ComSenMod (now for A18)

[TARCH26]

I don't understand some of this, but I'll do my best.

I write through the translator.

 

For cooking, I followed a simple rule. If you need water, then you use the pot. If you don't need water, then you use the grill. Maybe you're asking to cook a potato without the grill? As far as I know, you need a grill or foil or something so that the potato doesn't burn.

Potatoes in the coals. Without a lattice.

 

At this time, I don't think ComSenMod will add any new assets to the game. There are other mods that do that. The goal of ComSenMod is to fill things out: to make the most of what's already in the game. So unfortunately pizza isn't feasible. However it would be nice to find some recipe to use animal fat - I see it as an underutilized resource.

The game is quite products but very few recipes. Why not roast potatoes with meat or mushrooms in the pan? There are different canned food can be cooked in a pot and get high-quality food.

 

In ComSenMod you find more things like nails, coins, and arrowheads in one container. You need a lot of these things to be very useful, so ComSenMod gives you more at once in hopes of reducing clutter.

That's the problem. Finds little. For example, three nails. Didn't make the box. Or one arrowhead. And what is it for?

 

It doesn't make sense that you lose the glass jar when you cook stew... but it doesn't make sense for the jar to reappear when you eat the stew, either. It's not a jar of stew, it's a bowl of stew. I think the common sense solution for this would be to change the model from a glass jar into a disposable paper cup. Then it would make sense that the container disappears when you cook the stew. However, I'm hesitant to make the jump from xml edits to new artwork, because it'll probably make it harder to use ComSenMod in multiplayer.

It eats up a glass jar together with the stew? It is not logical! If I'm not mistaken, this was fixed in alpha 14.

 

This is kind of like requiring a candle to make a campfire - in my mind, the candle is actually a butane lighter. Then when I tried it, I realized candles are only found in one or two houses, so I allowed torches as well. Everyone starts with a torch, but it creates an interesting choice in the early game, and I can speak from experience that losing that first campfire before you've made any tallow creates a major survival setback.

Why not melt the fat in a tin? The water boils, and therefore the fat can...

[spwebguy]

Working on a mod

 

Hey Crater Creator,

 

I'm using your mod on my server and it's great. I've been making many adjustments, actually so many that I have a list of changes that's as big as yours. I'd like to "release" (I mean post) my mod (based on yours).

 

It's says in the policy that I need to ask for your permission so that's what I'm doing, can I post a mod that's based on yours?

 

If not then I'll just start over, and make something my own completely. Either way I'm good. Let me know what you think.

 

Thank you for your work.

 

— im not a native English speaker.

[Crater Creator]

Welcome to the forums, sbwebguy! Great to hear you're enjoying ComSenMod enough to use it on your server.

 

Thanks for asking about making a derivative mod. You have permission, but I do ask that you credit me in anything you release based on ComSenMod. If your mod is mostly ComSenMod with a few changes, or a compilation of several mods including ComSenMod, or whatever the case may be, that should be clearly documented.

 

Good luck with your mod. If you're agreeable, I might look at your adjustments some time and incorporate some of them back into a future version of ComSenMod.

[Crater Creator]

Also, a heads up for everyone. The big addition for the next version of ComSenMod will be fixes for weather survival.

 

Weather survival in vanilla definitely defies common sense. Most of all, I've been tired of nonsense like warming up by taking off my shorts. As I fully anticipated, this rapidly snowballed into redoing the insulation values for all clothes, and then adjusting the biomes and weathersurvival.xml settings for balance.

 

I'm currently testing my settings in single player (about to fight the first horde in a pine forest). I will *probably* release as soon as I'm happy with the balance & testing, rather than waiting for Alpha 16.

[spwebguy]

@Crater Creator: Thank you for this, we'll give you credit for ComSen, this mod will be completely based on yours. We are using it on our server and just posting it here later so others can try it. Nothing more. We'll link to your mod as well so people can check it out.

