Villages - Ideas & discussion

[Rufkut]

With each update we get new features which have made the game feel more fleshed out and complete. More than anything else I've wanted to see villagers added to the game. I understand we can't have everything at once but wanted to share some ideas for villagers once they arrive.

I've drawn some ideas from Minecraft mods and several games; namely,

Tektopia - Structure markers for buildings, NPC Jobs and stat system 

Millenaire - Culturally themed villages, interaction through missions and quests 

Banished - NPC management and production chains 

Odd Realm - Legder NPC JOB

Settlers 6 - Production chain linkages and 

Overall these villages shouldn't be expensive given the lore of the game. The few settlements that there are people banding together against the dangers of the world.

Anyways here are some ideas.

 SIZE

Given the lore, settlement should be no more than the size of a Hamlet, less than 50 NPCs. These could simulate a clan or small tribe of survivors. 

 

FOUNDING A VILLAGE - Potentially you could have a "trading post block" block which attracts nomads. This would be a multiblock structure that functions like a settlement center. The initial block would be sold by a trader. This multiblock can be upgraded over time for increased capabilities. Once established nomads and traders arrive at the trading post. You as the player can then create and apply a token to make them a part of the settlement (see Tektopia). Thereafter they're added to the settlement ledger where jobs can be assigned to said NPC. By default, new villagers are assigned the labourers and builders job but can be assigned a maximum of three jobs (See Old World). These are default to minimize NPC idle if there is nothing to do.

 

TRADING POST - this is like the village center (See Banished) and designates a certain radius as the village. Within this structure you can find the ledger where it has the settlement population information, resource amounts, food reserves, and other data. It's within this area where players will build their village. This area prevents spawns and allows villagers to build in that zone. This space is limited, consequently players may have to choose to design specialized villagers.

 

PRE-GENERATED VILLAGES - Pre-existing villages will have a basic layout based on presets and small population of villagers. These preexisting villages do not grow beyond their size and are fully self-sustaining. There varying layouts offer different cultures and production specialization much like traders making seeking them out worthwhile. The player can interact by trading or doing missions.

 

ZONING - A special tool can be used to mark zones for the NPC tasks (see Foundation). These NPC interactions include prioritizing pathways you'd prefer NPC'S take, as well as highlighting areas for a farm plot, pasture, hunting and forestry (see Banished).

 

NPC TIERS - Settlers are categorized into three (3) tiers and certain jobs are tied to these. To begin we have Tier 1 settlers who need basic resources (food, clothing, a home and tools), however, higher tiers require more specialized resources. Here are further details

 

- TIER 1 - food, clothing, home and tools

 

- TIER 2 - require coal, wax or resin for soaps and candles (simulate hygiene), and bread.

 

TIER 3 - alcohol, salt and honey or sugar

 

NPC STATS 

 

These provide perks to NPCs productivity with tasks, 

 

1 SATIETY - NPCs need food and will die without it. 

Tektopia: https://sites.google.com/view/tektopia/home/mechanics/hunger?authuser=0

 

HAPPINESS - this is influenced by the availability of entertainment. If a villager gets too unhappy they receive productivity penalties. Entertainment can be provided by a NPC who is a bard or cleric, a festival or when NPC talk to other NPCs when in a tavern or religious building and are not working. 

Tektopia: https://sites.google.com/view/tektopia/home/mechanics/happiness?authuser=0

 

 

2 FATIQUE - This reflects how much energy villagers have. Villagers have a limit to how many activities they can perform before they need rest. If they run out of energy they fall asleep on the jobs like the sims. NPCs recover health when they rest.

 

3 INTELLIGENCE - there are levels of education for an NPC. This can be improved through a school or library building with the relevant NPC. Unlike children born and schooled in the village, nomads cannot gain level 5 education.

 

THOUGHT ICON - Icons show up above the villagers head when they are in need of a particular item or are being affected by an action.

Tektopia: https://sites.google.com/view/tektopia/home/mechanics/thought-icons?authuser=0

 

OVERCROWING - https://sites.google.com/view/tektopia/home/mechanics/overcrowding?authuser=0

 

CLOTHING UPGRADES - Clothing is created by the tailor and provides several stats boosters. These include weather resistance, travel speed, and storage when working. Examples include snow shoes, sandals, fur clothing, baskets, and bag packs. The tailor will create and store these to structure quotas based on the availability of resources in the village.

 

TOOLS - These are created by the blacksmith for jobs that use metal tools. There should be bonuses for using tools made of better metal. 

 

VILLAGE LEDGER - Besides the settlement information, this provides a list of all settlers and the jobs or actions allowed by that specific NPCs (See Banished and Odd World). This also allows you to set resource quotas, request a preset structure be created in the settlement zone and other actions.

