Feedback Request 08/01/2014: Farming and Cooking (Test Server)

[Xsyon]

First to answer questions:

Just curious what tools will be needed for farming and can the special item the harvester be used?

New tools such as a hoe and trowel will be added. The harvester is a shovel which is currently used in place of a hoe for creating plowed land.

Has there been any thought as to our natural rainfall in the area watering plants for farming?

Yes, rainfall does actually increase your plants' water level, so you'll have to water less (or not at all) when it's raining often.

If you have to use guts as fertilizer, why can't you also use dead fish?

I've added fish as a fertilizer (see the forthcoming notes below).

I'm not understanding the 2 options either. Under option 1 Would raw foods produce zero calories and cooked food be the only method of calories

No, they will just provide less calories than a cooked meal, same as option 2.

[Xsyon]

Next, I have a few questions:

1) What is the problem with the spinach mesh / LODs? Is it that the spinach plant when small disappears as you scroll out to a far distance? Or is there another problem with the spinach?

2) Regarding the eating animation playing for too long: Does this happen when you are sitting, standing or both? Does this happen with food of all consumption rates or a specific consumption rate only? Does this happen consistently? (I tried eating 30 second food both sitting and standing and didn't see a problem).

3) An issue with the buffs was reported above by BoneBasher (here). Can this be reproduced? If so, I would like full steps to reproduce. The issue currently isn't clear to me.

[MrDDT]

Next, I have a few questions:
2) Regarding the eating animation playing for too long: Does this happen when you are sitting, standing or both? Does this happen with food of all consumption rates or a specific consumption rate only? Does this happen consistently? (I tried eating 30 second food both sitting and standing and didn't see a problem).

Test server has been down (or set to private) so I can't test anymore, but the food it was happening to and when was raw food, and standing (foraged items).

[mmogaddict]

I assume from the fact that there is a Sun gauge that eventually you will be altering the grow rates either based on the actual sunshine that a given square gets (I guess this would be harder) or based on a flat seasonal rate (the easier way) with it getting more sun during Summer and less during Winter and average amount during Spring and Autumn.

So as to have crops grow faster during summer and slower during winter. If not, please consider doing so.

Variable Decay Rate based on Season

If you are doing the above, consider altering the rates of decay also based off the season. During Summer food would decay faster and during Winter slower than the norm.

Regarding Food Presevation Time, I would aim for 40 RL days (1 Xsyon Year) with proper storage. That would be 10 RL days without proper storage.

That would be the norm.

Under variable seasonal decay rate, for example you could set the decay rate during summer to double and half during winter.

With proper storage the Food Preservation Time would remain the same [40 RL days] (because summer and winter would essentially cancel each out of the course of the RL 40 days)

Without proper storage however you would see food rotting away within 5 RL days during the summer, while food would last through an entire winter as the decay would effectively be 20 RL days during the winter. Due to the mechanics of a Xsyon season only being 10 RL days long the decay would actually be shorter than 20 RL days as some of that time would be outside of Winter and subject to the 'normal' decay rate. (My maths says the longest food would actually last (without proper preservation) would be 15 RL days as you would have 10 days of winter (half rate decay) and 5 days of normal decay = equivalent of goal of on average having food last only 10 RL days under normal conditions without proper preservation.

This would reward players for stocking up prior to Winter when crops are hard to grow.

Could extend this to foraging with decreased success rate during winter and an increased success rate during summer.

Anyway just an idea I thought I throw up while I wait for the server to pop back up.

[Xsyon]

The Test Server is open again with the following changes:

1) Right click guts or fish to create fertilizer.

2) Fertilizer is used to fertilize plants (no longer uses straight guts).

3) All food buffs (stats, energy and health) should be removed on death.

4) Splitting a stack of food should keep the correct bonuses, rate, duration and name. This should work correctly in all stack splitting situations: inventory, quest panel and vendor totem.

5) Calories burned adjusted and reduced. (Hunger should drain overall at less than ½ old rate).

6) Crops set to yield 1-10 products based on maturity of the plant.

7) Food decay set to 1 week for raw and 2 weeks for cooked food. Can be preserved up to 4x in proper containers and a commissary. This may be adjusted further.

8) Icons for all skewers should be correct.

9) Energy bar should display % (by request)

10) Food calories revised (cooked 500 calories 12.5% hunger, raw 150 calories)

Some of these changes went straight to the Test Server with only quick internal testing. If you find any problems with these or anything else, please post. Thanks again for the feedback and help!

[thurgond]

Tested what I could and everything seems to be working as designed. Fish gave fertilizer (one from a cutthroat). Fertilizer from fish and guts fertilized plants. Buffs went away on death. Stacks of kabobs split and re-stacked correctly. Hunger drain has definitely slowed, perhaps a little too much.

