EmperorPingu

I've been looking at the in game night sky for hours and hours for a project I'm doing and I've noticed something... Across an in game year, the amount of revolutions the night sky does from the perspective of the player is 1 less than the number of days in an in game year... In real life, when we experience 365 solar days with the sun rising and setting as we usually expect it, we also experience 366 sidereal days - which is basically how many turns the earth makes with respect to the cosmic background. This is because when you think about it, as the earth goes around the Sun, the orbit itself makes the Earth go around the sun, so each day the Earth actually has to spin a tiny bit more in order to catch up to where the sun should be rising. Here's the thing: in real life we see the stars revolve around us (relative to our position) 1 more time than the number of days in an in game year - in Vintage Story, we see the stars revolve around the player 1 less time than the number of days in an in game year... Now, one might think of that as a bug or something, but the developers would have had to of known and thought consciously about sidereal days for them to want to program that level of detail into the game. The thing is, the only way this could happen is if the direction of orbit of the planet we're on was opposite to the direction the world spun about on it's axis (relative to the horizontal plane on which the orbit sits). So... there are only two possible situations this could happen (if we assumed an Earth-like planet): Either the direction of orbit was the same as Earth's but the Sun rose in the West and set in the East instead... The direction of orbit run's counter to direction of the axial spin. Since the Sun rises in the East in game like it does here on Earth, this means that relative to its star, the planet of Vintage Story must be orbiting retrograde to the direction of plantery axial spin. If the Vintage Story world was Earth itself - this would mean at some point in history, the planet just up and started changing direction of orbit around the Sun - doing a complete reverse. It makes me wonder if the Vintage Story world is Earth or not (not too clued up on a lot of the lore apologies), but with Earth animals like bears, and chickens, and goats, and Earth plants etc., it does make me wonder what happened. I guess in another sense - for the Earth to reverse it's orbital direction, this would symbolically represent some kind of messing with time on a cosmic scale. I'm at a loss - anyone know what this is or what it means?

To each their own, all playstyles are perfectly valid :v And love the PZ drop, another S-tier game imo - if it wasn't for the fact I just got back into VS recently I'd be playing multiplayer PZ they finally got back

Damn dude, this is awesome, I love the shading and the attention to detail :0

I have a feeling you're going to like this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/butchering

Hey, you're not alone - a lot of players have had not the best experiences with temporal storms and the lore side of the game. Personally, I'm all in for the doubling down on the immersive survival experience aspects of the game - the loops are soooo satisfying. If you're looking for something less forced and more focused on the immersive survival aspects of the game, give "homosapiens" mode a try when you start a new world. I play homosapiens and use a bunch of modes to make things more immersive and engaging without the need of fantasy elements. Consider playing homosapiens with mods like primitive survival, hydrate or diedrate, the entire fauna of the stoneage series, tools need rope, and almost every mod by a guy called salty who really excels at making seriously immersive mods (like click to pick among many others). As for your mod suggestion itself, yeah totally, 100% - perhaps as another form of playstyle option? I've heard a lot of players (including myself...) who didn't like the forced engaging with the mechanoids, so having something where the player can still engage with the mobs in a meaningful way would be a great balance. Using certain commands on an already existing world, or when starting a new world, you can select to turn temporal storms off - you will still get rifts and the mobs will appear underground and such (I think?). You can also make a hidey hole of 2x2x2 size for when the storms hit - just put stones on ground and torches on all the walls and then the mobs won't be able to spawn - congratulations, you've just unlocked... the waiting game (With all my love devs, the lore is great, the dude^ has a point).

Hey @Exuko Did you find out what the problem was? Are you still doing a Homo Sapiens server?

Yeah that's fair - the game balance has to be addressed and what I'm suggesting isn't exactly forgiving. I suppose "one way around it" would be to incorperate gas or electricity for an infinite light source in the late game (gas by way of utilising pipes to connect to light sources, and electricity using the already existing mechanical power to generate current) - arguably that by itself is it's own nightmare fuel (which is why I'm all for it but it would take away from the medieval-esque survival experience).

@isopod Hey! Thankyou!

Hey yeah I didn't even think of that, that sounds dope. Have player built scenarios as well :v

Right??? I literally just suggested this:

Ever IRL held more than 3 fully lit torches in one hand? Ever placed those flames into the convenient storage of your rucksack or reed basket? Ever learned how storing or simply holding naked flames of your torch makes them conveniently eternal until you place them on the ground when a timer of exactly 48 hours counts down until there expiration, by which point you could pick up that torch again resetting that timer and making it immortal once again? Yeah I want realistic torches - even if it's just a mod (I'm sure most people wouldn't go for this). Not too sure how best an idea like this would be handled but here's two possible implementations: 1. Give Torches a "freshness" in the same way food does Would still allow many torches to be held and stackable - but the longevity of a torch would depend on it's stacks overall freshness (which can be compounded with other torches to determine it's shelf-life). 2. Treat Torches as Independent Objects (My personal favourite) - treat Torches like the flamin hot burning things that they are... don't let lit torches stack, don't let them be stored in any other container other than the hand/hotbar, make sure they have a limited lifetime regardless of if they are stored or place or whatever. Keep 100% fresh unlit torches stackable to enable a practicle means to carry many torches for things like expeditions. Torch holders don't make torches permanent, but they do extend the lifetime of the torch by a significant amount. Make sure that the torches "fuel amount" is stored in memory so that you can't just extinguish the flame in water and expect to have a fully fueled torch all over again. If you put the torch in a reed basket, it burns the bloody basket. Don't get left in the dark - yes it will be grindy and annoying, but you're playing Vintage Story for a reason. I rest my case.

