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Topics - Signatus

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Modding / Improving Fennec's random plant generator
« on: January 22, 2019, 04:15:39 PM »
I was thinking about this and I think that Fennec's plant generator has a lot of extra potential in it. I'd like to share with you all my ideas pn how to improve it.

I don't really know how they did it do, since there's no source. @fennecfoxx , would you mind sharing it? I can program in java so surely something I'd be able to use.

As far as I see it, it's just creating a certain number of plants with the herbs getting special traits. Berries and crops get none. They do have random names and get semi-random values for nutrition and whatnot.

However, this can be a bit chaotic and create combinations of plants that make no sense or don't cover the range of possibilities so well. So a good idea might be creating some procedural or hardcoded "plant types". These could be things like medicinal, threadable, grindable, shamanic, poisonous, etc. A certain minimum number of plants with these traits must be available. So you'll always get at least one edible plant to make flour wit or to get high, to make threads (even if inedible), etc.

It should also balance the occurrence of plants such that north/south/east/west has a certain minimum of herbs/berries/shrooms/crops while still leaving some space for randomness.

These settings should be editable, to be able to fine tune the results to what you want (almost all berries are poisonous? Go for it!)

There should probably be some berries or mushrooms available throughout winter, even if only in certain areas. At least 2 types seems appropriate but could be slightly randomized.

As for crops, one of the problems is the already usable plants not being included or available. I see a way around this along with the plant types mentioned above. We could have similarly named plants (black-nettle, marsh-flax, etc) which could then be equally soaked or processed by changing the recipe to {*nettle} or even stuff like {Retted *nettle}, which along with names like "Fibre from X" and "Linen from X" could make the material persist through to the clothing name.

Crops could alsk be created along a template (random or not, with random deviations, so that all e.g. "foobars" would have roughly the same properties, with the chance of random changes. Maybe if the base template is edible each new one of that type can have a 5% of being poisonous, 1% deadly. So if you know the plant's base name/type but don't have full knowledge of, say, "spiny foobar", you might be taking a risk by consuming it even if all the other foobars are okay.

Along with this is the possibility of making some dye, which does seem to have existed in iron age finland. One approach is to use a fixed name plant, "dyeplant - red", and create some cooking recipes (plenty of space there) for make dye out of it. This would take one recipe using {Dyeplant - *} input. The other approach involves randomly named plants from which you can extract colored dyes. This would have to procedurally make recipes for each.

Dyes could be called via {Dye - *} and use the last word. Items should probably be dyed at the source recipe to save space though, but I guess the cooking menu could be used for all the clothing dying if necessary. It doesn't require fire nor a pot if you don't boil anything. Kludgy, though.

Some special and rare medicinal/stimulant plants could be sprinkled in to make things more interesting.

Lastly, and with the empty cooking space in mind, perhaps procedurally create recipes that call for specific plants/ingredients but which will have a higher value of nutrition than the sum of its components. This represents the cooking releasing ingredients, and perhaps specific herbs and ingredients complementing each other.

This would make you have to use the specific ingredients in order to benefit, which might not be easy. I guess the recipes could have "regional" dishes with herbs from the area (maybe some archetypes can be used, like "Northern porridge/soup") but also some "global" combinations to spice it up. Perhaps the global ones, being harder to gather, would have an even higher nutrition.

What do you think about these ideas?

2
Mod Releases / Making salt out of sea water
« on: January 20, 2019, 10:22:00 PM »
Hey everyone, I've been testing for a way to make salt out of sea water. Sea water has at least 3% salt, so anyone can boil it in a pot and get at least SOME salt. Perhaps it's not as high quality as the ones salt farmers create, but still, it's salt. This surely held true during the iron age.

So I researched a bit in order to make a simple addition that makes you capable of making salt yourself. You'll need to get the water from the sea, of course, and you'll need a pot that will become unusable for 5 days. This could help balancing it, though anyway you'll only get 0.2 lbs per full pot of water. Could be changed to {*pot} to free the pot for other use, and removing the [boil] tag. Unsure how that would work with the weighing. You should also be able to drink the water

Code: [Select]
// Salt-making

// Collecting sea-water simply requires being at a sea tile and having a container
// Weight set to 1, but batches allow various amounts to be made
// Being in the cookery menu makes it not stack properly, but it should be put in a container anyway
// It will appear at your feet
//
.Collect sea-water. "Hunting horn" [effort:0] [phys:hands] *COOKERY* [noquality] /1/ [patch:20]
{[TERRAIN:sea]} 'Be at sea'
{[NEARBY_TILE:water]} 'Be near water'
{Container}
[NAME:Sea-water]
[WEIGHT:1]
[WATER:100]