My surviving crops are still 4 days away from harvest/death, so I can't test crop yield changes, but I think the yield will still be too low for the risk/reward ratio. Did a lot of planting with farming skill around 30. At this level, it was a 50/50 chance for a planted seed to grow and fertilizer to spill/fertilize. So, on average it would take 10 edible items (2 vegetables plus 8 guts/fish turned into fertilizer) for a chance (after a long time and further actions tending the plant) of a maximum yield of 10.

Extracting vegi seeds doesn't seem to increase any skill or stats.
Several suggestions to help this:

1. increase yield to 20 or more if multiple stacks are possible
2. extract multiple seeds from one plant
3. add non-edible items that can create fertilizer

Non-edible items that could become fertilizer:

1. feet and small (non-dissectable) heads
2. ground bones (bonemeal made from bones with mortar and pestal)
3. decayed plants, fish, meat, and food, i.e. compost

The conditions seem to vary on guts, meat, organs, herbs and food. My old stacks of guts are at 1 / 4 while newly extracted guts are at 30/30.

Extracting vegetable seeds doesn't appear to add to any skill or give stat gains.

[BoneBasher]

Sorry for being slow but been busy this weekend. I managed to get back on the test server just now and it was a bit weird. My other character Wazcool was the one that had the problem with a zero showing up in stead of the buff icon so i decided to try the exact same thing again to see if it was fixed. What i was doing was very simple, making fish kebabs and eating them. Anyway, the first fish kebab i ate still had the zero problem BUT i ate a second and the buff showed up as normal showing the 9minutes or whatever buff time. However, when eating fish kebabs with BoneBasher I couldnt get any buffs to show up at all, which was weird.

Can others recreate these problems? If not, i would say its just something weird going on at my end.

[MrDDT]

The Test Server is open again with the following changes:

1) Right click guts or fish to create fertilizer.

2) Fertilizer is used to fertilize plants (no longer uses straight guts).

3) All food buffs (stats, energy and health) should be removed on death.

4) Splitting a stack of food should keep the correct bonuses, rate, duration and name. This should work correctly in all stack splitting situations: inventory, quest panel and vendor totem.

5) Calories burned adjusted and reduced. (Hunger should drain overall at less than ½ old rate).

6) Crops set to yield 1-10 products based on maturity of the plant.

7) Food decay set to 1 week for raw and 2 weeks for cooked food. Can be preserved up to 4x in proper containers and a commissary. This may be adjusted further.

8) Icons for all skewers should be correct.

9) Energy bar should display % (by request)

10) Food calories revised (cooked 500 calories 12.5% hunger, raw 150 calories)

Some of these changes went straight to the Test Server with only quick internal testing. If you find any problems with these or anything else, please post. Thanks again for the feedback and help!

1) Working able to do it. Uses farming skill. The major point of making fertilizer from fish/guts was the cost, it still costs the same 4-8 guts/fish per plant.
2) Working.
3) Working.
4) Working.
5) Working, I like it so far.
6) Unable to harvest yet, it will take at least 4 days to test this. 1 to 10 yield just doing basic math is not enough. It takes 4 to 8 guts/fish to keep a plant at proper fertilized levels, then it takes 1 to 2 water, plus 0 to 12 actions of removing pets and weeds. Plus it takes 1 full unit to get the seed from. Even at max yield you are getting 10 plants (assuming no fails) and you started with 1, so now you are down to 9, plus guts you are down to 1 to 5 units of food per plant after waiting 3.5 days and using extra many actions.
7)Food is decaying correctly. Pouches for slowing decay is working correctly, and storage buildings is working correctly.
8)Unable to check.
9)Working.
10)Working.

[Xsyon]

I will check the fertilizer function. It should (and will) give 4-8 fertilizer per gut / fish.

Bonebasher, could you send screenshots of your issue to support?

Regarding duration of existing food ingredients, I will need to run a script to adjust these in the database before the patch to bring them to current levels.

Regarding failure to plant, water and fertilize: these aspects were added when farming was started and I was assisted by other coders. Do these add at all to the farming experience? If not, I can remove the failure rate altogether (it's not part of my original design at all).

[mmogaddict]

I seem to be bugged on test.

* Eating raw food or basic kababs only takes me 12s, even the ones that show up as 30s consumption.

* Loading a saved recipe - doesn't display the primary ingredient or allow me to add a primary ingredient making saved recipes unusable.

* Number of recipes allowed in my cookbook - Max of 12 @ 80 Int and 29.5 cooking. - seems a little low.

* Fish only gave 1 fertilizer.

* Extracting seeds from plants doesn't count as a skill use. (Not sure if it should, but would make sense if it did.)

* IF the QL of a building DOES have any effect when set as a commissary, it's not possible to see the QL of the building, either a flat rate should be used or the QL should somehow be displayable.

* I don't see any buff timers when eating buff food.