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Tree Felling

Spoiler

When a tree is cut down instead of logs item entities falling they turn into “log rubble” blocks that behave like sand. They would fall, smash things under them, form piles, etc. The log rubble would also age over time maybe eventually turning to dirt. To get logs from these “log rubble” blocks one would use an axe or a saw to break them. The benefit of using a saw as opposed to an axe on "log rubble" is the player has a chance of getting a bonus log from the “log rubble” (kinda like fortune enchantment). This simulates having to cut up a tree after it has fallen and has the fun effect of trying to make sure you aren't squished when cutting down a tree.

Skill level

Spoiler

 

Each time a person does something with wood it increases their carpenter skill. This skill can decrease the time it takes to cut down trees and “log rubble” piles. It also determines drop chance and what recipes are available to someone. The recipes unlocked at each sequential skill level is as follows:

  • Crude items not requiring hinges, precision, or hoops such as fences, planks, table, and bed frame
  • Fine(Recipes: dowel, wedge, resin unlocked) items that only need wood such as a loom, tool rack, ladder, and chairs.
  • Advanced(hinges unlocked) items not requiring precision or hoops such as doors, fence gates, and chests
  • Masterful(hoops unlocked) items include wooden buckets and barrels.

The order of this is historical accuracy to a point and to encourage people to utilize pots and piles for storage by delaying chests and barrels. I think there should be clay buckets that have a chance to break on use and wooden buckets be a solution that takes more to get but doesn't eventually break. Another thing is it encourages a different play style when you don't have immediate access to doors, for instance, ladders were used before hinges. People got into their house by placing two ladders. One to get up on the roof and one to get down into the building through a hole in the roof.

 


 

Log Hewing and Refining

Spoiler

 

Once logs have been recovered from the “log rubble” up to 8 can be carried in a log backpack. Logs can also be placed on the ground and hewn by right-clicking with a stone adze or metal axe. This removes all the bark on the log transforming the log into timber. This can stack up to 16. For firewood. a splitting wedge made of stone or metal can be placed on top of the log and hit with an axe until it splits into firewood.

Timber is all well and good but planks require more thought and specialized tools(progression reasons). To do this a sawhorse is needed. Craft a timber and twine to make a sawhorse. In order for a sawhorse to work, it must be next to either another sawhorse or a carpenter workbench(used to make fine wood products, not covered here). The sawhorse can be used to process logs into timber, planks, and sticks. Just like an ingot on an anvil, the timber would show up but as more than one layer. To use the sawhorse you need a saw and when placed it'll ask the player for a product just like the anvil. There are two modes saw and rotate. The saw cuts one voxel all way through and the rotate turns the log over 90 degrees. Just as with knapping the player removes all the excess voxels. In easy-mode you can't make a mistake, hard-mode you can mess up. If you mess up you can still use it as fuel in a fire. 

 

Coopering
To make barrels actually takes a lot. Before barrels, everything was transported in clay pots sealed with wax. Barrels were a revolution requiring knowledge of advanced carpentry and blacksmithing. It took much experimentation and crafting of specialized tools. I propose the following stages. During each stage items will be marked with a (B) or (C) meaning made by blacksmith or carpenter respectively.

 


Stage one

To get a Stage One Barrel a chime hoop(B) is placed down, twelve staves(C) are added to it, and then a riveted hoop(B) is added last. Breaking that with a hammer completes it creating a Stage One Barrel.
 

Stage two

Stage two requires a Wenching Station which needs rope, a wench(C), a log, dry grass, and firewood. Start by making a firepit. Next place the log on one side of the fire pit and the wench on the opposite side. Right-click the wench with the rope and then right-click the log and all three blocks will turn into a Wenching Station. 
Place the Stage One Barrel on the middle block of the Wenching Station. Next wet the barrel by clicking with a water bucket. Start a fire by clicking with firewood. Give the barrel time to soften. After awhile click the wench and you will hear it tighten. The tighter it gets the higher pitch the sound will be. The player doesn't want to over tighten or it will break the Stage One Barrel. Make sure to keep the fire going and adding water each time before. Keep tightening it every so often until the top of the stage one barrel shrinks in size. At that point click the barrel with a chime hoop(B). Clicking the wench after placing the hoop will pop the Stage Two Barrel out of the device.
 

Stage three

A Stage Three Barrel is made by placing another chime hoop down, then adding the stage two barrel, and lastly a riveted hoop. Break with a hammer and it’ll turn into a Stage Three Barrel.
 

(optional stage - charring)

If you plan to use the barrel for alcohol aging you may want to char the barrel. Simply place a Stage Three Barrel down and add dry grass. Light with a torch and wait. The longer the player waits, the more char it'll have until it burns up completely. Char levels are none, light, medium, and heavy. (Can piggyback on item quality if that's a thing). At the right time use a water bucket on the barrel.
 

Final stage

To get progress the barrel to stage four, a berth is needed. A berth is made with by crafting a log, with a Coopers Tool Set(B). It has three input slots for a Stage Three Barrel slot, barrel cap(C) slots, and a hammer(B) slot. It has two output slots, one for the finished barrel and the other for chime hoops.There are five buttons; smooth, slot, hammer, cap, drill. The progress bar will fill up and stop requiring the right action be pressed to continue. The order is smooth, smooth, slot, hammer, cap, hammer, drill. Each time the cap button is pressed it consumes a barrel cap and each time the hammer button is pressed it damages the hammer. (To make it more fun but less accurate you could randomize the actions to make it more like Simon says where you have to click the right action X many times in a row). When done the finished barrel and three Chime Hoops(B) will appear in the output slot.
 

