the cinema is complete, while Jas just sadly wonders if she will get to see a movie too. Wtf.

A lot of little things like that all add up to ultimately making your Jas/Vincent writings feel both a bit awkward and not fitting with the vanilla style. For starters, I would remove the "@" (player name) from most of Vincent's dialogue, and remove the weird capitalization of Mister/Miss, and add "..." everywhere to Jas' dialogue lines, to get closer to vanilla even if the sentences are still longer and more complex. You could also use ChatGPT and ask it to re-write the sentences how kids would speak naturally. But overall, Jas and Vincent are two pretty inconsequential characters that I barely even bother talking to, so it doesn't truly matter. I would rate those kid character dialogues as "awkward but not the worst in the world". And the other writings are great since you weren't constrained by trying to make "kid language" for the other characters!

Overall you did a fantastic job with the writing. I am sure you've spent days writing and working on the phrasing of all the new dialogue lines, so I understand the work that went into it, and I greatly appreciate that you've shared the mod with the world. It's awesome to finally see the villagers react to Joja's greatness. I've endorsed it, to help its search rankings. :)