30 replies to this topic

[Chesko]

Release 1.0

Progress:

0%

Status: Not under development. Waiting for Frostfall 2.0 completion.

(A discussion continued/branched from the official Bethesda forums...)

As they say, "fail to plan, plan to fail." This is the planning thread for one of two mods I'm working the details out on, currently called Last Seed. Last Seed will be a hunger / thirst / sleep mod that has a strong emphasis on simplicity while still retaining immersion and increasing the importance of food and water. Expanding the existing cooking mechanics is also a desired focus.

Last Seed will be designed to be stand-alone, or as a part of a survival and immersion "trilogy" along side Frostfall and Hearthfire Rain's Hand (a camping / wilderness survival mod also in the planning stages). It will also be compatible with other Hypothermia mods, like Nitor's Hypothermia, and other camping mods, such as Camping Kit of the Northern Ranger, Camping Lite, and LtMattMoo's Camping.

This thread may not get a whole lot of activity since Frostfall is still in very active development, but I can now see the end of its development lifecycle from here and would like to start the dialogue early for my next project. That way I'll already have everyone's feedback and ideas on paper when I'm ready to implement.

So, here's what I've got rolling around in my head:

• Hunger, Thirst, and Sleep: I think I'll use the same scale as I did in Frostfall: 120 to 0, with 120-101 being the "bonus" range (well fed, well hydrated, well rested). Eating, drinking, and sleeping makes your status go up; failing to do so makes them go down. Every 20 points marks a "threshhold" where good or bad things happen.
• Tie the timing of the mod to game timescale. Provide adjustable hunger, thirst, and fatigue rates.
• Automatic eating option. This is inspired by Necessities of Morrowind, one of my favorite mods in this category. Allow the player to select a diet type; carnivore, omnivore, and herbavore. Use this setting to determine what the player should automatically eat at appropriate times from their inventory. Allow for selecting drink preference / precedence. Also allow the player to eat and drink manually.
• Automatic status messages. Keep in touch with the player when their condition changes.
• On-demand status checking, either via a power or some other means. Include active effects that show the player's status and the effects of that status.
• Hunger, thirst, and sleep should all have unique, interesting effects, and balanced against other mods (including Frostfall) that may also affect your performance.
• Show, don't tell. Togglable imagespace effects, animations, and other visual feedback are important in getting the player's attention, without getting in their way.
• Use existing assets. There's already tons of food diversity in Skyrim; I just want to give it a purpose.
• Cooking enhancements, with a focus on primitive cooking over a campfire or similar. I don't want this to turn into Iron Chef: Skyrim. Move the recipe for grilled chicken, grilled leeks, grilled venison, grilled anything, to an actual grill you can drop food onto and watch it cook.
• Allow player to place and use a full suite of camping equipment (shared code between Frostfall and Hearthfire), to facilitate cooking over a fire, and restoring Fatigue through sleeping.
• Refillable bottles and waterskins. Disallow sea-water (northern coast). The rest of Skyrim is verdant with pristine lakes and streams, that the player should be able to gather water from.

I'm on the fence about two particular features; fishing and trapping. Both of these features were planned in my head as being part of Hearthfire, since they are closer to wilderness survival activities. However, fishing is really just a food procurement method. Trapping will have other purposes than food (securing the campsite against random encounters, acquiring pelts), but it's still a primary method of catching food. Would it make more sense to put these in Last Seed instead? Or put them in both, and just make them compatible?

So, that's what's on my mind. The question is, what would you like to see? What do you feel is currently lacking in existing H/T/S mods? Thanks for your input.

Edited by Chesko, 19 October 2012 - 02:52 PM.

[woodfilter]

Hi Chesko

A couple of things jump to my mind:
1) A system similar to your W.E.A.R. for recipes, so one could add specific attributes, e.g. warmth to stews, or no thirst quenching to dry meat. Maybe even food properties to certain alchemic potions.
2) Food should go rotten after a while, as in IMCN.
3) Need a mug in inventory to drink. That is what the animation suggest anyway
4) Ability to bake bread, since that is what the default animation suggest too.