// Sea-water consists of about 3.5% salt, +/- 0.5%
// Water in the Baltic has much lower salinity than the average, though, so
// You can make exactly 0.06 lb of salt with 6 lbs of sea-water (1%)
//
// Process has to be tended and the water stirred, I set it at 8 minutes per batch (48 minutes per full pot)
// Drying the salt can take days or weeks, so I set it at 5 days for now
//
// A patch of 50 takes 6h40m (and 5 days) to prepare, uses up 50 lbs of sea-water and yields 0.5 lb of salt
//
// Sea-water is 1 lb to allow for smaller batches, but yielding same percentage of salt in the end
//
// Your pot will not be unusable while it prepares
//
.Boil seawater for salt. "Salt" [effort:0] *COOKERY* [noquality] /8/ \5d\ [patch:50]
{Sea-water} #1.0# [patchwise] [remove] 'As much sea-water as possible'
{*pot} '+for boiling the water'
{Board} '+for laying salt out to dry
[WEIGHT:0.01]
[NAME:Salt]

Probably not very lucrative, but at least you can get some of it!

Edit: was missing a [patchwise] tag

For further reference, a single pike takes 0.66 lbs of salt to salt (heh). That's roughly 20 lbs of sea water. Salting is going to be very hard for an inland character without trading or water "mining" expeditions. A coastal character, on the other hand, could somewhat easily make some, though.

UPDATE: changed yield to 1% and no longer boils the water

3
Modding / Creating custom plants and herbs
« on: December 29, 2018, 08:51:39 AM »
Does anyone know if it's at all possible to make a recipe that creates a plant or herb? For instance, a .Hemp. recipe that creates a single hemp plant. I've been fiddling around with it but am unable to even get the recipe to appear in the menus...

I've been able to make vanilla stuff (nettle, for instance) but my custom plant is not being created at all. Here's the code:

.Pinesalve.     (1)    [grass]
[NAME:Pinesalve]
[TILEGFX:flo-nettle]
[LEAF_SIZE:L]
[LEAF_VOLUME:bunch]
[REGION:eastern western]
[TERRAIN:grove meadow settlement clearing]
[CARB:0]
[FAT:0]
[PROTEIN:0]
[EFFECT_RAW:antiseptic astringent anti-microbial anti-inflammatory]
[POPULATION:0]
[FREQUENCY:0]
[COMMONNESS:0]
[HERB_KNOWN:all]

I've tried changing the 0s to 1s, to no avail.

EDIT: I created a new character and now it works, so that explains it  :P

4
Off-topic / A thank you and an apology to Sami and Erkka
« on: December 24, 2018, 05:03:25 PM »
Hello, everyone! I think now is as good a time as any to present myself and send a message that I've been meaning to send for a while.

I've know this game for almost a decade, from about the time I learned about Dwarf Fortress and roguelikes as a genre. Unfortunately, at the time the game was not free (was it 3.14? Almost sure it was) and I was limited to the demo. Since I didn't really have a way to pay for it and it was kinda expensive, I couldn't really explore the game's depth.

I have a vague recollection of being on IRC, probably on a roguelike or even the URW channel and essentially bitching about the fact that this business model prevented me from actually exploring the game outside the narrow scope of the demo, which would probably make me less likely to actually shell out the money.

In the midst of this I made some silly arguments, including saying that the game was barely updated and there were quite a few features missing. Which there were, but the game was still being updated. I suggested that making it free would make it open to much more people and might even generate more revenue for the devs. It does seem that the game has become more well known and got some more activity in the community, but I can't speak for the revenue.

That being said, and considering the game went free on version 3.15, I owe Sami and Erkka a formal apology and a thanks. I was a jerk, if only because of the way I expressed my discontent at that time. You clearly deserve recognition for all the work you have put into this simulation, and it keeps getting better.

Unfortunately life keeps kicking me in the balls and I'm not in a position to even donate €10 right now, but you have been added to my permanent mental note (alongside Dwarf Fortress) reminding me to properly reward you for all the fun and wasted hours on something you created and developed over so long.

Thank you for all the work you put into this, and keep at it. You're great!

Edit: I've gotten the itch to play again after a while (and a lot changed since 3.23!) after I suggested URW to a co-worker who's into roguelikes/survival games. They were impressed, of course :) it's quite the gaming gem you have here!

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