[MOD] (Alpha 4F) Project K9 (v1.4 June, 18 2014)

[pidggit]

Description:
So you like dogs, do you? Well, be lonely no more! This mod will add Man's best friend to the game. You can tame the friendly dogs (Wolves are not tamable. They're too wild!), and they'll do work for the colony (Specifically, hauling things around, helping with hunting, and defending the colony from attackers).

To tame a dog, just select a single or group of dogs and press the Tame button. This will designate them to be tamed, and colonists that can work as Tamers will go out and tame the dog.


Screenshots:





Known Bugs:

• Sometimes dogs can't do work - Their backstories are sometimes generated such that they can't Haul or Hunt.
• Dogs fail to render in a bed - The "Bed_ShowSleeperBody" property in the ThingDef doesn't seem to do anything. As such the dogs are being rendered behind the bed since their body is being "hidden"
• Dogs Steal Food from Prisoners - Rather hilariously, the dogs will haul food left for prisoners on the floor to a storage area.
• Dogs occasionally kill and eat prisoners
• Sometimes pawns will be frozen upon loading a save game and produce errors in the game log.
• Dogs are unhappy with raw food.
• Sometimes dogs will attack colonists or other dogs in the colony
• Saved games cannot be loaded
• Dog corpses are invulnerable

Features:

   
• Complete
• Semi-Functional
• Planned

   
• Dogs exist and sustain themselves
• Dogs travel and hunt in packs
• Tame some of the friendlier dogs
• The smaller tamed dogs will make your colonists happy to have them around
• Tamed dogs will prefer to sleep in a Pet Bed rather than the floor
• Tamed dogs will have names generated for them and GUI Overlays will be displayed so you can identify which dogs are tamed, and which dog is which.
• Put the colony's dogs to work (hunting, protecting the colony from tribal raiders, etc)
• Have the mutts get distracted from work by squirrels and the like
• Assign pets to specific colonists and have them help complete tasks/protect them and generally just follow them around.
• Have dogs make their own doggy sounds

Have an idea for a feature? Let me know, and I'll be happy to try and include it if possible.

Update: Unfortunately, I don't have the time to keep this up to date. I've been swamped at work, and I'm in the process of buying a new house and moving. I hope to eventually come back to this when things settle down.

In the meantime, I've open sourced the development of this mod. I've been keeping my dev work on BitBucket, so anyone who would like to work on it, I'll be happy to take Git pull requests. If anyone has any questions, feel free to PM me. I know what needs to be done to update it for Alpha 5. I just don't have the time do it.

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[ChasmofFate]

Nice! Colony mascot here we come!

The tamed dogs should add a happiness bonus (them being friendly and all).

[decomg]

Love dogs, this is the best mod ...

[ancusohm]

This mod seems really cool.

Stupid question, but how do I download this mod?  Or have you not uploaded it yet?
Nevermind, just saw attachment

[iame6162013]

This mod seems really cool.

Stupid question, but how do I download this mod?  Or have you not uploaded it yet?

the download is at the bottom

[americany13]

This is pretty cool

[pidggit]

The tamed dogs should add a happiness bonus (them being friendly and all).

I forgot to add that to the feature list, but the small dogs actually give colonists the thought "Saw cute dog". So they're useful to have hang around your colony.

Dogs are also a great source of corpse disposal. All those raider bodies are great food sources for your dogs.

[Austupaio]

Very cool update/new thread. Will be testing.

[ChasmofFate]

The tamed dogs should add a happiness bonus (them being friendly and all).

I forgot to add that to the feature list, but the small dogs actually give colonists the thought "Saw cute dog". So they're useful to have hang around your colony.

Dogs are also a great source of corpse disposal. All those raider bodies are great food sources for your dogs.

Nice! Better than I first thought! Great work so far! 

[Kumai0214]

I think I found a bug with the mod already? lol.... Somehow, when the dogs are killed, their bodies are practically invulnerable and stuck at 0/100 hp. I've tried going into development mode to burn/destroy the body but it is just stuck there.

Edit: Also when having multiple animals tamed, there are times where they go and try to kill each other. Currently my male shep named Maximus is trying to kill my 2nd shep called Teddy. Not to mention if a dog is trying to eat a corpse and a colonist picks it up while the eating is in process, there is a constant generation of blood from the corpse that constantly appears underneath the person who picked the corpse up.

[pidggit]

I think I found a bug with the mod already? lol.... Somehow, when the dogs are killed, their bodies are practically invulnerable and stuck at 0/100 hp. I've tried going into development mode to burn/destroy the body but it is just stuck there.

I guess I never had a corpse stick around long enough or try to destroy it. Usually corpses get eaten up by other dogs pretty quickly. I'll add this and see if I can fix this tonight or tomorrow sometime. Thanks!

Edit: Also when having multiple animals tamed, there are times where they go and try to kill each other. Currently my male shep named Maximus is trying to kill my 2nd shep called Teddy.

