Can anyone champion my mod idea?

Started by KalkiKrosah, July 16, 2019, 05:13:38 PM

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KalkiKrosah

My mod idea is very simple: Nocturnal animals. I want this mod because it would increase immersion and it would also validate the night owl animal tamers. I don't know how to code but I would think it would be a simple rewriting of the animal sleep schedules. And maybe a bit of researching which animals are nocturnal but I have that part covered. Here is a list of all the nocturnal animals in vanilla Rimworld:

Deer
Panthers
Rats
Wolves
Cassowaries
Hares
Megasloths
Beavers
Foxes
Boars
Tortoises
Lynx

Everything else in Rimworld is either diurnal, crepuscular or is a fantasy animal with an unknown sleep schedule. So does anyone feel like this is a mod they would be interested in making?

XeoNovaDan

Seems like a pretty neat idea that it does seem that hasn't yet been modded in. I'm going to have a little crack at this one!

XeoNovaDan

Alright, I've put a functional prototype together. Will probably get a playtest version out soon-ish.

KalkiKrosah

Thank you so much for attempting this! If you can publish it to the point where you're content with the outcome I'll advertise it for you on the steam forums, try to get you some extra downloads over there too.

LWM

If you host it on GitHub, other mod users/authors can do "pull requests" to add patches for mods that add animals, if any of them should be nocturnal - it would spread out the work a fair bit in term of adding that functionality to mods.

Also, aren't deer crepuscular?  I was pretty sure hares weren't nocturnal too?

--LWM

PS - I would be willing to help add crepuscular behavior ^.^

XeoNovaDan

Actually yeah, putting it on GitHub probably wouldn't be a bad idea! Been busy working with my Adrenaline mod recently so this ended up taking the backburner. I would appreciate the crepuscular behaviour help though, since I'm not entirely sure on the design of that one.

Edit: Nevermind, turns out I already did! https://github.com/XeoNovaDan/NocturnalAnimals

LWM

The code looks fairly solid to me?  There are a lot of NoOps in the transpiler; I might do that differently were I writing it :)  But adding in crepuscular should be very easy!  I'll take a look at it later and see what I can do.

I might change the transpiler slightly to make it easy to compensate for season, even.  Or maybe that's too sophisticated ;)

--LWM

KalkiKrosah

I was excluding the crepuscular part because I thought it would be more work on your end and I wanted to make it easier for you. As for the sleep schedules themselves, I based all of the sleep schedules off of a quick google search. I don't have access to real life hares, deer or any of the other Rimworld animals to make my own observations. I don't think my local zoo has many of these animals and if they did their captive and regulated habitat probably messed around with their internal wiring in some way.

"Hares are mainly nocturnal animals moving over wide areas to graze on young grasses, cereals and herbs. They feed at night and mainly rest during the day while they digest the previous night's forage."

Deer you're more correct as this is what I found. They could be either crepuscular or nocturnal.

(Deer) "are more active at night than they are during the day, even though the day is generally warmer -- in winter, deer sleep in direct sunlight to stay warm. At night, deer move frequently and walk into the wind, so that they can respectively avoid and detect predators in the area"

That's just one breed of deer that act that way but I believe most are similarly wired to be awake in the night time as the darkness can cover their movements from predators. Whether you make them crepuscular or nocturnal isn't a big deal for me as either behavior is more realistic than their preset diurnal sleep schedule.

LWM

//nod//

The general wisdom in rural areas around here is that deer are most dangerous for drivers after sunset - they're more active and twilight is hard for us humans to see in.

I haven't had a chance to sit down with this yet - it's still something I plan to add :)

--LWM

KalkiKrosah

Hey guys, just checking in. How are things coming along with this mod idea?

XeoNovaDan

My version of it has been almost release-ready for a while but I've gotten sidetracked by other projects, plus I'd like to make a few integration patches before pushing a full release of it.

LWM

My intention to add crepuscular hours also got sidetracked by so many other things.

I'm still interested in doing it, tho :)

KalkiKrosah

I can understand the sidetracked thing. I'm an INFP so my attention span keeps getting diverted elsewhere constantly. I'm still grateful that both of you took on this mod idea for me so take all the time you need to iron out the details. My one extra request is that you upload the finished product on steam. I'm more active on those forums than I am on here.

SargBjornson

Hey XND, can I use the nocturnal code for the Nightlings in Alpha Animals? Instead of coding it properly what I did was hitting the code with a brick until it did *something* resembling nocturnal behaviour, but it has a LOT of mod incompatibilities (Hunt for me, for example)

XeoNovaDan

@SargBjornson - Sure! I can't remember if i already posted a GitHub link here, but I'll post it again for the sake of convenience: https://github.com/XeoNovaDan/NocturnalAnimals