UnReal World > Suggestions

Live fish sometimes visible in nearby water

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Buoidda:
Sami is improving fishing! Time to talk about fishing, people!

Spoiler: Personal rambling • show
None of you know, but I too aspired to become a roguelike coder once upon a time. Of something not totally unlike Urw. But I decided it was too much work. Later I began making crafts for a living, hunting and fishing in real life, regularily helping out with reindeers too. I come from a family of fishermen-craftsmen. (I'm saying this because I've been besserwissering around a lot here on the forums lately. So take this as a sort of claim I know something about what I blab about. I'm not always right, though, and happy to admit it when I'm not.)

Anyway, here is a visage of what I envisioned fishing to be in that game of mine:
1. pic) fish is splashing
2. pic) the character makes a successful spot check
3. pic) the character carefully wades into striking range
4. pic) notice how fish changes to its proper color when caught


I've been carrying this mental image for two decades.  I had to write this somewhere to finally let go of this persisting memory. Thank you for reading.

I read about Sami improving angling code, (https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=5898.0)
so this topic jumped in urgency.

My suggestions:
- (provided the fishing rod will be craftable as Sami suggests)
- EDIT: add splashing sounds/messages to notify the character of fish presence
- it would be stupendously cool to sometimes spot big fish in water (when very close, next tile or at most two tiles away)
- this would possibly be the only way to club/spear/tridentify fish
- this form of fishing could require usually lot of moving around / along the edge of ice / wading
- only in certain places and times of the year fish would be so abundant that just standing and waiting in correct place would be good
- EDIT: I'm not suggesting big fish would be modeled as 'true/persisting' animals, because that would be unnecessarily heavy implementation

No actual change, but considering what I suggested
- smaller fish wouldn't be seen like above (or even modelled)
- with fishing rod one could catch also those smaller fish and in deep water catch big fish without seeing them (like it is now)
- EDIT: one could also wait by a spot and lash out automatically the instant a fish is seen (like fishing is now)

Additional ideas:
- imagine having to compete with bears for that spot in rapids, during salmon run (this might be just an Alaskan thing ;D)
- one traditional way of catching pike and burbot is kolkkaus, stunning. This works only when the water first freezes in autumn and there is no snow. The fish is near and under the ice. If there's not enough sunlight one needs a torch to find them. One hits the ice with an axe and the fish is stunned for a moment, enough to make a hole in the ice (3cm clear ice) and grab the fish. I didn't find proper material quickly, but at least this conversation in Finnish: http://kalassa.net/keskustelut/index.php?topic=832.0

PALU:
I have a problem with the main suggestion because it seems to introduce a lot of player tedium: rather than active fishing until tired for 4 days to catch a fish you'd have to actively run around for 4 days to catch that same fish. I'd prefer to have the activity abstracted to something akin to the current system.
Actively looking for fish to catch seems to be somewhat similar to hunting for bear pipe leaves along rivers and lakes, but rather than looking for static targets you look for mobile ones, so you move back and forth rather than covering new territory. I'm not a fan of the bear pipe leaf quest because it's so tedious, and that still takes only a few days...
Thus, my current verdict is that it's a very nice mechanic, but I don't think it will work well as a game play component.

I don't think the brown bears on the right side of the pond are quite as into salmon fishing as the leftpondian ones, even though I think it happens, but, on the other hand, if you've found a good club fishing spot, especially if you've also caught some fish, it would make sense that they may be around to get their share and get attracted to that wonderful smell (although it being tainted by the repulsive human one counters it, of course). Hm, come to think of it, I suspect bears would prefer fords to normal rapids, given that they'd be able to get closer to the fish. Logically, those places ought to be good fishing spots only during the migration period, but that doesn't absolutely have to be modeled by the game.

Burbut clubbing makes sense. Given its simplicity, there's no reason it wouldn't have been practiced during UrW times. The gameplay issue I see there is to communicate to the player when the conditions are suitable (ice thin enough and snow free enough to be seen through, but yet thick enough to to safely support your weight (and all that fish you catch!) throughout the day. I don't know if there are any efforts made to clear the ice of snow in areas to facilitate burbut detection in real life, but if that's the case, such an effort would require the ability to use a shovel to clear away the snow in, what I would expect, would be a fairly large area (and snow clearing isn't a feature, currently).

Buoidda:
Yes, so called strike fishing (club/spear etc) would be more tedious. I agree on that. But since Sami is going to make the lot better fishing item fishing rod craftable by the player, henceforth strike fishing would be less useful anyway and more used as an attack of opportunity (doing smth else, a bear pipe quest, maybe? and seeing a big fish) and special occasions (salmon run).

This suggestion would bring another way of fishing to urw, with the excitement of trying to sneak up to the big catch and not spooking it. It wouldn't take away the old one completely, as practised with the fishing rod.

Clearing the snow off the ice would be probably too much work for the mere chance to find any fish.

Good point about fords, btw. Maybe better for people too.

Privateer:
 I look forward to this update with great anticipation. I would like to see baiting become a larger part of the "process" Standing in a spot for 3+ hours without stopping to check/change something (unless you catch fish). I think Sami mentioned some diversity of baiting options, loosing bait should also be fairly common over time. Maybe more 'tedium' in the way of shorter 'tasks' like 1 hr max before player direction required (unless fish are caught). Though shortening the timer would also lessen cold dangers.


 Now this is a tree chopping game, I have quite a few 'fishing' games so I don't think any over the top changes are appropriate.
Making rudimentary fishing gear ie gorge, or trap should be possible, though not as affective/efficient as proper gear.

PALU:
If you've got a fishing rod I can't see much point in spearing/clubbing fish as a normal fishing method (check spots the like to hide in?), but, as mentioned, attacks of opportunity might be useful. One spear fishing technique that's been used (although I don't know how far back) is a metal basket with a fire in it for trident fishing during night time.

There's still the issue of a starting character, as chord is tricky to get hold of unless you start at the right time of year (I've just had a character starting in spring stranded on a single tile island. It took about a month before the first bird was caught, so the only thing available was pike. Now, spring is a good time for bark, so I did get bark ropes early (allowing for pike bashing from a raft), but if you start in autumn or winter things get trickier).

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