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TonyLiberatto

Suspend Decay on preserved food

25 posts in this topic

So, tfc is geared towards multiplay. In my server I left the decay config as default, because I felt that tweaking with it would make it so people would not bother preserving.

Many times I mix the vinegar in the milk barrel and go do my buildings, If for any reason I forget to pick up the cheese and log off for the night, the next day the cheese will have disapered, it just totally decays even before I lay eyes on it.

Food decays so fast, that I am keeping my pickled fruit barrels inside the cellar. That I installed on my server, even though I think is a giant Refrigerator and out of the time frame for tfc. 

The way I see, is that to have to do extra work to preserve food is believable and and interesting part of the game. What I don't like is that this preserved food still decays. 

Historically humans have been preserving food since cave times, and it would last for years.

I think we need to change something in the way decay works for those specific foods. Like cheese, Dry meat, processed grains, dry fruit ( If is added to the game ) ( sausages would be a great addition too).

I have no idea how hard it would be to code, but maybe a solution would be to tag those foods with an expiration date in years, like grains would start slowly decaying after 10 years, different preserved food would have different decay buffer.

Is just that after all the work it takes to pickle fruit to still have it decaying in the barrel, is very frustrating.

 

Yes I know I could just change the decay rates in the config file, but then the players in the north would not need to do any preserving, and I think it breaks the gameplay.

I want to preserve food. I just want it to last enough to be worth the trouble.

Lately I am making my cheese straight inside the cellar, I take the food out of the cellar make 5 sandwiches and put everything back.

I understand that tagging food would make it so food with different expiration dates would not stack , but that is a small price to pay.

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Preserved food already has a drastically decreased decay modifier. And also let's not forget the food decay protection system that prevents your food from decaying too much if it is unloaded for an extended period of time. Cheese is literally the slowest decaying food of all of them, with a decay rate of 0.5 the standard. I've just ran a test with a freshly spawned in block of cheese, and it took 27 in-game days before it completely decayed away. Or 9 real-life hours of sitting out with no preservation methods, and being in a chunk that is constantly loaded. If you had just put that cheese in a small vessel, suddenly you're at 18 real-life hours. If you had pickled the cheese and put it in a vessel, you're looking at 36 real-life hours. If you had pickled the cheese and left it sealed in its vinegar, you're looking at 15 real-life days before that cheese will decay. All of the above stated times are only if the cheese is in a loaded chunk the entire time. That's 1080 in-game days, or with a default year length, that's 11 years 3 months of in-game time. I would say that a hunk of cheese lasting over 11 years is more than generous for a decay rate.

 

TFC is about collaboration. If you have players around you who are keeping your food loaded, and are therefore making your food decay while you are not online, they should be tending to it, and it should be shared among those players. If you are going to be logging out for extended periods of time, know that people are going to keep your base loaded that entire time, and don't want your food to decay, then you should log off with it in your inventory. That way when you log back in, if enough time has passed you're only going to get a single day's worth of decay when you log back in.

 

So if you were to start pickling a hunk of cheese and log off, making sure the barrel had enough vinegar to preserve after the pickling is done, you can be gone for 2 real-life weeks and the cheese will still be there when you get back.

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The ice house and storage/transportation of ice was a 19th century invention.  In Western culture anyways.  ;)

 

Before that  there were root cellars, which is very much like what Kitty describes as TFC's low light level mechanic. 

 

What some people do is take advantage of the altitude based temperature decrease and build sky freezers.  Towers built to sky level.  Still out of keeping with the tech level, but it is a game not a simulation.

 

My only issue is that normally cheese can be aged if treated right,18-24 months for some types.  It's only fresh cheeses that decay.  Encrusting a wheel of cheese in salt and storing in a cool, dry place would cause it to form a rind and preserve the cheese. 

 

Of course, making a different mechanic for one food type is probably too much for too little return.  It doesn't affect the game enough to be really necessary. 

 

A grilled cheese sandwich would be pretty great though. lol

Edited by WillOfStone
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I don't think  it would be one kind of food.  If you think about dry fruit, cheese, dry meat, also ham, salami, smoked sausages. dry and smoked fish, grains in general, they all lasted for years without any extra care, but to be kept in a shaded dry place.

I don't mind the decaying in fresh food, but to be cutting decay off cheese is just a grind.  I can work as much as needed for preserving my food, but once I am done preserving it I think there should not be any kind of decay. That would make possible for people to trade food items. Right now is hard to trade food. 

