Game Development: Animal Domestication

[jorb]

We've developing tonight, and here's what's new.

Feature, Animal Domestication: The Aurochs that have for some time been roaming the land can now be caught. To catch an aurochs, you must quell its inner beast. 'Neath ye olde attacks menu, all ye with the animal husbandry skill should find an attack called just that: "Quell The Beast". The prerequisites for using this attack, are as follows:

Full combat advantage.
Less than one (i.e "0") combat intensity
Two initiative points.

The weapon required to use this attack is the rope, which can be crafted from ten pieces of string (In the clothmaking menu, for now), equip it, and the attack is available. The attack can only be performed versus aurochsen, for now.

NOTE: The aurochsen are fairly meaty prey. In several senses. Be careful. No n00bs allowed.

Once this attack has been successfully performed versus an Aurochs, the beast is quelled, and the aurochs will now follow you around. The aurochs is however not yet tamed. Within the span of about ten minutes, it will try to break its shackles. When this attack comes, you must again quell its beast. If you hit the aurochs, at this point, it will lose some of its tameness. Each quelling of the beast renders 20 tameness points unto it. Once a grand total of 100 tameness points hath been bestowed unto the beast, it willth...

Metamorphose!

...into a cow, or a bull. Its beast is now completely vanquished, and the animal is now a persistent game object. This means that, from now on, the cow loads and saves with the map. You can now, via right clicking, leash or unleash the cow (or bull), and it will follow you around. You must now care for your new found companion, lest it starve to death. Cows don't eat all that much, except in certain circumstances, namely pregnancy, and when giving milk.

Cows gain food from two sources:
1) The food trough: Build it (containers), and fill it. Seeds and straw go into the trough.
2) Moor, heath and grassland tiles. These always count as a food unit of quality level 10.

The cows have statistics. To see these, right click on the cow and select "Info", this opens the cow's character sheet. You can name your cows, and also see their stats. Cows have the following values.

Meat Quality/Quantity: Self-explanatory
Milk Quality/Quantity: Self-explanatory (Quantity is deciliters of milk per five hours) only applicable for cows, but inheritable through bulls
Hide Quality: Self-explanatory
Breeding Quality: Puts a soft cap on all breeding from this cow, only applicable for bulls, but inheritable through cows
Wellfedness: A beige bar to the right. If the cow goes hungry, it takes a permanent hit to this value, reducing the quality of all produce from it.
Hunger: How much the cow needs to eat, indicated by the red meter to the left.
Historical food quality: The mean quality of the food that the cow has eaten, also affects the quality of its produce. Note that food quality can only reduce from the genetic values of the cow. (I.e a Q50 milk cow will only produce Q50 milk if fed with Q50 food, or higher)

Now, how do we get more cows? Well, children, there's this thing about birds and bees. A bull in the vicinity of a non-pregnant cow will... adjust her pregnancy parameters. Two weeks later (in game time), a calf is born. The stats on the calf are the mean stats of its parents, soft capped by the father's breeding value, all modified randomly by (-2/+5), except for meat quantity (-2/+2, harder to breed). In one month (ingame time) the calf will become a cow (or a bull). During its calf month the animal will only drink milk from a cow (doesn't have to be mommy), it will drink one liter per five hours, so here's hoping mom can provide. A calf only produces half the meat of a fully grown cow if slaughtered.

Please also note that a cow does not start giving milk until it has given birth to its first calf.

...we think that's about it. Also, the sheep have had a slight graphics adjustment. They will be domesticatable next dev session.

Enjoyeth!

[BoatTickets]

FUCK YES!

[Sarien]

Holy Cow!

[Alamarian]

So not only do we have domestication but we do it by beating up animals? Manly.

OH! Can we transport cattle via boats? I'd love to see that.

[sabinati]

sounds pretty cool, gonna try it out, will post trip report.

[ElGato]

fucking sweet.
I'll try it out soon ^^

[kazgar]

So not only do we have domestication but we do it by beating up animals? Manly.

OH! Can we transport cattle via boats? I'd love to see that.

once they're beaten up you can do it by breeding and they'll stay domestic,though you might want to beat up more for ql reasons.

[RaptorJedi]

Just as a word of warning. My friend and I found this out the hard way, but attacking one auroch, causes them all to attack you.


Edit: I know Jorb said they were not for n00bs, which is why I expected them to hit like bears or something. Not attack in groups and hit like bears.

[sabinati]

lol, seriously?

[RaptorJedi]

Well I wouldn't exactly call them bears, but a group of 5 took my health down from 180 to almost knocked out in a couple minutes.