Shadows, don't dehydrate, overcast days, houses, flooding, drought.

[truepurple]

I thought up of a bunch of ideas. Some have connections between them and I really don't want to have to track a bunch of threads so I am going to put them in one. That said, I am sure you could use some of these ideas without using all of them, I do have many here.

Dehydration.   Another meter, just like hunger. Except your dehydration meter empties faster the fuller it is.(you just pee out the extra, well you won't actually in game but that's the explanation)  You can drink from puddles, ponds, or the water at the edges of land to fill your thirst, though the latter takes a long time.Walking around in the rain when not under a umbrella or hat allows one to open up there mouth and let some of the rain fall in, this happens automatically. You can build buckets to hold water for carrying around and drinking latter, but buckets take up multiple inventory slots each one when filled with water.(not as much when empty)  Bucket with rope(crafting bucket and rope together) makes collecting from ponds and map edge water faster than just buckets.  Water canteens/skins can be made to hold water too, and these take up much less inventory space than buckets but take even longer to fill up than bucket without rope. Buckets don't need science to make.

Plants and animals also need water. If it rains alot, areas can flood. even to the point where you can not travel across that area on foot, you might need to build a boat (limit boat could be introduced to Giants, made from logs and rope) Any plant completely submerged in water will drown if under for more than a day. Before than, waist deep water can be traveled through but will slow you down and make you and your inventory wet very fast.

Droughts happen when not enough rain falls, and plants start drying up and dying. You can water plants to help keep them alive if your willing to spend the time.  But even ponds will eventually dry up (will come back next rain though) Perhaps some irrigation system can be crafted for connecting to reliable water sources for crops etc.

Change the day cycle so there is equal moderate light at the beginning and ending, rather than putting all the moderate light at the end of the day. In other words, a dawn as well as dusk.

Each item casts a shadow, this shadow faces first west, then east and is almost nonexistent at noon. Creatures do too, like you could stand behind your Glommer for shade.  The shadows are more extended and deep farthest from noon, changing each hour as the day goes on.  Being in a shadow means being cooler. This applies during the winter too. Umbrellas and parasols provide their own shadow. 

Shadows are also a way to determine orientation, which would have great practical benefits in game. Personally I set game angle one way and never change it except temporarily to target one item behind another. Otherwise it gets confusing. With shadows, it would be less confusing. Also as it is now, I find it hard to determine if I am standing next to a tree enough for its shade.

During the first two hours of dawn and last two hours of dusk, give or take depending on how deep a shadow is, they become dark enough for Charlie to attack if in one and have the same effects on sanity as general darkness has. Carrying a light or being next to a light source cancels this out like normal. So pretty dangerous/hazardous to sanity to be walking around in a forest at dawn or dusk without a torch etc.

Overcast weather means everywhere is treated as a light shadow, no deep shadows. Meaning darkness leaves a hour latter and comes a hour latter.  Some protection from suns heat but not as good as standing in a shadow during a clear day. When raining, it is always treated as overcast, with a tendency to be overcast before and after the rain.

If after a rain, it is clear weather relatively quickly, there is a chance at rainbows appearing. If you click on it, you can view it and receive a one time bonus to sanity, you can not receive more than one bonus to sanity per rainbow (but multiple rainbows does work, so you could run around during that time and hope to spot lots of rainbows) . Robot character is immune to this bonus.

During the summer and early fall/late spring there is a sun meter which gets reset to zero at the beginning of night. If the meter gets beyond a certain point you get sunburned. There are varying levels of sunburn and the effect is to cause steady damage till it is healed with crafted item or naturally goes away in a few days. (sunburn is triggered via the meter, but after being triggered, is independent of the meter and does not get reset at night, multiple sunburns can cumulate and make existing sunburns worse) Being in a shadow or out during overcast stops the sun meter from filling. Robot character does not have a sun meter, instead sun directly contributes to heat and thus overheats faster than anyone else in a sunny day if not sticking to shadows. Shadows canceled out from light sources like a campfire etc, still work for blocking sunlight for this purpose. 

If you get the sun meter up without going over on multiple days you get a tan. Tans can get deeper and deeper. Tan has the effect of increasing the amount of sun you can get before being sunburned. But you lose your tan if you do go over and get sunburned. Tans also fade over time of low sun, like during overcast days and winter days.

