Messages

571

Suggestions / Re: Roads and creeks, brooks. Springs!

« on: May 07, 2020, 10:20:14 PM »

How do you know the characters don't trip or slip? You're simply not notified about the trivial mishaps, but falling into (deep) water wouldn't be trivial (in particular if you managed to bang your head on the log while falling), nor would falling from a cliff face (which characters currently don't try to scale on their own, given that there are walkable paths).

Regarding chasing, I meant the prey should cross, rather than being blocked as per the current lake/river behavior.

572

Suggestions / Re: Roads and creeks, brooks. Springs!

« on: May 07, 2020, 02:55:59 PM »

On the technical side you could take a look at how Dwarf Fortress (DF) handles rivers.

At most one river per world tile, but allowing other rivers to join that river (bifurcations are not generated, although they can be created by hacking the structure). Rivers have a width (in 2*2 meter in-game tiles) that can gradually increase as it flows downriver and gathers more water (from rain and joining rivers). They enter a world tile at specific in-game tile indices (i.e. x1 - x2, or y1 - y2) and exits them similarly, allowing them to enter on an X side and leave through a Y side.
The path the river takes is generated according to some algorithm that doesn't seem to generate undulations (which is a deficiency, of course), but both the world scale and the in-game scale rivers look reasonably realistic (the lack of undulation is most noticeable at the intermediate level, where the game spends only a small amount of time).

A DF river width can be from 1 to 48 in-game tiles (because the level between in-game tiles and world tiles is 48*48 in-game tiles).

That's some input on the technical side. However, the game play implications are probably trickier to deal with than the purely technical side (although memory management is an issue that always has to be dealt with, of course).

573

Suggestions / Re: Roads and creeks, brooks. Springs!

« on: May 07, 2020, 10:05:42 AM »

If you have to swim it isn't shallow enough to ford...

These water features would have a very significant effect on game play:
- More or less constantly getting wet unless they're frozen over.
- They would affect the interaction between the local map and the overland map, as you can pass them easily on the latter (there are some exploits currently available with the overland map that are similar in nature).
- Animals would have to "learn" how to deal with these features, i.e. cross them, or hunting will become far too easy.

574

Suggestions / Re: family ties in the village?

« on: May 03, 2020, 02:39:26 PM »

Actually, all the kids are boys, and all the old people are men (unless the women are ageless, so you can't see that they're actually old).

I agree that fleshing this out would be a useful addition along the path towards PC families.

575

Gameplay questions / Re: bunch of essental herbal blend?

« on: May 01, 2020, 08:37:13 PM »

As mentioned, they're healing herb mixtures. I believe they're good for wounds treatment (that's what I use them for, apart from occasionally eating them accidentally [with no ill effect]). The name is generated, and even if the name is the same they don't stack, but as far as I know they're functionally equivalent.

576

Gameplay questions / Re: Hearing range?

« on: April 30, 2020, 09:11:45 AM »

I don't think UrW trees fall spontaneously, and trees felled by woodsmen/Njerps are described as hearing a tree fall from <direction>.

577

Gameplay questions / Re: bow skill improvement

« on: April 29, 2020, 11:36:01 PM »

I don't use that method, but it ought to be possible to fire at the ground where there's an uphill slope so misses won't go as far. Aiming at a target (such as a tree or the wall of your cabin) results in a very high breakage rate, which isn't practical (I don't think stones count as arrow breaking targets, but haven't tried to test if they are).

I think I've seen somewhere that firing at dead targets require the distance to be at least 5 tile, though I can't confirm if it's correct.

The gamey method I use is to fire blunt arrows at prey caught in bear traps, aiming for the head.

Regardless of method, increasing weapon skills is a very slow process, especially when above 90% (I've definitely had several cases of more than 600 consecutive failures to increase skills at that level, although that was dodge and shield use)

578

Gameplay questions / Re: Hearing range?

« on: April 29, 2020, 11:27:15 PM »

As far as I've been able to determine, it's either a trap or an animal brought down by a bird of prey (although I guess a hunter might be able to do that as well now: at least I've found arrows fired by Njerps, but I don't know if they target birds).

579

Suggestions / Re: Some cooking and modding improvements?

« on: April 28, 2020, 06:12:40 PM »

Pot as the second item: The logical reason would be that you bring the pot and then add items to it. The game play reason would be all the times you (or at least I) carefully select the ingredients, only to find that I'd forgotten to fetch the pot, and so has to go through the whole process again.

580

Suggestions / Re: Chop the salmon for dogs

« on: April 28, 2020, 05:57:12 PM »

Another use for chopping up fish would be to be able to actually thank the spirits when you get a single, but big, fish, without sacrificing the whole fish (and days used to catch it).

581

Suggestions / Re: Wishlist

« on: April 28, 2020, 05:30:57 PM »

I have a creature target use case for thrown non weapon (i.e. food): feeding your dogs on a daily basis. I guess you COULD abuse it by starting combat by throwing a (heavy) salmon at an enemy, but I don't think it would be very effective, and your salmon supply would run out fast...

Loading beasts of burden with large stacks splits them. I think it's something like 250 to each stack (I've had this issue with dried meat used for payment to robber quest posse members).

582

Suggestions / Re: Pause for spacebar when you fall through the ice

« on: April 23, 2020, 10:28:27 AM »

To try to save the character, drop EVERYTHING carried and not worn except a couple of knives that ought to be wielded to increase the chance of getting up onto the ice. Not only does it increase the chance that the ice may support the character if you manage to crawl up onto it (and don't stand up: crawl to the shore to spread the pressure over a larger area), but it also lowers the fatigue buildup rate and the chance to actually get out.

You may decide it's better to try to swim back than to try to get up onto the ice, but you definitely should lighten the load in that case as well.

583

Gameplay questions / Re: Combat system

« on: April 23, 2020, 10:20:55 AM »

As mentioned above, penalties are brutal. Being heavily encumbered (e.g. by armor or just stuff hauled around in case you need it) takes a toll on your success chances. In addition to that, heavy encumbrance also increases the rate at you gain fatigue significantly, which adds another penalty, and getting injured (doesn't matter if it was a lucky shot or not: the injury is there anyway) adds additional penalties. Through this, you can quickly have your success skill drop to the minimum, eventually making it impossible to move, and then pass out from the lightest of injuries.

Unless your character is a maximum strength giant Kaumo, you need to balance the protection of your armor against the encumbrance/fatigue rate of it, and you should drop all carried equipment you don't need in the fight (excluding at least bow and possibly arrows, as enemies can pick those up and use them against you).

584

General Discussion / Re: Why is the spirit of the forest upset with me?

« on: April 22, 2020, 06:19:41 PM »

I recently found that setting and resetting traps a lot (which I tend to do while waiting for fatigue to wear of and train the trapping skill rather than just waste time) can also tick him off.

Sleeping on roads also gives nightmares.

585

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: Bloodscrapes disappeared on reloading

« on: April 22, 2020, 02:29:11 PM »

They definitely should be. You should be able to save UrW to take care of something else and return to continue, even if it was in the middle of a chase of a wounded animal.