About

Crops to plant, mines to explore, relationships to cultivate but you still can't live without your truffle oil and duck mayonnaise sandwiches. Does this sound like you? Sure you enjoy the benefits that come with farm animal ownership, but that doesn't mean it needs to be you out there in the barn wading through manure. Why not pay someone else to do that stuff, or better yet, make your kids do it.

Update

If you downloaded 1.0.6, there was an error in the default configuration file.  The last configuration option had a comma after it, and the one preceeding it had no comma.  1.0.7 only corrects that problem.  You can correct it yourself by making the last couple lines of the config look like this:

  "chestCoords": "73, 14",
  "chestDefs": ""
}

and not (note the comma placement)

  "chestCoords": "73, 14"
  "chestDefs": "",
}

1.0.6: I've been sitting on this update for quite a while, as I was afraid of breaking things that were working. I can't promise that I didn't, but try it out. Basically this update adds better control over where your items get deposited, and adds some enhancements to the dialogue system. If you're an existing user and neither of these features interest you, then you should probably stick with the version you have as it seems pretty stable.

On a side note, I added a suggested feature to allow you to set your pet as the user, but the dialogues are pretty simple. I'd love to add some more immersive pet interaction, alas my digital art skills are limited to manipulating the work of greater artists than myself. So if anyone would be interested in donating a nice cat and dog portrait image, I would like to include such a thing in this and a few of my other mods. If you're interested in such a collaboration, please contact me.

1.0.5: I've fixed a bug where you couldn't have any normal dialogue with NPC characters if you has spoken to them as a result of using this mod.

1.0.4: The latest version now incorporates a few of the suggestions I've been getting in the comments. Namely, an overflow chest option has been added (this was suggested in a comment on one of my other mods, and will also be incorporated into them in the coming days or weeks), and harvesting animal drops. I wasn't able to test it with Void eggs, let me know if you happen to encounter one that doesn't get picked up. Anyway, I've got some additional plans with this mod, and I hope you enjoy the direction this is going.

Usage

When you wake up in the morning (or later if you like to sleep in on Sunday) just press a button ("O" by default) and you can have someone: pet, feed, and harvest your animals. If you're the kind of person who's into that kind of stuff, they can also max out the animal's happiness, their friendship toward the farmer (that's you), and even turn your baby animals into full-grown contributing animals on the farm.

If you're the kind of person who wants to pull your own weight, or maybe you just need a money sink, you can even pay the mod to perform these actions for you out of your hard earned Stardew bucks.

Quick Setup

If you want to use this mod like a trainer, change whichever "Enabled" options you would like to use, and keep "costPerAction" to 0. Also set enableMessages to false.

The costPerAction defaults to 0, so make sure you change it if you want to be charged.

Configuration

Here's the default configuration:

"keybind": "O",
"growUpEnabled": false,
"maxHappinessEnabled": false,
"maxFullnessEnabled": false,
"harvestEnabled": true,
"pettingEnabled": true,
"maxFriendshipEnabled": false,
"verboseLogging": false,
"costPerAction": 0,
"whoChecks": "spouse",
"enableMessages": true,
"takeTrufflesFromPigs": true,
"bypassInventory": false,
"chestCoords": "73, 14",
"chestDefs": ""

keybind: The key that you press to tell your animal helper to get to work. This defaults to the "O" key.

growUpEnabled: This open tells your animal helper that you'd like them to use dark magic to instantly bring young animals up to the age where they can become contributing members of your farm. Default is false.

maxHappinessEnabled: This option tells your animal helper that you don't care how long (or where) they have to pet your animals, but their job is not done until each animal's happiness is maxed. Default is false.

maxFullnessEnabled: This option tells your animal helper to feed your animals. A full animal is a producing animal. Default is false.

harvestEnabled: This tells your animal worker to harvest the animal drops. If you like doing this yourself, then set this to false.

pettingEnabled: This tells your animal worker that you want your animals petted. This is the whole reason I made this mod, so it defaults to true. So if you set this to "false", please keep it to yourself. If you enjoy petting each of your animals (because you don't have a hundred of them) then set it to false.

maxFriendshipEnabled: This tells your animal worker whether they have to wear your "you" mask, so that the affection of the animals is directed toward you, and not the help. Defaults to false.

verboseLogging: This enables or disabled debug logging. Useful for troubleshooting.

costPerAction: This is how much to charge per action per animal. There have been some suggestions around this option, and I do have plans to introduce a more complex pricing structure in the future, but for now just make sure this includes all services that you want the animal checker to perform, and average it out over the number of actions. Defaults to 0.

takeTrufflesFromPigs: Whoever trainedm these pigs did an awful job, as they have a tendency to hide truffles. Where? I'm not exactly sure, but they've got 'em, trust me. With this option enabled, your farm helper will perform a TSA-approved body cavity search and find them. If you love the person who is doing your checking, or if you want your pigs to remain unviolated, or if you consider this cheating, then set it to false.