I wanted a system where preservation could be even harder, but once done you can forget about that food. I would prefer if preserved food had an expiration date, instead of daily decay. It would be more like in real life, when you get dry meat, it will not have a 0.1 percent decay the next day, that's for fruit and vegetables.

I don't think the whole system is bad, on contrair, Is a very well though system, the exception is preserved food.

 

 

Edited by TonyLiberatto
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So lets say it has an expiration date. How do you prevent the player from abusing that. Don't forget that you need merge stacks of food. What happens when I merge some fresh cheese with an old batch of cheese? Does it get the old date? Or the new one? Or does it try to average it? If you've answered yes to the either of the last two, then you now have a way for the player to keep food around for essentially forever. If you answered yes to the first way, you're effectively punishing the player by requiring tons of storage space. 

 

There just isn't a really really good way to handle non-permanent food in a world that functions the way that MC does. When you add multiplayer into it, it becomes 10x harder to deal with. It's unfortunate, but I've spent untold hours brainstorming the issues raised by multiplayer time progression, and I don't see any very good ways to handle things that can't be exploited to hell.

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Can't we just drastically decrease the decay rate of properly preseved food (pickled cheese etc), and leave fresh food as it is?

The incentive here would be to keep all fresh food in one pantry so that when someone comes online he can take it all and preserve it, while leaving any new fresh food he finds in the pantry so that anyone that comes online will find it and preserve it.

 

Tldr: I suggest massively decreasing the decay rate of all high-end preserved foods

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Wasn't there hints at some point, of a new preservation system of some kind in the future?  Personally I've found that keeping food on me in vessels, and being pretty scrupulous about trimming it, it lasts a long time.  Grains almost forever really.  As long as I'm careful not to log in like, 7 hours after the last time, and get hit with a huge amount of decay.  I always have at least two vessels of raw foodstuffs on me.  Is that too burdensome for some?

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Can't we just drastically decrease the decay rate of properly preseved food (pickled cheese etc), and leave fresh food as it is?

 

So 11 years isn't already a drastically increased lifespan for pickled cheese? You want it to last even longer? The original post was complaining about fresh cheese, which is treated more like a fresh ball of mozzarella than an aged block of parmesan. Not all cheese is created equal, and farmer's cheese doesn't last very long without extra preservative measures like pickling, brining, or smoking. Do any of those, and your cheese will last for plenty long. Pretty much all high-end preserved foods already have massively decreased decay rate, and I have no plans of decreasing them further.

 

Wasn't there hints at some point, of a new preservation system of some kind in the future? 

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Food#Preservation

 

We already have small ceramic vessels, cooking, salting, pickling, smoking, drying and refining as methods of food preservation. There are currently no plans for adding even more.

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Thanks for the answer Bioxx, if for nothing, it is comforting to know that you and Kitty listen to our concerns and suggestions. We are very thankful.

Not to sound impertinent, but does food really need to add up? what if preserved food, since it has and expiration date would not stack, unless it has the same expiration date? I understand it would cause an inventory issue, to manage that.  It would be a price worth  to pay for having food that you can now safely store and practically forget about, and also be able to trade.

Please understand that I am not asking for the game to be easier, I actually think it should take more work to preserve food, but once done preserving it we should be able to safely store and trade it.

So for example grain was historically preserved in clay jars, but before it had to be processed and spread on a floor to dry and be aerated, to prevent fermentation. Now if I understand correctly, another issue that you are pointing is how to prevent some players or towns to maximize this to the point where they have hundreds of jars filled with grain. That's where the expiration date comes into play. All that one hundred jars of grain will expire at the same time and they will be left with nothing. So there is no incentive to preserve more food than you can consume or sell.

In my mind I envision a system where people would really have to prepare for winter or off season, So you actually need to preserve food. I would be happy with a 1 year expiration date, even though most preserved food can last for more than that. the idea is that the fruit that you harvest today, once dry will last until next year when the fruit is ripe again in the Orchard. The same would be true for all preserved food.

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An expiration date doesn't make much sense to me. Food isn't completely fine for 364 days, and then suddenly on the 365th one it's completely rotten. Food decays a little bit at a time, and then compounds on that decay, which is already simulated. Yes the majority of that grain that was historically preserved was fine, but I can guarantee you that at least a decent portion of it was inedible a year later when they went to use it, and if they leave the rotten bits in the jar even more will be rotten the next time they come to use it again.

