Mod concept: nomadic survival, no vehicles, more emphasis on agriculture

[BadZombie]

I'm currently gathering info which I intend to turn into the ultimate primitive survival mod, providing the framework for a more realistic experience in the event of a "real life" zombie apocalypse, while taking influence from historical sci-fi conceptions of zombies.

Any feedback/suggestions welcome, also if you want to get involved in this mod concept please let me know!!!

In 7 Days To Day it has always seemed unrealistic to me that players are able to craft helicopters only a matter of weeks (or sooner) after waking up in a zombie apocalypse.
Not to mention many other things which seem totally unrealistic about the game.

While creating this mod I imagine what I would do in the same situation, and for me the top priority is survival - not from zombies, but from starvation and thirst.
Early game should be focussed on sustaining life and ensuring you are able to be free from worrying about starvation and thirst.
This means that farming should be always be the top priority.

This notion has so much potential as parallels are drawn from the agricultural revolution in homo sapiens.
Think about it... who are the most valuable members of a post-apocalyptic society where reliance on supermarkets no longer exists?
Those that know how to farm. Those who know how to grow their own food. Those who can identify plants.

This aspect of survival can go down 3 channels: farming, hunting and looting.

3 initial playstyles could be of utility: farmers, hunters and looters.

The types of foods you consume should also have an effect on your character.

5 main food groups:

Fruits/Veg
Protein
Carbs
Dairy
Fats/sugars

With each giving a buff when over a certain percentage of satiety, and a debuff when 3 or more fall below a certain percentage.
This will introduce a fourth playstyle: cook.
You will no longer benefit from spam eating the same stack of grilled meat.
Additionally, cooked foods will spoil over time. This ensures players only cook food when they need to eat, or rely on canned foodstuffs when travelling.

Meats should also be reverted to their animal forms: chicken, boar, rabbit etc, giving a greater variety of meals to choose from

Your average Joe would not know how to work a cement mixer or chemistry station, let alone know how to build them.
Forge? Why would I need to smelt metals in the first place?
Working version of the workstations (if needed at all) should only be found in POI's.

There should be no ability to craft motorized vehicles... instead some vehicles in the world should be able to be hotwired and driven for a certain amount of time.
This could give rise to a fifth playstyle: engineer.
Bicycles should remain in the game, but again should not be craftable, only found.

Fitting with the traditional sci-fi notion of zombies... they should only ever walk, not run, and they shouldn't randomly know your exact location every 7 days.
Instead, you encounter them when in small towns or cities, and rarely in the wilderness.

And should only fight them if you need to.

Additionally, with fewer humans in the world, nature would start to reclaim areas... roads should have weeds emerging from them, animals would be more abundant in the wild.

You shouldn't be the only survivor, other survivors roam the wasteland and offer trades. You have allies, but also enemies.

You shouldn't know the date or time, unless you have a watch or talk to somebody that has one. In lieu of that you just count the sunsets.
 

At the moment with the horde attacking every 7 days the emphasis is naturally focussed on base building and everything else is pushed into the background.

Please let me know if you know of any existing mods which may share ideas that I can take from.

Obviously this mod is going to be an overhaul mod as it completely changes the narrative of the game.

 

[Cranberry Monster]

I like the way you think, Bad Zombie. There are a few mods I can think of offhand that have some of the mechanics you're talking about. Darkness Falls, for example, removes the time from the HUD until you find or craft a watch (neither of which is easy). And Romero Mod makes zombies walk all the time, removes blood moons and the zombie homing ability, and makes most weapon damage minimal (1 pt) unless it's to the head. I'm pretty sure at least one vehicle mod also adds repairable vehicles to the world.

Trying a nomadic, hunter/gatherer style had occurred to me before. I thought it might be cool if you removed regular crop growing (or perhaps just seed crafting) and set the food plants to be random spawns around the world. Redefine the plants so there's no chance of getting a seed on harvest, but also have it downgrade to a non-obvious block (say, grass or air) that will mature into a harvestable food plant again in time (not 3 days, obviously, but 15-30 days might be reasonable). Once you'd harvested all the plants in one area, it'd be time to move onto another section of the map until the plants had a chance to regrow. Living off the land could still have value if it gave you a bonus to the amount of food harvested from these wild plants.

 

[BadZombie]

I like the way you think, Bad Zombie. There are a few mods I can think of offhand that have some of the mechanics you're talking about. Darkness Falls, for example, removes the time from the HUD until you find or craft a watch (neither of which is easy). And Romero Mod makes zombies walk all the time, removes blood moons and the zombie homing ability, and makes most weapon damage minimal (1 pt) unless it's to the head. I'm pretty sure at least one vehicle mod also adds repairable vehicles to the world.

