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Augi

Attracting Deer/Fishing suggestion

25 posts in this topic

Hello developers, some worlds, for some reason, have little to no deer. The server I play on has this issue as well. I'm not sure what the terms are to spawn deer, but I have a solution that may fix the problem universally .Give us the ability to craft salt blocks. Once a salt block is placed, that could better the chance to spawn deer around that area giving the illusion of "attracting" the deer. Optionally have the deer be attracted to the salt block and have an animation to lick it? I know that takes a lot of time, but I think the first way is a simple way to spawn deer within a radius in relation to the blocks placement.  I really like what you've done with fishing, but I'd like to catch different types of fish that could give different levels of hunger back. Deep ocean could give me the chance to catch a huge tuna. Fishing in running water could give me the chance to catch a wild salmon. Ponds could have catfish. Now not all fish should have different values or hunger refill rates, but variation in nice to see. Maybe even different icons that represent different fish is fine.Thanks for taking the time to read this if you did, please leave a reply.

Edited by Augi
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Deer spawning is based on climate. If that area of the server doesn't have any deer, it's because the climate of that area normally doesn't support deer living in it (like a tropical or a plains climate for example).

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Climate

 

As for the server having little deer, it's probably because all the players are killing them on sight, and vanilla's respawn mechanic for non-hostile mobs is very slow.

 

There actually is no hunger system in TFC such that one food has a higher "refill" rate than another. It doesn't matter if you eat 5 ounces of beef, or 5 ounces of banana, or 5 ounces of carrots, they all fill your hunger bar the exact same amount.

 

I'm guessing that your butchering skill isn't very high, which means that you aren't getting much meat from the fish that you do catch. As your butchering skill increases, you'll waste less meat when cleaning the fish and getting the fillet, therefore giving you more weight of food.

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I am a fresh spawn, but I do have a moderate butchering skill. I'm actually kind of surprised the developers didn't make different levels of sustenance for different types of foods. I understand having a higher level slows the process of getting hungry/thirsty, however I feel like if I eat a slab of venison, that will sustain me longer than say, a loaf of bread. I like the Oz system though and I like how we can hold one slab of food and eat it multiple times rather than stacking 64 single slabs of whatever I'm eating. Thanks for explaining the climate though, makes sense I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of that myself. It really seems like a no brainer. Dont you like the salt lick block idea? Say I placed the block in the right climate where deer do spawn, but the spawn rate is slow on a high traffic server, where players do kill on sight.Could that be a thing? Say one block ups the chance of deer spawns in general. Not by a lot to break the system, but slightly quicker to meet the needs of a kill on sight server. Aside from telling people to stop killing the deer so quickly of course. 

Edited by Augi
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Think for a minute just how much bread you would need for it to weigh the same amount as that slab of venison. It's weight we're talking about here, not volume. The "different levels of sustenance" is based off of the yields that you get in weight when you harvest it. For example, you'll get a lot more food by weight from killing a single cow, than you will from harvesting a single carrot crop. As for saturation so you don't have to eat as often, that's what the sandwich and salad mechanic are for.

 

Salt is actually already currently being used to familiarize deer so you can name them.

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Animal_Husbandry

 

Any sort of system that can increase spawn rates, especially for a mob that we made it intentional that you cannot breed it, has to be approached very cautiously, because it could quickly be abused and completely destroy the current balance in the food system.

 

The purpose of deer are so that players have a source of protein starting out, that they don't have to feel guilty about killing because they will eventually respawn, and they can't breed it anyways. If you're wanting more deer because you wish to use them as a food source in the mid-to-late game, you should be looking into the livestock animals that you are actually able to breed.

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Do you like the idea of different types of fish to catch?

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It's kind of like the whole "Which weighs more: a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?" Obviously lead weighs more than feathers, but once you have an equal amount they are the same. Yes, in vanilla meat restores more than bread, because you don't get very much meat from killing things, compared to wheat. Whereas in TFC, with a high butchering skill, you can get upwards of 1500 oz of food (that's 300 eatings-worth) from killing a large animal. That's going to feed you longer than a loaf of bread. Also, you start with only a small amount of meat/fish, with only a fraction of an ounce. On our server, we have a designated butcher who did a lot of fishing and got up to Master in only a couple IRL days by doing a lot of fishing, and now he gets 20+ oz per fish.

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For what it's worth, I really like both ideas, the salt block and the different fish.  The salt block should work only if it is the right climate though, but it would help provide a source of leather until pig and cow herds are developed without having to spend hours of game time exploring for wild animals.  So far, I've lucked out in my youtube series and found animals fairly easily, but I can identify with what he's talking about.

Edited by iblt
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I think a config option to have more animal spawning would be the best solution. This way people could adjust according to their needs or taste, It would be great in a server where new players always complain the lack of wild life.

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Spawning animals in larger groups really does not solve the problem though. If suddenly on initial world generation it spawns 6 deer instead of just 2, what would very likely happen is that the player just slaughters all 6 of them on sight, instead of 2.

 

Beyond the initial generation for animals when the chunk is first created, there's not much we can do. The respawning of animals later in the game is a mechanic that as far as I know, can't really be tweaked to increase the rates.