 The tastes of things stored in the barrel may be affected by wood used and char amount. The video below is the more complex and real way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bNp3E-SuQw

 

 
 

 

Down the road when you have more metal you can make a multi-block sawmill where you can specify what cut you want and just feed it logs.

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I would love more involving lumbering mechanics, just a simple "cut tree down, logs end up on the ground facing away from where the stump was (is?), then you have to individually cut up each log to collect it.

There was also mention of other lumbering tools such as an adze for making canoes, it could also be used for making more primitive roughly hewn planks, perhaps you only get 1-2 per log and the recipes you can make with them is more restricted than normal logs.

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6 hours ago, MarcAFK said:

it could also be used for making more primitive roughly hewn planks, perhaps you only get 1-2 per log and the recipes you can make with them is more restricted than normal logs.

what would you make with these roughly hewn planks?  Our options are pretty limited right now already - plank blocks, chests, doors, fences, buckets.  Just fences and plank blocks?

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I think part of the discussion here needs to be what the categories for wood products should be and what items fall into them. I already gave examples above under skill, though those who like their chests and doors would definitely at least want to change it.

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Chests and doors arguably should be gated as being more advanced carpentry, requiring a saw. 

Fences and general construction planks would be one use for rough hewn wood. Giving you more material per log in exchange for more effort. Also a different look, the more important thing would be asthetic rather than simply getting more material out of your logs.

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Ya, I feel like it might be better to make stone age containers and doors more unique to the stone age, rather than ugly versions of metal age stuff.  For instance a hide door that maybe keeps out (small?) animals, but not monsters.  Clay or more expensive reed containers.  I'd actually love to see a variety of reed containers, because I think they would make for some pretty amazing market stall scenery.  Taller thinner ones, open top ones that you can see the contents (only take one kind of content - like a stone age hopper).

Now, I could see an adze perhaps being used to make de-barked logs, which would simply be an alternate if you want a log cabin or beam without bark.  Or, perhaps if 'beams' were ever a material.  You could require beams for epic wood constructs - ships, windmills, horsepower beams, etc.   But you can only get a beam from a tree that has a trunk that is a minimum of 6 segments long, and straight.  Every multiple of six gets another beam (so sequoias would be very beam profitable).  What doesn't become beams becomes logs (or wood rubble).  Beams are not player-transportable though, so you have to have a beast or something to move them.

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Oh you have no idea how much i look forward to the day where in Vintage Story a saw milling machine cuts lumber powered by an aqueducted river. I wrote down an idea in our issue tracker that water wheels would require river water to be powered and wouldn't work with lake water, which is not super elegant but would be amazing game play wise, as in, there are only a handful spots in the world where you can actually have a viable power source for whater wheels.

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6 minutes ago, Tyron said:

Oh you have no idea how much i look forward to the day where in Vintage Story a saw milling machine cuts lumber powered by an aqueducted river. I wrote down an idea in our issue tracker that water wheels would require river water to be powered and wouldn't work with lake water, which is not super elegant but would be amazing game play wise, as in, there are only a handful spots in the world where you can actually have a viable power source for whater wheels.

I really like this idea.

Ancient civilizations bloom around rivers. I never liked how people could create water wheels with buckets of water. It completely breaks the immersion of the game.

I like for water wheels to be able to connect to any mechanical mechanism, but windmills should only power water pumps, it would be the way to irrigate crops. Maybe a way to do it would be to have the game generate a random code that would make the wind blow at unknown times, but it would come every day so crops would always get irritated. The player just cannot use it for anything else because he never knows when it will start or stop. It's realistic, immersive and elegant.

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An interesting video, but I do not believe is historically accurate. It looks more like a modern thing than something that was actually used in medieval times. It's just like the discussion about fat/brain treated hide and tanned leather. It is just knowledge, it is not actually dependent on metal, and if stone age people knew how to tan leather they would be able to do it.

I like realism, but I would prefer to follow a western technological progression. So windmills for pumping water and anything that does not require constant power or supervision.

For lumber cutting, I think a water wheel works best. Also, it gives the player a reason to build both. So happy a lot of nice contraptions to build and decorate my base.

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The first water power sawmill was around the 3rd century and the first wind-powered sawmill was around the 16th.

Quote

Prior to the invention of the sawmill, boards were rived (split) and planed, or more often sawn by two men with a whipsaw, using saddleblocks to hold the log, and a saw pit for the pitman who worked below. Sawing was slow, and required strong and hearty men. The topsawer had to be the stronger of the two because the saw was pulled in turn by each man, and the lower had the advantage of gravity. The topsawyer also had to guide the saw so that the board was of even thickness. This was often done by following a chalkline.

5

Could mimic that but it would require two people.

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^Agreed.  Flowing water has a much stronger force per square inch than flowing air.  Easier to harness with less engineering knowledge and weaker materials.  Maybe have windmills as a later game mechanic, once the materials become available?

For tree felling, I like the mechanic introduced in a game called Ylands.  You fell a tree, which falls intact and you then chop it into smaller logs, which also produces sticks, resin and bark as residual products.  These logs could then be processed with a saw, or sawmill. 

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