Trying a nomadic, hunter/gatherer style had occurred to me before. I thought it might be cool if you removed regular crop growing (or perhaps just seed crafting) and set the food plants to be random spawns around the world. Redefine the plants so there's no chance of getting a seed on harvest, but also have it downgrade to a non-obvious block (say, grass or air) that will mature into a harvestable food plant again in time (not 3 days, obviously, but 15-30 days might be reasonable). Once you'd harvested all the plants in one area, it'd be time to move onto another section of the map until the plants had a chance to regrow. Living off the land could still have value if it gave you a bonus to the amount of food harvested from these wild plants.

Hey, thank you for the mod suggestions! Although prevalent I have never played DF so was unaware of that time feature. I will check out the Romero mod and search for the vehicle repair one... that will at least provide a foundation to build an overhaul modlet from.

I really like the idea of hunter/gatherer that you have outlined with the moving from area to area based on where certain crops grow, and I like the idea of germination taking 15-30 days which is more in line to real crop germination speeds. I'm not going to get too pedantic about crops though: coffee in the real world could only realistically grow in a hot climate, so in game maybe only the desert, or provide protection with glass and a heat source... maybe further down the line. Downgrading crop blocks to air is the perfect way to execute this! Hadn't thought of that!

 

[BadZombie]

Hi all,

I have begun writing the code for the metabolism/food component of this mod concept and need some help with realising a particular goal.

I want to have meat spoil over time.

Is it possible within the frameworks of xml to have 1 item change to another after a certain amount of time.

I'm looking for ways to achieve this but I just don't think it is possible within the code.

Cany anyone confirm? Or is there a workaround?

 

[BFT2020]

Hi all,

I have begun writing the code for the metabolism/food component of this mod concept and need some help with realising a particular goal.

I want to have meat spoil over time.

Is it possible within the frameworks of xml to have 1 item change to another after a certain amount of time.

I'm looking for ways to achieve this but I just don't think it is possible within the code.

Cany anyone confirm? Or is there a workaround?

FYI @khzmusik has a modlet in his area that does add food spoilage to the game.  You can use that as a reference or use his mod instead of creating your own (i.e. make it required as part of the mod pack, not suggesting you copy his code).



Note, this is a C# mod in order to get it to work.  Not sure if you can do what you want through xml only.

 

[doughphunghus]

Any feedback/suggestions welcome

Just me thinking of idea and things I have seen...if I know a mod specifically I'll list it (some are old),, else "I knew of or saw one"...

NOTE: I'm not saying "take stuff from these mods" I'm just suggesting mods and/or "examples": of mods that had some mechanic or effect that was neat, obviously implying you can either ask permission to use their mod/XML, or "roll your own using that unique survival concept someone else did"

1.  Fishing: There have been some mods that had a "fishing" element in them.  Telrics had a working fishing pole and I believe MeanClouds just used "place fish catcher, block "grows" into a caught fish basket with random loot".

2. Grass/bush/soil harvesting: Some mods (Telrics had the worms?) have had "dig soil", and randomly find (items)" like worms and grubs.  Others have "hit grass/shrub... you may get grasshopper or other bug like dead roaches".  You could simply use these in recipes or maybe "bait' or food for animals?  I think some chicken coop mods have you "feed" the chickens to "reset" the chicken coop block (block then "grows" into a coop with harvest-able chicks/chickens"). I think some mods have a baby chick you can find by looting birds nests.

3. Outdoor Ambiance, Animals: There is/was/were mods by Spherii? That had "butterflies and small insects flying around", and possibly fish in the water...("A better life"  mod?).  Also: the NPC mod has a Bird pack where they fly around, never attacking.

4. Outdoor Ambiance, Plants: I believe Gnamod and the Asia mod? both had some very nice "plants and other things" in them that really made the ground cover (and roads) look "rougher/fuller" with all sorts of plants and things that were "at different heights" than the standard grasses and small bushes in the vanilla game. SO when you were "not on a road" there was much less visibility and it looked "much more natural looking".  Additionally there's OCB's mods for "custom textures" (seems to only be on Nexusmods? (https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/2788)  . where there are examples of using this to get some outdoor "different shades for outdoor vanilla plants". personally: I wish someone would make a mod to must have "many different heights of grass and bushes/plants" because I think it wodul really amp up wandering off the trails experience. The PS4 console version seems to do this by lowering the player camera (or something... maybe plants were taller in old versions?) and it feels "good"

5. Boat mod. I think there is a primitive raft in it (feasible to craft as wilderness person)? but to really use it you will have to generate a map with quite a bit of water on it/long distance islands.

6. Ambiance: looting. Ravenhearst? and some otehr mods have made "trash containers" containers you can collect and store stuff in.  like "this is my base for the first week.. yes, all my stuff is in trash bags and trash cardboard boxes" is kinda a fun look/feel.

7. Weather: Currently, being hot and cold will not really "kill you", just take stamina I think. There are some mods that make the weather lethal.  too hot or cold and you are not dressed for it: you die. There is/was also an acid rain mod, might be a fun idea.