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But is exactly that idea of having to cut decay everyday that really bothers me. Grains would be stored and then be consumed over the year, so when the new harvest season comes whatever is left would be throw away, ( used for animal feeding or whatever ) to make room for the new harvest. Yes, I understand it does not make much sense for food to last perfectly good for one year and suddenly just go bad, but is how it happens in real life. exception to fresh fruit and vegetables, no one cuts decay from meat or grains. If some grains in a container go bad, the whole container is compromised, same with any kind of meat, if a portion of the meat product is bad, you better trow away the whole thing.

In the end is a question of personal game style. I don't mind working very hard to produce and preserve my food, but the constant cutting decay gets really annoying. Is one of the jobs that no one in the town wants to do. Also because of the way it works it makes it impossible to store food in some kind of container and set a automated market, where people can come and buy that food.

I think I have said my mind, I do not wish to upset you or Bioxx insisting on a point. Either you guys agree with me and are willing to change it or not. Either way I will for sure keep playing the mod and be thankful that you guys provided me with it.

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I agree, cutting decay gets tedious.  There ought to be a point which you are freed from that tedium.

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There's nothing forcing you to cut decay. The world isn't going to end if your food gets more than 1% of decay on it. That 11 years for pickled cheese in vinegar is without trimming any of the decay off of it. If you want to trim the decay, it will last even longer.

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There's nothing forcing you to cut decay. The world isn't going to end if your food gets more than 1% of decay on it. That 11 years for pickled cheese in vinegar is without trimming any of the decay off of it. If you want to trim the decay, it will last even longer.

 

:shrug:  We're just expressing our opinions.  Some of us enjoy the challenge of having to preserve food but would like to reach a point when we "beat" that challenge.  Saying that the cheese lasted 11 years is a little misleading because that's how long it took to completely disintegrate.As far as grains and pickled things go, if preserved properly grains should last indefinitely and pickled goods nearly so.  There've been grains found after hundreds of years which were still good.  I myself have eaten dried grain which wasn't even cared for particularly well (it was a part of a thanksgiving wreath) and if I keep a jar of pickles in my basement for a year I don't worry whether I'll have to cut away the "bad" spots.

And when folks used to preserve food it was with the intention that the whole portion they put away would be good when they needed it.  People would smoke, salt, dry, pickle, sugar, things and put them up for the winter, and those things would generally be completely good when they went and took them for use.

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We "beat" that challenge with modern technology. If TFC went past the 1400 AD current cap, then yes food could be preserved much better as things like Sulfites(1868) and other chemical additives and materials were introduced.  I was a child in Northern Idaho in the 60's and we farmed and hunted for a majority of our food.  We used the latest preservation methods, but still did not expect things to last forever or to not lose a portion to decay.  After a time, even if there is no decay, it loses some of it's food value.  That grain may be edible, but lacking in nutrition. 

 

Personally, I have no issue with the food system in this game, because it is a game.  Maybe one of the best I've ever played.

Edited by WillOfStone
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I think I want to retract much of what I wrote about preservation.  I'm finding that pickling the food makes it last more than long enough for me.  My only trouble is that you cannot pickle grains.  It'd be nice if there was something you could do to grains... dry them out maybe.

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Make sure you are always keeping your grains in the refined state for as long as possible. Refine them the moment you harvest them, and don't turn them into flour until you absolutely need them. Refined grains decay at half the speed of their whole/flour/dough/bread counterparts. Because maize doesn't have a refined stage, it is the whole version that has the reduced decay rate.

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Yeah, I try to refine them as soon as I harvest but sometimes it has to wait till I get back to the house... which only takes about thirty seconds.

 

I've been really slow to use the food and preservation mechanics of the game because I'm so geared toward mining and building.  I cook because it makes sense to cook, but it even took me a long time to start cooking after I settled in one spot.  I finally earned master chef... which is a huge leap forward from the previous level.  One of these days I'll have to sit down and figure out how to make the best sandwich for my character.

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First of all, tfcraft is an amazing mod, and the fact that we are even talking about such small points just goes to show how much has gone into it. I personally would like to see expiration dates, just because of the group I play with (80% of the play time is me, but 20% is my 4 room mates who aren't nearly as into the minutia such as preserving food as I am, meaning they keep our house loaded but don't manage food).

 

So lets say it has an expiration date. How do you prevent the player from abusing that. Don't forget that you need merge stacks of food. What happens when I merge some fresh cheese with an old batch of cheese? Does it get the old date? Or the new one? Or does it try to average it? If you've answered yes to the either of the last two, then you now have a way for the player to keep food around for essentially forever. If you answered yes to the first way, you're effectively punishing the player by requiring tons of storage space. 

