Greetings medievalists!
Aaand we’re back to animals. As we mentioned
previously, the animal system is receiving a major overhaul. So, let’s discuss what that means.
Animals will have genders - being male or female will influence what they’ll be able to give to you and in what way. You’ll not be able to get eggs from male chickens (roosters), because that would be silly. We’re also adding animal aging - aging will dictate what type of resources they’ll give and in what amount. For example: younger animals will give less wool. Genders and age will be emphasized by different models (size, horns, and all those things).
All animals will have a period when they sleep because that happens in real life too and sleep is important!
We’ll categorize animals into wild animals, domestic animals, and pets.
[h3]Wild animals[/h3]
You know them, you’ve seen them. Deer, rabbits, and wolves populated your maps and usually minded their own business. We’ll add boars, pheasants, and foxes (after all, we are Foxy Voxel) to this wonderful group.
Depending on the map type (and its size), the amount of those animals may vary (boars will love hillsides/mountains in particular). Do you want a specific animal, but said animal can’t be found on the map? Don’t worry, some merchants may have it available for purchase.
The Hunger stat will be added to the animals, too. This means they’ll look for food when hungry. Herbivores will look for plants like saplings, bushes, and redcurrants, but they’ll just take hit points from those resources (not necessarily consume them as a whole). This also means they’ll not eat trees, so keep an eye out for those “minor” plants.
Carnivores will, of course, look for meat. This also means that they’ll attack other animals to satisfy their hunger. There’s going to be a sort of hierarchy when it comes to their food type. Take wolves, as an example: they’ll look for rabbits and pheasants first since they are easier targets. If easier prey is not present or hard to get, they’ll look for deer, etc.
They’ll be able to eat carcasses too, but the amount of nutrition they’ll get from them will depend on the carcass type.
All wild animals will avoid your settlements, but if they are provoked or extremely hungry - be prepared to face them. Hopefully, this will lead to some interesting scenarios.
Now comes the fun part: will you be able to tame them? Yes, all of them! However, it’s not that simple.
Wild animals will have a tame button and we’ll add a tame order. Settlers with the animal husbandry job turned on will go to these animals and initiate taming. The level of the animal handling skill will influence what animals they’ll be able to tame.
Once the tamer is close to the animal, they’ll initiate a taming sequence. Again, the duration of this sequence will depend on the animal and settler’s attributes. Taming can either succeed or fail. If it fails, that animal will not be tameable for the next 24 hours and there’s a chance it might attack your settlers, so pick your animals carefully.
If it succeeds, congratulations! However, it’s not over yet. Animals will have, let’s call it, a tame bar. Once the tame process is successful, that tame bar will increase. When it’s completely filled, the tamed animal is officially turned into a domestic one. This also means that until this happens, you’ll have to repeat the taming procedure until the tame bar is complete. Some animals will get their bar filled after two tames, and some, like wolves, will require more taming sequences. Each animal will have a different chance that they, coupled with the settler's stats, will output different numbers.
Here’s the trick: the tame bar of that animal will slowly be depleted until it’s maxed out. Once the taming sequence is successful and finished, that animal will be on a tame cooldown of 24h until you try to tame it again. During that time the tame bar will diminish. This should encourage you to pick your wild animals carefully. All those factors will definitely be balanced, so it will take some time to see how pleasant it fills. More on that later.
In the next update, we’ll discuss domestic animals, as there is a lot to say about them.
IMPORTANT:
So far, we managed to keep your saves compatible with our updates. The next official update, however, will break that cycle. We had to restructure code big time for that pathfinding to work and set the scene for the modding. This resulted in the new version of Going Medieval that will not be compatible with your older saves.
Once the update goes live on the experimental branch, a warning will pop up, indicating that existing saves will become incompatible. You'll have to start a new game to experience Update 4. Thank you.
For those that love your old saves, don't worry - we plan to introduce another branch without the new content and changes, but that one will allow you to still work on your old settlements. We understand that you spent a lot of time on them and feel like this is a good alternative.11 days ago we held our second AMA session on our
Discord server. For those that missed it, here are some questions and the answers from the team that accompany them. We even took some questions from the Steam discussions area:
[h3]DISCORD AMA Q&A[/h3]
Last week we held our second AMA session on our Discord server. For those that missed it, here are some questions and answers from the team that accompany them. We also took some from the comments on the previous Medieval Monday post:
Count Von Dread: This is something I've been wondering about for a little while. I suspect the developers perform a lot of the playtesting but is there an opportunity for people to assist with testing functions of the game outside of the experimental versions?