[TARCH26]

Crater-Creator Fix the weather a good idea. Good mod, but there are deficiencies. To loot the number of items low. For example, two nails, one arrowhead, and four tokens... It would be good to increase the number of rounds in gun safes and cabinets, not less than 20. Found concrete mixture in amount of 29, why? You need at least 100, then it will be good. Will it be fixed?

[Crater Creator]

Crater-Creator Fix the weather a good idea. Good mod, but there are deficiencies. To loot the number of items low. For example, two nails, one arrowhead, and four tokens... It would be good to increase the number of rounds in gun safes and cabinets, not less than 20. Found concrete mixture in amount of 29, why? You need at least 100, then it will be good. Will it be fixed?

 

Okay, Tarch. You've convinced me. In vanilla, you find arrowheads in trash one at a time. In ComSenMod, you would find between one and five. But I see your point, that finding one arrowhead isn't fun even if it doesn't happen often. You might go a long time before finding any more, and in the meantime it takes longer to make one arrow and load it in your bow than it does to use that arrow. So based on your feedback, I went through all the loot and adjusted the "count" values for many things. For example, now you find between 4 and 12 arrowheads at once.

 

If taken too far, this will make the game too easy. If you always find ten nails, for example, then it's like changing the recipe so a crate requires one nail, except things are bloated with inflation. You shouldn't always find as much as you need from one container. You should have to gather resources from multiple places sometimes. On the other hand, finding one nail from ten or more different trash piles is too tedious and hit-or-miss. So I set the junk group to have between five and fifteen nails.

 

This is the philosophy I used when setting the numbers on about twenty different items. I'm testing my values now. I'm sure they'll need more tweaking before I'm happy with the result.

 

I did not change the "guns+ammo" group, which gun safes use. I feel the number of rounds is already useful, especially because you find a weapon and ammo at the same time, and the weapon comes loaded with ammo. I feel that scarce ammo is part of the game, so maybe explain why you think more ammo is a good idea.

 

I don't understand how you found 29 concrete mix. I set it to a range between 100 and 200 units. This matches the rebar frames, which have a range between ten and twenty units. Maybe I don't understand the effect of skill levels and loot settings as well as I thought.

[TARCH26]

Crater-Creator At the military base there with the safe open, it found 1 ammo for the shotgun. It's funny how something. This is how to open your refrigerator and discover 1 pea on the middle shelf. 29 concrete mix found in a box working tools store.

[Crater Creator]

Was it a gun safe or a munitions box? And, do you remember if there was a shotgun that came with the ammo?

 

The concrete really makes no sense. There is no concrete mix in vanilla, and I just checked the concrete mix in ComSenMod. It only appears in Working Stiffs crates, and the quantity has always been between 100 and 200 units.

 

<lootgroup name="workingStiffs" count="1">
<item name="pickaxeIron"/>
<item name="shovelIron"/>
<item name="fireaxeIron"/>
<item name="hoeIron"/>
<item name="clawHammer"/>
<item name="wrench" prob="0.8"/>
<item name="repairKit" count="1,4"/>
<item name="woodFrameBlock" count="10,30"/>
<item name="rebarFrameBlock" count="10,20"/>
[color="#FFD700"]<item name="concreteMix" count="100,200"/>[/color]
<item name="nail" count="10,40"/>
<item name="wood" count="50,250"/>
<item name="anvil" count="1"/>
<item name="ironDoor1_v1"/>
<item name="sledgehammer"/>
<item group="nailgun+parts"/>
<item name="calipers" prob="0.67"/>
<item name="toolAndDieSet" prob="0.67"/>
<item group="rareTools"/>
<item group="automotive" prob="2"/>
<item name="forgedIron" count="5,15" prob="0.21"/> <!-- together 2% per crate -->
<item name="forgedSteel" count="3,12" prob="0.12"/>
<item name="fertilizer" count="1,3" prob="0.5"/>
<item name="electricParts" count="4,8" prob=".5"/>
<item name="electronicParts" count="1,3" prob=".2"/>
<item name="mechanicalParts" count="4,10" prob="1"/>
<item name="scrapPlastics" count="4,8" prob=".4"/>
</lootgroup>

[TARCH26]

Crater-Creator I apologize, of course munitions box.