Really appreciate your great work and hope my 5 cents help

Woodfilter

[Chesko]

Hey Woodfilter. I wish I could import the comments from the Bethesda forums, but some of these things have been talked about a little bit.

• That might not be technically possible, but hey, I'll write it down.
• Food spoilage as a mechanic is at the forefront of my mind. There is too much food in Skyrim for a survival mod to be meaningful. Not only that, people should guard their available food more carefully. I shouldn't be able to rob an entire farm's worth of crops with no repercussions.
• Not sure I agree with this. I can drink from a bottle or waterskin just fine.
• Cooking, and the things that go along with it, need to be improved and reworked. I agree.

Edited by Chesko, 24 August 2012 - 09:16 PM.

[woodfilter]

Hey Chesko. I will check the Bethesda forums (maybe you could put a link in the first post for others).
-Maybe the wrong mod, but what came to my mind right now: My horse seems quite oblivious to any h/t/s effects, so that might be a unique addition.
-As for the mug, when using IMCN, my character and the followers always used a mug in the animation, even if none were in inventory, which seemed odd...thats why I came up with that one.

[Chesko]

Done. Link is at the top of the OP.

[woodfilter]

Hi Chesko. Went through the Bethesda thread. In addition to what DigitalWanderer said over there, I suggest to expand the hunger and thirst to non-human followers. Dogs will need meat and horses wheat and both will consume a hefty amount of water. So to add to the sense of preparedness, surly in combination with carry limits, the availability of food per trip to the wilderness would decline as more will be consumed.
The trigger event to fulfill the needs of the followers (human or not) should be camping or entering a city or an inn. If you fail to tend to the followers, they should simply take care of themselves and walk off on the player. If inhibiting fast travel with Frostfall, you would have to walk home or collect the dog in a place quite off your itinerary. If you slow down the speed of an hungry horse, that would encourage the player not to simply ride to the next inn but rather set up a camp.

[onerous1]

Ok there was a lot to read on the bethesda forum page and I wanted to make some comments about it.

*Followers

I've used BFF Animal Companion on my latest play through. Everyday around the same time you have to feed your pet (and the pet will bring you things). I never thought it was intrusive or took away from gameplay. In fact I enjoyed having to feed my pet everyday. It made me feel like I was connected or involved with the animal.

I propose that whenever the PC eats a meal then the other party members eat a meal. That way you don't have to count calories for every party member in the group. So group happiness can be tied to your own needs. If the PC was just robbed and has no money to buy food, has been starving for awhile, and can't kill a rabbit to save his life then party members can ditch and see money/food elsewhere.

I advocate for this because I felt IMCN gave you too much bang for your buck when it came to food. You could make 6 or 8 apple cabbage soups from one cabbage head, a red apple, and some salt. Then with the spoiler setting on I felt it was impossible to keep all of this stuff from spoiling and wanted my companions to share in the bounty. Food is so plentiful in the game that someone besides the PC should be eating it. One possible way to keep micromanagement down is to tailor the recipes in such a way that you can get enough rations for 4 servings. When the player eats one serving and there are three other players in the party, all servings for that food item will disappear (assuming the PC had only 4). I guess you can still have 1 recipe count for one serving and just make sure you can make enough for everyone.

Those were my thoughts for now.

[JohnnyB41]

I'm glad automatic eating is put as an option. I personally like having to rummage through my inventory to sate my hunger. I've been following Frostfall and I know that follower support is coming it 1.7. It would be nice if they were also affected by these "needs". Perhaps it would require you to place some food and water in their inventory, and maybe have a "Let's eat!" dialogue? Or maybe you can place a bit of food on the floor and command your follower to eat it similar to how you ask them to sleep (but that might be a bit mean ).

At the moment I'm using SkyRealism - Feast and Famine. He allows you to collect water from streams or lakes, similar to TRO - Basic Needs, but requires you to purify it via cooking for it to be safe. I would also like to suggest this feature, as I think it'd work well with Frostfall. And yes, would like to see Grilled Leeks cooked in a grill, not a pot.

As for trapping, I'd think it would fit in better with Rain's Hand, which focuses on the environment more. Fishing has its place here.

Thanks, Chesko!

[BootySweat]

Have you considered incorporating a feature for planting crops in Last Seed?

