Tracking Wildlife

[Lookstothestars]

Second suggestion i make today, but i feel like it's an important one and i haven't seen it being suggested yet.

I feel like tracking wildlife, however faint the tracks that you can follow are, could improve the hunting experience immensely. It exists a little bit if you look at dead animals and see that they were killed by another creature, but that only helps so much in avoiding wolfs and bears. A different user already suggested more complex animal behaviour so i won't reiterate what they have said and i 100% agree with them, especially considering how animals act in real life. And before you argue lore - lore is important to me ... and it's not an excuse for bad or frustrating features. Having said that, hunting animals like rabbits, deers or boars or perhaps horses, or cows once they've been added could be improved with tracking mechanics. It happened to me quite a lot that when i hunted a boar or a deer in the woods i simply just lost it because it disappeared in the bush work. I immediatly want to say that that is fine, that can happen and should happen. Hunting isn't just you getting out into the forest and coming back with piles of meat, there has to be challenges, i get that, but i feel like the game could reward you for paying attention to animals footprints, maybe piles of excrament, etc. to help you find and hunt down that one deer in the winter to sustain you for a couple of days, especially with how TERRIBLE the crude bow and arrows are for hunters. Tracking could make that terrible bow actually useful (I'm not salty at all that hunters get a terrible starting bow and blackguards get a great, late game sword. Not at all salty :P). If they added better stealth mechanics too, i would even be fine with them making animals more attentive and scared of the player, making hunting more difficult except of course if the player understands the tracking mechanics.

I hope this suggestion makes sense and my train of thought was able to be followed thouroughly. :3

[Tom Cantine]

This is something I too would love, especially in the winter when I see critters tromping through the snow across a frozen lake. They should definitely leave a trail. Also, SERAPHS should leave a trail, too, so you can retrace your steps, or locate your friend who was just here a minute ago, without the artificial convenience of the minimap.

I know there's something called the "decor layer" which is how things like wallpaper and rush mats are applied, so in principle there could be footprint overlays for different species, but you'd want them to disappear over time, and having thousands of these things all over the landscape might get a bit laggy. 

Wounded animals should leave blood trails.

Another, perhaps subtler clue, would be to just automatically lower the grass level by one whenever any large enough mob (including the player) walks over it. Or create a couple of alternate "trampled" forms of grass which grow back into their untrampled form by the same code grass grows normally. And I often see mobs who haven't noticed me yet resting on the ground; a compressed bed of grass where this happens would be another nice marker.

Actually, why not put animals to work maintaining the environment simulation? Wild crops, berry bushes, and most flowers don't respawn after you pick them, and new trees don't grow unless you plant them yourself. But many plants in the real world actually rely on having their seeds deposited in the droppings of animals who eat their fruit. So why not have animal mobs rarely place scat objects that are essentially planted seeds for some appropriate plant. 

 

[LadyWYT]

On 5/17/2025 at 12:11 PM, Tom Cantine said:

Actually, why not put animals to work maintaining the environment simulation? Wild crops, berry bushes, and most flowers don't respawn after you pick them, and new trees don't grow unless you plant them yourself. But many plants in the real world actually rely on having their seeds deposited in the droppings of animals who eat their fruit. So why not have animal mobs rarely place scat objects that are essentially planted seeds for some appropriate plant. 

Yes please. Not only does it make the world more dynamic, but it also gives you a good reason not to hunt everything in the near vicinity to extinction.

On 5/17/2025 at 12:11 PM, Tom Cantine said:

I know there's something called the "decor layer" which is how things like wallpaper and rush mats are applied, so in principle there could be footprint overlays for different species, but you'd want them to disappear over time, and having thousands of these things all over the landscape might get a bit laggy. 

I wonder if it's feasible to make some sort of "tracking device", as in not an actual device but rather something that lets you enter a "tracking mode" so you can see various clues you couldn't otherwise find, similar to the different modes on a propick. Alternatively, there's the way Hunterborn in Skyrim handled it--made a specific ability you could use that would produce a random result based on wildife nearby. Since we already had something of an ability mechanic introduced in chapter two of the story, I suppose you could repurpose that concept into a general ability you have at your disposal whenever. That being said...knowing what's in the general vicinity doesn't tell you where exactly the creature is hiding.

On 5/15/2025 at 11:40 AM, Lookstothestars said:

Hunting isn't just you getting out into the forest and coming back with piles of meat, there has to be challenges, i get that, but i feel like the game could reward you for paying attention to animals footprints, maybe piles of excrament, etc. to help you find and hunt down that one deer in the winter to sustain you for a couple of days, especially with how TERRIBLE the crude bow and arrows are for hunters.

