Contributing Guidelines
First off, thank you for considering contributing to Monika After Story. This mod has only been able to grow so quickly because of the outstanding support of our community.
More than anything, these guidelines are here to save you time and make contributing to this project as easy as possible. By reading this you will learn what tools you need to contribute, what you can do to help, and how to make your contributions in a way that makes them very likely to be accepted.
[These guidelines are based on a template from Hoodie]
If you find any issues with Monika After Story, please file a bug report. Nothing is too small or rare. If you experience a bug, odds are that others have hit it as well.
To add a suggestion, visit this link. These can be ideas for new topics and features, or even a personal opinion you'd just like to share.
Adding new content to this game is easy, and doesn't require any specialized tools.
To add new random topics and greetings, or to make changes that involve dialogue, you can simply navigate to the appropriate file on the content branch of our github site and click the pencil icon in the upper right corner to begin making changes. To make changes that involve no dialogue or are minor typofixes, make sure to be in the enhancement branch. When you are finished, add a short message describing your changes, and click the green button labeled "Propose Changes." A collaborator will be notified, and will review your changes before merging them into the mod.
Now that monika's dialogue includes expressions, please use this cheatsheet to pick appropriate expressions and poses for your topics. At the moment, all poses revert to Monika's standard sitting pose, but when more poses are added, any expressions using them will update automatically.
For new game art or music, please open a ticket on issues, and attach the files you'd like to submit. Again, a collaborator will look over your submission and figure out how best to use it in our game. To get an idea of what we might be needing, check for any open art-related issues.
Making changes to the code for the game is a bit more involved. Here are a few steps you should take:
- Download and install the Ren'Py SDK version 6.99.12. (NOTE: The current version of DDLC is not compatible with .rpyc files generated with other versions of the Renpy SDK)
- Fork this repository or make a local git clone by clicking the button labeled "Clone or Download" above.
- Place the files in the Ren'py working directory (chosen during installation).
- Download the DDLC files (available for free at http://ddlc.moe) & drop the .rpa files from it into the /game directory.
- Launch the project in Ren'Py. It should compile & run.
- Consult the open issues and/orvisit our development Discord channel to find things to work on.
- Submit any changes as pull requests to the appropriate branch.
Here is an overview of the main branches for this project, and what goes where.
master is the current release version of the mod, plus any simple bug fixes slated for the next release. Please submit bug fixes directly to master.
content is where new dialogue is added, like new greetings, farewells, moods or stories.
enhancement is where non-dialogue changes is added, like bug fixes and other small code changes. Exception to this is minor typofixes that do not warrant dialogue review.
While we're generally accepting of most help, there are a few things that we are not looking for.
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Please do not submit meme-related content, and only include pop-culture references when they seem appropriate to Monika's character.
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Please do not submit lewd, offensive, or otherwise NSFW content or images. These will be deleted, and you may be banned from future submissions as a result.
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Please thoroughly test your bug fixes and feature additions before submitting. If you do choose to submit work with known bugs, please report very clearly what those bugs are so they can be eliminated before being merged. Keep in mind that incomplete work like this is much more likely to be rejected, since bug-fixing a feature written by someone else is often more work than just implementing that feature from scratch.
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Please adhere to Team Salvato's publicly available IP Guidelines. That means that you can not make a profit on Monika After Story, promote it as an alternative to playing DDLC, or distribute the mod as a standalone game. Dan has consistently been very generous to the fan community, and we should respect his rights as DDLC's creator.
- Ensure cross-platform compatibility for every change that's accepted. Windows, Mac, Debian & Ubuntu Linux.
- Create issues for any major changes and enhancements that you wish to make. Discuss things transparently and get community feedback.
- Code clearly, using descriptive variable names, comments, and modularizing as functions wherever appropriate.
- Keep feature submissions as small as possible, preferably one new feature per submission.
- Be welcoming to newcomers and encourage diverse new contributors from all backgrounds. See our Community Code of Conduct.
