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Stardew Valley is a game that will take you to the good old country, simulating the daily life of a farmer in a peaceful open-world environment. It is a game that starts in a town with a farm that you inherited from your grandfather, along with some handed-down tools and some money for a good start. In this game, you will take the role of a farmer, grow crops, take care of animals, and eventually upgrade everything you own like a tycoon once you get the hang of a game. It is also an interesting game for developers to study too.
Stardew Valley was made with the use of C#, which is excellent for running a game with graphics of games reminiscent of the old era 2 to 3 decades ago. Though some say it was made with C++ as well. Nonetheless, this popular game was developed by a single person.
After all, everyone loves to play a peaceful game where they just want to grow some crops at their humble abode in their digital farm world. To find out more about the coding of Stardew Valley, I will guide you to a lot of details regarding this popular game, and how it was developed.
Instead of looking at the game itself, I will provide you the details behind the scenes to know how this wonderful RPG game came into existence.
Table of Contents
What Language Did Programmers Use To Write Stardew Valley?
Game Story And Elements
Before I discuss further how it was developed, let me first explain how Stardew Valley is played. The game has a simple background story where you, the main character, have inherited farmland from your old grandfather.
This is a concept based on the classic farm game Harvest Moon and has some elements such as the overall gameplay and graphics that are purely based on that popular game.
The game is made with graphics reminiscent of the old NES and SNES games, which are purely made of 16-bit sprites. The sprite animation made the game simple and intended for players of almost any age.
After all, farm life can be simulated by old people on their devices, while young adults and kids will feel comfortable playing with the cute sprite graphics of the whole game. It is a modern game with the ever-impressive graphics of the old gaming era.
What made the game entertaining enough to keep you hooked up for the months (or even years) to come is not the graphics. But the gameplay experience itself. RPGs are known to have a lot of items that you can exploit and use to your advantage within the game.
Stardew Valley surely did some hard work in creating hundreds of items for you to obtain and use to upgrade what you currently own on your farm. Just like most RPGs, Stardew Valley also offers you to use weapons for taking quests aside from using farm tools, seeds and animal feeds. Since it is an adventure game, there are also a lot of quests to enjoy, customization of your own home, as well as meeting villagers to make friends with them and marry a love interest.
There are a lot of surprises in this game that will surely make you feel like living on a peaceful farm just to grow some crops and cattle for a living. What made it interesting as well is that you can even add up some mods in your own game to spice your experience up with extra game features.
So, now that you know how the game can be played, now it’s time to seek the answer to the question: what is the programming language used to write the Stardew Valley?
The Language Used For Such An Awesome Game
Stardew Valley is widely known to be programmed using the C# programming language. It turns out that C++ as the main language of the program was just a rumor, and mostly contains elements from C#. Contrary to popular belief, despite looking like a SNES game, NES and SNES games lack C# elements. So that is another myth debunked, aside from the rumors of the game written in C++.
The designer, artist, programmer, director, composer, and founder of the game, Eric Barone (A.K.A. ConcernedApe), has confirmed the fact that the game was made in C#. Barone stated this in a forum back in 2013, as well as mentioned other programs that I will show later on.
How Many Lines Of Code Is Stardew Valley?
Though ConcernedApe did not disclose how many lines of code was the game made of, those numbers made some good statistics that are pleasing for its sole developer. Stardew Valley now consists of more than 550,000 players as of now, continuing to grow even higher as many more people are starting to get more familiar with the game. After all, games with a country life genre are entertaining, filled with adventure, and a lot of items to explore and use for your profit.
Take note that this was made by a single person who put a lot of effort into building ideas and spending time writing code and debugging some. Knowing his background, being a computer science student is one of the main reasons he became capable of writing such an epic game.
And aside from his degree, his passion to create a fun game also led to its success and his dedication in solely developing every single element in the game.
What Software Did Stardew Valley Use?
In contrast to some online rumors created by fans, ConcernedApe never used Unity Engine at all. He used a custom engine that he built on his own to completely develop the game.
This is both logic and creativity in action, as he was able to create a huge list of items and game elements with cute-looking graphics that made the game more comfortable to play.
ConcernedApe also mentioned in various forums that he used Visual Studio 2010 for the IDE while using XNA to write down the entire C# language to operate the game. He also used Paint.NET for creating most of the graphics in the game, including the items and every possible element coming soon. He also mentioned that EVERYTHING in the game was made from scratch.
He was also generous enough to let everyone download it for free. On top of that, if you happen to be skilled at programming yourself, you can even add up some mods to create more exciting elements in your own game.
This was the creator’s goal: to create a free game everyone can enjoy in a way where they can freely customize it if they wanted to. After all, most of the best games nowadays rely on providing an open-world experience to guarantee a lot of features to make players stay in the game for a long time.
How Is Working On Stardew Valley Now?
Ever since the game was made in 2016 by ConcernedApe, he kept on updating the game by adding new features using his usual tools. Over the years, the game has expanded and upgraded much to the point where it does not look much like the first version anymore.
As of today, there are hundreds of game elements that you can enjoy to make your farm a lot livelier compared to when you first inherited it from your grandfather.
He was able to provide updates such as adding furniture to make your home look even better. He also added more characters for you to interact, and possibly fall in love with.
He added more farm animals and not just cows and chickens, and a whole lot more. Because of his years of dedication in developing and maintaining the game, Stardew Valley is still one of the most successful games of all time!
Lastly, even if he stated that he is on the way to create two new games, Eric Barone is still taking good care of his Stardew Valley. He also wants to tell all his fans that there are more additional game elements coming soon. So stay tuned!
Conclusion
Stardew Valley is not just a very successful game after all. It is also a success story made by a person who has passionately put a lot of hard work into developing a game, much like how a farmer reaps what he sowed thanks to his diligence.
