Messages

1

Development News / Re: A very draft of textilecraft -- fibre processing on its' way

« on: April 10, 2021, 02:00:58 AM »

Very exciting update, I've been looking forward to this one for a long time!

I practice textile arts as a hobby in real life and have done some research into historical northern European textiles including the trading value of materials and the times it would take to craft different items. If dyeing is ever added as a craft, I have a fantastic research study I've found that I'd be happy to share as a reference.

If you have any questions to ask from someone who's done the skill in real life or just want someone to brainstorm textile ideas with, please feel free to contact me!

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Suggestions / Re: Salt as seasoning

« on: December 29, 2020, 03:57:12 AM »

From what I've read, salt was actually used more sparingly in this era and predominantly as a preservative due to how expensive it was to obtain without modern mass production methods. Sour flavors from various fermentation methods (also used to preserve foods) were more common than salty flavored foods.

At current food cooking ratios, even 0.1 lb of salt added to a recipe would be a huge amount!

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Off-topic / Re: Bast fiber cordage resources

« on: December 10, 2020, 08:46:54 AM »

I haven't had a chance to read through all the articles yet, but as the person who (I think) put out the original post about it, I find it really interesting too!

Of course, I've spent untold hours creating a historically accurate dyeing mod using modded in extensively researched plants, so my nerd quotient is pretty high here.

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Suggestions / Re: A few things i am afraid that they could be overlooked in all the euphoria...

« on: December 01, 2020, 09:06:55 AM »

I second agriculture being a bit too secure/productive.

For fun/curiosity/extra pandemic food source I attempted to grow 100 square feet of barley this past spring/summer in a very fertile garden bed. It grew absolutely beautifully until about 1 month before harvest was due a windstorm flattened the whole patch, which then succumbed to some kind of fungal infection. I got 0 harvestable barley plants.

Probably the ancient Finns would have had crops better adapted to their climate than some random barley seeds off the internet, but it was still quite surprising/enlightening to not even have a single harvestable plant.

On the flip side, there is at least the influence of marauding animals in the game. I never actually saw him eat, but I had a badger wreak utter destruction on my crops with one character.

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General Discussion / Re: Hills too much flora?

« on: November 24, 2020, 09:26:30 AM »

In my experience it's just nettles and berries, though I have gathered hundreds of pounds of raspberries by searching hills before.

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Suggestions / Modding: More Than One Output/Byproduct

« on: November 20, 2020, 08:15:26 AM »

It would be great to have a crafting process that works the way timber currently does, where you cut up a tree and you get both a log and branches, for example.

I'd love to be able to do something like this for modding, for example when making cheese you get whey and curds, which can both be further used in recipes. Ideally option for modder to specify parameters (nutrition, weight, item type, etc) for each output. This could also be used to mod in recipes where an ingredient is tied up for the duration of the crafting timer but is returned to the player afterwards, as in cords when drying meat.

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Suggestions / Re: Traps should be nerfed

« on: November 12, 2020, 06:45:22 AM »

In my experience, the degree to which traps are "overpowered" depends a lot on luck. I've had characters strategically build a trap fence between an open mire and spruce mire tile after seeing reindeer movement there and end up trapping an entire herd of 9 animals over a few days, to the point where I couldn't preserve all the meat and was pissing off the spirits. On the other hand, I've set many trap fences that never caught a thing.

With my current character I was actually banking on a fruitful trap fence to build up enough wealth in furs to be able to have that character buy some reindeer and test out a nomadic life living off their milk. The combination of nothing in my trap fences and then running into robbers (as I was in the middle of constructing a new trap fence, ironically enough) pretty much ended that plan. Now she's wandering half naked after having all her clothed robbed and shooting arrows with her primitive bow at every grouse that flies by.

Based on many historical reports of various indigenous cultures using fence lines and corrals to send game into trap pits or just driving large herds of animals off cliffs, I'd say there actually is some historical basis for the current success rate of traps. What makes them appear overpowered is more that the food and furs are going to a single individual (I.e. the player) whereas historically such abundance would have been shared out among the tribe or village, just as the process of building the fence line and driving the animals would have been a group endeavor.

I will add that some players do actually enjoy the more settled "end game" scenario and crafting with mods, as much as if not more than the grind to get there. I appreciate that there is at least sometimes an option of hunting windfalls, though for my characters it's still far from consistent. I think those who want a greater challenge can always downgrade their trapping skill, not set as many traps or not set them in areas where reindeer were just spotted, or perhaps redistribute some of the wealth of meat and furs to a local "adopted" village which you could roleplay as your home village.

