[WIP] Gnomions (gnome minions) Mod Idea

[seronis]

So last weekend while playing my daughter asked me if the gnome statue I had next to my farmplots did anything. So been looking into some things and I think I am gonna make it a mod.  Ideas I have so far:

 

Wilson, being the scientist he is, will be able to give life to gnome statues by combining them with nightmare fuel and then leaving them close to a lightning rod and hoping it gets struck within half a day. Longer than that and the shadow empowered statue will lose its charge.  If the lightning rod IS struck on the other hand the statue will activate.

 

At this point the player will be able to pick the statue up and place it next to something that needs 'work'. Gnomes will also require 1 additional nightmare fuel every 3 days or revert to a normal statue again.

 

When placed next to a farmplot the statue will gain a green glow and will check nearby for manure (even in chests) to fertilize the farmplot or the growing crop periodically.  It will also pick the crop and put the food in the nearest chest, replanting if seeds are available.  A single gnome will only be willing to tend the 2 or 3 farmplots that were next to where he was placed.

 

Placed next to a firepit will give the statue a red glow at which point it will attempt to light the firepit halfway through dusk and maintain the fire until morning. It will prefer charcoal, logs, sticks, and cut grass, in that order, to fuel the fire.

 

A gnome placed next to tooth traps might automatically attempt to reset them. One next to a beebox might collect the honey for you.

 

I love mods that add new 'features' like this but all rewards should have costs or risks to balance them out. The balancing features so far would be:

 

1. gnome statues arent too common overall

2. initial activation requires the player to have already made a decent enough base camp and has a bit of luck involved

3. nightmare fuel as both a startup and maintenance cost means having the gnome minions isnt free and the player cant forget about them

 

Initially this weekend when i start on this im gonna just try to get tending to the farmplots working and will expand abilities as I figure stuff out. I really want it to not feel like cheating though. Are the costs I listed enough? Any other balancing requirements/costs you guys can suggest?

[Heavenfall]

Keep in mind things rarely happen off screen for the player. If you're not near your base, there won't be lightning strikes and your gnomes won't work.

[Silentdarkness1]

Would the gnomes have quotes?

[seronis]

Keep in mind things rarely happen off screen for the player. If you're not near your base, there won't be lightning strikes and your gnomes won't work.

Anyone with specific knowledge know what this range is? Obviously hounds spawn a bit offscreen so their spawn range is 'close enough' and I can check the TUNING file to figure out what it is exactly. But how much past that range can I rely on things still processing ?

 

Would the gnomes have quotes?

Umm.. not initially but nothing in the code preventing it so its always possible.

[simplex]

Anyone with specific knowledge know what this range is? Obviously hounds spawn a bit offscreen so their spawn range is 'close enough' and I can check the TUNING file to figure out what it is exactly. But how much past that range can I rely on things still processing ?

I did a simple test once (sorry about the post being squashed into a single line). These values should be taken as an approximation, though, and they may have changed since then.

[seronis]

I did a simple test once (sorry about the post being squashed into a single line). These values should be taken as an approximation, though, and they may have changed since then.

Thats extremely useful.  Im assuming your 'meter' unit is the unit where each ground tile is 4 units (meters) wide?

[simplex]

Thats extremely useful.  Im assuming your 'meter' unit is the unit where each ground tile is 4 units (meters) wide?

Yes, it's the unit where walls are 1x1 and tiles are 4x4. I find it strange to call it "meter", but that's the only term the game (very occasionally) uses to refer to it. See for example components/distancetracker.lua (and be astonished to know at some point the game tracked the distance traveled by the player as a game stat... in furlongs).

[seronis]

Well now my first priority is gonna be tracing if farmplots have a sleep mode so they compute missed growth when waking back up.  And seeing how this affects other things. More to learn =-)

[Heavenfall]

They do indeed, I think it's called longupdate or something. Also beware that the range for prefabs to sleep varies from player to player - it is significantly shorter for someone running netbook settings.

[simplex]

They do indeed, I think it's called longupdate or something. Also beware that the range for prefabs to sleep varies from player to player - it is significantly shorter for someone running netbook settings.

I had forgotten about that, yes, netbook settings reduces the active radius. Do you know of any other factor that affects that?

And about farm plots, they just remain using their timed callbacks. The game used to display buggy behaviour on things like that because timed callbacks were put aside when an entity slept (but those set up after it had slept worked fine), though I think that's been fixed.

LongUpdate is used when the player sleeps or comes out of a cave (or goes in, for the entities inside the cave). It's also triggered by console commands such as

GetClock():MakeNextDay()