Fair, but I would also note that outside of a specific challenge you made for yourself, you shouldn't really have to rely on hunting to get you through the winter. Livestock is a good, safe source of meat/eggs, assuming you took the time to acquire some critters. Hunting is easier to do in the summer/fall and yields a bit more for the effort, and what you don't eat at the time can be easily preserved in crocks or with salt. Likewise, hunters should have access to something better than a crude bow and arrows by wintertime as well.

On 5/15/2025 at 11:40 AM, Lookstothestars said:

Tracking could make that terrible bow actually useful (I'm not salty at all that hunters get a terrible starting bow and blackguards get a great, late game sword. Not at all salty :P).

I don't think tracking solves the crude bow/arrow "problem" either. The crude bow and arrows aren't meant to be good; they're just a cheap option for hunters in the earliest part of the game if you want to use a bow and arrows specifically. The advantage to it is that it's cheap(you don't need twine) and allows many more shots than a spear when your factor in inventory space.

Overall, I like the concept of tracking--it would add an extra level of detail in the world. I'm not entirely sure how one implements more complex/dynamic tracking signs though, without also eating through a lot of processing. One thing I would note though--if you can track creatures, some creatures should be able to track you as well. Chiefly, if you go leaving a trail of edible items lying around, perhaps it may attract the attention of nearby predators.

[Lookstothestars]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't think tracking solves the crude bow/arrow "problem" either. The crude bow and arrows aren't meant to be good; they're just a cheap option for hunters in the earliest part of the game if you want to use a bow and arrows specifically. The advantage to it is that it's cheap(you don't need twine) and allows many more shots than a spear when your factor in inventory space.

I get that. I like the idea of a crude bow and with better arrows (mainly regular ones using feathers) it does become an option for me early game. But considering the amount of arrows you have to use to hunt down big game it just isn't really an option for me, but that might just be my play style. Like, to have a crude bow and crude arrows you use two inventory slots. Even for small game you have to hit multiple times with crude arrows to kill it. If you use those same two inventory slots for spears, you can throw one spear and if you miss, considering you are good with ranged weapons, you'll hit on the second time and definitely kill your target (as long as it's small game). To be fair, the animal AI doesn't register a miss from a ranged weapon, but even if it would this would be a debuff for all ranged weapons, not only spears. And well, for big game the same mostly applies. I have ingrained into my memory that boars take three spear throws and so having three spears with me i can throw, while using one more inventory space, is still better to me than using crude arrows that easily break and barely do any damage. You could say, that because they use less flint they are less resource intensive, but considering sticks only become an easily obtainable resource once you have shears (mainly because you want to use your time more wisely than gathering sticks) crude arrows are, from my opinion also resource intensive. But again, might just be my opinion. I could've easily missed something. On that note, i would really enjoy a crossbow recipe for Hunters. I like crossbows (this is biased :P).
 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Overall, I like the concept of tracking--it would add an extra level of detail in the world. I'm not entirely sure how one implements more complex/dynamic tracking signs though, without also eating through a lot of processing. One thing I would note though--if you can track creatures, some creatures should be able to track you as well. Chiefly, if you go leaving a trail of edible items lying around, perhaps it may attract the attention of nearby predators.

I actually like the idea of creatures being able to track you too, i didn't even think about that. Maybe some monsters too? I have my opinions about the Monster spawning system in the game, i think it could be refined, but that's a whole other post in itself, but i like the idea of a shiver (idk, it fits them), or a whole new monster type to follow your scent out of a cave and bringing with it a whole swarm of ... rust monsters? Wait, do the enemies from the rust world have a unified name? Rusties? Desolates? Anyways, well yeah that, because maybe you hear it sniff around in a cave so you realise, you have to find and slay it, otherwise you'll have to defend your base from a horde of monsters. Idk, could be cool :3

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I wonder if it's feasible to make some sort of "tracking device", as in not an actual device but rather something that lets you enter a "tracking mode" so you can see various clues you couldn't otherwise find, similar to the different modes on a propick. Alternatively, there's the way Hunterborn in Skyrim handled it--made a specific ability you could use that would produce a random result based on wildife nearby. Since we already had something of an ability mechanic introduced in chapter two of the story, I suppose you could repurpose that concept into a general ability you have at your disposal whenever. That being said...knowing what's in the general vicinity doesn't tell you where exactly the creature is hiding.

