Clay Crafting 1.0.1 (Formerly NoMolding by Mr1k3) - Tweaks and adjustments

[Jobediah Timberman]

Special thanks to Mr1k3 for starting this idea, and the credit goes to him for coming up with a solution for accomplishing it which I might not have ever considered. It led me to mimic his idea when I polished up his NoMolding mod. 

I've decided to change the name to make it more positive, as there's no reason to actually remove the Clay Molding system. Perhaps an Easy Clay Modeling Mode, where you can't make mistakes. Just make the player go through the motions of doing the work instead of shift + clicking a giant stack of difficult items.

Because that was my reaction to using the original mod: I put a whole stack of clay in a circle and did a Shift-click, and suddenly I had like 13 Storage Vessels. That was completely backwards-unfair. I felt genuinely robbed of the sense of achievement that all the hard work this repetitive chore would have given me. Because that's how you have fun in games these days: working the grind. 

So I took to updating and reconfiguring the mod that Mr1k3 began. I realized I could use Soil for the pottery recipes the same way he used Flint as a spacer for the Tool Molds. This makes the recipes a different overall signature, and the system knows which item you're trying to make. For instance, the Clay Pot and Clay Planter are both a capital "U" shape, but the planter has Soil in the center. And since the Helvehammer is tall rather than flat, I made it a capital "U" with Flints inside. 

I used NotePad++ to look into the game's Asset files for the Clay Modeling recipes, and used NP++'s Find/Replace "Count" function to search for the "#" character. That way I could have accurate numbers of how many voxels each mold requires, and maintain some accuracy with how the recipes relate to each other. 

But I didn't go for an exact 1:1 of how much the recipes are supposed to take. And the amounts are based more on how much time it would have taken to create them, which varies depending on the mold. 

The basic idea is that you either take the time and effort to dig up larger amounts of Clay, or you take the time to make them voxel by voxel and save on resources. And maybe you make that choice based on simply not finding enough Clay deposits within reach. Or you choose to do manual Molding because you genuinely enjoy doing it, and the savings on resources is just a bonus. 

So it's not just the number of voxels, it's how complicated the overall recipe is. The Clay Planter and Flower Pots, for instance, have no lids, and are basically just two layers, because you can repeat layer 2 all the way till it's finished. Besides that, they're just cosmetic items anyway, so there's not as much sense of necessity as Storage Vessels or Crocks, which should cost more for multiple reasons. 

I decided to condense all the recipes into one concise image. It might look like I just deleted a lot of image cropping work, but Paint Shop Pro has some amazing scripting abilities. None of that took as much effort as it looks, but it would have been worth it anyway. Not bad for an app that's 17 years old.

Of course I'm willing to take suggestions and make adjustments, after all, this mod itself is a drastic adjustment to an existing mod. I have included the numbers in the JSON as Comments, so you can see the logic that I used. 

I decided for the sake of discussion I'd include the comments here. Hopefully it makes sense, but it's better than my first attempt. At first I was confusing myself, so I reversed how I divided the Ratio, which previously resulted in lower = more expensive. 

The numbers in parenthesis are as follows,
1. Total # Voxels,
2. Crafting Slots x Clay Quantity = Total Crafting Units,
3. Modeling Voxels / Total Crafting Units = Cost Ratio

"__comment": "[Item Name]: (# Voxels, # x # = Units, Ratio)"

"__comment": "Bowls (41 voxels, 3 x 3 = 9, 0.21)",
"__comment": "Storage Vessels (924 voxels, 8 x 22 = 176, 0.19)",
"__comment": "Clay Pot (161 voxels, 7 x 6 = 42, 0.26)",
"__comment": "Ingot Molds (93 voxels, 5 x 6 = 30, 0.32)",
"__comment": "Crock (99 voxels, 6 x 6 = 48, 0.37)",
"__comment": "Crucible (97 voxels, 6 x 6 = 48, 0.36)",
"__comment": "Flower Pot (156 voxels, 5 x 4 = 20, 0.12)",
"__comment": "Clay Planter (500 voxels, 7 x 8 = 56, 0.11)",
"__comment": "2 Shingles (12x3=36 voxels, 6 x 1 = 6, 0.16)",
"__comment": "2 Fire Shingles (12x3=36 voxels, 6 x 1 = 6, 0.16)",
"__comment": "Anvil Mold (750 voxels, 7 x 20 = 140, 0.19)",
"__comment": "Helvehammer (190 voxels, 7 x 6 = 42, 0.22)",
"__comment": "Watering Can (300 voxels, 6 x 12 = 72, 0.24)",

As for the Tool Molds, those are something you build so rarely, I'm not concerned if they're a little too expensive. Same with the Anvil Mold, which you're even more likely to only ever need one.

And again, overall, the point is that it should feel like a genuine choice as to whether to do the manual work, regardless of whether you have vast amounts of clay at your disposal. Sometimes the logic and realism regarding physical resources has to be warped to accomodate fair and fun gameplay. 

Like I said, suggestions for adjustments are welcome. 

Instructions on how to install the font shown in the screenshots into the game:

Spoiler

You can find this font I'm using ("Albertus Medium") for free at https://best-font.com/font-download/download-albertus-medium-font.html

Just download and open the TTF file like any document, and Windows Font Viewer has an Install button at the top. 

Then you'll have to open your VintageStoryData folder and edit "clientsettings.json", which should be reachable using the magic path "%APPDATA%\VintagestoryData\" instead of C:\ as usual. 

You can also just go to Start -> Run, and type in "notepad %APPDATA%\VintagestoryData\clientsettings.json", without quotes.

Scroll all the way down to line 500, or just press Ctrl+F to Find "font". Change the value of "defaultFontName" to "Albertus Medium" and close and save. 

You should shut down the game before doing this, otherwise your changes will be overwritten. Probably should have told you that first. 
 

I'm calling it 1.0.1 simply because it's a rework of Mr1k3's NoMolding mod, which you should remove or disable before using this.

ClayCrafting1.0.1.zip

Edited February 18, 2021 by Jobediah Timberman

[Sickckc]

The other option would be modifying resource drops (you would need to change all recipies that cost clay to ballance the game) What im saying is you need x amount of clay to make clump of clay that is used in the recipies there could be 3 size types taking 2, 4 and 9 clay to make used in crafting large ones (costing 9 clay blocks mined) used in larger molds like the storage container while bowls would only use small clumps of clay. While not equal to thier original amounts they still are closer to what is in the original and could be used as a later step after you make some sort of clay molding workstation where you combine water with clay to mold it into the three sizes of clay clumps then using them craft the molds on the workstation as a bonus saving resources(explanation beeing you dont lose chunks of clay by it falling off when molding it on the ground getting it dirty with sand grass and chunks of rocks) This would allow clay molding to stay as a game mechanic making you mold by hand at the start and then later on allow you to mold using the workbench saving time and resources.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Sickckc