This is an easy to use GUI modding tool for my game:

The purpose of this tool is to bypass the tedious process of adding new words, dialogue and new "forms" (i.e. transformations) in the game using the back end. Everything in this software is beginner-friendly, straightforward and workable at the very list.

With this tool, my game has endless possibilities!

How to Use

This is a detailed (hopefully, enough) tutorial of my custom modding tool for the Anomalous Coffee Machine. This is still in early stages but I’ll continue to update it and hopefully make it easy and productive to use!

Before starting, make sure your assets are in the same folder as the modding tool, like this:

That way, you can easily find them when the time comes

For this tutorial, you can download the “mermaid_mod_assets” file for the assets that I used.

Alright, let’s begin.

Mod Name

Start the modding tool by setting up your “mod name”. Keep this really formal and avoid spaces and uppercase letters. It’s not strictly not allowed, but it’s better you just don’t so you don’t end up wasting time by packing your mod pack only for it to not get loaded on the game.

New Word

Now, start by adding your “Word”. 

Words here can be “sentences”, there’s not limit and you can use spaces but don’t use upper case letters. The game will convert your text to lowercase but just in case, avoid uppercase letters.

Words are important as they’re primarily used as triggers for “transformations” and “events” in the game. You can also add synonyms but note that if you type the synonym, the game will automatically convert it as the main word of that synonym.

You can add as many words as you want, and ideally, your words don’t exist yet in the game.

(On a future update, I’ll make sure you get access to all the words already implemented in the game.)

Now, the meat part!

This section is where you add the dialogue part of your mod.

Each line is a dialogue bubble for our girl so make sure you make each line not too long so they don’t look too weird on the game.

You don’t have any limits on this part as well.

The drop down on the right of each line is all the emotions currently supported in the game. It’s how our girl changes expression depending on what she’s saying in the game. You can add new emotions but we’ll talk more about it later.

The Cup Creator

Next part is the “Cup Creator”:

This is what you’re “Cup of [your word]” will look like in the game. There are a few options for you here:

• “Galaxy” means it’s going to look like with stars and shit and all pretty.
• Not checking “Galaxy” means it’s going to look simple with a single color.
• Checking random means it’s either gonna be a random “galaxy” or a random “non-galaxy” i.e. a random plain color.

New Transformation

The next section is the “Transformation”.

Transformations are when Horu changes into basically a different character in the game.

You start by adding a “form name” i.e. the name of your transformation.

Just like the word, make it lowercase and also avoid spaces and other special characters. You don’t have to be extra effortful on this since they don’t really show up in the game, and are just used to find stuff in the back end.

Also, ideally make your transformation name distinct from your word so that the game can recognize it better. On my example, since my word is “mermaid”, I called the transformation as “mermaidgirl”.

Now, let’s talk about the “form types” in the game.

• “Cursed” means anything that can be described as negative, such as curses, mutations, diseases and maybe some disturbing body horror shit. Cursed forms can be fixed using the Cup of Health/Cure.
• “Generic” means it’s a simple transformation, like becoming an angel or a demon. it’s marked for default and unchecking it means you’re uncategorizing your transformation which can result to unpredictable outcomes. Generic forms can be fixed by the Cup of Human.
• “Post Mortem” are transformations that require death to happen, such as the ghost. Fixing this form requires the cup of Life.
• Lastly, “Special” forms are those that are above everything else and must trigger no matter what. I typically use this for transformations that require a previous transformation. For instance, the “Angel demon” form requires either the “angel” or “demon” form. By default, you can also fix special forms using the Cup of Human.

Adding Triggers

Next is a thing in the game called “Triggers”.

As the name implies, Triggers are what triggers a transformation or an event in the game.

You have a few stuff to understand on “triggers”.

• “Current Cup” means the current word the player requested on the machine. Basically, if you request a cup of “death”, your current cup is “death”. Leaving it blank means it’ll trigger regardless of the current cup. I highly recommend don’t leaving this blank or null as it will result to unpredictable scenarios.
• “Current Form” is our girl’s current transformation. For now, since this is a transformation trigger, you can leave it null/blank, since doing so will allow the girl to transform to it regardless of the current transformation.
• “Previous cup” is the player’s previous cup or what the player requested before the current cup. You can use this to make your transformation require two different cups, such as in the case for “Ghost” and “Death” that leads to the Ghost transformation.
• "Consecutive counts" are for stacking effects but it's not available at the moment.

After that, also set the visuals of your cup.

And also the dialogues:

Adding Assets

The next main thing is locating the assets of your transformation. This is required if you want to make a transformation.

The “default” emotion of your new form requires to assets: Idle and Talk.

Idle is basically the “mouth” closed version and Talk the mouth open version.

You can new “emotions” for your transformations so it’ll look interesting in the game, having different expressions and such.

There’s no limit to this, just make sure you’re gonna use them if you add them so the file storage is worth it.

If you do add custom emotions, make sure to register them as global emotions so you can use them for dialogues.

New Custom Event

Our next part is adding “Custom Events”.

Custom Events are like the “Death Scenes” in the game, except you can also add scenes that don’t lead to death and a game over scene.

Just as before, make it lowercase and also avoid spaces and other special characters. You don’t have to be extra effortful on this since they don’t really show up in the game, and are just used to find stuff in the back end.

Now, add the trigger for that event.

You can then use your new transformation here as additional trigger variable. In my case, I added that this event will trigger when the current form is “mermaidgirl”.

After that, you can also add dialogues.

Lastly, locate the image asset of your Custom Event. It’ll be show in the game as the visual of that custom event.

Creating the Mod Pack

Now that’s everything is good, you can finish everything by clicking this button:

The game will show some information regarding your mod:

If you encounter any issues, let me know in the comments section!

Important notes:

• Make sure to not rename your mod after this process. The game creates your mod assets based from your original mod name, and changing this means changing those as well, resulting to a crash in the game upon loading your new modpack.
• With regards to your assets, the character on your transformation assets  must be centered on the image, and leave a empty pixels at the bottom for the hover effect shader so it doesn’t look like this:

Modding Demo

Download the "mermaid_mod.pck" file and load it on the base game to see how the mod works.

Uploading Your Mod

You can upload your custom mod here on Itch and note that it's a mod of this game by adding this code on your itch page:

<iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/2890613?bg_color=383851&fg_color=ffffff&link_color=ef1c61&border_color=ef1c61" width="552" height="167"><a href="<a href="https://horubrain.itch.io/anomalous-coffee-machine">Anomalous" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://horubrain.itch.io/anomalous-coffee-machine">Anomalous</a> Coffee Machine by HoruBrain</a></iframe>

Don't forget to mark it as a "game mod" in the classification section:

Then join my Discord and on the "modding" channel, share your new mod!

Note:

This is an early access version and future updates will be added to add more features and functionalities to this tool.