Gomboc04: We have done this before and might do it again :D But we're not promising anything
Northman Raspberry: Before the game was out, we had a special group of people (the most active members) that helped us with the testing. They are even in the credits of our game. Most of them are still on this Discord and you'll recognize them by their uniquely named roles. We're always discussing "should this be tested by more people" once we are closer to the update launch, but we are really happy with our internal team AND the feedback we get during the experimental-only phase. But, as Gomboc said - it's on a case-by-case discussion (or update by update if you will).
Medieval chicken of fate: Can settlers be happy when they are assigned an animal as their pet?
Gomboc04: This is something that we would like to add at some point, but as a more complex thing with depth. So, for starters, we might add simple mood effectors to settlers with pets. Later on, we would like to expand this with pets being tied to settlers and bonding with them (or not, if the setters are not good with animals). So this is something we will be adding as we work on social relationships between settlers and pets and other NPCs.
Johny [Steam]: Having skulls of enemies preserved as trophies is totally epic. Are we going to get heads on pikes or prisoners in cages for instilling fear in the hearts of attackers?
Gomboc04: Not in this next update, no. :) The skulls on the walls are purely aesthetic in nature and they don't bring much in gameplay mechanics, but we already have a system of something emitting mood modifiers when close by, so adding this will not be a problem. More from a gameplay perspective of what happens when the enemy is unhappy :)
RaeGames [Steam]: I'm going to guess and say that no matter what animal you have, there's going to be meat and bones come from said animals, but is leather/cloth as well, or is that only going to be for certain animals that you kill like deer and wolf?
Gomboc04: Meat, leather, wool, eggs, milk, and tallow are resources dropped by animals that are planned in the near future (from butchering and harvesting animals).
ミョ: Developers, do you have any plans to add weapons that actually existed in the Middle Ages? Personally, I want you to add a rapier and an executioner's sword
Gomboc04: We are planning to make our weapon number and type richer in the future. for narrative reasons and gameplay. One larger update in the future will be revolved around warfare so we plan to do it then. The next type of weapons we want to add are throwing spears, slings, and throwing axes, as well as differentiating the weapon types we already have so they give more strategic value than they do now
Ruoning [Steam]: Typically, the swords are more often pointing to the floor rather than to the roof, if hang. Don't know if we are able to change the direction. Thanks!
Gomboc04: This is 100% true. :D It was more of a solution where we aim to make systems that work on many levels. So, because the weapons on the walls can be equipped by settlers, they all need to point in the same direction (shields, bows, swords, axes, spears, etc). I had a problem making them in a different direction since rotating swords around made spears, axes, and berdaches look very bad, so I opted for this situation in order to not add a separate system only for racks that rotates and offsets the weapon by type. This way, when adding new weapons, they will automatically be able to be on the rack and work. 100%
Robinn: Are you planning to add features for entertainment like Backgammon table? Animals couldn't be a way to add another entertainment?
Gomboc04: Yeeees! I have been waiting to use my design for a bocce field for a while now. :D Archery range and dummies are something we talk about a lot to make a nice balance of training melee and marksmanship with a bit of entertainment.
normal rat: Are you planning to add double beds and children to the game?
DocHammerhead: Double beds probably at some point. Children are not very likely to get into the vanilla version.
CzarKloos: Are there any plans for a coop or multiplayer setup?
DocHammerhead: Honestly. No. :D Not saying never, but very very very far from it :D
Northman Raspberry: This is always a question that pops from time to time that we had to include it in our faq. But like Doc said, it's not impossible, but we want to nail the single-player experience.
Hamish: How soon can we expect some QoL features like task queues (when right clicking), and more status screens with filters?
DocHammerhead: Not very soon, but this next update enables us finally to be able to tackle those type of features. So, we're getting there.
retho1309: Can we make more variety of cooked food equal tier as lavish meal? As it is currently there is not much of a reason to make lower tier food once you unlock lavish meal. Nor would the settlers eat them if there are lavish meals. Actually making every individual meal a different quality based on the chef's skills, would make cooking skills more valuable. Settlers would also randomly pick a meal and not pick better meal quality (you wouldn't know until you taste it), like a random mood percentage buff chance for each settlers eating.