• Food spoilage as a mechanic is at the forefront of my mind. There is too much food in Skyrim for a survival mod to be meaningful. Not only that, people should guard their available food more carefully. I shouldn't be able to rob an entire farm's worth of crops with no repercussions.

Great to hear, I think this is a cool feature in IMCN, but unfortunately for some reason it results in lots and lots of "divide by zero" errors in the Papyrus debug log. I'm not quite sure if these errors are harmless, but I disabled the food spoilage feature as a result.

Edited by BootySweat, 28 August 2012 - 10:00 AM.

[Chesko]

Maybe I'm out in the woods here but I'm not sure if I want to implement any sort of follower support. Part of what scares me is, having already worked on Wearable Lanterns and supporting 3 different multiple follower mods, I know that it can be a bit of a pain to manage.

The other side of it is that while it sounds cool and makes sense, I can't see the implementation being fun. I can't see in my head how this will work in such a way that isn't flow-breaking or annoying. For now I think I will focus on a more player-centric experience, and leave followers to tend to themselves. I'll keep thinking about it but the most important thing to me is for this to not get in the player's way, and that's what I'm afraid tending to followers (which, in my opinion, shouldn't need to be babysat) will do.

[onerous1]

All I would like is for food items to be eaten by someone other than the PC. It could be as simple as every 1000 steps a food item gets eaten or disappears from the inventory. It's bad enough NPCs don't have anything interesting to say beyond their quest you did two months ago.

But anyway, I have a question. Would you consider using third party software like SKSE? Why or why not?

[Chesko]

I want my work to be enjoyed by the widest number of people possible, which means making it as accessible as possible. If you requires SKSE you immediately cut your potential userbase. It also adds more troubleshooting overhead for me. Is the problem me? Is it SKSE? And then the flood of bug reports every time Bethesda pushes out a patch and breaks SKSE functionality for a few days.

That being said, I'd prefer my work to be as high-quality as possible and achieve what I set out to do, so, if I find that I need SKSE to pull something off that can't be worked around any other way, yes, I would use it. I will be using SkyUI Widget Framework to drive meters on the screen when the Widget Framework becomes available, which will require SKSE. However, that particular bit of functionality should fail silently if you don't happen to have SKSE installed. It shouldn't break the mod, you just won't see the meters.

[Chesko]

Anyone see the Hearthfire trailer? Particularly the animation taking bread out of an oven?

Imma have me some of that...

Edited by Chesko, 28 August 2012 - 08:35 PM.

[onerous1]

The oven animation is pretty cool. What Dovahkiin was taking out of the oven was a bit strange though. Still makes me want to open a bakery and make sweet rolls.

[SneakyLookingSort]

Hiya! Will this mod support werewolf feeding? I hate to be starving the next morning even if I just mauled 50 bodies last night.

[chrisbburn]

Really looking forward to this mod have loved using Frostfall and all of its support is fantastic. Have been using Imps for all my food needs at the moment but it seems to have become unsupported with dawnguard coming out and all the new vampire stuff it just isnt compatible and with new mods. So really cant wait for this version of needs mod as the hearthfire dlc seems to be expanding the cooking options. (from the screenies)

Really cant wait.

[abbycadabra]

Truly am excited for this mod. Like a lot of other people I've been using Imp's mod, and have been very happy with it, but the lack of updates and support means that I'm very keen to move on to another Needs mod. Based on the quality of your work with Frostfall, Last Seed is far and away the obvious choice.

My top wish for this mod would be to have the ability to fill bottles/waterskins in rivers and lakes. Technically you can do this with Imp's, but the function has literally never worked for me, and even when I'm swimming I get told "there is no useable water." The wells are the only place I can fill up, but that's not great from an RP perspective.

The other thing I'd really like is the ability to more easily add new compatible food items with the CK. Hopefully some of the good food mods like Babette's Feast and Improved Cooking will put out compatibility patches for Last Seed, but I'd like to do some myself as well. I made a lot of recipes for Imp's, but getting the nutrient values to work was a real pain in the neck.

