[MOD] (Alpha 8) Hermit's Farm Mod (v0.04) (26/01/2015)

[Winter Hermit]

Update! New recipes, items and buildings. There is one issue at the moment, the worktop can't be set to 'do until you have x' at the moment. This is because i have multiple or unpredictable ingredients. I'll try and solve this over the next few days, i have a couple of ideas.

If you are looking for a suggestion on how to handle the Orchards, I recommend you take a look at my Seedless Grape Vine in my Xtra Plants mod. It is just a building that produces 10 seedless grapes every 5 days. I got the idea from the water barrel in Tech Tree Minami. The fact that it is not an actual plant means that it is immune to weather changes and solar flares or changes in light, though I do have it required to be built not under a roof. I did that because I would think that if one were growing seedless grapes for their wine production business they would take extra steps to protect their crop from every possible disaster. I've seen people with prize winning Azalea bushes in my home-town that take such good care of them that they are perfectly healthy all year round no matter what the weather is like. One would think that it would be similar with an Orchard. I've considered removing my fruit trees from being growable in growing zones and converting them into an orchard building like the grape vine. If you end up going that route with your orchard idea I'd probably go ahead and remove the fruit trees from the growing zones just to make our mods compatible in that area.

Your mod was my next stop for inspiration! The idea of an orchard building is a nice one and i may try it. However, i'd like to have the orchard react to the weather, namely, not produce during the winter months. As a growing zone and not a building this would happen. I was thinking of having an item such as trees in growing zones, so they take a number if in game days to grow and then be harvestable like wild bushes, so they are not destroyed by harvesting or the weather.

When it comes to coordination between our mods, i'm more than happy to! Once i had content that may over lap, i was going to test my mod along side yours and other food mods out there.

This mod looks very promising, and I even got an feature suggestion that would fit perfectly; A windmill. You could research it, put it down, haul grains to/into it and over time it would make flour. The speed of it work would depend on the wind speed (wind turbine logic). The building would have a slot for intake and output (grain --> time --> flour).

I like the idea of a windmill and it was on the cards from the start. I need to learn a bit of programming before though! I'm learning to use C# as i go. I'll have to look at other mods and their source code to figure out how they did things similar to what you describe. A windmill is definitely going to happen at some point!

[elStrages]

I was looking into doing something like this. Guess now I won't have too also thanks for the credit on my water mod. Glad it inspired you to get on and mod

[Igabod]

Your mod was my next stop for inspiration! The idea of an orchard building is a nice one and i may try it. However, i'd like to have the orchard react to the weather, namely, not produce during the winter months. As a growing zone and not a building this would happen. I was thinking of having an item such as trees in growing zones, so they take a number if in game days to grow and then be harvestable like wild bushes, so they are not destroyed by harvesting or the weather.

When it comes to coordination between our mods, i'm more than happy to! Once i had content that may over lap, i was going to test my mod along side yours and other food mods out there.

The code for the building could possibly be modified to not allow production when the temperature is below a certain threshold. I'm not sure though since Skullywag is the coding genius behind my Grape Vine. As for the trees not being destroyed on harvest, I made that change in my last update. So you can already put them in a growing zone and harvest them several times through their lifetime. I like the direction this mod is heading. Keep up the good work.

[lude]

If you are looking for a suggestion on how to handle the Orchards, I recommend you take a look at my Seedless Grape Vine in my Xtra Plants mod. It is just a building that produces 10 seedless grapes every 5 days. I got the idea from the water barrel in Tech Tree Minami. The fact that it is not an actual plant means that it is immune to weather changes and solar flares or changes in light, though I do have it required to be built not under a roof. I did that because I would think that if one were growing seedless grapes for their wine production business they would take extra steps to protect their crop from every possible disaster. I've seen people with prize winning Azalea bushes in my home-town that take such good care of them that they are perfectly healthy all year round no matter what the weather is like. One would think that it would be similar with an Orchard. I've considered removing my fruit trees from being growable in growing zones and converting them into an orchard building like the grape vine. If you end up going that route with your orchard idea I'd probably go ahead and remove the fruit trees from the growing zones just to make our mods compatible in that area.

a nice state changing orchard would be beautiful, perhaps even as a place of leisure (coz orchards were in less internety times)

[Winter Hermit]

Update!

There is one problem I've been having, and i was wondering if anyone knows the solution. I'm unable to create recipes with multiple output products. elStrages's water mod had a mechanic that i thought was pretty good, until i found that the 'do until x' function doesn't work. I spent quite a while banging my head against the table (that is not even a metaphor, i really did!) trying to fix it. The only solution i found was to have only one output.

This was a shame as i was planning on including cooking utensils to the cooking production line. The utensils would need to be made and stored in cupboards and would be required ingredients, but would be returned at the end of the cooking process.

