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Topics - caethan

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1
Suggestions / Log message for skill training
« on: September 14, 2018, 08:48:36 PM »
Would be nice to have a message in the log when one of your skills goes up.

2
General Discussion / A very skilled sage
« on: June 13, 2018, 01:59:42 AM »
I always suspected...



Now I need to hunt around the other villages looking for Erkka.

3
Stories / Cath the lost
« on: May 17, 2018, 06:11:35 AM »
This is a story about a game I played while trying to follow the "lost" challenge:  completely random character, random start location, hurt helpless and afraid start in winter, and all possessions get destroyed as soon as you load.  You're also restricted to only using and traveling on the zoomed in map, except for viewing (not traveling) from mountain peaks to get a look at the lay of the land.  I have my sufficiency mod installed but aren't using it for the first winter.







Set upon by robbers while traveling alone in the wild, Cath was left badly beaten, with no possessions and nothing but her skills to keep her alive.  Luckily her wounds, while painful, were not too serious and didn't prevent her from walking or using her hands. She awakened completely lost and with no idea where she is - the first thing to do was to make a fire, for November this far North would surely freeze her within a day unclothed and without a fire.

4
Guides and tutorials / Skill Training Guide
« on: March 31, 2018, 09:34:29 PM »
One of the things I've been working on more lately is more consistent skill training, so I thought I'd write up a bit about how to train up skills and how difficult they are.  The general rule is that you can gain at most three percentage points every day, and the day rolls over at about 8:00 AM.  Skills with more stars next to them will be easier to train up, depending on your stats and the stats that help with that skill.

Craft & Lore skills

Agriculture - Train up through planting seeds.  Affects the yields of grown plants.  Difficult to deliberately skill train.
Building - Train up through building things.  Affects the speed of building.  Difficult to deliberately skill train.
Cookery - Train through cooking more difficult recipes.  Roasting meat won't do much, more complex recipes are more likely to train.  Somewhat useful; will affect the trade value of cooked food.
Herblore - Keep unknown plants, mushrooms, and berries in your inventory and use herblore on them every hour or so.  Trains pretty rapidly with a few items to train with.  Useful for identifying edible and medicinal plants.
Fishing - Train through fishing with a tool, pole, or nets.  Difficult to deliberately skill train, but net fishing is probably most effective.
Hideworking - Training with small game is most effective, since they tan faster and each hide gives you the same number of possible skill ups regardless of side.  Very useful for getting higher quality clothing and cords.
Timbercraft - Training with board making is most effective.  Not hugely useful, but affects the speed of timberwork and quality of boards.
Physician - Train by treating minor injuries.  Climbing trees is a reasonable way to get minor but not threatening injuries.  Frostbites from running naked in the winter work OK too.  Can now treat animals and companions as well, which might be a less dangerous way to train it.
Trapping - Can be trained by resetting traps repeatedly.  Very useful for those who want to trap; increases the chance of game entering the trap.
Tracking - Train by following a game trail and repeatedly using the tracking skill to check the direction of the tracks.  Quite useful for active hunting.
Weatherlore - I have literally never seen this skill increase, and I use it every morning.
Carpentry - Train by making crafted goods like shortbows or paddles.  Difficult to train, but quite useful for higher quality items.

Physical skills
Skiing - Just ski.  During the winter I ski around checking trap lines to train this.  Quite useful for winter travel.
Stealth - Walk around in stealth mode.  Seems to train faster when there are animals nearby.  Useful for active hunting and combat.
Climbing - Climbing fences or small cliffs trains this safely and quickly.  Useful at very high skills for climbing trees safely for better views.
Swimming - Swim along the shoreline in the summer.  Trains fairly quickly.  Not commonly used, but can save your life in some situations.

Combat skills
Difficult to train up safely.  Throwing or shooting weapons will train, but often takes hundreds of throws to get a skillup.  Dodge, unarmed, and shield are very difficult to train.

Any other suggestions?  I generally spend time on actively training herblore, skiing, stealth, climbing, club, trapping, and tracking. 

