1.22.0-rc.8 - Fishing, Mechanisms, Metalworking and More!

[Narcosis]

9 minutes ago, coolAlias said:

My biggest hunting annoyance is all the brush etc. making it very difficult to keep track of a fleeing animal. It's also really hard to see animals that are laying down.

A simple fix for the first would be to reduce the movement speed of injured animals. A status effect system would be great but isn't necessary for my proposal at all - the code could be as simple as "movementSpeed = movementSpeed  * (currentHealth / maxHealth)", probably with some lower threshold so they can always move at at least e.g. 50% speed.

I think that was something that's been already presented and brought up a couple times in the past to no avail, sadly. In my opinion the game would benefit greatly from these - an entire library could handle all the buff/debuff/injury/ailment system together and it would allow for a lot of freedom in terms of content additions and modding. Large wounded animals could get weaker/slower but also more ferocious - like bears (fight/flight response); wounded animals could also leave a blood trail behind them with periodical drips of blood visible on the ground to spice up hunting mechanics; a percentage-based system on the ailments could basically dictate whether the animal will survive and heal itself after a while or just collapse and die, making hunt searches an interesting and alternative way to deal with large predators (think of potential bear traps, spikes etc); now you wouldn't necessarily have to only hunt, you might expect a dangerous predator you fought with but didn't quite managed to fell might be laying somewhere around in the area, dying. Obviously - polishing such a system would require adding more animations for wounded states etc but overall - for starters, introducing a mere wounded state with a slowdown on herbivores and maybe a buff for some predators to enter an "enraged mode" could be fun.

Not to mention - the player's own survival potential with new mechanics like illnesses, wounds, healing methods via salves and herbal medicine - as well as health or stamina buff via herbal concotions or natural drugs (with potential later drawbacks) etc. Vintage Story feels like a deep and immersive survival-focused experience, I'd really love to see this included and expanded; Obviously this also begs for a complete combat overhaul. Its not something that probably will come anytime soon, if ever at all though.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

3 minutes ago, Narcosis said:

wounded animals could also leave a blood trail behind them with periodical drips of blood visible on the ground to spice up hunting mechanics

There is actually a mod for this.  

[john_p]

Looks like milking any goat causes an exception and you get kicked. Re-connect and any bucket with milk vanish. 

edit: milking them does NOT crash the connection, but the buckets of milk automatically stacking. You have to dump each bucket in a barrel, back and forth, or the second bucket kicks you.

Edited 11 hours ago by john_p
specifics

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, coolAlias said:

My biggest hunting annoyance is all the brush etc. making it very difficult to keep track of a fleeing animal. It's also really hard to see animals that are laying down.

A simple fix for the first would be to reduce the movement speed of injured animals. A status effect system would be great but isn't necessary for my proposal at all - the code could be as simple as "movementSpeed = movementSpeed  * (currentHealth / maxHealth)", probably with some lower threshold so they can always move at at least e.g. 50% speed.

I dunno. Simply slowing the animal down won't necessarily help the player find it if it can break line of sight by diving into thick brush. Some animals can still move rather fast even when mortally injured as well. I don't disagree that slowing down wounded animals would make hunting a little better, but I think the better solution here would be a blood trail for the player to follow, perhaps even bleed-type injuries so the animal has a chance to bleed out and die. Something like that is also better suited for a status effect system.

While it's annoying for animals to escape unwanted attention by diving into thick brush or lying low, I do think it's appropriate for that to be something that can happen if the player isn't being too particular about what they're doing. When hunting in Vintage Story, it's a good idea to try to line up shots to drive prey away from cover rather than toward it, as well as save hunting for more open areas. Clearing thick brushland with shears is a great way to open up territory for hunting without destroying other resources that may be present; fire works as well, but will cause more collateral damage.

[cjameshuff]

2 hours ago, coolAlias said:

My biggest hunting annoyance is all the brush etc. making it very difficult to keep track of a fleeing animal. It's also really hard to see animals that are laying down.

A simple fix for the first would be to reduce the movement speed of injured animals. A status effect system would be great but isn't necessary for my proposal at all - the code could be as simple as "movementSpeed = movementSpeed  * (currentHealth / maxHealth)", probably with some lower threshold so they can always move at at least e.g. 50% speed.

I think it'd actually be better to have movement drop to near zero before the health does. Realistically, an injury can easily leave you with very little mobility but still very much alive. Say mobility_scale = max(0.1, current_health/max_health*2.0 - 1.0), so they can only move at a crawl once they get down to half health.

Also, perhaps have them continue to lose health if taken below a "mortally wounded" threshold, so if you can do enough damage, they will stop nearby and eventually die, rather than dashing off across the hills.

[coolAlias]

36 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I dunno. Simply slowing the animal down won't necessarily help the player find it if it can break line of sight by diving into thick brush. Some animals can still move rather fast even when mortally injured as well. I don't disagree that slowing down wounded animals would make hunting a little better, but I think the better solution here would be a blood trail for the player to follow, perhaps even bleed-type injuries so the animal has a chance to bleed out and die. Something like that is also better suited for a status effect system.

While it's annoying for animals to escape unwanted attention by diving into thick brush or lying low, I do think it's appropriate for that to be something that can happen if the player isn't being too particular about what they're doing. When hunting in Vintage Story, it's a good idea to try to line up shots to drive prey away from cover rather than toward it, as well as save hunting for more open areas. Clearing thick brushland with shears is a great way to open up territory for hunting without destroying other resources that may be present; fire works as well, but will cause more collateral damage.

For sure, but a status system and/or blood trails might take a lot of work to implement, whereas my suggestion is a simple fix that could be implemented in as little as a few minutes to a few hours at most depending on how entity movement speeds are coded.

As for clearing areas of brush to improve visibility, yes, that is doable if time-consuming, but I'd much prefer if hunting were more approachable without having to destroy the environment.