- Ensure all dialogue fits Monika's voice. Do your best to consider word choice, conversationalism, and her interests.
Monika is more than just a stand-in for you as the author. She is her own character, with her own personality, mannerisms, likes and dislikes. Do your best to capture that character when writing as her.
From her dialogue in the game, there are a few consistent traits you should note when writing for her.
- A tendency to use soft language in casual conversation. Words and phrases that fall in this category are "like", "you know", "kind of", and "maybe".
- Several consistent mannerisms. Notable ones include "ehehe" and "ahaha" for laughter, "man" for fatigue, "gosh" for surprise, etc.
- Direct addressal of the player. Her conversations more often than not include "you", "[player]", and "[currentuser]".
- A generally supportive and caring personality is implied. She often asks about the player and their own lives, with multiple dedicated conversations.
- Though dark topics are discussed, Monika tends to end conversations on a positive note. Possibly caused by the unique relationship she maintains with the player.
- Love for the player. Most of her conversations and dialogue will contain a reminder of her affection. That being said, it is NOT a requirement. In-game conversations without an "I love you" do exist.
- An ability to tease and joke around. When instances of this occur, she makes sure to point it out at the end of the conversation. Occasionally accompanied by a tilde (~).
- An interest in written arts and philosophy. From her abundance of advice on writing, emotions, and other life topics, it is safe to assume that she enjoys thinking about abstract or controversial topics. Her passion for the Literature Club supports this.
As we would like to keep Monika as close as possible to what's established in game, keeping her unique character traits in mind while you work on contributions would be appreciated.
Beyond that, we are aware that interpretations differ from person to person, and different writers may not necessarily agree on certain topics. An open mind is encouraged when receiving critique and review.
Are you new to this whole open source coding thing? Many of us are too! We think this is a great project for anyone to get their feet wet with open-source development.
To find how to help, you can start by looking through these beginner and help-wanted issues:
Beginner issues - Issues which should only require a few lines of code, and a test or two.
Help wanted issues - These issues may be more involved, but are definitely in need of a contributor.
Working on your first Pull Request? You can learn how from this free series, How to Contribute to an Open Source Project on GitHub.
At this point, you're ready to make your changes! Feel free to ask for help; even Monika still has things to learn about coding!
If a maintainer asks you to "rebase" your PR, they're saying that a lot of code has changed, and that you need to update your branch so it's easier to merge.
Before you make dialogue ensure the branch is set to content, NOT master. However, if you're writing jokes set the branch to jokes-concept
If you're planning to write multiple topics, please submit a pull request with all the topics inside it.
Once the branch is set to content, click the pencil button to start editing.
List of categories: Psychology, Society, School, Life, Media, Literature, Games, Literature Club, Romance, Club Members,You, Monika, DDLC, Mod, Technology, Philosophy, Misc, Advice, and Trivia.
IMPORTANT: Do NOT use capital letters on keywords. The input lowercases all strings, hence making capitalized letters in keywords unreachable.
When writing dialogue always start with m #X " and end with".
For #X refer to the cheat sheet for the numbers and letters.
If you want to write more complicated dialogue, visit Dialogue Coding
Place return at the last line, after the last sentence of your dialogue.
Once you're done, refer to the guide below to submit your topic as a pull request.
Click the pencil icon to start editing.
When you're done making changes, click propose file change.
Note: If you're writing dialogue, do NOT use capital letters on keywords. The input lowercases all strings, hence making capitalized letters in keywords unreachable.
Ensure that that the base is set to content while the base fork is Monika-After-Story/MonikaModDev.
The head fork has your username on it, if this is your first time submitting a pull request then it will automatically be named as patch 1 in compare.
Click create pull request.
Add an appropriate title and a description of the changes you made, before you create your pull request.
You can chat with the core team on our development Discord channel. We're always friendly to new contributors, and it's not just a great place to get help, but also just a fun place to hang out with like-minded DDLC fans.