5
General Discussion / Lucky treasure finds
« on: March 19, 2018, 05:36:54 PM »
I have a new top spot for my best treasure find.  I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the time hunting for a "casual treasure of Owl-tribe origin", but:  lots of masterwork fur clothing, a couple of trinkets, a wooden shovel (???) and... a masterwork northern knife!  I've spent ages looking for a normal one before, I'm super excited about trying out the masterwork one.  Just hope I don't run into robbers on the way home.

So what's the favorite treasure you've found?

6
Bug reports / COOK_WEIGHT_DIV can hit nutrition value cap
« on: January 31, 2018, 06:40:09 AM »
I've only found this bug in the base game with dried bear cuts, but I can replicate it with modded items very easily. 

A raw bear cut has protein:29.  Dried cuts have their weight divided by 10, and their nutrition values multiplied by 10 so that the final cut contains the same amount of nutrition as the original cut.  For most cuts this works fine. For the dried bear cut, the protein value should be 290, but is instead 255.  This is presumably because that value is stored in a uint8 (i.e., a single byte) and the largest value that can be stored is 255.  This means that bear cuts are slightly less nutritious than expected when dried.

I can replicate this with modded items:  a processing step with COOK_WEIGHT_DIV:15 and a reconstitution step with COOK_WEIGHT_DIV:0.066666667.  If I process a sheep cut (raw: 0/12/19) I get a lighter processed cut that's hit the nutrition cap: (0/180/255) instead of (0/180/285) as expected.  If I then try and reconstitute the cut, the loss is permanent, down to (0/12/17).

Realistically speaking, of course, none of carb/fat/protein should be above 100, as my understanding is that those values indicate the percentage by weight of each nutrient.  But not sure the best way to resolve the bug for now!

7
Bug reports / Starting flatbreads have no nutrition
« on: January 31, 2018, 05:29:52 AM »
Playing around with the cooking system and testing modded recipes using an object inspector, I noticed that the special "Flat rye bread" item characters occasionally start with has 0 carb, 0 fat, and 0 protein.  The normal "rye flatbread" items created through the cooking recipes have the same nutrition as rye (55/2/9), as expected.

8
Suggestions / Modding Wishlist
« on: January 03, 2018, 11:57:46 PM »
I thought I'd compile a list of things that would be useful (long-term) additions to the modding tools, along the lines of Rain's old list here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/351700/discussions/4/392183857628525494/

  • Time of year requirements for recipes.  Something like [MONTH: 5 6] to restrict an item being made from May to June.  I'd use this for things like birch-bark gathering (early Spring) or sheep shearing (Summer).
  • Weather requirements for recipes.  E.g., [WEATHER: sunny] for drying berries. I always like seeing weatherlore more useful!
  • Quality limits on outputs.  Something like [MAXQUALITY: 1] to prevent the produced item from being better than crude.  Or similarly, something broader than [noquality] like [QUALITY: 1] to make the output always crude.  This would be nice for primitive item crafting like easy cords.  I've got a recipe for cords from soaked branches, but I don't want them usable to make high quality items, so I want to make sure they're always low quality.  Right now I just have a massive %-100% quality modifier, but I still often produce decent or even fine cords from the recipe.
  • Item categorization for use in recipes.  Something like [IS:keyword] to define an item as a member of a preexisting or custom set.  So a recipe for drying berries that has [IS:Berries] that would allow the dried berries to be used in berry porridge.  Or custom items like [IS:Iron Ore] that would allow specifying {Iron Ore} in smelting recipes instead of using complicated regexes.
  • Custom tool preferences.  If I've got multiple tools of the same category, it'd be nice to specify that one is better suited than another.  E.g., I've got stone and iron hammers in my smithing mod.  Something like {Hammer} <Iron hammer> to make iron hammers perform better, even with the same qualities.
  • Cooking without a fire.  Something like [nofire] to allow cooking of foods without a fire, for things like drying berries or cracking bones for marrow and such.
  • Cooking without a pot.  E.g., [nopot] that removes the pot requirement at least for baked foods.
  • Nutrient modifications in cooked items.  Normally, the nutrients of the input food get used to automatically calculate the nutrition of the output food.  Customizing this based on the input items would be nice.  Something like [CARB_DIV: 0.5] to let roasting turnips make them more nutritious, or [PROTEIN_DIV: 2] for losses of nutrients during cooking.
  • Custom flavor text. [TEXT:Something immersive it says in the game text for flavor while you are doing a diy action]
  • Allow [SPOILAGE_DAYS:] in diy items.  Would like this for things like retting grasses or soaking branches for cords.