8. Fear/Mental struggle?: Ewhiaz? had a "fear" and stress mod (Stressed out?) and there is another mod.. (28 Alphas later?) that have mechanics to basically make you have to handle being stressed or scared or under duress.  Basically it keeps building up ( s an amount) and if not mitigated in some way (being by a fire/in the light/smoking a cigarette/being dry etc) you eventually just "give up on life" and die.  The "mental state" having to be a manageable thing a nice survival mechanic IMHO.

9. Animals: Iceburg71 has a "baby animals" mod. its just all the vanilla animals, but scaled down so you have tiers of them (babies, teens, adult: each with different health points, probably attack strength, speed, etc.). This way "every bear or dog or wolf is not a huge adult" and its fun to see an animal and have to put a second of thought into it be fore attacking or fleeing.  but if you're planning "all different kinds of meats" for animals, you could probably tweak "amounts given"  based on animal size.

10. Fire mod: wood catches fire. Explosions cause fires. I think trees might be exempt? survival goodness, especially if you are making a lot of things out of wood.  However: I think the "put the fire out" items are fire extinguishers, but maybe there is a bucket of water in there.. if not you might have to make one.

11. SCore mod: There is a LOT of configs you can do in the blocks.xml file. You need to have it for the birds NPC add on, and you also probably? need it for the food spoilage mod, and need it for the fire mod.  Things you can do in this mod: turn off nerd poling ability, have it generate caves (have to make a new map), make punching things with bare hands hurt you, etc.

12. Polluted water: There are mods to add "polluted water" to all "water sources" (by khzmusik?) that must be processed more than just "boiling murky water", if you want to make water a struggle.

13. Loot %: You can load a few mods to allow dropping the loot% way down.  Personally, it seems making it 10% might be a good target for what you are looking for, but there may be a "more perfect number" (so when you perk up, loot is more abundant).  Anyway: when you drop loot% waaay low you find that "looting" (without perking high the looting skill) is very pointless unless you are desperate or just want to mindlessly loot while in a POI. The point is: it forces you to harvest resources and craft.

14. No traders: There are mods for this... anyway: either "removes" the trader, or trader POIs or ( some overhaul...) makes the traders have no quests.

15: Misc crafting: There have been some mods (Khelldon had some) that add "little bits of items" to craft things. Things like nails, nuts and bolts.  Things you have to scavenge/loot. Since you don't seem to want a forge to be "available easily" , then why not make it "I cannot upgrade or build a door without nails, bolts, doorknob" or "I cannot upgrade this frame without nails, cannot build a hatch without hinges/bolts. etc.  Make looting and scavenging more "looting for basic parts" and then require those parts to build the simplest of things.  If you want to go further,: make every block upgrade take substantially more than just "material". example: there have been mods requiring you to make mortar to make/upgrade wood to cobblestone. In this way, making all block upgrades "really painful", you kinda force players to build from wood and/or live in POI's and fortify them with wood for a long time, until you want to allow them to forge nails, or maybe "harvest/loot more efficiently" to find a lot more nails/screws/bolts

 

[khzmusik]

FYI @khzmusik has a modlet in his area that does add food spoilage to the game.  You can use that as a reference or use his mod instead of creating your own (i.e. make it required as part of the mod pack, not suggesting you copy his code).



Note, this is a C# mod in order to get it to work.  Not sure if you can do what you want through xml only.

Meant to reply sooner, sorry...

The actual food spoilage is done in SCore. That is a C# mod, and spoilage does in fact require C#.

My mod enables it, sets the spoilage rates for various foods, sets the preserve rates for containers, adds fertilizer that plants spoil to (instead of rotten meat), creates craft-able canned goods and fridges (powered by batteries), and a few other user-friendly things like loading tips.

If you want to change the water situation, I have a few different mods you might be interested in:

• Rain Collector: The "dew" collector fills less when the weather is dry, a little more when it's foggy, and a lot more when it's raining. Also includes the ability to change the number of "slots" in the dew collector. Requires C#.
  
• Murky dew: The dew collector fills with murky water, not clean water. In return, it doesn't produce heat. XML only.
  
• Polluted water: Glass jars are back, but they can only be filled with polluted water, which is much worse than murky water, and needs to be purified (not just boiled). For that, there are new water purification tablets, which can only be crafted with bleach (bleach can only be looted or bought at traders), and are unlocked with herbal antibiotics. It also includes the features of the "murky dew" mod. This does not require C#, but there are new icons, so it has to be installed on client and server.
  

You are free to use anything in any of my mods, however you like, verbatim or not. You can also use them purely as tutorials, if you want to do your own thing.

There are Gimp files for the new icons, if you want to make your own (they are all based on the vanilla game icons, photos taken by me, or public domain images, so there are no rights issues if you want to distribute them).