[SenLim]

Can we add a way to craft emptyJar from "filled" jar?

 

Example: you can just dump the water inside "bottledRiverWater" and it'll obviously turn to "emptyJar"

 

Here is addition to recipes.xml:

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="bottledWater" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="bottledRiverWater" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="beer" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="coffee" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="goldenRodTea" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="grainAlcohol" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="redTea" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="snowberryJuice" count="1"/>
</recipe>

[Crater Creator]

Can we add a way to craft emptyJar from "filled" jar?

 

Example: you can just dump the water inside "bottledRiverWater" and it'll obviously turn to "emptyJar"

 

Here is addition to recipes.xml:

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="bottledWater" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="bottledRiverWater" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="beer" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="coffee" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="goldenRodTea" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="grainAlcohol" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="redTea" count="1"/>
</recipe>

<recipe name="emptyJar" count="1">
<ingredient name="snowberryJuice" count="1"/>
</recipe>

 

I like this idea. The ability to empty out whatever's in the jar would be sensible. It strikes me as analogous to scrapping. I think you could scrap a full jar to an empty jar if empty jars were their own material. Then we wouldn't have to add a bunch of recipes.

 

I have an item on my To Do list to scrap arrows to get either the arrowhead or the feather back, where I plan to use the same approach. It's just an area of modding I haven't tackled yet.

[SenLim]

I think cornBread should stick to cookingPot because it requires bottledWater.

 

Edit: Same goes to blueberryPie

[Crater Creator]

I think cornBread should stick to cookingPot because it requires bottledWater.

 

Edit: Same goes to blueberryPie

 

Okay, I see what you're getting at. I broke my own convention that if water's in the recipe, you use the pot. But intuitively, you don't boil breads or pies - you bake them. Grilling is the closest thing we have to baking.

 

So I researched real recipes for cornbread and blueberry pie with a cornmeal crust. The real recipes use more shortening than water. So in the game, these recipes will require animal fat instead of bottled water.

 

This kills 3 birds with one stone.

• It maintains the water=pot convention.
  
• It keeps these recipes on the grill, which makes the most sense
  
• It satisfies my desire to use animal fat as a cooking ingredient, in general.

Neither food hydrates you, so this doesn't create an exploit to get free hydration, either.

 

I think this will make the game better. I'll test it along with other changes for the next release of ComSenMod, coming soon™. Thanks for catching this, SenLim!

[SenLim]

Lol sounds good!

[Crater Creator]

Boy, it's hard to stop tinkering long enough to actually make a release. My local change list has grown to over 60 items.

 

I was finally able to test weather survival in different biomes, and it feels good. Wear your coat inside, and you'll generally get hot. Venture naked into the pine forest, or worse yet jump in a pool, and you'll get cold. Walk through the desert, and you're hot in long sleeves, pants, and boots; but tolerably warm in tank top, shorts, and shoes.

 

As before, the bulk of the changes will be loot related. People in the ComSenMod universe will soon stop carrying around doorknobs & candlesticks, cool actual beverages in their refrigerators instead of only empty jars, put papers inside desks instead of their clothes, and so on.

 

One more highlight: you'll dismantle bird nests with an axe instead of a wrench.

[SenLim]

I didn't know you can dismantle nest... what for though? relocate?

[AlienZ]

I didn't know you can dismantle nest... what for though? relocate?

 

Same reason to dismantle a car, for resources. It's not the same as dismantling a workbench.

[Crater Creator]

By dismantle I mean harvest, like animals. I personally have been playing with no loot respawn, so it's worth chopping up bird nests. You get those last few feathers, and the nest is destroyed so you don't keep revisiting nests that are already empty.

[xyth]

I like most of your edits, well done.