Anything else other modders have been hankering for?

9
Stories / Suli the Hermit
« on: November 07, 2017, 10:29:26 PM »
I'm playtesting some changes to my self-sufficiency mod and thought I'd make a story out of it and see just how self-sufficient I can make myself. 

Suli Reemilainen went out for a walk north of Reemi territory one autumn and found himself robbed, beaten, and left with almost nothing.  Vowing to forswear the company of men forever, he set out into the wilderness to make a living his own way.  He begins by taking stock of himself:

Without any great aptitude for any particular skill other than the bow, he has trained in trapping and tanning small game in his village, knows the basics of timbercraft and carpentry, and has of course some basic knowledge of sowing and reaping.  Likely he can survive through the winter on small game, hoping to set up a small field next spring.  His crafting knowledge gives him some hope of being able to forge some tools to make his life easier.

Unfortunately, the robbers were not merciful; among other smaller cuts and bruises, they broke his shoulder and ribs quite badly (71% injury!).  He found his broad knife nearby when he awoke, and the robbers must have been scared away while they stripped him, as all his clothes but his tunic remain, including a cloak and hood that should help him keep warm during the upcoming winter.

Shuffling off, he hopes to find some water and herbs he can use to treat his injuries, along with some berries or roots to sustain him until he can set up some snares for game.  As he walks towards the nearest river, a stag struts right in front of him, as if knowing he is unarmed and too weak to kill it.  Suli eyes the stag hungrily until it is out of sight.

Suli makes his way to the shores of a nearby lake.  Goldeneye, mallards, and grouse call constantly, and he sees signs of foxes and ermines that hunt the birds here.  The lake reeds along the shore offer the prospect of food for the next few weeks.  Suli decides to rest here and recover from his injuries while gathering food for the winter.  With the extent of his injuries, it takes him most of the day to erect a simple shelter to keep the rain off his back.  He builds a small fire and roasts some of the roots he gathered, thinking of all the work he has to do and wincing whenever he moves from his broken bones.

10
Not bugs / Lake reed too productive
« on: November 01, 2017, 02:19:16 AM »
The lake reed definition in flora_newherbs.txt has [ROOT_SIZE:XS].  On testing, it doesn't look like XS is a valid value here.  Instead, each lake reed root produces the same as if it were ROOT_SIZE:M, the default option.  This makes lake reeds much bigger than they should presumably be, and in practice gathering a bunch of reeds for flour and vegetables over the winter is very effective.  I dropped them down to ROOT_SIZE:S and ROOT_QUANTITY:1 in my own game to get it approximately aligned to what I figured was intended.

11
Suggestions / Tracks being covered by snow
« on: October 22, 2017, 12:38:37 AM »
One of those little things --- I've got a bunch of old forest reindeer tracks nearby my cabin from mid-autumn.  Seems very odd that months later, when everything's covered with a foot of snow, I can still see them fine.

Making snow cover tracks (and maybe rain decaying tracks?) would also make the weatherlore skill a little more useful.  Hunting during intermittent snow would be very difficult, since you couldn't keep a track on as the snow covered things up.  Hunting after the snow fell on a clear day would be your goal.

12
Bug reports / [grain] type plant always produce the same weight of grains
« on: October 02, 2017, 03:01:11 AM »
I've been playing with the plant modding and found an odd inconsistency. 

For most plants, when I want them to produce seeds, I can modify the weight of seeds produced with the SEED_VOLUME and SEED_SIZE properties, as follows:

pinch, S: 0.007358 lbs (e.g., turnip seeds)
fistful, S: 0.022075 lbs
pinch, M: 0.036792 lbs
pinch, L: 0.044150 lbs
fistful, M: 0.110375 lbs
fistful, L: 0.132450 lbs

Any plants with the type [grain] in the header line, however, always produce a unit of grains weighing 0.110375 lbs, equivalent to a fistful of medium seeds, regardless of how I set the properties.  You can see this with both barley and rye, both of which produce small fistfuls of grains, each of which weigh 0.110375 lbs.

