Messages

1411

Modding / Re: Old mods

« on: December 25, 2017, 08:53:46 PM »

I've tried to package it up in the zip linked to here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hpg8bmi4xa4w15u/Buiodda%27s%20Crafts%2C%20Modified.zip?dl=0.

Edit: I just found that the antler comb recipe has to be changed to take "elk antler" rather than "stag antler" with 3.50b2 (That recipe is found in diy_p_Buiodda's boneworking.txt).

1412

Suggestions / Re: Rotting Warning

« on: December 25, 2017, 11:24:52 AM »

I'm a bit surprised about Buiodda's Crafting mod being the cause, as I haven't (and do not have) a problem with it. For the beta versions all I've done (I think) is to remove the bone and antler extractions in the mod as they're included in the beta itself. However, I've done some additional changes to the mod myself (in 3.40), but I don't think any of those should be responsible for things seeming to work correctly.

However, things not working properly with the mod and working properly without seems to be a rather clear indication something in it or its installation did mess things up.

When it comes to warnings, it would certainly make sense to add a message in the Log similar to the ones you get for laying nets for dehairing, as that process takes quite some time. If so, the report ought to state when the process will finish (it's something like 5 days for an elk skin, so it's a fair while). I don't have much of a problem with drying and smoking, as the products don't seem to take much or any harm from being uncollected for some time (apart from the dog eating some of it).
To help me remember I have my homestead close to water and my tanning site sufficiently close to the cellar that I can see if there are skins tanning or not when I go to eat, except when it's quite dark. The morning routine includes eating and taking care of any skins that are under process as some of the first activities. That usually jogs the memory sufficiently to allow me to remember to check skins for further processing each time I eat (even if it's dark), and to plan activities based on whether there's any skin preparation needed.

1413

Suggestions / Re: Rotting Warning

« on: December 24, 2017, 02:37:29 PM »

I've never been able to pick up anything that's in a passive process (cooking, drying, tanning, ...) so that's odd. I haven't paid close attention to how well time ready message correlate to the actual finishing time, but I've seen the same fire displaying two different messages at least.
My basic process for elk hides is:
- Skin/butcher at the killing site. Haul everything back to the homestead and dump the meat in the cellar. Do as much hide preparation I can before going to bed (sometimes none, sometimes cleaning only, usually first tanning stage).
- Wake up, continue tanning.
- Handle meat, next step of tanning if I can, otherwise sleep again.
- Tan, do other stuff. If I follow the normal routine this will be the grueling bonking stage.
- Meat processing takes the back seat, done only when hide processing isn't required.

I don't think I've had hides degrade any time due to time spent using that schedule (tanning ineptitude is another matter).

1414

Modding / Re: Old mods

« on: December 24, 2017, 02:06:19 PM »

I've got the Nerp Cooking mod and Buiodda's mod installed with the beta. I've modded both mods a bit:
- Njerp cooking mod: Rather minor enhancements to drying of berries and mushrooms.
- Buiodda's mod: I've got both the "original" as downloaded (and unchanged) and my modded version. The mods are (from memory), addition/extension of weapon salvaging (for reuse of the iron), and change of the skill used for a lot of skill checks to carpentry (turning it into more of "small handicraft") both because there's very little to train that skill on in a meaningful manner (an enormous pile of bows/bowls/... produced only for training purposes is not really meaningful), and because I wanted some of them to use a trainable skill (allowing superior results). In addition to that, I've removed antler/bone retrieval as that's included in the beta.  I believe I reduced the weight of the punt slightly because my character at the time was extremely small, and so could only carry Buiodda's version when the weather was warm enough to wear very minimal clothes. I also wanted a reindeer (or large dog, as it turned out) to be able to carry it, as the character lived in northern regions where there was no access to cows of burden (without traveling, which would need a punt...).

1415

Suggestions / Re: Rotting Warning

« on: December 24, 2017, 12:08:03 PM »

You need to process things in a timely manner, as Privateer said. Trying to pick things that are still processed up gives you information on when they will be ready, so you can check how long it's left (but you don't get that info by looking at them, so you have to go to the location).

It's not possible to warn you about rotting of meat (at least, and probably of furs as well) because there's a significant random factor involved, so each morning when the day ticks over there's a chance things will degrade, but there's also a chance it will not, so it's not known beforehand (You can see that clearly by having several different pieces of meat acquired at the same time that degrade at different rates. While cooking, for instance, left over partial pieces may degrade slower than the whole pieces it used to stack with, despite the stack being left in the cool cellar all the time, while the one used for cooking was kept in the inventory by the fire at least during the cooking process).