I would argue a tracking device to make it easier to track animals or even enable other classes to do so and maybe an ability for hunters to track wildlife (though i feel like this could make Hunters a pretty strong class, at least for singleplayer. In multiplayer i see less of an issue because a good hunter makes the entire village happier). 

On 5/17/2025 at 7:11 PM, Tom Cantine said:

Actually, why not put animals to work maintaining the environment simulation? Wild crops, berry bushes, and most flowers don't respawn after you pick them, and new trees don't grow unless you plant them yourself. But many plants in the real world actually rely on having their seeds deposited in the droppings of animals who eat their fruit. So why not have animal mobs rarely place scat objects that are essentially planted seeds for some appropriate plant.

I can only agree with LadyWYT on this point of yours. Having the flora and fauna be simulated like that, especially with more complex animal behaviour could really make for some interesting dynamics but also for more complex gameplay. For example, you might choose to hunt down the wolfs of an area so you have safer passage, but in turn the rabbit and deer populations will increase and harm the local plantlife by overfeeding and over-producing. Could give you motivation to capture or buy a wolf cup from a trader and let them out into the wild to balance it out again. 

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Lookstothestars said:

I actually like the idea of creatures being able to track you too, i didn't even think about that. Maybe some monsters too? I have my opinions about the Monster spawning system in the game, i think it could be refined, but that's a whole other post in itself, but i like the idea of a shiver (idk, it fits them), or a whole new monster type to follow your scent out of a cave and bringing with it a whole swarm of ... rust monsters? Wait, do the enemies from the rust world have a unified name? Rusties? Desolates? Anyways, well yeah that, because maybe you hear it sniff around in a cave so you realise, you have to find and slay it, otherwise you'll have to defend your base from a horde of monsters. Idk, could be cool :3

Monsters already track you, although I think it could be tweaked to have certain types(such as drifters) be a little more oblivious overall and more attracted to loud noise(similar to the Warden from TOBG). That way, if you're very careful, you can slip by them without initiating combat. It wouldn't work for every monster though, and of course if you get too close or hang around too long, they'll notice your presence anyway.

Oddly enough, bells are apparently attracted to bright light, so if you're carrying a lantern you'll already be alerting them before you get close enough to set them off.

1 hour ago, Lookstothestars said:

I like the idea of a crude bow and with better arrows (mainly regular ones using feathers) it does become an option for me early game. But considering the amount of arrows you have to use to hunt down big game it just isn't really an option for me, but that might just be my play style. Like, to have a crude bow and crude arrows you use two inventory slots. Even for small game you have to hit multiple times with crude arrows to kill it. If you use those same two inventory slots for spears, you can throw one spear and if you miss, considering you are good with ranged weapons, you'll hit on the second time and definitely kill your target (as long as it's small game). To be fair, the animal AI doesn't register a miss from a ranged weapon, but even if it would this would be a debuff for all ranged weapons, not only spears. And well, for big game the same mostly applies. I have ingrained into my memory that boars take three spear throws and so having three spears with me i can throw, while using one more inventory space, is still better to me than using crude arrows that easily break and barely do any damage. You could say, that because they use less flint they are less resource intensive, but considering sticks only become an easily obtainable resource once you have shears (mainly because you want to use your time more wisely than gathering sticks) crude arrows are, from my opinion also resource intensive. But again, might just be my opinion. I could've easily missed something.

Generally when I think crude bow and arrows, I think more about something useful to tackle a predator(like a wolf or bear) than I do something to hunt prey animals with. A bow and arrows is a lot easier to snap shots off with while on the run, and it's going to take multiple shots anyway to kill the target. For more conventional hunting, I prefer the spear, as it does more damage at ranged but also serves as an okay melee weapon.

1 hour ago, Lookstothestars said:

I would argue a tracking device to make it easier to track animals or even enable other classes to do so and maybe an ability for hunters to track wildlife (though i feel like this could make Hunters a pretty strong class, at least for singleplayer. In multiplayer i see less of an issue because a good hunter makes the entire village happier). 

Hunters are already very strong(not so much underground), so I think if it were a hunter-exclusive ability then other classes should have something similar to help balance it out. Or instead, make it a trait that you can learn from an NPC instead. However, if it's learned from an NPC, that makes it something unavailable in Homo Sapiens mode, where a lot of people would be wanting something like animal tracking...

Overall, it's probably best to figure out a way to add a generic ability for all classes by default, or otherwise find a way to include little tracking clues in the world itself without sacrificing performance.