13
Mod Releases / [3.70] URW sufficiency mod
« on: July 16, 2017, 11:26:49 PM »
Hi all, I've been working on a new sufficiency mod to add some helpful recipes for living in the wilds.  It's available on github at https://github.com/caethan/urw-sufficiency - just click the green "clone or download" button and download as a zip file.  It does write over some existing files (the encyclopedia and diy_glossary.txt) so it may not be compatible with all other mods.

A detailed description can be seen at the link, but it adds some basic ironworking and stone mining, adds a low-quality primitive cord recipe, new birch-bark crafting recipes, well-digging and road-building, some new simple recipes (drying berries/mushrooms, rendering fat, and baking hard biscuits).  There's some other stuff planned --- in particular spinning & weaving.  The new flax plant is in and available for planting, but nothing can be done with it other than eating its very nutritious seeds.

Feedback is appreciated; there's a list of issues there for things that I'd like to do in the future.

14
Modding / Quality detemination
« on: July 11, 2017, 11:56:58 PM »
I've been trying to figure out how the game decides what quality produced items are so I can better tune the %X% quality modifier in my mods.  Did a lot of testing, and here's some of my results summarized.  All of this was done with diy modded test items, so it might be different with cooking.

Both the base skill of the craftsman and the quality modifier affect the distribution of quality for items.  When a craftsman makes an item, there's a roll for how well they crafted the item, and there are four categories - two good and two bad.  The base skill of the craftsman determines what quality item is produced for each of those four categories.  They work like this, with the min base skill of 5% and max base skill of 95%:

Base SkillPoorBadGoodExcellent
5-9%CrudeCrudeCrudeRough
10-19%CrudeCrudeRoughRough
20-39%CrudeRoughDecentDecent
40-49%RoughRoughDecentFine
50-69%RoughDecentFineFine
70-89%RoughDecentFineMasterwork
90-95RoughCrudeMasterworkMasterwork

This table is independent of the quality modifier in each recipe.  That means there's a couple of natural breakpoints:  craftsmen need at least 20% skill to make decent items, 40% to make fine items, and 70% to make masterwork items.

Where the quality modifier for each recipe comes in is calculating how likely each of these categories is.  Add the modifier to the character's base skill and restrict it to be between 5% and 95%, which we'll call the adjusted skill.  The adjusted skill is the likelihood of getting a good or excellent roll when you craft.  One-fifth of those good or excellent rolls are excellent (rounded down).  Same way for the bad two categories:  100% minus your adjusted skill likelihood of a poor or bad result, with one-fifth of those rolls being poor (rounded down).  Then you look up in the table to transform those categories into actual item qualities.

As an example, suppose you're crafting with carpentry skill level 77% and making an item with quality modifier 30%.  The adjusted skill is 95% (77 + 30, rounded down to 95).  So 1% of the time(100 - 95 / 5), you'll make a rough item, 4% of the time a decent item, 19% a masterwork (95 / 5) and 76% a fine item.

15
Going through the flora files to play with modding new plants, I noticed a typo in one of the entries.  It looks like one of the effects for bogbean is misspelled as "anfi-inflammatory" instead of "anti-inflammatory".

.Bogbean.                   (3)  :106:             [grass]   
[NAME:Bogbean]
[TILEGFX:flo-bogbean]
[LEAF_VOLUME:fistful]
[LEAF_QUANTITY:1]
[LEAF_SIZE:M]
[ROOT_SIZE:S]
[ROOT_USE:cooked flour]
[REGION:northern western eastern southern]
[TERRAIN:spruce_mire open_mire]
[SYMBIOSIS:watery_soil]
[EFFECT_RAW:anfi-inflammatory appetizing tonic stomachic]
[SPROUT:5]
[MATURE:45]
[WITHER:9]
[CARB:40]
[FAT:3]
[PROTEIN:5]
[POPULATION:50]
[FREQUENCY:50]
[COMMONNESS:5]
[HERB_COMMON:northern]

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