 

I suggest you consider adding one new feature though. I don't understand why felling trees produces cordwood, rather than logs first. It would be common sense that chopping down a tree would drop "woodLogPillar100" which is an existing block. It would be great if a pillar50 block was added for smaller trees, but the pillar100 would be more realistic than dropping already chopped up chunks of wood. These pillar logs then can be chopped into wood pieces, or in other mods made into planks using a saw.

[Crater Creator]

Announcing Version 2.0

 

A new and improved version of ComSenMod is now available! See the first post for the download link.

 

Since we're still on A15b8, I'm calling this version 2.0. Here's what's new. (part 1 of 2)

 

biomes.xml:

• Made all biomes 25 degrees cooler
  Compensates for what people would typically wear, now that clothing doesn’t cool the player
  

blocks.xml:

• Removed requirement to use a wrench when harvesting bird nests
  Wrenches look silly on organic things. Now you can bust it up with an axe, like a tree.
  
• Changed desks to use file cabinet loot instead of dresser loot
  Clothes in a desk is uncommon; this loot list makes much more sense
  
• Changed material for school desks from furniture to metal
  So that it uses metal SFX & VFX, and the pickaxe works better than a fire axe on them
  
• Changed wall ovens to use oven loot instead of cupboard loot
  Assumed to be an oversight. Cupboards are already abundant.
  

items.xml:

• Redesigned insulation of all items so that clothing & armor can only warm the player
  The system wasn’t robust enough to support warming and cooling items. No more taking off your shorts when you get cold. More and heavier clothes = warmer, less and lighter clothes = cooler.
  
• Changed cigar material from cloth to plants, and added weight so it can be scrapped
  Cigars are rolled tobacco leaves, not cloth
  

recipes.xml:

• Changed cornbread & blueberry pie recipes to use animal fat instead of water
  This is more true to life, and maintains the ‘water=pot’ convention. These foods didn’t hydrate you, either.
  

weathersurvival.xml:

• Increased threshold before weather system considers you ‘inside’ from 15% enclosed to 25% enclosed
  Experimental - sounded too low, like it would almost always be in effect
  
• Decreased snowfall soak time from 5 minutes to 2 minutes
  Snow melts as soon as it hits skin, so IF you don’t have waterproof clothes, you should get soaked almost as fast as with rain.
  
• Let player get colder before they stop drying out (30 instead of 40)
  Should be forgiving, because there’s a punishing feedback loop where you get cold because you’re wet and stay wet because you’re cold. 30 is closer to the freezing point.
  
• Temperature has a less pronounced effect on how fast you dry out
  Lessens the feedback loop, and re-scales the curve to fit the above change
  
• Narrowed the difference in how fast player changes temperature when wet versus dry
  It looks like this affects how fast you cool down AND heat up. You shouldn’t heat up faster when wet, so this is a compromise.
  
• Expanded range of temperatures under which you heat up/cool down at regular speed
  If you’re not hot or cold, you don’t really need to warm up or cool down extra fast
  
• Reduced temperature drop when wet from 30 to 20 degrees
  This is very hard to model accurately without humidity, so wind will be a bigger factor as an approximation
  
• Disabled BaseOutsideTempChangeWhenWet
  Research indicates this is an absolute value that negated biome conditions.
  
• Increased the cooling effect of the wind
  Wind plays a bigger role in absence of other factors like humidity. Now wet skin can ‘feel’ twice as cold when it’s windy.
  
• Made a cloudy sky only warm you 20% as much as a sunny sky
  I researched what a good value would be, but in the end just went with what felt intuitive.
  
• Increased temperature shift when running to 10 degrees
  Running never had an appreciable effect on temperature.
  
• Remapped elevation’s effect on temperature to a parabolic curve once above ground
  This way you only really notice it getting cold as you get up ‘in the mountains.’ Less realistic, but remember we’re compressing thousands of real meters into 250 game meters.
  

[Crater Creator]

This is part 2 of 2 for version 2.0's change list. Enjoy!

 

loot.xml:

• Replaced coffee beans in sink loot with buckets
  This group is also used for public bathrooms, where coffee beans would be an odd find.
  