Also note that degradation happens in steps, so meat first goes stale, and fur/skin degrades one level. This means that by the time the skin rots it has already degraded in steps down to harsh.

1416

Gameplay questions / Re: Short Questions/Quick Answers

« on: December 23, 2017, 10:16:54 AM »

Harm to the neck affects the skin quality. I've one-shot killed small animals with an arrow through the neck, and the resultant carcass was of a degraded quality.

1417

Suggestions / Use quest markers to indicate locations asked about

« on: December 20, 2017, 06:11:09 PM »

If it's easy to implement, using quest area rings to indicate approximately where villages, caves, and lakes asked about are would be rather helpful. If so, the areas would be automatically removed when the feature is seen by the character.
If you're told about a feature again the basic implementation would just keep the original indication, while an enhanced version would add something along the lines of "(you feel you have heard about this <feature> before.)".

1418

Gameplay questions / Re: Short Questions/Quick Answers

« on: December 19, 2017, 10:58:01 AM »

The tool makes a large difference. A masterworks broad knife will increase the yield a lot. A hide takes damage if it's damaged, but I don't know if there are numbers under the hood, or if it's step based (i.e. anything that doesn't result in a reported carcass degradation is 100%). The only way to ensure the skin is completely unharmed is to have all the damage being dealt to the head/skull (neck is not good enough).
My current character has gotten a few superior quality bird leathers using a standard quality broad knife and a skill of something like 85, but most attempts result in lower quality, and I haven't had any complete success with any fur yet.
Also note that penalties probably affects the result, so fatigue, injury, and encumbrance probably all degrade the skill roll. I drop everything carried (not counting worn clothes) and let fatigue drop to zero before starting to skin "important" carcasses (I don't care much about birds). If nothing else, the subsequent butchering won't build up as much fatigue if you're unencumbered (which might allow you to actually move after butchering an elk).

1419

General Discussion / Re: Adding marriage - poll about how you find its priority

« on: December 18, 2017, 11:50:09 PM »

As Mati256 I find it a nice thing, but quite a few other things would be higher up on the agenda.

caius made a nice argument regarding the spouse's behavior, but I don't think "trophy wives" were a thing at the time. I certainly have nothing against resources spent on wooing and general upkeep resource consumption as such, but I'd definitely expect the spouse to be useful (but I assume players could deliberately refrain from making use of the spouse's capabilities to create a trophy spouse).

As mentioned, a good spouse system would probably need to build on a number of other new mechanics, such as e.g. tasks requiring, or at least greatly simplified through, the use of two people (with the ability to use hired help for those jobs. However, the hermit play style shouldn't be sacrificed in the process).
Spouse and spouse family quests/demands could improve things, but that in itself would probably be built on a broader village relation framework where messengers would seek you out to make requests rather than wait for you to show up (and the spouse would presumably ask to see the relatives from time to time, for instance). Obviously, village requests would only happen if you're on sufficiently good terms with them, and possibly only after accepting some kind of status (again, to protect the loner play style).

What I think this boils down to is an aimed chaotic development process where systems supportive of the family goal might be given a slightly higher priority than those not leading towards that goal, resulting in such processes being worked on a little more frequently than others.

Turning your homestead into a single character village with a spouse NPC inhabitant no more reactive than current village NPCs wouldn't really achieve much, in my view (in fact, turning it into a "real" village through the recruiting of "settlers" would probably be less boring).

Obviously, the above are my opinions, and not any kind of objective truth.

1420

General Discussion / Re: A lot of the cultures have nothing to trade?

« on: December 17, 2017, 10:23:25 PM »

As far as I've seen all the cultures have the bare basics, although they're rarer in the more remote cultures, so you should be able to get an axe in any culture provided you visit a sufficient number of villages.
If, for whatever reason, you find yourself unable to get hold of an axe you can make a stone axe (which is a really poor axe, but it allows you to do some things, although not all, e.g. not a paddle to get you off an island...). The next step would be to either kill a Njerp who has an axe or to mount an expedition to richer areas, which definitely is required if you're looking for masterworks everything. Obviously, an expedition requires something to trade with, which usually means hides.

You can build your homestead with any axe that's not a stone axe, but it's quite a lot slower with unsuitable types.

1421

Gameplay questions / Re: Does injury not related to the legs still slow/tire animals?

