The Bereft Souls is an upcoming modding project for the game Terraria. Originally conceived and brought to life by the YouTube brome, this project aims to bring a large number of content mods that normally do not work well with each other together into one, cohesive playthrough experience.
I started out my journey in working on the Bereft Souls by applying for a position as a programmer. A Patreon page was opened by brome to fund the project, and the funds were used to pay developers to bring the mod to life, as brome did not have the relevant experience to build it themself. I began working on a per-commission basis on programming some of the additional API/library mods that we would be releasing as additional products of the Bereft Souls project. As time went on, it became clearer and clearer that brome did not have the necessary game development, nor management experience to efficiently and effectively facilitate the production of a project at the scale of the Bereft Souls; even brome agreed on this. The situation grew more and more dysfunctional until eventually, brome was preparing to refund all Patreon subscriptions and cancel the project. However, rather than allow the project to simply die and never see the light of day, I offered up my relevant experience in game development and team management to take over as owner of the project, to which brome agreed.
After taking over as lead developer, I completely restructured both our development setup and public communications systems. I released a handful of "developer logs," which were videos on YouTube that covered our development processes as we worked to bring the project to life. Significant progress has since been made on all aspects of all our products, and to put it more plainly, the project has been brought back from the brink of death. Now, I create numerous designated "bounties" for our various development departments, including programming, artwork, and testing. The bounties all have payments attached to them and are able to be claimed by development team members upon completion. While progress has slightly slowed down since the burst of motivation resulting from the project's revival, it is still moving forward steadily and consistently, and both of our supporting library mods are looking to be 100% finished by the end of the summer, with a playable early access version of the Bereft Souls releasing immediately after!
Below are some of the public service API/library mods we are working on releasing in addition to the primary Bereft Souls modpack, working to bolster a flourishing future for Terraria modpack creation!
tPackBuilder is a relatively new modding project that hit the ground running immediately upon its release. Terraria modding is all done entirely via C# - no GUI, no leniency, only code. This has its advantages, but one of the disadvantages is that it cuts off mod-making accessibility to a large portion of the community. This is where tPackBuilder comes in.
Using this API, users can create their own modpacks; referencing, modifying, adding and removing content all via extremely simple and easy to use JSON files, and, as of the tPackBuilder 2.0 update, an in-game GUI to build these JSON files automatically! Since the mod's release, there have been floods of people giving feedback, suggestions, feature requests, and more within the API's help channels.
This tool has already seen use in other professional mod making projects, namely the "Infernal Eclipse of Ragnarok" project, which is an additional upcoming modpack that has already entered early access.Â
QuestBooks is the second of our publicly available library mods. A common problem within the Terraria experience is that the game can be so complex and convoluted, that players need to consistently have its wiki pages open just to progress. This is made even worse by adding in large content mods, which can effectively scale the game's already vast content to even more ridiculous levels.
What's the solution? An in-game QuestBook that serves to guide the player through the game's progression! Our vision for this project is not a strict guide that drags the player by the hand through the game, but instead, a reference that players can check in with when they feel lost on what to do next. Steps and content are not explicitly spelled out, and instead are only led on via short and sweet tips that nudge the player in the right direction.
This mod is 100% fully programmed and developed by me, and expected to complete and release with version 1.0 by the end of the summer. It will bring with it an extremely easy to use API for other mod developers to implement their own quest trees in game! Furthermore, even third-party-added quest trees are configurable by other mods, so future mod packs that may necessitate an in game resource for progression guidance will have the necessary tools easily at their disposal.