 

STRUCTURES - Settlement buildings must be designated using structure markers and include the required blocks based on the job role for that building (See Tektopia). For instance, a home structure should have a bed and be a certain size while a blacksmith should have forge and anvil. Each building has storage for materials needed in production. NPCs that are labourers will bring production items and tools for their profession to limit travelling to a warehouse. NPCs also store food in their home and prioritise it.

 

STRUCTURE UPGRADES - Like Millenaire structures can be upgraded over time for increased capabilities and aesthetics.

 

PRODUCTION BUILDING - Each production building has storage. NPCs with the laborers job enabled will pick up material from production sites and bring them to the relevant warehouse or storage site. For instance, harvested material from farmer plots to granaries to bakeries. If there aren't any NPC with the laborer job enabled, the NPC with the special job in need of the resources will seek out and pick up whatever item they need and bring it to the production site

 

VILLAGER BEHAVIOR

Villagers will engage in leisure activities if there is no work to do and not assigned to the labourer job role. This can include reading in the library, visiting the tavern, practicing combat or chatting with other idle NPCs which all provide happiness bonuses. Villagers are more likely to stay inside or go to recreational buildings during bad weather if quotas are not extremely low.

 

BLUEPRINTS - Lost knowledge can be obtained by trading the blocks you find in ruins. These can be traded (potentially with a village leader?) to provide points which can be used to purchase blueprints. Blueprints are used to unlock special buildings to put in the village, armour/clothing sets, special blocks weapons and crops that can't be obtained otherwise. This should encourage exploring the underground for ruins and the vanilla lore. 

 

TEMPORAL STORMS - Normally there are no spawns within a village due to the trading posting, however, during a temporal storm spawns occur outside marked structures. Villagers stay inside during these events and attack hostile mobs after the storm has subsided. Killing hostile in the village during these raids provides research points for blueprints.

 

CONTRACTS - NPCs can be contracted to tasks. This can be to dig a designated area. Clear all the trees in an area or terraform an area. Have a specialist NPC craft an item or block over time. Build a schematic/preset building once provided with the resources. 

 

NPC FOOD - Given how long food takes to grow in VS. Food items produced by the village are essentially converted by NPCs with the cook job into special food items which don't decay like Vintage Beef. Each culture should have a version of this. Each NPC will require one of these food items per day to fulfil their hunger needs. This should allow harvests to last long enough that the settlement doesn't starve.The player should have access to this, however, it should not provide much satiety but have all food groups besides cheese for balance. Fields are only harvested once all crops are mature and the player can purchase produce or seeds during this event.

 

VILLAGE CULTURAL THEMES My idea is that various people from the ancient to medieval world were drawn in the VS world like on the Witchers conjunction of the spheres. These people roamed the land trying to survive and eventually settled together forming clans akin to the combinations below: 

 

AMERICAS - Mayan - Aztec - Olmec

BUILDING STYLE - K'uh Nah, Aztec Sacrificial Temple

SPECIAL ITEMS - Cockatoo, Feathered Headdress, WEAPON- Macuahuitl

PLANTS - various appe trees, 

CROPS - Cassava, potato, maize, sunflower, amaranth, peanut, pineapple

 

AFRICAN - Nubian - Askumite - Egyptian 

BUILDING STYLE - Obelisk, Meroe Pyramid, Great Zimbabwe, Great Mosque of Djenné,

SPECIAL ITEMS - 

PLANTS - Mango tree, Orange Tree, 

CROPS - Goat, yams, rye, okra, spelt

 

ASIAN - Yayoi Edo Japan - Zhou Ming Chinese 

BUILDING STYLE - Garden, Tera, forbidden city, grant tea house, pagoda

SPECIAL ITEMS - Samauri armour set, Paper Lanterns, silk worms, silk, sliding doors, murals  

PLANTS - Giant Bamboo, cherry blossom tree, purple sugar cane, cherry tree, lychee tree, breadfruit tree, Peach Tree 

CROPS - Rice, noodles, duck, tofu, soybeans, sushi, pigs, cabbage, soybean, turnip

 

EUROPEAN - Norman-Roman

BUILDING STYLE - Temple, Forum, amphitheater, Baths, 

SPECIAL ITEMS - Concrete, tapestry, brightly coloured dyed plaster, decorated ceramic blocks, red clay shingles, legionary armor set,

WEAPON- Battle Axe, Wine, 

PLANTS - Grape, Olive Tree, Promegranate Tree, Pear Tree

CROPS - Cattle, flax, carrot, parsnip, onion

 

MISSIONS - Ideas for missions

 

CHILDREN - NPC could potentially have children 

Check out Gerste's Villager Mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/vsvillage

Edited June 4, 2022 by Rufkut

[Hirou]

Yay, it's very good idea, but lore is in 1810s-1820s years was disease what killed people

But merchants alive, maybe villages alive too.