 

The problem here is on established servers, where all of the initially generated animals have already been killed. At that point, there's really not much from TFC's point of view that can be done to restore balance. The deer are respawning off of the vanilla mechanic, which if I recall correctly cannot be tweaked with to make the animals respawn faster or in larger groups.

 

And even if there was a system that could be implemented, it would have to be done in such a way that fixes the lack of wild animals on servers, but doesn't cause overpopulation on servers with less players, or in single player. Honestly, in my opinion, because the dynamic of wildlife population varies so drastically from server to server, and who is playing on that server, that the only feasible solution is just for server admins to recognize when there is an imbalance, and use spawn eggs in random places about the map to add some more animals.

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Thanks for the info Kitty.  I had no idea the re-spawning of animals was still a vanilla mechanic. Not something easily done, but I wish there was a server command that would allow me to repopulate the world with animals in random locations. Yes to have admin use eggs works, but then we will know where they are, that really removes immersion.

Once again thanks for the answer.

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How about the use of trapping to catch creatures smaller than deer, such as squirrels or rabbits? If I remember correctly (and it's been a very long time), trapping was considered/tested in a much older version of TFC.

 

I'd be interested in seeing Don't Starve-style rabbit holes that can each maintain up to a family of rabbits, and if all the rabbits are killed there is a small chance of new rabbits spawning there (obviously a pretty low spawn rate - don't want to unbalance the other ways of getting meats). You can get the rabbits out of their hole by several methods:

 

1. Smoking out the rabbit hole with fire somehow (Makes them all run out, but take longer to respawn)

2. Placing traps in the near vicinity to the rabbit hole (Slower but less harmful)

3. Waiting until a rabbit actually leaves the hole and managing to hit it with a weapon. (Challenging but feasible)

 

I'd imagine you could treat the rabbit hole like a piece of ore, with the traps functioning a bit like a stationary gold pan or sluice. You could also vary the rabbit activity with the seasons, making them nearly inactive during the winter so if you are starving you will be forced to smoke them out.

 

It'd be a fun decision to have to make as a player, and players wouldn't have to worry as much about the murder of all the animals on a server. Not to mention it would be a hefty challenge to even locate one of the small holes to begin with.

Edited by Jivix
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And what problem exactly would the rabbits be fixing? They're small animals, so it's not like you would be able to get a decent amount of meat from the compared to deer, and their hides are far too tiny to give even one piece of leather. Even with the addition of rabbits, that doesn't fix players killing deer on sight, which is the whole problem in the first place.

Edited by Kittychanley
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Spawning animals in larger groups really does not solve the problem though. If suddenly on initial world generation it spawns 6 deer instead of just 2, what would very likely happen is that the player just slaughters all 6 of them on sight, instead of 2.

 

Beyond the initial generation for animals when the chunk is first created, there's not much we can do. The respawning of animals later in the game is a mechanic that as far as I know, can't really be tweaked to increase the rates.

 

The problem here is on established servers, where all of the initially generated animals have already been killed. At that point, there's really not much from TFC's point of view that can be done to restore balance. The deer are respawning off of the vanilla mechanic, which if I recall correctly cannot be tweaked with to make the animals respawn faster or in larger groups.

 

And even if there was a system that could be implemented, it would have to be done in such a way that fixes the lack of wild animals on servers, but doesn't cause overpopulation on servers with less players, or in single player. Honestly, in my opinion, because the dynamic of wildlife population varies so drastically from server to server, and who is playing on that server, that the only feasible solution is just for server admins to recognize when there is an imbalance, and use spawn eggs in random places about the map to add some more animals.

Mo' Creatures has tweaked the spawning for their mod, so it can be done. However, like you said it may cause overpopulation. Honestly, it could just be my luck, but the amount of animals in TFC now is much better than when I first started playing. But that could just be me and maybe because i have been playing for a while.

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I strongly suspect that Mo'Creatures is not using the vanilla spawning mechanic and has actually written his own spawning system. While TFC could theoretically implement a similar system, it really isn't feasible to do so without a large rewrite.

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I strongly suspect that Mo'Creatures is not using the vanilla spawning mechanic and has actually written his own spawning system. 

Correct, the have a custom mob spawner jar to go along with the main mod. Apparently, it just reverts back to a more ancient Minecraft spawning mechanic.

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And what problem exactly would the rabbits be fixing? They're small animals, so it's not like you would be able to get a decent amount of meat from the compared to deer, and their hides are far too tiny to give even one piece of leather. Even with the addition of rabbits, that doesn't fix players killing deer on sight, which is the whole problem in the first place.

 

It's not so much a "fix" as it is acknowledgement of the fact that meat can get very hard to find when players DO run around and kill everything (because they do of course). People would still be able to get Protein even if they aren't at the animal husbandry tier yet (and even then they may have trouble finding animals).

 

If I wanted to fix players hunting deer, I'd first try making the deer more wily.