• Made all water murky, except when found in coolers, fridges, beer coolers, and shamway boxes
  In the age of a zombie infection, you can’t assume random water you find on a corpse is safe to drink
  
• Added water & canned food to air drop loot
  Complements that clean water is harder to come by. Not sure why the airdropfood group wasn’t enabled.
  
• Added jackets wherever clothes or warm clothes are found
  Jackets were effectively disabled from the game. They offer another tier of warmth.
  
• Removed medicine from stumps
  It didn’t feel right to find a beaker in there. Stumps had enough different goodies as it is.
  
• Added goggles to warm clothes
  Ski goggles are cold weather gear, and they have a warming effect now
  
• Reduced amount of survival stash loot found in stumps
  I was finding too much good loot in the pine forest
  
• Increased quantities of arrowheads, while reducing the chance of finding them
  Incorporating feedback to reduce the clutter of finding a near-useless amount of something
  
• Increased minimum quantities of items in ammo & military ammo loot
  Incorporating feedback to reduce the clutter of finding a near-useless amount of something
  
• Removed duplicate entry for paper in locker loot
  Assumed to be an oversight
  
• Standardized quantities of paper found, outside of books & filing cabinets
  Incorporating feedback to reduce the clutter of finding a near-useless amount of something
  
• Removed rotten flesh from cold food loot
  Establishing a general convention that refrigerated food isn’t spoiled, while other food may be
  
• Removed some car parts from car loot & added other stuff you might find inside
  There might be a drink in the cup holder, a flashlight in the glove box, or motor oil in the trunk. But if you want radiators, springs, and engines, you’ll have to harvest the car rather than loot it.
  
• Added snowballs to cold food loot
  Representing ice buildup on the wall of a cooler or freezer, which still has value to a thirsty survivor
  
• Increased minimum quantities of military fiber, potassium nitrate, oil, springs, cloth, gunpowder, scrap metals, wood, nails, casino tokens, bullet casings, feathers, grass, dirt, plastic, forged iron/steel, & leather found at once
  Incorporating feedback to reduce the clutter of finding a near-useless amount of something
  
• Removed old cash from junk loot
  People don’t just throw away money. Still found on bodies.
  
• Increased amount of loot in fridges
  They were set to have less loot than coolers & shamway crates, despite being larger
  
• Added beverages to fridge loot
  More consistent with other food containers. Refrigerating an empty jar is unusual, so now it will happen less often.
  
• Added books to backpack loot
  Books in a book bag? What an idea!
  
• Replaced glass panes in junk with broken glass
  If it wasn’t broken, it probably wouldn’t be in the trash. They were only good as forge material, anyway.
  
• Added cooking grill to oven loot & split probability of finding either
  The grill’s usefulness is already overshadowed by the pot. It shouldn’t be overly rare, too.
  
• Added broken glass to medicine cabinet loot
  Represents ‘scrap glass’ from glass vials and broken mirrors. Fits the game’s dilapidated look.
  
• Removed hazmat gear from regular zombies
  These clothes are too special case for any old zombie to have on them
  
• Slightly decreased chance to find mining helmet in cars
  Flashlights are more believable, and they appear more often now
  
• Added paper to cop & nurse loot
  For an air of authenticity: these jobs involve a lot of paperwork
  
• Added scrap brass to cop loot
  Representing their brass officer’s badge
  
• Reduced chance of finding flashlights in stumps & backpacks
  On further inspection, flashlights are meant to be rarer than I thought
  
• Cherry picked a few junk items for suitcases & rebalanced loot chances
  Suitcases are rare enough they don’t have to have common junk, much of which you wouldn’t find packed in a suitcase
  
• Added armor, crossbows, & old cash to corpse loot (the ones that are dead but not zombies)
  They needed more variety, so you don’t get too many magnum parts. These items better ‘tell the story’ of this fallen survivor, plus crossbows weren’t found in any loot.
  