 

Honestly, the first sounds totally fair. It makes sense that if you mix and old cheese with a new cheese, you're going to get bacteria from whatever state the old one was in into the new one. You aren't requiring tons of storage space, you're giving the player a choice, which is totally believable (save storage space, or don't mix food, and eat your older food first).

 

I also wish I could put a full 160oz of food in a slot in a ceramic vessel, because dividing a pile of grain in half (with a knife, no less) in order to fit both halves of the pile into the vessel isn't very believable. The worst is when I have 90oz of grain and have to eat/feed the rest or get creative with my knife (although maybe I should just install the scales mod). I do find this irritating enough that I wouldn't mind having to make a separate type of vessel to store two slots of small (medium?) items in order to get the preservation bonus.

 

That being said I'm just saying how I feel; I don't expect the modders to make any of these changes, especially since they've already given me the tools to approximate what I want; I plan on simply setting the decay rate of top-tier preservation methods (dried/pickled) to 0 or near 0.

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You actually used to be able to fit the full 160 oz of food in a single slot, but we specifically cut that amount in half because we felt it was a little bit too OP to be able to store 40 lbs of food in a single inventory slot. The entire reason that it was nerfed is just another example of where we make believably less of a priority compared to balanced gameplay. If you want a way to think about it that does make it more believable, just think of the vessel as only being able to hold 20 lbs of food. Either we could have made it so the container has only 2 slots that you put full stacks into, or leave it as the 4 slots where you put half stacks in. Ceramic vessels are used for a lot more than just storing food, so I think our players wouldn't be too happy if we cut the storage capacity for everything instead of just for food.

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Remember the point about makinig cheese is very easy, if you have 9 familiarized female cowns, you have a way to make 1 cheese a day, and milk in barrels, dont decay, this way and hard preserving ways make you never be lacking in cheese.

 

In RL, the not industrialized food, rotten in the market, bread, fruits,, vegetables and grains while the time pass.

Thanks.

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You actually used to be able to fit the full 160 oz of food in a single slot, but we specifically cut that amount in half because we felt it was a little bit too OP to be able to store 40 lbs of food in a single inventory slot. The entire reason that it was nerfed is just another example of where we make believably less of a priority compared to balanced gameplay. If you want a way to think about it that does make it more believable, just think of the vessel as only being able to hold 20 lbs of food. Either we could have made it so the container has only 2 slots that you put full stacks into, or leave it as the 4 slots where you put half stacks in. Ceramic vessels are used for a lot more than just storing food, so I think our players wouldn't be too happy if we cut the storage capacity for everything instead of just for food.

I totally get this, which is why I said I wouldn't mind having another type of vessel with 2 slots that could hold full stacks of food. Of course, that seems like a rather silly addition. Maybe a way to cut food more easily? I have no idea how hard this would be, but perhaps trying to place a stack of food that is too large into a vessel would put just the 80oz that fit, and leave the rest in your cursor, much like trying to put a stack of items into a slot that can only hold one will work, but only take one? Or how shift clicking something at the forge auto-splits your stuff for optimal filling?

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That's been suggested before, but the primary issue is that we actually use the crafting handler to split the food, and you don't have access to the crafting grid when you have the vessel interface open. We'd also have to take into account the fact that in normal usage, splitting food requires using the knife.

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 We'd also have to take into account the fact that in normal usage, splitting food requires using the knife.

I always assumed that requiring the knife to split food had to do with making recipes unique (although in retrospect, that doesn't make sense). Needing a knife to split an apple makes sense, but I've always assumed most foods are already bundles of pieces (I seem to remember reading somewhere that combining food items makes a bundle of the pieces, rather than smooshing them together int a super food).

 

Assuming needing a knife to split food, how about using a ceramic vessel as a measuring cup, by crafting together a knife, a vessel with at least one empty slot (or even make it have to be completely empty if that's possible), and a piece of food, and getting out a ceramic vessel with one (or more) of its slots as full as possible? Or, just get out piles of food that are at most 80oz (really just using the vessel as a measuring cup) and then I can put it in through the normal interface. Actually, I guess I just really want a measure cup.

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That seems like it's a bit over complicated...

 

In the current system:

  • Hover cursor over piece of food
  • Press S as many times as required to fully stack all of the food together
  • Place knife in crafting grid
  • Put each full stack in the crafting grid to cut it into two 80 oz pieces

In the end you are going to have a single piece of food that is not a full 160 oz. For the sake of example, let's say it is a 100 oz piece of food that is leftover. No matter what way you cut it, it is always going to take up 2 slots, so there's absolutely no reason to have to have it be split as 80 and 20. 50 and 50 gives you the exact same end result.

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