 

Deer can become pests in a farming environment because they are capable of jumping over fences to steal food. My grandparents live in a very forested area with many deer. They tried growing tomatoes once, but the deer jumped over the 8 foot tall fence they put around them and ate all of the tomatoes, and most of the plants themselves. It would be interesting to see Deer used as a non-hostile pest that occasionally sneak into your croplands and eat a crop or two, if you don't have them sufficiently defended (deer can jump up to 12-15 feet, so 4-5 block high fences should do it). Perhaps the quantity of crops present in a chunk will incrementally raise the chance of spawning a Deer. If ignored for a huge amount of time, the deer population might become a significant threat to the player's food source.

 

Fishing was implemented, and I have yet to catch a fish that provided more than 6 oz of Protein. Surely rabbits would have more than 6 oz of usable meat on them. Doing some quick website checks I found that adult rabbits can yield from about 2 to 4 pounds depending on breed. 32/64 ounces would be a solid amount to reward the player for using a more renewable source of meat. Not to mention that rabbits are delicious :)

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Players can get protein without ever killing a single animal, that's what soybeans are for.

 

The reason the fish you catch are small is because your butchering skill is still low. Level that up, and you'll be catching 20oz + fish every time.

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Yes I agree with everything, To be honest, once I have my base setup with all the farms, most of the time I make sandwiches with soybean, just because I cant bother to butcher the animals. 

I think the whole system is worked out wrong. We should have more reasons to eat meat. Instead of trying to simulate Taste, something really unbelievable. Just think about, there are no such thing as a perfect taste food.

There is no honey for humans. We like variety. Just try eating the same thing for 3 days, even if it is the most delicious food in the world, soon you will get tired of it and crave for the most basic food, as long as is something different.

I like the idea of having more wild life. Not just because I want to hunt then, but because we can have as much fun by finding a deer in the game as we have when we see wildlife in real life. It just bring a smile to our face.

The way I see we have 2 options when trying to control the animal population. We can try to recreate a natural balance that we have in real life or we can just have a system with a config or a in game gui that will let the player or the sever choose how many of each animal we will have in the world. Every time on dies another spawns in a random location, keeping the population constant.

I actually want more reasons to kill; animals, like you can survive with on type of meat, but you need variety to increase your health.

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Ah, my mistake then. I read that Butchering has no effect on the TFC wiki, I should have assumed the page was out of date since there are notices on a lot of other pages.

 

I understand that Soybeans are a growable source of protein but hunting as a survival technique is both fun and shouldn't necessarily be suppressed as it adds a lot to the game.

 

As for respawning animals, Djakuta I don't think the server keeps track of all the animals. And if it did keep track of every animal, I would rather it respawn animals in the areas of lowest population (or according to some rule, by biome, etc), rather than random. One person might wonder when he rejoins a server why there are 5,000 deer inside his house because they just re-spawned there randomly.

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Ah, my mistake then. I read that Butchering has no effect on the TFC wiki, I should have assumed the page was out of date since there are notices on a lot of other pages.

 

Could you link the page where you read that please? It should not say that anywhere, and never has as far as I know.

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As for respawning animals, Djakuta I don't think the server keeps track of all the animals. And if it did keep track of every animal, I would rather it respawn animals in the areas of lowest population (or according to some rule, by biome, etc), rather than random. One person might wonder when he rejoins a server why there are 5,000 deer inside his house because they just re-spawned there randomly.

Basic rule of animal spawning,  Only on grass. so there is no risk of animal spawning inside your house. As far as limiting how many animals in the world, I know is feasible, if is easy or hard I have no Idea. For me is impossible since I am no coder. All we can do is trow ideas, is the whole purpose of this forum. If a Dev like the idea enough to work for free on the idea it gets done. Otherwise no harm done.

We will keep playing the mod.

In a totally unrelated thing. I was playing yesterday and I am making a small roman temple, so I decided to collect some flowers to make a small garden. Then I remember that I forgot to do something a while ago. This is a good place as any other. Here it goes.

THANK ALL THE DEV'S FOR THE BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS.

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Could you link the page where you read that please? It should not say that anywhere, and never has as far as I know.

 

I checked back on the Skills page in the wiki, looks like I missed the non-bolded text that explained what you mentioned. All I read was this line:

 

"There are no extra bonuses for reaching the individual levels of butchering skill."

 

I misinterpreted that.

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Alright. I removed the bold and added a bit more to that phrase so players will be less likely to completely skip over the rest of the text in that section.

 

I honestly cannot emphasize this enough: all of the information on a wiki page is important. DO NOT skim over it or you WILL miss key explanations.

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Deer, and really all the large hoofed mammals, should be attracted to salt. The salt could be placed on the ground, like a salt block, and any deer, sheep, cow, or horse within a certain radius would track towards the placed salt to lick up some of it. They wouldn't stay put near the salt; they would just come by and eat some, then be on their way. This could be used to make hunting and finding animals for domestication a bit easier, so the player would have more time to occupy himself with working towards different things. It wouldn't make either of the mentioned tasks tons easier, just simplify them a bit. This would really help out players whose worlds are very sparsely populated with domesticatable animals, but without allowing the animals to reproduce on their own. There could also be natural salt licks where there are salt rocks exposed on the surface.

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