[Gerste]

This is a nice way of gathering some feedback/ suggestions. I linked this thread on the mod page.

My current plan is to implement something like:

• pre generated villages do not expand
• players can found and expand their own villages
  • place some initial block to spawn a mayor
  • the mayor hands out quests and recruits additional villagers on completion
  • villagers support the player, but dont automate tasks
    • farmers boost crop growth
    • shepherds feed animals
    • guards defend the village from hostiles
    • smiths upgrade guard gear

I want to try to keep a vanilla feel to villages, maybe even explainable by game lore.

For example The Morning could be interpreted as the seraph might be the being chosen by the gods to unite mankind again. I kind of like that idea.

[Rufkut]

That sounds great, any villagers will make the world feel more complete. Quests would be great and I agree with limiting player influence on preexisting villages. Besides that, what you've planned is similar to the Millenaire mod for Minecraft.

Im going to "flesh out" these idea more with pictures and more examples illustrating concepts.

I recommend you take a look at this MC Mod called Tektopia:

 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Rufkut

[Aersoldorf]

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask, but I've found a village and none of the villagers will interact with me. Is there something special I need to do to be able to talk to them?

[Rufkut]

1 hour ago, Aersoldorf said:

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask, but I've found a village and none of the villagers will interact with me. Is there something special I need to do to be able to talk to them?

I suggest posting that issue on the mod page: https://mods.vintagestory.at/vsvillage

 

 

[Gerste]

Quote

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask, but I've found a village and none of the villagers will interact with me. Is there something special I need to do to be able to talk to them?

Currently the villagers do not have interactions, this is planned for a future update.

Edited June 5, 2022 by Gerste

[thomas00129]

i hope more minecolonies like system like one can build buildings for the npc's but having a builder do it for you is also neat allowing you to get like multiple projects at the same time

[Peter Sanderson]

Love the concept, and want to see where you take it. I noticed a few issues, others may have already commented on them.

The mod seems to be trying to generate in the same spots as translocator network temples and often ruins, with the resultant village being pretty much mangled and mixed with the other structures. And also you end up more often than not with flooded villages.

I noticed also that in the spawn of a brand new village, brand new world, the terrain was also breaking up village spawning so that terrain would blot out fences or walls.

Is this due to something that is hard coded in the way VS distributes spawned locations? I have no idea how that works.
The same thing has always plagued spawned villages in particular in Minecraft. You end up with villages overtop of caves and chasms with huge holes needing to be filled, or in the case of the mingled spawns, fences and walls obliterated by the terrain or other structures.
 

[JokerdaAce]

Villages, clans, tribes etc...

yes please

[Hal13]

On 6/2/2022 at 2:36 AM, Rufkut said:

Overall these villages shouldn't be expensive given the lore of the game. The few settlements that there are people banding together against the dangers of the world.

Banding together for protection? So normal villagers should be significantly weaker than traders?

On 6/2/2022 at 2:36 AM, Rufkut said:

Given the lore, settlement should be no more than the size of a Hamlet, less than 50 NPCs. These could simulate a clan or small tribe of survivors.

From what I understand the cataclysm was at least several centuries if not a few millenia ago, if they aren't significantly weaker than traders there is no need for them to form communities of that many people in close proximity on their own, realistically (if they are about as strong as traders or maybe slightly weaker) there might not be more than a single or up to a handful relatively small families tending to a small farm and maybe a singular craft or two at most, hence I'd say any village with more than a dozen to 15 inhabitants would be extraordinary big. If such villages were about as common as traders are in vanilla they were close enough for population exchange and far enough apart for the abundance of traders travelling the land to make sense.

On 6/2/2022 at 2:36 AM, Rufkut said:

FOUNDING A VILLAGE - Potentially you could have a "trading post block" block which attracts nomads. This would be a multiblock structure that functions like a settlement center. The initial block would be sold by a trader.

I actually think it might be better to make the player gain the trust of some generated village (quests from villagers are on the roadmap already) and with that gets the block that protects the village from getting changed by the player which then transforms into a village ledger block (similar to minecolonies) meaning the player can either just transform that village (giving them some starter buildings and population) or maybe let the village deteriorate by taking the ledger to start a new village elsewhere. Additionally with it being a single block the settlement center can be designed in various ways as long as the room the block is in is sufficiently big and has the sufficient furnishing in it. something similar could be done with the defining blocks for homes and workplaces.

[Vilderos]

This is one of my favourite mods now, The updates with the clutter is looking great! Sad that the bookshelves are invisible tough, and also som part of the village is white on the map? keep up the good work!