Yeah I've noticed that sometimes they attack each other. And sometimes they attack Colonists. I haven't gotten down to the bottom of it, yet. But I forgot to create a bug for it in my bug tracker, so I didn't add it to the list of known issues.

Not to mention if a dog is trying to eat a corpse and a colonist picks it up while the eating is in process, there is a constant generation of blood from the corpse that constantly appears underneath the person who picked the corpse up.

Hmm, yeah, that should be an easy fix. I'll just make the dog reserve he corpse before they start eating. It'll keep the colonists away until they're done.

[JinxWolf]

In general, this mod is excellent. Using this mod, i've grown fond of my pups. With that in mind, here's some things I myself would not mind to see fixed, removed or added in addition of this mod. As of now, I will attempt my best to issue some constructive criticism, expose some well-known bugs and give some suggestions.

Yellow - Bug
Red - Suggestion/Addition
Green -  Constructive Criticism

• Dog taming complications - Every once in a while when taming a mutt, they will allow themselves to be tamed but also attack the human that is in the nearby area, most cases the tamer.
• In-Depth training system (Domestication) - As beautiful as it is to see my newly recruited pup cadets hard at work. I would find it more accomplishing if the addition of me teaching them how to haul and hunt are added.
• Overly-Domesticated - To some degree, there was entirely too much cross over of the human's trait and animal traits. The dogs seem more demanding than the human colonies sometimes.
• Insanity Warning - As stated by the sub-topic title. The alert of your puppy companions levels of insanity should be included. The micro-management of my dog is soon very monotonous. Also in addition, I don't see why sleeping outside and/or sleeping with others should really alter the way a dog feels towards the colonies loyalty UNLESS in someway its inherited ability traits (Like humans), but these are wild dogs.. they were pretty much born outside and lived outside.
• Human meat: Tamed vs Wild - I don't entirely understand why the dogs feel the need to all of a sudden shun the whole "eating of humans" after they've been tamed, but it's rather annoying for my dog to hate me after they've dug up and chewed up a raider.
• Mating - It's ever so quickly squirrels, wolves, fires and game bugs seem to freeze the ability for dogs to really exist beyond the first couple days after the launching of a new game. I would hope so in some way they will have their "In heat" periods and reproduce.
• Individual orders - Depending on tamer, a menu could be added in addition to somewhat "control" your dogs in their behaviors. I may not want them to eat the near-by squirrel or boom-rat.
• Invulnerablity - When some die, they retain the almost seemingly odd ability of continuing an action while have 0/100 HP.
• Standing Bug (Untamed) - Sometimes the wolves and dogs will stay still for days at a time in one spot. Congregated by a food source or a kill of another wild dog.
• Very slow HP gain - What takes colonies 5-6 in-game days, takes a dog almost 9-10 to heal up almost seemingly full. As the dogs seem to always be on the hunt, they are rarely healed. And the wounded negative seems to plague the inevitable doom for ever housing them.
• Relationships - The dog may have a loyalty to the colony as a whole, but the decisions to which the dog may or may not assist in combat, be housed with, eat from or listen to.
• Attacking Colonist - Sometimes during combat, they will mistaken colonist for enemies and attack the colonist rather than the raiders. Seemingly holding animosity towards anyone whom may or may not attack another dog on occasions. I've had my tamed mutt and a wild mutt attack me at the same time when my tamed mutt turned on me. I can guarantee he never lost sanity, perfectly fine at that.

[/list][/list]

I hope this helps in some way.
Edit: It keeps doing "[/list]" twice, it's asinine.

[pidggit]

In general, this mod is excellent. Using this mod, i've grown fond of my pups. With that in mind, here's some things I myself would not mind to see fixed, removed or added in addition of this mod. As of now, I will attempt my best to issue some constructive criticism, expose some well-known bugs and give some suggestions.

Thanks for this write up! I've basically only been testing this by myself, so it's great to have some other eyes on it now.

To address some of the points:

• I would like to re-do the way the Dog's psychology is set up. Currently, it's just inheriting the Colonist's psychology. Hence why they don't like eating Human meat, or raw food or sleeping outside, etc. I plan on eventually overhauling that part to have a Dog Psychology instead (it might be impossible in Alpha 3, I still have to look at how the Psychology is created)
• I would also like to make dog management more like colonist management. Right now they're completely autonomous, but I do plan on creating some sort of user interaction to determine which dogs do what jobs, and making them have to be trained to do jobs, etc.

[Vas]

When dogs have their own beds and do not have back stories and can eat raw food just fine, I'll use this.    Good idea though.  But they shouldn't be able to haul some objects such as resources like metal and silver.  Only small corpses and such.  Protection is what I'd mainly use them for.

[pidggit]

When dogs have their own beds and do not have back stories and can eat raw food just fine, I'll use this.    Good idea though.  But they shouldn't be able to haul some objects such as resources like metal and silver.  Only small corpses and such.  Protection is what I'd mainly use them for.

Well, they do have their own beds...

Yeah, one thing on my issue tracker is to make them only haul specific things that would be feasible to haul by a dog.