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puxapuak

Trapping revisited (Trapping++)

3 posts in this topic

tl;dr version:

  • Ideas for trapping have been over-complicated in the past.
  • No new entities are required for game - small game appear in the world simply in their item form.
  • Traps may break or fail and can be environmentally-dependent (requiring nearby trees, for example).
  • Traps may contain live or dead prey. They might get ransacked - only bones remain.
  • Traps can improve in quality and efficiency as materials become available through technological advancement. Reed snares for small prey, copper cages for mid-sized game, and steel and stronger metals can be made into jaw traps that can catch and/or kill entities (even you!). Some can be re-used, others not.

 

The full idea with some examples:

 

I've been thinking quite a bit about early and mid-game mechanics since srgnoodles' farewell post, and the problem of food availability and wildlife. The possibility for trapping has been raised a small handful of times before, but it has always involved setting a trap that would take the form of a block/tile with a mechanism that would fire whenever an entity steps in the block. There is a major downside to this version of trapping though: it requires those interesting tasty/useful animals to already exist in the world as entities.

 

That's not necessary though. Why not have traps that function kind of like sluicing? Most traps are for small game anyways - those critters don't have to be rendered into the world to be a part of the game, they can show up in your traps as items. 'Dead squirrel', 'Panicked rabbit', 'Rotting pheasant', 'Small bones', 'Zombie foot'. This makes the mechanic very easy to introduce - a few new items and a couple of new blocks or tiles - often with very simple graphics.

 

Advancement and Durability

There are lots of different kinds of traps, and their construction materials vary greatly. There are different types of traps that can be made at each level of technology, and their efficiency and durability is dependent on such materials as well.

 

In the stone age you can easily piece together a trip-snare with some twisted reeds, a stick, some straw. Clay can be made into the slippery walls of a simple pit trap. A bow and arrow can be made into a shoot-trap. Metals can be used for cages and jaw traps, but weak squishy metals might only last a single use. You can even make a fire-trap and roast your food using some gun powder and sticks in a shallow pit.

 

Some types of traps like cages and jaw-traps can be re-used, so you can simply empty them out, reset the trap (perhaps with more bait), and walk away with your next meal. Other traps like reed-snares or pit-traps break in order to fire, so the block disappears once you remove the contents - perhaps leaving a component item or two on the ground - and you have to make a new one.

 

If desired, later revisions can pretty easily implement a skill system so that you can improve your trap-making craft.

 

Placement and Time

Traps need to be in an appropriate environment. A small reed trip-snare won't catch anything at all without a forest nearby, and a big iron cage might not do as well in a forest as out on the open plains. Jaw traps are best with a water source nearby.

 

Some traps are a lot less visible than others. You can't even see a properly set snare, so you had better mark it with a rock lest you step on it and break it. You're walking through the forest when you hear a small *snap* at your feet. Looking down you see the remnants of that snare you set last week - some woven reeds and a broken stick.

 

Placing a trap isn't a guarantee of catching something either. It might take days or weeks, but you have to check (right-click) your traps frequently, because:

  • they can missa squirrel set off your snare, but the wily critter leapt out just in time and escaped
  • they can break - that lumbering bear in the neighbourhood smashed your flimsy copper cage and ran off with your bait-fish
  • they can fail to producea squirrel was caught this morning, but something came along and took advantage of a free lunch
  • they can under-produce - you caught a pheasant a few days ago, but there's nothing left but a rotten husk and a few feathers
  • they can deplete a resourceyou go to check your on your prized steel small-game cage only to discover that someone went and built a bunch of snares in your area and killed all the rabbit

 

Final thoughts

I really like this idea and I think it has a lot to offer.

  • It makes more variety of food available without requiring a lot of programming / design overhead.
  • It gives you another reason to advance - trapping can become a very efficient means to find the meat portion of your meals at higher levels, and even a decent copper cage trap can gather you a lot of hide for cloth and leather.
  • Opens up the possibility for a useful new craft-based skill.
  • Adds more variety of use to many materials already implemented in TFC at every technological stage.
  • Relieves design stress on the already-burdened animal husbandry system, in particular adding new sources of leather and fur.
  • Could be made as a core component of TFC or as a child-mod.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read and as with all the ideas I've posted, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'll add that I could be enticed to write the code for this if requested by certain important peoplez.

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I really like this idea, this would defiantly be a good alternative to entities being the means of setting off the traps. Perhaps this can be incorporated with  traps to catch sea food? I suggested before about the idea of lobster pots and cages to catch things such as squid and other fish. 

 

Although i think for this to be successful, the aspect of food spoilage would have to be incorporated with it, otherwise the amount of food sources a player has access to will seem overwhelming. But as you said if it takes up to a week to catch anything in a trap this may balance that factor out.

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I really like this idea, this would defiantly be a good alternative to entities being the means of setting off the traps. Perhaps this can be incorporated with  traps to catch sea food? I suggested before about the idea of lobster pots and cages to catch things such as squid and other fish. 

 

Although i think for this to be successful, the aspect of food spoilage would have to be incorporated with it, otherwise the amount of food sources a player has access to will seem overwhelming. But as you said if it takes up to a week to catch anything in a trap this may balance that factor out.

--

Thanks, me too. And yeah I thought about spoilage as I was writing it, it would be better if that was implemented for sure.

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