Major Update 0.5.6: Animal husbandry, balance performances

This is quite a major update, and it goes with a new trailer as the old one was getting embarrassingly dated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOmtvJ-0Pjs

We'll go over the major changes below, but here are the main points for those who want the TL;DR version first:

• Animal Husbandry has been implemented
  
• Added the butcher shop, tanner, and pastures
  
• 10 to 20% better performances overall, with reduced RAM consumption
  
• Wall placements using zoning method instead of one by one
  
• Balance tweaks
  

You can now pasture pigs and sheep for meat, wool, and animal hides which can be in turn converted into food, cloth and leather at specific new or existing crafting stations. To that effect, I added a reproductive system and those animals will age. Kids and old animals can't reproduce, but can still be butchered.



Domesticated animals require a pasture (zone) and food (wheat, a new easy to grow, crop). Animal food production won't be efficient at first, you'll need to hit a large enough group for those to make enough children for that to work out. As such it's probably best for mid to late game bases.

You can find those animals in the forest (which is a new destination for the exploration planner) or get them from the new merchant.



As explained above, domesticated animals gained the ability to reproduce. There's a soft cap of 60 alive animals per species per game. This is a feature I will be introducing for underground critters too in future updates once we've figured out a couple issues.

For 2 animals to reproduce, they need to both be adults (animals reach adulthood after an in-game week or so) and be in close proximity. There's no animation or special behavior for now, it just "happens". Pregnancy last also around a week. Children individually take either the traits of the mother or the father, and children' stats are re-rolled close to one of their parents.

As this is a new feature, I am preventing them from dying of old age, but that will be included in future versions.



All animals (hostiles or domesticated) are now dropping animal hides instead of leather. A tanner has been added to convert such hides into proper leather.

The new butcher shop might be a bit confusing as it doesn't come with its own menu. Instead, when you click on a domesticated animal or change the settings of a pasture you can order animals to get butchered. This is where your settlers with the animal husbandry skill will make burgers out of your cattle. I'll likely add its own menu (listing ALL your animals for instance) in a coming update.

The pasture is, well, a pasture. Domesticated animals you bought or found will be parked there. This is also where they will eat. Don't forget that you will need to provide them with wheat if you don't want them to starve.



Leather requirements for many recipes have been increased thanks to that new renewable source. Additionally, while making the trailer I couldn't help but notice that making large buildings was taking an ungodly amount of time, as such, wall building time has been halved, and tile placement is 5 to 10 times faster (for a settler with average construction skill, at least). HP of defensive structures (sandbags, and barbed wires) has been increased as well.



The game got a proper loading screen when starting a new game, with bonus random tips. Walls are now placed like zones, with a specific renderer giving you a preview of what your construction will look like. I also smoothed the mouse cursor and reduced its size a tiny bit so it doesn't look all "pixely" anymore.



I went on a fairly extensive performance pass, leading to on average 10 to 20% better performances. The time spent between launching the game and getting to the menu has been reduced (it continues to load when you're in the starting menu now). It should also consume a bit less memory and save/load a bit faster. There's still room for many more improvements, but nothing that I can really touch at this stage of development.



While this is "technically" compatible with previous save-games, everything that was dropped on the ground will be lost and many changes will only impact newly created structures or won't be present (animal trader) until you start a new game.

There's a LOT of additional changes and tweaks in this version, but I'll have to refer you to the changelog below for that.

Cheers!

 + AI: Added Cattle AI module
 + AI: Added reproductive component (for pigs and sheeps only right now)
 + Balance: Increased leather requirements for multiple recipes (armor, some clutter)
 + Balance: Reduced build time for floors (massively) and walls (halved)
 + Balance: Updated default equipment pack (more food stuff and wood. removed spears, renamed to quick start). Leave just enough room to add basic weapons or 2 techs.
 + Balance: Reduced value of very basic weapons (removing a trading exploit)
 + Balance: Increased HP of barbed wires and sandbags
 + Balance: Edited (and added) jobs to take the new activities (brewing & animal husbandry) into account
 + Content: Domesticated pigs can be raised for meat and leather production
 + Content: Domesticated sheeps can be raised for meat and wool
 + Content: Added animal trader event
 + Content: The new butcher shop is used to process cattle into meat
 + Content: The new tanner can process animal hides into leather
 + Content: Loom can convert wool into cloth
 + Content: Replaced leather drops from animals by animal hides
 + Content: Added pasture zones to feed and care for the cattle
 + Content: Added wheat farming (fodder for the cattle)
 + Content: Survivors got a new skill, "husbandry" for everything animal related (butchering, pasture management)
 + Content: Added the "Forest" to exploration destination table, ability to find animals
 + Engine: Ability for agents to reproduce
 + Engine: NPC can produce sounds at semi random intervals (pigs and sheeps for now, will be added for more stuff along the way)
 + Engine: Ability to convert items into animals (for expeditions & trading purpose)
 + Engine: Reduced RAM consumption, incidentally increasing save/load speed
 + Engine: Multiple CPU optimizations (Fauna, and UI being the biggest targets, more stuff to come) giving 10 to 20% better performances on average
 + Engine: Heavily reduced wait time between launch and start menu
 + Engine: Improved Discord integration
 + Graphics: Added yellow grass to all terrain presets for smoother transitions between terrain types
 + Graphics: Better looking mouse cursor
 + Graphics: Wall placement using the zoning method show actual walls instead of the usual transparent rectangle
 + UI: Added settings menu for pasture 
 + UI: Added cattle specific NPC panel
 + UI: Wall placement now done like zones instead of a wall-per-wall basis
 + UI: Zoom/Unzoom via mousewheel is smoother and more consistent
 + UI: Optional zoom to cursor option in the settings (still needs some work)
 + UI: Added "game is loading" panel when starting a new game (so people don't assume it crashed)
 + Fixed: Missing UI text for some orders
 + Fixed: Giant crabs would still get needs related problems (other animals were already fixed)
 + Fixed: Animal Husbandry skill was disabled by default
 + Fixed: Small bug that might have caused some issues with queued jobs
 + Fixed: Some additional cases where a builder would try to build something they don't have access to
 + Fixed: Stone statues available in start menu despite being useless outside of trading purposes
 + Fixed: Bug that was delaying most events from happening for way too long
 + Fixed: Trade jeep teleporting from tile to tile in trading zone instead of being immobile
 + Fixed: People with the hauling skill disabled would still pickup stuff from the ground