There are many ways to make this game more challenging but only so many paths to a stable existence. With my own character, I've honestly started to lose interest after getting robbed and not having any luck with trapping, since it means grinding through a winter in a 1 x 1 cabin until I can work back up to my original plan of trading for reindeer to do something other than the typical build cabin and settle path.

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Gameplay questions / Do livestock animals follow the player character unleashed?

« on: November 09, 2020, 04:46:11 AM »

I can't remember if this was addressed in a recent update or not and I'd rather not buy an animal just to lose it into the forest. Do any domestic animals besides dogs follow the player automatically or do they need to be leashed, fenced, or tied to trees to prevent them wandering off?

I'm working on building a nomadic reindeer herder type character and wondering if my vision of her driving a big herd of reindeer is possible or if I'll have to have them all leashed.

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Suggestions / Re: Small scale primitive smoker

« on: November 06, 2020, 08:43:19 PM »

Agreed!

One of my characters just spent about 3 weeks game time to cut enough logs and build a cabin of the minimum size for a fireplace and a single extra tile to use for smoking. And by then the reindeer herd had left the area...

Primitive cultures definitely had portable alternatives to smoking meat. I think the latest update requiring a fire every day should still hold true. I could see perhaps a compromise where meat smoked in a more portable smoker takes less time to cure but has a shorter preservation period, perhaps just a month or two? This would help adapt to a more nomadic play style where we could have our characters hunt and preserve meat on the go for a portable stash of food that's used quickly rather than a full winter supply for someone hunkering in a cabin.

Here's an example from the Sami, looks like a sort of reindeer salami, that was smoked in a kota or even kept in a special container that allowed controlled fermentation: https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/slow-food-presidia/sami-cured-reindeer-meat/

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Modding / Re: Issues Integrating Cookery with Craft Mod Recipes

« on: November 05, 2020, 11:39:36 PM »

Actually my original code used the generic {Pot} followed by the preferred tag <Clay pot> and as I recall it still did not force a selection. I could try going back to that just to make sure though.

In terms of the visual graphics, I've pretty much just accepted that my yarn object will be sitting there in the open and not technically inside the pot. Usually I drop the pot on top of it in order to simulate the pot being occupied as well, but since the dyeing process isn't a cooking process there's no way to force the pot to be there during my entire simulated fermentation/dye adhering time period.

Thanks for all your help! I guess it's nice I at least know what the issue is that I have 3 possible solutions: I can either avoid having filled pots in my inventory, use a vat for step 1 and a pot for step 2, or specify #s of pot in step 2 to force a selection. 

The other problem with using cookery is I have to make sure I don't accidentally eat my dyestocks, especially since some of my coded plants are actually poisonous!   

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Modding / Re: Issues Integrating Cookery with Craft Mod Recipes

« on: November 05, 2020, 10:30:42 PM »

No secrets, I actually wasn't entirely sure how to display my code haha. It's also unlikely my recipes could be easily playtested since I went so far as to mod in whole new plants based on my extensive research of what would have actually been used, so most of the ingredients wouldn't be obtainable without a whole mess of ingredients I've modded in.

Anyway, worth a go to see if you can figure out any solutions. Here's the first recipe in Cookery for extracting a dye solution from a plant called bloodroot:

Code: [Select]

.Bloodroot extract.    *COOKERY* /60/ \10d\ [effort:1] [phys:arms,hands]
{Bloodroot root}      #3# [remove] [boil]
{Wood ash lye}      #0.5# [remove] [boil] 
{Water}      #2.5# [remove] [boil]
{Knife} '+to chop roots'
{Stone}   (2) [nearby] '+to grind the roots'
{[NEARBY_TILE:ground]} 'Ferment outside in a clay vat'
[SPOILAGE_DAYS:0]

So the selection of the pot is not coded in by me but is forced by whatever code goes on in cookery. No issues there.

The next part for the dyeing:

Code: [Select]

.Dye yarn red with bloodroot. *HIDEWORKING* "Cord" /1h/ \14d\  [effort:0] [phys:arms,hands]
{Wool yarn} #1#                [remove]
{Bloodroot extract}     #1#        [remove]
{Water} #1#         [remove]
{*lay pot*}       'Clay pot to ferment'
[TILEGFX:rc-yarnr]
[NAME:Wool yarn dyed red]
[LENGTH:250]
[WEIGHT:1]
[PRICE:4]

So the bit with the asterisks and the clay pot was me attempting a solution by having all of the cookery processes take place in a "Clay vat" object (which is coded as a pot) that still works as a pot but cannot be selected accidentally in the crafting step if I specify a pot with asterisks. However, the first step being cookery, I cannot force the player to choose the "Clay vat" object.  When I run these two processes, it works exactly as intended, with 6 lbs of dye solution being created in the cookery step and 1 lb being used up in the second step. So I think I've confirmed that the issue is the pot selection in the dyeing/crafting step accidentally grabbing a full pot of out my inventory and emptying it.