It seems strange to me that the game would limit the number of output items to a recipe. Am i doing some thing wrong or what?

[elStrages]

Update!

There is one problem I've been having, and i was wondering if anyone knows the solution. I'm unable to create recipes with multiple output products. elStrages's water mod had a mechanic that i thought was pretty good, until i found that the 'do until x' function doesn't work. I spent quite a while banging my head against the table (that is not even a metaphor, i really did!) trying to fix it. The only solution i found was to have only one output.

This was a shame as i was planning on including cooking utensils to the cooking production line. The utensils would need to be made and stored in cupboards and would be required ingredients, but would be returned at the end of the cooking process.

It seems strange to me that the game would limit the number of output items to a recipe. Am i doing some thing wrong or what?

The is no solution right now. sorry to say that if you have multiple outputs then it will not allow it, this is because it keeps count of the items in storage of that particular thing. The only thing I think that could help you is if there was a dll that could tell you to disregard the second item.

My only thoughts really on this is, the way I did it you needed water and the bucket was the aid, now you will only ever need one spatula to do all of your cooking, that object never changes so I would actually say it would be wiser to have it as part of the building materials for the production object e.g: butchers table needs > wood and butchers knife to make: butchers knife is produced at the crafting table with steel etc.

[mipen]

The "do until x" thing is something Tynan will need to change, it is in the core game code. I think I know a way to change that, if you'd want me to look into it for you. Also, if you'd like, I could try make some trees that grow fruit and are harvested by colonists marked as growers or plant cutters. I have a couple of ideas on how it could be done. Let me know

[Winter Hermit]

Update!

There is one problem I've been having, and i was wondering if anyone knows the solution. I'm unable to create recipes with multiple output products. elStrages's water mod had a mechanic that i thought was pretty good, until i found that the 'do until x' function doesn't work. I spent quite a while banging my head against the table (that is not even a metaphor, i really did!) trying to fix it. The only solution i found was to have only one output.

This was a shame as i was planning on including cooking utensils to the cooking production line. The utensils would need to be made and stored in cupboards and would be required ingredients, but would be returned at the end of the cooking process.

It seems strange to me that the game would limit the number of output items to a recipe. Am i doing some thing wrong or what?

The is no solution right now. sorry to say that if you have multiple outputs then it will not allow it, this is because it keeps count of the items in storage of that particular thing. The only thing I think that could help you is if there was a dll that could tell you to disregard the second item.

My only thoughts really on this is, the way I did it you needed water and the bucket was the aid, now you will only ever need one spatula to do all of your cooking, that object never changes so I would actually say it would be wiser to have it as part of the building materials for the production object e.g: butchers table needs > wood and butchers knife to make: butchers knife is produced at the crafting table with steel etc.

The idea of having the utensils as an item needed to build the work benches is a good one. I may resort to that if there is no alternative. I would like to have the colonists interact with the utensils, so they have more to do to complete a task. The problem also limits what i can do in later updates.

The "do until x" thing is something Tynan will need to change, it is in the core game code. I think I know a way to change that, if you'd want me to look into it for you. Also, if you'd like, I could try make some trees that grow fruit and are harvested by colonists marked as growers or plant cutters. I have a couple of ideas on how it could be done. Let me know

If you could have a go at writing some code that fixes the problem, that would be amazing! I'm sure i'm not the only modder that would be interested in something like that. The trees have been done well by Igabod's extra plants mod. I was going to see if i can get mine to work along side his and Telkir's expanded crops mod.

[Igabod]

Also, if you'd like, I could try make some trees that grow fruit and are harvested by colonists marked as growers or plant cutters. I have a couple of ideas on how it could be done. Let me know

I already tackled the fruit bearing trees issue. It's actually pretty easy to do. I wasn't ever able to make it so that when you harvest the plant you get the fruit and some wood though. So I just made the trees not destroy on harvest. It's really neat watching a big old lemon tree get harvested and then shrink down to the size of a sapling.

Also, I took some inspiration from the orchard suggestion on this thread and decided to add it to my list of things to do in the next few updates for the Xtra Plants mod. That probably won't happen until alpha 9 though. And I'm going to see if I can get Skullywag to add in a bit of extra code to stop the production of the fruits at certain temperatures as well as at certain light levels. But like I said, this is probably not going to be done until after alpha 9 comes out. I may be able to get an early version of it out before then if my schedule permits me to work on the mod that much. But I can't promise anything.

[Winter Hermit]

I'd just like to add a little more detail on what balancing i plan to carry out.

When it comes to the different crops, one question I've been asking myself is 'why would the player want to grow all these different crops?'. The simple answer is because it looks cool and it's something different to do. This i was not something i was satisfied with. Therefore, i plan to balance it in the following way.

