Fleeing Animals and Territory

[Khalkists 10]

Simple idea to make the game harder...

Your have an "aura" that does 0 damage blows (no damage) to nearby animals at an interval. This means that animals in the wild would flee continually from you, just from seeing or "smelling" you. You then need to chase them to kill them, and we know how irritating it can be.

This same function could also apply to mobs that are passive-hostile. It would act as invasion of their territory, so as long as you determined the area of the radius, you could know how close you can approach before you cause agro. This would add a bit of a risk/reward possibility for adding drops to bears and wolves.

 

 

One more way to enhance this is to cause the radius to decrease with your character level. Attribute it to experience in hiding yourself.

A second manner of improving this is to add and utilize "fur armor".

Furs would have the advantage of hiding your scent, while providing little defense. It would favor the hunter.

 

 

The appeal of this, it uses vanilla mechanics. Doesn't require a lot of extra script, so it would be extremely low impact. The bigger the radius of the "aura" the more realistic it would seem.

To make it more appealing, they could extend the vanilla "run" time.

More or less, this would simulate animals "seeing", though hiding behind blocks would become ineffective.

[gxblt 11]

Good idea, though I don't see why wearing a smelly predator fur would be any better; the prey smells it thirty thousand miles away.

[Khalkists 10]

Good idea, though I don't see why wearing a smelly predator fur would be any better; the prey smells it thirty thousand miles away.

 

 

In nature, animals often mask their own smells by rolling in the dirt, mud, or on other things. Their other method is to stand down-wind, but remember that i'm trying to keep this low impact. (no wind direction)

 

Also remember that humans have a very unique odor. Smoke, sweat, the forge... and steve doesn't exactly bathe often. The smells of a normal predator are common place in nature. Animals keep an eye out, but its not uncommon for something predatory to pass by you without the intent of hunting you. Even then, the most obvious odors are of feces and urine, hence why dogs mark and why elk mark their territory with piles of crap. Those smells are obvious on approach, but an animal skin often doesn't carry far enough.

 

 

This would also further establish bows are the best hunting weapon, even in their primitive state.

Another idea to enhance on this, if one animal dies, anything nearby should probably enter a "flee" state as well, but that might be excessive.

[Hyena Grin 92]

The problem is that this would mess up pretty much all the animal husbandry stuff.

 

I'd think about how you'd handle the capture of domestic animals, the 'training' of wolves, and why domesticated animals wouldn't flip out whenever you are nearby.

 

The '0 damage' thing is pretty much a hack. It'd be easier to make running from the player a default behavior UNLESS the player is carrying the animal's preferred food item (bone for wolf, grains for most other animals). Once an animal has been 'fed' then it no longer 'fears' the player.

 

However this would also make hunting not much harder than it is now. One grain would let you slaughter all the wild cattle you could hope for, just by merit of the cows not running from you while you are carrying the grain. So it's not without its problems. But the fact remains that in order for animal husbandry to 'work' you need to be able to approach animals.

[HunterKain 32]

The problem is that this would mess up pretty much all the animal husbandry stuff.

 

I'd think about how you'd handle the capture of domestic animals, the 'training' of wolves, and why domesticated animals wouldn't flip out whenever you are nearby.

 

The '0 damage' thing is pretty much a hack. It'd be easier to make running from the player a default behavior UNLESS the player is carrying the animal's preferred food item (bone for wolf, grains for most other animals). Once an animal has been 'fed' then it no longer 'fears' the player.

 

I just made a hunting overhaul post a few days back. Not too far down, so no need to hunt for it. its done it such a way so that only 'wild' animals flee unless you're trying to tame it, for which you need to attract it by scattering grain and then it eating it, so you do lose grain. that plus the need to feed animals with troughs would take away the 'take all, give none' aspect of animal husbandry.

the bolas item is what's used to capture wild wolf cubs without hurting them to tame them.

Yes, mine was way more difficult to code, but it IS an overhaul, so that's to be expected. It also makes use of visual and hearing to determine of a mob should flee. and it gives players a reason to sneak and hide as well as a disadvantage to wearing metal armor while going hunting. (you're hunting pigs and cows, not dragons)

[Khalkists 10]

I just made a hunting overhaul post a few days back. Not too far down, so no need to hunt for it. its done it such a way so that only 'wild' animals flee unless you're trying to tame it, for which you need to attract it by scattering grain and then it eating it, so you do lose grain. that plus the need to feed animals with troughs would take away the 'take all, give none' aspect of animal husbandry.

the bolas item is what's used to capture wild wolf cubs without hurting them to tame them.

Yes, mine was way more difficult to code, but it IS an overhaul, so that's to be expected. It also makes use of visual and hearing to determine of a mob should flee. and it gives players a reason to sneak and hide as well as a disadvantage to wearing metal armor while going hunting. (you're hunting pigs and cows, not dragons)

 

 

More or less, you hit the nail on the head. The "0" damage thing was just a way to forcefully trigger the behavior without adding new features. I didn't really take too much in to account when I typed this up. I was at the very end of my lunch break, so I was trying to get the idea down while I still had time. It would have been better to save it as a .txt while I had time, but I didn't really think about it.

[Temujen 31]

Couldn't this be achieved with already present animal AI behavior?

 

Deer AI currently moves away from players, but not in a panic like a struck animal.  Deer shy away from you, but they stop after a certain distance and go back to casually grazing.  If you make that the default behavior for all animals, but keep the reaction to Wheat Grain as a higher priority on the AI action list, you've got a fairly believable mechanic.

 

End result should be that 'farm' animals approach when offered Grain, but otherwise attempt to shy away from players; not panic-run, but just avoid.  You'd probably still want to keep them fenced in a corral so they don't wander off.  When you wanted to milk a cow or shear a sheep or butcher something, you could lure it into a smaller fenced area with Wheat Grain, then swap tools and do your thing.  If the animal was still alive, it could move away from you once you opened the gate again.

 

Not entirely realistic, since over time farm animals become acustomed to humans, but believable.  Should also be fairly easy to implement until someone comes up with a full animal husbandry overhaul.

[Coragamy 2]

I support Temujen.

[Solanus612 3]

End result should be that 'farm' animals approach when offered Grain, but otherwise attempt to shy away from players; not panic-run, but just avoid.  You'd probably still want to keep them fenced in a corral so they don't wander off.  When you wanted to milk a cow or shear a sheep or butcher something, you could lure it into a smaller fenced area with Wheat Grain, then swap tools and do your thing.  If the animal was still alive, it could move away from you once you opened the gate again.

 

Not entirely realistic, since over time farm animals become acustomed to humans, but believable.  Should also be fairly easy to implement until someone comes up with a full animal husbandry overhaul.

 

If you have the animals retain a "wild" indication until after they've been fed a few times, then they should continue to be skittish around Steves.  Once they're used to getting fed by hand, they lose that indication and operate like they do in vanilla.

 

Animals become domesticated over many generations, by having the offspring that are more temperate be the ones that are retained for breeding while their skittish siblings get culled earlier.  Later generations are improved on to be bigger or produce more product (e.g., milk, eggs, wool).  While the second already can be done in TFC, setting up a process that transitions graphically and behaviorally wild animals over to domesticated would be hard although possibly more rewarding.

[PaoloEmilio 53]

I disagree, take on count the animal husbandry