If you build walls parallel to each other, you can build roof between them. Roofing has the effect of providing continuous shade, including the darkness Charlie attack and sanity effects. (walls also cast their own shade) Plants will eventfully die left like that lacking light and water (more on limited plants indoors latter). Doors could be introduced to the game, 4 solid walls connected with no gaps an complete roofing above all spaces between the walls means a insulated space, like the whole area is thermal stone. Creatures give off heat, including player, and this heat will also be trapped within.

Roofing also means nothing inside will burst into flames from summer heat directly. But the roofing itself can catch fire which can spread. Roofing wears out over time, can be made of grass, wood, or stone with grass being the most flammable and least lifespan and stone being the highest lifespan and never bursting into flames.  wind and lightning can put holes in roofs too.

If a torch or fire is lit indoors with no hole in ceiling the player will quickly start suffering damage from the smoke until put out. Fire-pits can only be placed under holes in the ceiling and said holes compromise the isolation considerably. But worry not, I have two new items to solve these issues.

Fireplace, like a fire pit but requires different materials and at least level 1 science. Fireplaces need to be placed in front of a wall. Fireplaces produce ash that does not disappear. This ash needs to be removed if built up where ash max stack size is reached before the fireplace can be used again.  No hole in ceiling necessary.

And Stove, hard to craft,  requiring marble among other things like electric doodad (we need more stuff that uses marble) and probably alchemy engine. But lots of benefits. Can be placed anywhere in the house. Burns twice as long on the same set of fuel but produces half the light of anything else.  Stoves can be turned on and off and increased in power, the fuel put in them waiting around for its use.  Only so much fuel can be placed in at once though, if charcoal is used for fuel, more can be saved up in it and charcoal in a stove will go alot further in a stove then it will anywhere else. But again, a stove at max power will still only be producing half the light as say a fire-pit at max.  Stoves can also be either cooked on normally like a fire or be used as a crockpot, but only when turned on. Stacks of stuff can be cooked on a stove at once if you like.

"New" resource for Giants game,  sand.  Sand can be dug up from sandy beach and desert terrain just like shipwrecked, which can be added to a regular game.

Mud, if you dig in soil covered by puddle you get mud. Special trigger for digging mud, this way you don't get it by accident trying to dig something else.

New material, glass and brick. Brick is made from mud grass and sand when next to a a fire (whether a fireplace, or kiln special type or any fire will do, up to you guys) Glass is made with sand and perhaps the same special heat source as brick, requires alchemy engine. Anything that uses bricks also uses mud directly to bind them together.

Glass is needed for windows, which can be built into walls so that the walls let in light. Curtains can be made to open and close windows as desired. When a curtain is closed, it is like that window is not there.  Curtains can be made of grass. wood(shutters) or silk with both a summer flammability risk and grass then wood being the highest flammable and silk the lowest.  Grass lasting the least amount of time (moving curtains reduces durability) and silk the longest. But only wooden shutters will provide additional resistance if hounds or another enemy break through your glass windows (but the act of breaking through and entering a glass window also damages the enemy)

Windows allow growing plants indoors if you keep open enough each day for the plant next to it to get some sunlight, the plant also needs to be manually watered too if below a ceiling.

Different areas could have different weather and temperatures. Like desert areas will naturally get very little rain except for the rare flood. If you really wanted to make it realistic you could make a mountainous area between desert areas and other areas and cause more rain on the other side instead what the desert will get. Storms could travel through areas and clouds could travel through them too. So if one area is really bad, you might jump in a worm hole to escape to somewhere better.

I know, it's alot of material, I thankyou those who read it all. So what do you folks think of these ideas? I think I had a few more ideas too, but this will do for now.

 

 

 

 

 

[Raspberry Shake]

I found a mod for dehydration: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=908071894&searchtext=thirst but it's really buggy (you can't fill up your cup etc) and appears to screw up the world gen.

[truepurple]

TY, though if it is as bad as all that, it doesn't really count.

Regarding the ideas in that post. I like the idea of being able to melt snow for water.  I hate the idea of water "spoiling", that makes no sense. And the "sea" water, well it's a fictional world, might as well just say its fresh water, not salt.