Gomboc04: This is a very good suggestion. I have been thinking about this a lot and wanted to make more interesting combinations of lavish meals and just make every meal in the game have a lavish version where it would drop with a quality chance just like gear. I would also like to create a bit more interesting things to do with lavish meals and not just mood modifiers - at one point have feasts and NPCs arriving and the better the food, the better the relationship with that faction
Count Von Dread: If you had to put these in a priority order for your future plan of the game what would it be ? Quality of life, game stability, frequent content updates (new things), additional scenarios/more functionality around custom scenarios
Gomboc04: This is a tough question. We look through discord/steam/reddit a lot to see what you guys want, to see what we can do. We think about what system will help us out the most with later feaures and mechanics, and we try to way that in as much as we can and determine the priorities. Unfortunately, its not simple
retho1309: It would also be more in depth and interesting if settler's health is based off a balance diet (Meat, Veggies, Fruits). So it would give us more reasons to plant all kinds of fields
Gomboc04: This is interesting, and something that pushes the food sim part a bit further than we would like to go. :( But different food types is something that we would like to utilize a bit more. Having religion play in to it with settlers not eating meat during some periods of time, if they are very pious etc. Have some setters react and prefer some types of food to the other.
ミョ: What kind of clothes and armor do you plan to add in the future?
Gomboc04: as mentioned in a question about new weapons. we try to add equipment that has a narrative (world building) role and a gameplay role. so as we add new systems (for instance when we add nice looking clothes influencing trade or social aspects, then we will be adding new types of clothing)
Medieval chicken of fate: Can tamed animals reproduce?
Gomboc04: Yes
Medieval chicken of fate: Will there be an improvement of dps on metal spear/berduche in the near future because i see the iron berdiche having the same dps on the wooden spear but i would like to ask if there will be like a minor increase pf damage for metal spears/berdiche
Northman Raspberry: Oh, balancing will be constantly overhauled. We'll fine-tune everything during the game's development. Right not we are working on making them functional and fair. Only if we detect major disruption of the gameplay do we fix it in the next hotfix. So yeah - balancing is very much a situational thing.
OozySquash: Hey guys! I've seen it discussed on previous ama-talks how the settlers aren't necessarily designed for very large maps, are there any plans to balance this and make it more viable to have settlers working in a larger area without being so nerfed from dropping sleep and hunger bars etc?
Gomboc04: Yes. There are plans to balance this with existing mechanics, and add new mechanics that will counter that issue.
Medieval chicken of fate: Who is mostly in charge of the updates?
Gomboc04: A huge spreadsheet of ideas that changes prioritizations from time to time (from steam, discord, redit, us the devs, our publisher) and then whet is near the top we build an update around. like th update that's coming is mostly built around refactoring of pathfinding. giving us the option to make interesting and optimized anima behavior
Molnar Popaj: Don't forget common sense! Sometimes, no matter how a popular request is, it's impossible to implement it before doing bunch of other things.
Lyric: Any plans for moats?
Northman Raspberry: More like, are there any plans for water? :D This has also been discussed for a long time, but boy is the water complicated thing. Not impossible, mind you - just very complicated. We are not committed to it as of now, as we're trying to choose are battles that are doable in a sensible period. That pathfinding overhaul we've been talking about? We've been working on it for months. Now imagine a complex thing like water - the mechanic of its distribution, the effect on the terrain, its impact on characters and animals and other seasons...I think you can see why it will take some time and why fire will probably come sooner than the water.
Medieval chicken of fate: Will there be a part in the almanac on what are the needs of the animals for example. A cow will eat grass. And can I force the cow to be cannibal?
Gomboc04: I don't know. Maybe. We try to make it common sense - a cow can't eat meat, try giving her a redcurrant pie. You will be able to change their json file to be bloodthirsty man-eating cows.
Amary: I was wondering if you have plans to implement a feature where we can designate a rally point for non combatants settlers during a raid?
Molnar Popaj: There will be a combat focused update, that's a cool qol feature we could implement.
Lady Kathleen: For the most asked question of the game.... Is there going to be dirt in the short future or the long future?
Gomboc04: Yes
Vaatu: Can we ever expect to be able to build our own catapults, trebuchets, or other defensive siege equipment?
master312: We have talked about it many times, but no any concrete plans yet. We'll probably think about it in more details for the future combat update.
Count Von Dread: Will there ever be Cloaks, capes in the game? after all end game is always all about fashion
Baan: In short, yes. We were even thinking of other attachments like scarfs, backpacks, sword sheaths and so on.
Amary: Will we be able to copy torch fuel setting and paste it to multiple torches all at once to reduce clicks?
Gomboc04: in short: yes. in a future QoL batch of work
That will be all for today’s talk. Stay tuned, more exciting announcements will be coming soon!
For more direct communication, be sure to join our
Discord server and talk about your Going Medieval experience with our active community.
Thank you for your time!
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(Note: Jade material will be added to the material files for you to dabble with, but will not be officially added as a variant to any items in-game)
(An example of the WeaponQualitySettings.json . Armor, Garment, and Weapon type have their own files)