whoChecks: This is the name of the person (or animal) who checks your animals. Defaults to "spouse". You can also set it to "pet"-- they do a really good job, but they don't provide much feedback. You can also set this to any character in the game, which will enable dialogues with that character. If it's set to anything else, that name will be used in messages.

enableMessages: Thisis whether to enable in-game messages and dialogues revolving around your animal checker. It defaults to true.

bypassInventory: Whether to bypass your inventory when depositing animal drops, and go straight to the chests you have defined. Defaults to false.

chestCoords: These are the coordinates of the default chest where overflow items are placed. It defaults to (73,14) which is the tile location, when you are looking at your screen, is to the immediate right of the sell-box.

chestDefs: This is a bar-separated list of chest locations that you have defined for specific items. It defaults to blank, but here is an example: "430,70,14|340,7,4,FarmHouse" You can see there are 2 options.

The first specifies the item ID and the chest coordinates, this knows to check for a chest on the farm at that location. The second specifies an item id, a chest location, and a building. This will look for a chest at (7,4) in the FarmHouse (which in the starting house is the spot next to the fireplace).

I've had varying luck in using building names: Cellar, FarmHouse work well, while Shed doesn't work. This functionality is experimental, and I plan to get it working better as I better learn how buildings are identified.

Customization
 
Because it matters to some...

The dialog.xnb file will allow you to customize the dialog to your liking.  I've also included the dialog.yaml source file, but the mod will read it from the XNB file.  If you don't know how to do it, google "how to unpack and repack stardew valley mods".  Anyway...
 
The dialogue elements are arranged in a name_index format. If the name starts with a capital 'X', that means those messages need to stay roughly in that order and in the same format for the dialog to make sense.  The number is important.
 
All other elements can be added to, and modified because they are used randomly at the appropriate place in the dialogue.  You have to use the same "name" from the "name_id" that are already in the file, but you can add to and remove so long as all the numbers in a particular group are unique.
 
Also you'll see that I added a few names down at the bottom,"Shane_1", "Shane_2", "Leah_1", for example.  You can add any other Stardew characters dialog to the file in that same format.  Those dialogues will be merged in with the "smalltalk" group if your "whoChecks" is set to one of the characters.
 
Most of the notation that existing SDV dialogs use will work(for example @ is replaced by the name of the farmer).  There's also notation added to use values from this mod in the dialog, they are (along with a description)
 
%%animalsPet%%  -  The number of animals that were petted.
%%trufflesHarvested%%  -  The number of truffles that were harvested.
%%productsHarvested%%  -  The number of other animal products that were harvested (I promise to allow more granular tracking in the future).
%%aged%%  -  The number of animals that were aged to maturity.
%%fed%%  -  The number of animals that were fed.
%%maxHappiness%%  -  The number of animals who had their happiness maxed.
%%maxFriendship%%  -  The number animals that had their friendship toward the farmer maxed out.
%%numActions%%  -  The total number of actions performed.
%%totalCost%%  -  The total costs for all animals.
%%spouse%%  -  The farmer's spouse's name (if married), the value of whoChecks otherwise.
 
The dialog groups in the file, and a quick explanation of when each are used:
 
Xdialog - Some specific dialogs used when the spouse or non-character check the pots.
greeting - Greetings the checker will use when addressing the farmer.
unfinishedmoney - Comments the character checker will make when they weren't able to finish on account of no money.
freebies - Comments the character checker will make when allowFreebies is true, and the cost of services was more than the farmer has on hand. (Not really used in this mod yet)
unfinishedinventory - Comments the character checker will make when they weren't able to finish on account of not having anywhere to deliver the goods. (Not really used in this mod yet)
smalltalk & character names - Comments that are thrown in at the end of most conversations.

Notes

This was written and tested against SMAPI 0.40.1.1-2 for Stardew Valley 1.1.

Changelog

1.0.0: Initial release.
1.0.1: Added some immersion settings to customize a few messages, etc.
1.0.2: Botched my upload. Nothing different in file.
1.0.3: Removed some debug code that was inflating truffles, added an overflow chest option, truffles and animal products on the ground will also be harvested.
1.0.4: Fixed a bug where exception thrown when inventory was full and no chest was present at the coordinates. Sorry, I just started learning C# last week and am still trying to get a grap of some of the nuances.
1.0.5: Fixed a bug where normal game dialogue with your checker would be cleared out if you had animal-related dialogue that day.
1.0.6: Added some dialogue customization features, added a chest system, and a few other things.
1.0.7: Fixed a default configuration file that was broken.
1.0.8: Now correctly takes into account the "Gatherer" perk, giving a 20% chance of a double pickup when harvesting truffles.