I didn't know that :0 Thanks! Yeh true, but sometimes it's nice to be able to have a certain type of generation straight out the box - like maybe one day I'll want an island survival, or maybe something with a lot of mountains, or maybe flatter terrain. I'm not so smart and following instructions online doesn't seem to get what I personally have been after - so having this is really just a way to get those settings quickly without doing hours of research and making tons of new games until it's "just right". I still haven't got mine Hardcore as a style is really just: Bit more difficult plus permadeath. Less about making new play style for the sake of it and more about establishing a bar that players can gravitate towards as a competative standard. Soil Instability - oh I love it. I love how immersive and real feeling VS is and the more realism the better imo. Every playstyle is valid ofc - my gf likes dragons, I like horses.

I kinda like the idea of being able to cook up seawater

I love it! Perhaps the day night cyle is impacted by where the player is on the East-West axis? @Professor Dragon It's about immersion and feel for realism - having stars or pretty textures doesn't add anything but you wouldn't play without it :v

Hey, so my suggestion is to Update the Title Screen. I have a number of suggestions so I will list them here. My suggestions are not so much based on the aesthetics of the Title / Menu Screen, but are rather more about the function and Utility of what can be done before a game is started or entered. Pressing "Esc" can return the player to the splash screen Customizable (and moddable) Splash Screen Customizable Title Screen Am I the only one that thinks the side bar of the Title Screen would look amazing in pink? Customizable typefaces For the Title Screen and elsewhere in the game tbh Saveable playstyles Saveable world-gens Preset world-gens Personally, I'm not hyped on the default and prefer generally flatter terrains with realistic mountains and terrain elevations. I also like Oceans as well, but just having some of these kinds of variations as presets that can be selected (or customised as usual) would be helpful for us dummies who find it difficult to figure out how a lot of it all works together. Mods are managed separetely for each world Before entering a savefile, the player should be able to enable or disable which mods they have for that world specifically from the title screen, rather than work out which ones were being used for a specific save and editing the entire Mod Manager each time. "Hardcore" as a playstyle preset Soil Instability and Cave ins enabled as default This is just an opinion really Ability to isolate multiplayer servers by version Alternatively, the ability to change versions from Title Menu (or both) Ability to sort multiplayer servers by ping Ability to read a multplayer server's full playstyle settings before entering the server And that's about all I have for now - If you got any other Title Screen suggestions, lets hear it,

man this is tough, I worked out the idea of like a pseudo-1 block wide corridor by putting slabs on sides of walls, but I've also worked out being able to have a kind of 2 high room if you put something like pelts on the floor and a chiselled cieling for example. My next stage has been trying to work out which blocks can be "walked through" and "chiselled". Ideally, we want an "any-size" room but it's just not practical to have it fillwed up with bushes and leaves - even though you can walk through them you can't see through them! The problem with pretty much every other block is that they are hard and can't be walked through so you'll always bump into them a little bit.

They still spawn into my own base for me - it's nowhere near as bad if it isn't lit up mind so it clearly does something but the effect isn't total I've noticed

Hey! Thanks for the guide, I'll have to check it out. Yeh, perma-death is a choice - but dying is not an option >:0 I have to get gud I guess T-T

Hey, yeh I do exactly the same xd. I just have a panic room with the plan being to make a grinding setup (or maybe fight?) once I get far enough into the game to do that. Problem is, I suck at fighting - my whole survival strat is based on hyper-preparedness and exploiting the mechanics to work for me so I don't have to fight. Other problem is I play on perma death and progression is so slow its a practical age before being able to get passed crude wooden armor. I did get that impression that the devs were trying to do this. I can get why they want to do this, but I honestly hate it. I've kept temporal storms because I want to harvest BUT I very much want to kill the drifters in my own way. I think (to use the obvious comparison) this is one of the few strengths minecraft does have on Vintage Story because MC very much allows players to play in their own way and style (fighters, artists, redstoners etc.) - in the very least I wouldn't mind being able to fight these eldrich horrors in my own way (which is by completely surrounding myself in a protective box and killing them off from a distance). If they absolutely must force the Temporal Storms then I need base defenses!