Each crop can be assigned a different growing time and yield. I plan to assign each crop a different growing time and a different yield. The growing time will be bases on real life growing times, just not at the same magnitude. I'll make it so that the longer the growing time, the higher the yield. The play therefore has to make a decision on what crops to grow based on when and how much food is needed. An example could be:

Crop A, Grow Time = 2 Days, Yield 4
Crop B, Grow Time = 4 Days, Yield 16
Crop C, Grow Time = 6 Days, Yield 36

The nerds will notice that the yields are the square of the days grown. This is intentional as i feel that the reward, in this case the yield, should go up with the risk. What is the risk, well these would be the incidents, cold snap and crop blight. You could have a massive yield of crop C, and be thinking that you will be set for food for the entire winter, but then suddenly a crop blight hits and you're buggered. The player would need to decide on  how much food is needed quickly, and therefore plant crop A, and how much they want to risk on a big payout, and select either Crop B or Crop C. Other factors i'll try to include will be soil type and temperature, so some crops can't be grown in some biomes.

Hopefully, this will result in a crop system where a little thought, if only a little, needs to into it.

Any comments or thoughts on what i'm planning? I'm open to suggestions and to mistakes being pointed out to me!

[Igabod]

Any comments or thoughts on what i'm planning? I'm open to suggestions and to mistakes being pointed out to me!

I've been experimenting with different growing times for some of the plants in my mod. For instance, I made sunflowers produce a fairly large yield, made the seeds stack to 150, and made the seeds not rot. The balance for that is that sunflowers take around 6 days to grow to maturity. I've also set it up so that all fruits smaller than limes stack to 150 and the rest currently stack to 75, though I'm considering reducing that for some of the things to further balance them. Bananas currently have much higher nutrition when eaten raw than any other raw food so they will probably be the next thing I adjust the stack size and growth time on. I have been toying with the growth times ever since I made the 2nd tree for that mod, but never actually seriously trying to balance it. With the next couple updates I plan on focusing on that element for balance heavily.

As for your grow time to yield ratio, I think it's a bit excessive. I'd go for a simple 1:2 ratio or maybe 1:3 at the most. But I think some crops just wouldn't make sense to stick with that rigid idea. For instance, with my olive tree, it produces more fruit than the lime tree does because that's how it is in real life. My ratio still needs adjustment to fit reality better, but right now it's just a rough guess at the differences. Your current crops are all similar in size enough IRL that the rigid ratio system might work. But as soon as you add something else like watermelons or something the ratio will seem very unrealistic. Just something to consider in the future really.

[ProtoTypeRaavyn]

So the mod made it so my guys would no longer make meals and they only ate raw food, Then when I went to uninstall it, it has made the game unplayable. I have A list of my mods and the mods order. Please help. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EYCo9AOKO0LPlddxmmRsllVju5cgEtBoNtNdnw39k2c/edit#gid=0

[Winter Hermit]

So the mod made it so my guys would no longer make meals and they only ate raw food, Then when I went to uninstall it, it has made the game unplayable. I have A list of my mods and the mods order. Please help. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EYCo9AOKO0LPlddxmmRsllVju5cgEtBoNtNdnw39k2c/edit#gid=0

i'll look into this for you.

update:

Ok, i found the problem. The making coffee mod changes the DoBillsCook def file for the cook stove, the work bench is changed to the coffee making machine. The colonist weren't making any meals because there was no longer a WorkGiver def file telling them to do so.

If you play with out the making coffee mod then your setup should work. You should probably consider mine and ToastyBuns' mod incompatible until the WorkGiver clash is sorted.

[Enjoyment]

Each crop can be assigned a different growing time and yield. I plan to assign each crop a different growing time and a different yield.

Readin this, I was hoping you did the different growing periods, when crop A grows from may to october, and crop B - from october to may. Or it's impossible to do? It could really motivate player to grow all the crops you have... IMHO

[Winter Hermit]

Each crop can be assigned a different growing time and yield. I plan to assign each crop a different growing time and a different yield.

Readin this, I was hoping you did the different growing periods, when crop A grows from may to october, and crop B - from october to may. Or it's impossible to do? It could really motivate player to grow all the crops you have... IMHO

I was thinking about this last night. I thought that maybe instead of forcing a crop to only grow during a certain month, i would adjust the temperatures that the crop can survive at. Currently the crops die out when the temperature drops too low. What i could do is adjust the temperature at which the crops die out at for different crops. You would then be able to select some crops to grow, or at least survive, in the lower temperatures. Forcing it with a limit on which months the corps can be grown in seems unnatural, where using the temperature as the deciding factor of when crops can be grown would be more natural and closer to the real world. If i was to include a ground moisture level as well, this would add another seasonal factor that would determine when the crops should be grown.

Both of these things would require some coding. I'm still learning C# at the moment. So it make take a few weeks for me to implement an idea like this. In the mean time we'll have to settle for different growing times and yields to differentiate the crops.