Now, do I understand correctly that if I were to specify

Code: [Select]

{Clay pot}   #6# 
in the crafting step, it would force me to choose a specific pot, thereby avoiding the accidental selection problem?

EDIT: I just tested and confirmed that specifying a weight of Clay pot does force a selection. It looks pretty stupid but does prevent the game from emptying any other pots in my inventory. Does anyone know any other methods of forcing a selection? I've tried codign with and without the asterisks (

Code: [Select]

{Clay pot} vs {*clay pot*} and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

12

Modding / Re: Issues Integrating Cookery with Craft Mod Recipes

« on: November 05, 2020, 09:17:22 PM »

I was going to test my own recipe again before posting the text, and in the process of obtaining some of the raw ingredients (my dye recipes are pretty complex to be realistic), I think I may have figured out what's happening (just not how to solve it!)

I think instead of the game miscalculating as I originally thought, the problem is that when I'm crafting and the recipe calls for a pot to cook in, the game grabs any random pot out of my inventory rather than letting me select it. If it selects a pot that had some dye product (or anything) left in it, then the pot becomes emptied as part of the crafting process.

This just happened when I was testing when my recipe called for "clay pot" and it emptied a pot of porridge out of my inventory rather than letting me select one of my 3 empty pots.

So the next question: is there a way to code the mod so that the game forces the player to select the specific item desired rather than autoselecting and in many cases inadvertently emptying a desired container?

13

Modding / Issues Integrating Cookery with Craft Mod Recipes

« on: November 05, 2020, 01:58:04 AM »

I'm working on designing a realistic mod that allows me to create dyed yarn and garments using various plants and mushrooms. My first attempt has some of the mod under cookery so I can create, for example "A pot of blue dye" rather than "A blue dye". My goal was to then have the dyeing step call for a portion in #s of the created "liquid product" gained from cookery. So "A pot of blue dye" might work for several batches of yarn (each requiring 1 lb of the intitially created 5 lbs of liquid, for example), with the weight of liquid reducing each time it's used as in when you have a pot of something and eat portions from it. I was hoping I could go this route as long as I remembered not to eat my dye stocks, as they show up in the food menu until further utilized.

The problem I'm encountering is that when I try to do regular modded crafting outside the cookery menu, it just doesn't want to pull the volume correctly. So my very labor intensive "pot of blue dye" was all emptied simultaneously leaving and empty pot when I attempted a test dye with it, rather than using a portion of the weight/volume and leaving the rest in the pot for later use. I wanted to end up with "Blue yarn" plus "A pot of blue dye" minus 1 lb of liquid, instead I got "Blue yarn" and an empty pot.

Can anyone advise on a way to make these functions work together, or is the cookery menu just not meant to be used that way?

Thanks!

14

Suggestions / Naming:First Word Tag Please for Modding

« on: November 04, 2020, 11:39:14 PM »

TL;DR:
I'm able to mostly accomplish what I want with modding with the [naming:last word] tag but there are times the naming would be a lot less awkward and allow for more precise modding if a [naming:first word] tag.



For example, if I want to be able to make a single fiber craft "Weave wool cloth" I can have the game label my cloth "Green wool cloth" only if I named the yarn "Wool yarn dyed green" so that "green" is the last word. Otherwise I'd have to have 8 different crafts each calling for a specific starting material "Green cloth" from "Green yarn", "Blue cloth" from "Blue yarn" etc, and if I then wanted to make clothing the menu would get completely out of control for 15 different clothing options (shirt, cloak, apron etc) times however many colors I wished to represent in my dyeing mod.

If there were a [naming:first word] tag I could streamline it to only a few menu options where the color tag gets carried through the process and I still get the fun customization I'm working on. So "blue wool yarn" could get processed through a single weave craft into "blue wool cloth" through a single "Make a shirt" craft into "blue wool shirt" each time renaming the previous item into the next one based on the first word.

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Suggestions / Torch Holder

« on: October 09, 2020, 06:28:53 AM »

Just a small thing, but it would be really nice to have a way to mount a torch on a solid surface. I've tried dropping torches but they just go out. Even with a fire and a torch lit, my cabin can feel pretty dark and I'd love to have torches burning in a few places to me it all cozy.