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Recently I made the Reclamation mod as a sort of best effort to get something like this in the game, but it feels a bit limited what one can do with mods. Ideally, I think essentially every item in the base game and in content mods would define some standard thing like `dismantleProps` which would indicate what items are obtained by dismantling an item or block, and in what randomized quantities (which items with durability should perhaps be able to modify depending on remaining durability), with some UI for dismantling an object from the player's inventory. This would be distinct from grid crafting in two important ways: there could be more than one output item, and output amounts could be randomized in a range. Unfortunately, patching this in for everything in the base game would be quite brittle and require quite a lot of work to keep up-to-date with each version with any content changes, compared to it being already incorporated into base game data, which makes it a very big ask for a mod. I'm not sure what such a dismantling UI should look like, though one idea I like the thought of is a workbench that one places blocks or items onto, and then a menu of possible interactions (with required tools and other materials) might appear, including a dismantle interaction. Maybe this could go well with plans to rely less on the crafting grid, and some things that currently use the crafting grid might use this workbench instead? Think like crushing ores with a hammer, or de-barking logs, or splitting logs into firewood, or polishing rock blocks, or crafting polished rock slabs, or crafting ashlar blocks, or crafting a grindstone, etc.

Today I published a fairly substantial v1.0.1 upgrade to Stoneworks: - Fixed a bug that made placing concrete mix blocks not work as intended (blocks could not be removed after being placed) - Obsidian stones can be crushed using a hammer. - Stone ashlar blocks can be crushed/pulverized to obtain crushed stone. - Concrete masonry blocks can be pulverized to obtain crushed concrete, or crushed with a hammer to obtain concrete chunks. - Minor improvements to text names/descriptions.

This is a case-by-case thing. It depends on the mod and the modder. In most cases you would need to ask the modder for permission, and probably also ask that they give you the source code. But you're in luck here. @Maltiez has already done a very cool thing: They have already publicly shared the source code for the Firearms mod, and have done so with a CC0 license. What that means is that you are legally and ethically in the clear to make and to upload your own modifications to the mod. It's like permission given to everyone in advance. Though it's a good idea for you to also make your own updated code publicly available in the same way, in the same spirit of open source, so that someone else can also pick up where you left off someday down the line. https://github.com/maltiez2/vsmod_firearms

I'm not particularly attached to the old one, but I like the new one even less. The new one feels to me like it clashes pretty overtly with the actual experience playing of the game. The logo is distinctly cartoonish (and extremely evocative of Scribblenauts in particular) while VS itself is one of the more grounded survival games that exists right now, and manages not to feel cartoonish at all during play even despite the voxelized art style. I think that ultimately neither one does a good job of communicating the game in simple, distilled logo form. The first idea off the top of my head, after sitting with it for a moment: You might have a set of interlocked rusty gears set into a cubic wooden frame. The text goes either as "Vintage Story" written out in full underneath, or VS in the bottom right corner, or is absent, depending on copy/context. Maybe there are stones settled in the bottom of the frame? Maybe it's entangled in leafy branches or vines? It may work well with a recognizable character just behind or holding the cube, though I'm not sure if VS has any suitably recognizable character at the moment? Keep in mind also that a logo doesn't do all the work of selling the idea of a game on its own, but you might want a logo that's simply recognizable, readable at small sizes, and a little bit evocative, plus a key art piece that speaks about the game more in depth and might possibly take more from this mechanized tree concept. I have a very tiny bit of background in branding and graphic design. Just enough to say that what you really want is surely to pay an artist whose portfolio you like and who has experience in branding work to help you explore options. (Or, if that's what you did already, then perhaps heed their own opinions on branding and what would make for a good logo more rather than asserting your own and/or find someone with a stronger background in logos and branding specifically.) I think opening up to voting might not be a particularly productive thing, and can easily give misleading results, since most people will not be voting based on an informed opinion about how branding and marketing material work.

One of the things that was bumming me out the most when playing Vintage Story was that there was nothing I could do with mostly-used tools except get those last few hits and watch them disintegrate. And so here's Reclamation, a new mod that gives some balanced options for recovering useful materials from spent tools: https://mods.vintagestory.at/reclamation Most (but not all) tools and other items are dismantled with the use of a chisel in the crafting grid. Metal tools give metal bits, though only a reduced amount compared to what it takes to craft them. Flint tools give flint shards, which aren't useful for making new tools but can be burned to make calcined flint. Other stone tools give crushed stone, but only if the Stoneworks mod is also installed. Bone arrows and other bone items can be dismantled to get bone chips, which can be ground into bonemeal. Some wood items can be dismantled to get wood chips, and some bamboo items can be dismantled to get bamboo chips. Either of which can be used to make pulp for paper, by different crafting processes. (Or you can just burn them.) Sometime in the future I might also like to also add glass shards (from glass) and pottery sherds (from ceramics) and some uses for each, though I didn't want to blow up the scope of this mod too much for a first release...