« on: December 17, 2017, 10:10:57 PM »

I believe players are slowed due to non leg injuries, so animals should be as well. However, the key to endurance hunting is to stress the animal so it runs (to build up fatigue), and do so often enough that it doesn't have time to recover in between being forced to run. At the same time, the player can't run constantly as that will slow the player down to a crawl.
The speed of the player is important, I think. A high speed player with a 7 km/h walking rate seems to be able to get elks and reindeer to run into the ground by walking (provided the tracking is sufficient), while my current 5 km/h player (about average) was thwarted by a reindeer who could recover by just walking away in more or less a straight line.
If you can corner the prey so it constantly runs back and forth along a river or lake shore it's fairly easy. If you can drive a calf away from its mother is should be reasonably easy as well, as the calf should try to return towards the mother, and if your player is in between to cause it to run again you may be able to bring it down reasonably quickly, and the same goes for reindeer in a herd, as they try to return to the herd, rather than walk away from you in a straight line.

I don't think eye sight affects your assessment of the prey's status: I think you get it all if you're able to see it (and I think eye sight only affects detection).

I'd suggest you take another look at your new character's speed stat (or just look a the walking speed), as I suspect a 3 km/h slowpoke would have trouble endurance hunting anything not hemmed in. If the character has poor speed, you may consider changing the strategy (e.g. towards traps).

Terrain matters as well, of course. Spruce infested forest is a pain due to the poor visibility, so you're often reduced to tracking rather than moving directly towards the target when it comes into what should be visual range again, giving it more time to recover before you scare it into running again.

1422

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: NPCs opening doors, farm animals fleeing

« on: December 17, 2017, 10:01:26 AM »

You can build your stable around a tree (or several trees), obviously leaving that tile without a floor/roof, and tie your animals to the tree(s). It's a bit of an immersion breaker as well, but probably better than having to climb a fence.

1423

Suggestions / Re: Horn from bulls

« on: December 16, 2017, 02:56:50 PM »

I HOPE you're thinking of drinking horns, rather than the stupidity of trying to mount drinking horns on helmets (yes, there are iron age ceremonial helmets with stag or reindeer horns on them, but those aren't intended for combat).

In the mean time (provided you don't intend to go the helmet route) you can use Buiodda's 3.40 mod idea of how to get elk horns.

1424

Suggestions / Re: Make Hunting on Skis more Viable

« on: December 15, 2017, 02:08:13 PM »

I haven't reached skiing yet with the beta adjustments, so I can't comment on those (for the stable version I gave up on skiing as I found the increased compounded endurance penalty from the extra weight of the skis caused skiing to be worse than walking after only a kilometer or two). I hope the adjustments will make skiing the better option.

A significant different between the old time/in game ski stick and modern ones is that the old version used only a single long stick (a bit like a sesta) rather than the current day meter long pair of slender thingies, so to quickly shift from a ski pole to an arrow you'd either have to release the pole (causing it to fall to the ground and potentially scare the prey), stick it upright into the snow (similar issue), or lean it against your body or a tree (with a risk of it sliding and falling, potentially knocking at your bow in the process for the body case). On the other hand, the noise you made skiing up to that position ought to be louder than sticking the pole into the snow...

So far I've rarely used bows to hunt animals (bows are extremely useful when "hunting" marauding Njerps, though [with bow and ski stick mismanagement leading to the death of one of my characters]), as I tend to endurance hunt them (and I usually fail with predators, but I usually avoid actively hunting those, as they're dangerous [which goes for the piggies as well]).

I think I've had some success with javelins, although I tend to avoid that as well, as it damages the skin, and endurance hunting has worked well.

I guess it very much depends on which ski hunting method you use. If you ski around and suddenly see a suitable prey at a short distance (possibly by zooming in) you may have to react quickly and probably use javelins. If you try to sneak up on prey they shouldn't bolt just because you're stopping. However, moving towards them and decide to attack as a reaction to them bolting is probably not the best tactic (as opposed to moving towards them, saying: this is close enough and then shift to the bow).

Open terrain probably favors bow and arrow over javelin.

A lot of rambling of dubious value...

1425

General Discussion / Re: Stop and resume a task/craft?

« on: December 13, 2017, 10:48:38 PM »

More tasks should eventually be interruptible & resumable, but few are currently. It can be noted that those that can be interrupted will automatically pause the task when you're too tired (due to fatigue and/or needing to sleep) while those that can not will continue the task until it's finished, at which time your character immediately falls asleep if too exhausted (which is annoying when the extremely long and heavy tanning task also leaves the character extremely hungry, losing further nutrition levels during the sleep).
Some tasks will refuse to start at all if they would take too long (typically involving tools unsuitable for the task, such as e.g. stone axes), and some, which are borderline cases, will start only if the duration roll was favorable.