• Added candy tin to fat zombie loot & rescaled loot percentages
  Fat people like candy
  
• Added treasure maps & nerd glasses to filing cabinets
  The map makes shuffling through all those papers worthwhile, while the glasses are because the poindexter using the file cabinet is absentminded
  
• Increased time to open suitcases, file cabinets, coffins, bookcases, dumpsters, and mortician’s drawers
  These are things that either take a moment to get open, or have lots of stuff inside to sort through
  
• Added trophies to football player loot
  If anyone should be carrying around a trophy, it should be these guys
  
• Created new “junkPersonal” loot list just for zombies & other bodies, with adjusted probabilities
  This way zombies don’t carry odd things like door knobs and candlesticks, but you can still find these in trash piles
  
• Added old cash and vitamins to junkPersonal loot
  People carry these things on them, and they’re no more valuable than the casino tokens and painkillers, respectively
  
• Added candles to junkPersonal loot
  Candles are thought of as lighters in this mod. Giving them to zombies allows you to start a fire without relying on specific PoIs.
  
• Removed rotten food, quests, & treasure maps from generic zombie loot
  Now redundant with junkPersonal loot group
  
• Moved facial piercings from generic zombie loot to clothes loot
  These could be found, rarely, wherever clothes are found. Individual zombie types have an extra chance of having them.
  
• Added junk to football player & utility worker loot
  For consistency with other UMA zombies
  
• Adjusted each zombie’s chance of dropping specific clothes
  On horde night you would get a glut of things like running shoes: more than you can even sell.
  
• Insured some type of clothing could be found on all corpses
  All zombies wear clothes (except ferals & animals), so it should be possible to loot clothes off of any of them. Zombies drop generic clothes if no specific clothes are specified or, in the case of strippers, cloth fragments.
  
• Took automotive loot out of air drop crates
  This was the one subset of working stiffs loot that didn’t fit well
  
• Added chrysanthemum seeds to seeds list
  If you can find other biome-specific seeds like aloe, you should find chrysanthemum, too
  

[TARCH26]

Crater Creator Now there is a reason to start a new game

[Subjugator]

And lastly for now, anyone is welcome to incorporate ComSenMod into their own works, but I'd appreciate it if you'd credit me, Crater Creator, if you do. Or to put it formally, ComSenMod is released under the CC BY license. I will gladly take an opportunity to put out a Terms of Use that isn't 10 pages of legalese.

 

I appreciate your openness to this and your preference for having a limited but proper terms of use.

[Crater Creator]

I like most of your edits, well done.

 

I suggest you consider adding one new feature though. I don't understand why felling trees produces cordwood, rather than logs first. It would be common sense that chopping down a tree would drop "woodLogPillar100" which is an existing block. It would be great if a pillar50 block was added for smaller trees, but the pillar100 would be more realistic than dropping already chopped up chunks of wood. These pillar logs then can be chopped into wood pieces, or in other mods made into planks using a saw.

 

Thanks for the praise and suggestion!

 

It's true that the game glosses over processing logs into lumber, which is nontrivial in reality. At your suggestion, I considered two ways it could be implemented: via a station, or through hand crafting.

 

For the station approach, you'd take logs to a table saw, comparable to the cement mixer. The problems with this would be:

A) For now, I'm not prepared for ComSenMod to add new art assets to the game

B) It creates more unanswered questions downstream. The major ones are, how do you get a saw station? And if you don't have one, how does the lack of usable wood affect your ability to survive and progress through the early game?

 

Alternatively, you could craft logs into lumber by hand. As it turns out, we know how this would affect gameplay, because the game was this way before Alpha 13. TFP concluded that the only thing that logs (and other intermediate ingredients like metal strips and blades of grass) added to the game was clutter and extra time processing. So a guideline emerged where if A -> B -> C, and B doesn't have uses other than turning into C, B is removed.

 

I can appreciate their reasoning, so I'm not yet convinced that going back to logs would improve gameplay. I think it's necessary to accept a level of abstraction - that some steps are extradiegetic, assumed to happen 'off stage' for the sake of skipping over what would be tedious to act out manually. I think common sense is maintained so long as that acceptance is achieved.