Another good feature would be for your hunger/thirst to increase more slowly while you're sleeping. This more closely mirrors real life (if you go eight hours without eating during the day you'll be starving, but fasting for eight hours overnight is no big deal). With Imp's I basically have to stuff myself with food right before I sleep, because by I always wake up with something like -500% hunger/thirst, which is annoying and not very realistic. When you wake up in the morning you need to drink a cup of tea, not six skins of water.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Very excited and can't wait to see what you pull out of the hat with this mod!

[chrisbburn]

Another good feature would be for your hunger/thirst to increase more slowly while you're sleeping. This more closely mirrors real life (if you go eight hours without eating during the day you'll be starving, but fasting for eight hours overnight is no big deal). With Imp's I basically have to stuff myself with food right before I sleep, because by I always wake up with something like -500% hunger/thirst, which is annoying and not very realistic. When you wake up in the morning you need to drink a cup of tea, not six skins of water.

Hi I noticed this as well and found that going into the rates you can slow the sleeping rate right done that should help. I keep playing with the time scale and rates to find the correct balance.

[Chesko]

My top wish for this mod would be to have the ability to fill bottles/waterskins in rivers and lakes. Technically you can do this with Imp's, but the function has literally never worked for me, and even when I'm swimming I get told "there is no useable water." The wells are the only place I can fill up, but that's not great from an RP perspective.

I can sympathize with Imp as this is a very difficult problem to solve. I'll do the best I can, but water detection is... difficult at best. But it is a priority for me.

The other thing I'd really like is the ability to more easily add new compatible food items with the CK. Hopefully some of the good food mods like Babette's Feast and Improved Cooking will put out compatibility patches for Last Seed, but I'd like to do some myself as well. I made a lot of recipes for Imp's, but getting the nutrient values to work was a real pain in the neck.

If I had my way, patches would not be necessary. I am considering using a weight-based approach for these sorts of things. Since Last Seed's hunger system will be much simpler than Imps, there's no breakdown of nutrients; it should contribute to your fullness based on weight. I can detect food weight using SKSE.

Another good feature would be for your hunger/thirst to increase more slowly while you're sleeping. This more closely mirrors real life (if you go eight hours without eating during the day you'll be starving, but fasting for eight hours overnight is no big deal). With Imp's I basically have to stuff myself with food right before I sleep, because by I always wake up with something like -500% hunger/thirst, which is annoying and not very realistic. When you wake up in the morning you need to drink a cup of tea, not six skins of water.

This is also a priority of mine, and it can be done.

[inkspottedtea]

I can sympathize with Imp as this is a very difficult problem to solve. I'll do the best I can, but water detection is... difficult at best. But it is a priority for me.

I know very, very little about modding so forgive me if I'm waaaay off base, but - if you can already detect water in Frostfall so that the character "gets wet" and it tells you "the water is cool and refreshing" or freezing, etc, I would have thought it would be a similar thing to be able to fill your skins? Like, if you're in water and Frostfall says you're drenched, you can drink it too? Again, sorry if I'm without a paddle on this one!


I'm also very eager to switch from Imp's to Last Seed, especially since there's no longer support for IMCN. Water is also a bit of a contention with me in that mod. The waterskin for SURE is irritating as all heck. Yes, it has more uses, but it only fills you up 60% as opposed to a wine bottle's worth of 91%?! How does that work!? I assume your waterskins will be much more logical

I also can't wait to see what/if foods can more directly impact your warmth. Imp's has coffee and tea, for example, and I always find a hot drink warms me up when it's cold out. There's already soup compatiblity, but I'm missing the warmth of a cuppa in game!

Another thing that really gets me about Imp's is the amount of food that can come from 1 raw ingredient. It really seems like too much. I always have way, way too much food and it doesn't seem like it spoils fast enough to really deter me from keeping it on my person. Also, with the rate that bears and crap kill deer in my game from SKYTEST, I always have more than enough venison. In fact, I often have scores of dead deer and find my character saying, "Deer again?" (*G* just like those soldiers and their distaste for rabbit!) I didn't think that the vanilla count for raw -> cooked was unreasonable, so I am not completely sure why Imp felt the need to change it in the first place ...


Keep up the great work, Chesko, as always~

Edited by inkspottedtea, 08 September 2012 - 07:18 AM.