Stoneworks is my third-ever VS mod and, whew, it ended up being a lot more work than I anticipated. But now it's finally ready to share! Stoneworks adds: Concrete (solid blocks, brick blocks, and cobble blocks) created by curing concrete mix and coming in three aesthetic varieties depending on mix ingredients, smoothed concrete surfaces as paths, concrete that looks kind of messed up if you (or stray wildlife) had a walk over it while it was still curing, crushed stone aggregate blocks and paths (available in a much broader range of colors than base game paths), new stone ashlar block fences, castable and smithable metal bricks ("masonry blocks", to distinguish them from the base game's big solid metal blocks) plus metal slabs and stairs and fences. Check it out on the mod DB here: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/47094

I wanted to try making something a little bit more involved for my second go at modding, and this is what I landed on. The mod adds turpentine as a new distillable liquid, plus several related items and recipes to give turpentine some interesting and practical gameplay uses. The most notable uses of turpentine are definitely 1. crafting mortar without lime (which can be a real pain to find on some maps) and 2. improving the preservative effect of storage vessels via the application of fungicide. Check out the mod here: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/46423

I've been really wishing for alternate options to potentially missing or very difficult to find progression items. Iron age civilizations prospered all over the Old World throughout history, in different climates, with different geological conditions, with access to significantly different natural resources from one another. It would be nice if Vintage Story was a better reflection of that diversity of paths to iron and steel. Like, can't find lime or borax for leather? It would make sense to produce lye from wood ash, and use lye as an alkali in tanning instead. (It should probably also be possible to obtain potash from wood ash.) Another annoyance I've run into is the absolute requirement of lime for brick blocks. Can't find lime for mortar? It would make sense to allow waterglass (sodium silicate) as a binder, made from quartz and lye. Or bitumen (from bituminous coal). Or turpentine (from resin) plus plant matter. It would be nice if it were at all feasible to play without hunting. Wool is very conspicuously missing from the game right now, as an alternative to pelts. Vegetable and dairy fats are conspicuously missing as alternatives to animal fat. Tree nuts are conspicuously missing as a source of protein. And cloth treated with beeswax or linseed oil would be a sensible substitute for leather for most if not all purposes. I already made a mod for tallow candles, which was thankfully pretty simple, but I'd also like to see paraffin candles. (Paraffin could be manufactured via carbonization of lignite. Adding a whole new item is a little bit more complicated than only adding a new candle recipe, though.) I think next I'm also going to try to figure out how to allow tin plates as an alternative to gold or silver plates for lanterns, since I've yet to find a single bit of gold or silver, though in reality tin can also be used to manufacture reflective surfaces...

I'll go as far as to suggest that it should really be possible to change the anvil work item at any time, even after using the hammer. Accidentally removed too many bits? Well, at least you can form what's still there into a chisel.

After getting a taste of the luminous glory of lanterns thanks to a random chest I found, I was surprised to learn that I couldn't craft candles (and thereby lanterns) with fat/tallow, only beeswax. And then kind of irritated, when I realized just how hard bees were to find. So I got curious and looked into it, and it seemed not too difficult to mod a new candle recipe in, so here it is: Now candles can be crafted in a cooking pot with one flax fiber and three units of raw or rendered fat, as an alternative to beeswax. https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/46074

There are so many crafting recipes where position either doesn't matter or only sort of matters. And they make up the huge majority of my interactions with the crafting grid. Firewood from logs, boards from logs, hammering chunks to get nuggets, combining flour with water, those are the biggest ones. If I could press a hotkey on the first item to put it in the top left, and press the hotkey again on a second item to put it in the middle left, that would already be a huge reduction in repetitive precise mouse movements. Which are the stuff that RSI is made from, and my hands aren't that young anymore. I don't see how the survival handbook pre-filling recipes would help with this. If these things would eventually not be done with the crafting grid anymore then that's great. But for now they are, and UI matters. It would be nice if I could play the game with that little bit less stress on my hands for something that doesn't seem very purposeful to me. If all you have to add to this conversation is "I don't personally care about this" and "it could be a mod (but it's not and I'm not going to be the one to do it)" then why are you even here wasting your time and everyone else's writing such replies?

There isn't a mod for this right now. And as much as I would appreciate getting rid of the extraneous clicking, and I don't think this is a reasonable argument at all against adding hotkeys for already existing UI to reduce repetitive and precise clicking, I don't want it enough to learn how to make such a mod myself. I'd be happy to have it from a mod though, if anyone else knows how one would be made.

I've found myself right clicking when trying to go back a page in the survival handbook as muscle memory, and having to constantly remind myself to click the "Back" button. I'm not sure what game or games I learned this muscle memory from... but it would be nice if it worked in VS, too. (It would also be nice if the handbook remembered what page you were last on when re-opening it.)

I've also been really wishing for an easier way to send items to the crafting grid, especially for simple common things like cutting logs to firewood. It would be faster and less RSI-inducing if it were possible to ctrl+click or press a hotkey or something to send an item to the grid. Kind of like shift+click to move between hotbar/bag and inventory/container.