Placing certain objects can be a little tricky - especially for new players where placement of certain objects (like slabs or stairs) can be finicky at best and confusing at worst! These suggestions aim to make the placement-of-difficult-objects that much simpler. --- Placement-Guide Interface With certain objects it is important to place said object very precisely in order to dictate the placed objects orientation. If you are placing a slab for example, and place the slab onto the face of a block in front of you, then you will get a very different outcome depending on whether you placed towards the top of the other blocks face, towards it's bottom, it's centre or at it's sides. Unfortunately, you cannot tell at a glance if you're placing the block in the exact position you need it to be as there are no player cues or player indicators signifying that the block you are placing is in the relevant "correct" position. If trying to work quickly, then it can be very easy to make simple mistakes - simply by way of misplacing a block or two or twelve, requiring you to exhert extra effort/tool durability/time into breaking that block just to replace it ever so delicately again. A Placement-Guide Interface is something that will indicate to the player where on the opposite face (looked at block) the player is looking at by highlighting that micro-region whilst the player is looking at it (and presumably holding a position-dependent placable block). In this way, the player has an indicator to assist in their building so they don't have to hyper focus on every tiny little placement (particularly useful for large scale builds). --- Placement Mode The default placement mode is one that forces the player to focus very carefully on exactly where a block is being placed in order to prevent misplacement. In small quantities, this is fine. When doing this in repetition it can be the height of tedium and cause many mistakes if trying to work quickly. Placement mode allows the player to (surprise surprise) switch the method of placement to one that is predetermined and not dependent on "where on the face of the other block" the block/slab/stair is placed. In this way, a player can determine a stack of slabs (for example) to be placed vertically and to the left (relative to the player) and by setting the mode to this preset, everytime a slab from this stack is placed on a block, that is where the slab will be placed (relative to the player) irrespective of "where abouts on the other block" the slab is placed. The stacks would have a similar memory and mechanism as is found with clay and their usage. Similar to clay, the different modes can be accessed with the "switch modes" key ("f" on my keyboard). The advantage to having a set placement mode is that it can enable faster building with fewer mistakes. This is particularly useful for large builds with a lot of repitition.

So I saw a topic from a few years back and I'm still none-the-wiser... How can I make a 100% safe space that drifters cannot spawn into under any circumstances? More specifically I guess I should be asking "What are the specific mechanics and conditions by which drifters (or other hostile mobs for that matter) spawn?" and "To what extent are these mechanics effected by phenomena such as Temporal Strorms and low Temporal Stability*?" Is it possible to make such a space? How big can we make such a space? I'm running with the theory that the only way to achieve something like this is to have a base in which every single block (including apparent "air blocks") is filled with something so as to prevent drifter spawns from occuring. If we was to layer the floor in rocks or pelts, this would not prevent spawns as the block above would be a complete air block - unless that block was a "chisselled cieling" for example. Perhaps a 2 wide corridor where each side had a side slab or oil lamp? Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas! Is there a grinder to these things as well? Other than the "Boiler" that is?

Not as the default I reckon, but as a world/player option, sure. Default: You have to personally spend the time to remove the animal products from the harvest sacrifice. Semi-Auto: The parts will auto harvest provided you already have that item in your inventory. Auto: Goes into your inventory regardless except when your inventory is full. Full-Auto: Goes into your inventory regardless and stacks products irrespective of freshness (except when inventory is full).

I love those ideas! The old fashioned way of making a compass was using a magnet to magnetise a bit of metal (like an iron nail/needle), having that float on paper/thin-bark on water and using that to find one's direction. I wouldn't have thought about the sunstone thing (I literally just learned something)! Magnets should totally be a thing anyway - if you can get one spinning inside a wrap of copper coil you can generate DC electricity :d

Oh yeh, maybe a sextant as well? But I don't know how that works

Celestial Navigation So I decided to try playing without the map because I love the idea of going as realism as possible... but I suck at it. I can look up at the sun and I can get a bearing of west-east (I think) but apart from that the strat I'm going for is building beacons to help navigate back to base. I think a navigation overhaul could be neat. Here's what I got: Realistic Night Sky Having a real map of the stars at night can be a useful way to get your cardinal directions as you can use things like the "Big Dipper" to show you which way is North for instance. Also, if we consider the distance from Pole to Pole, you could program it so that the angle of incidence of the night sky image is slightly different depending upon how far away you were from the pole/equator (tldr: big brains could work out what their relative North/South position was within a Pole to Pole region). Sundials Could be a neat way to tell the time if you played without time on screen (not a thing but it could be...). Maps First, make some paper by soaking stripped papyrus reeds in water for a few days, then roll out excess water (with a rolling pin or something) and weave together and leave under a heavy rock or flattening thing (like boards or a press) for a few more days. Mix some charcoal powder with water and arabic gum (from acasia trees) and boom you got yourself some ink. Sit in a location with ink and draw the location of what you see! That's all I've got for now. Would be great to have some other aspects of navigation implemented for immersion. Any suggestions?