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WIP In Vitro Meat Lab

Discussion in 'Food & Farming' started by FrAndromeda, Aug 30, 2016.

  1. FrAndromeda

    FrAndromeda Subatomic Cosmonaut

    This is one of my first mods, and the first mod I'm showing to people online... also, English is not my first language.

    After being spoiled by the way Sayter's mod Frackin' Universe (you need this in your life, it's fantastic, trust me) adds so many new game-play mechanics, interesting new crafting stations and a massive amounts of recipes for plants, armor, objects, weapons and more to science your way towards, I needed the same type of stuff for.... meat. There are other mods out there that let you craft meat, but I wanted something science-y.
    Hunting is fun, of course. But what if, one day, you don't want to put on pants and get your butt outside to hunt? What if you're too busy growing all kinds of stuff? What if you want the option of growing meat and meat products in a lab, specifically?

    I made something for myself that fulfills those needs and has a science theme. Maybe other players want something similar, so the question is: would you be interested?

    This mod adds two crafting stations. The first one is the Cell Incubator, it will take your first catch (the types of meat available in game), turn them into cells and provide you with the materials you need to grow more of that meat (and possibly more) at the second station, the In Vitro Meat Lab!

    [​IMG]

    The Cell Incubator's crafting window.

    [​IMG]

    Whoops, cursor.
    [​IMG]

    The station lets you craft the cell types for each respective meat (you need to find and pick up each piece of meat before you get the recipe), the necessary nutrients and other things you need to grow your slab of meat!
    All recipes require in-game items or the custom items added by the mod. You will also be able to craft a manual, and perhaps something that adds lore.

    The In Vitro Meat Lab's crafting window.

    [​IMG]

    It will offer you the types of meat in the game, and I'm hoping to add unique meat-themed weapons, maybe armor and furniture, but there would need to be interest for it. Oh, what about new recipes for food? A new type of freaky lab-grown meat only available at these crafting benches?

    What I would like to know is if there's interest for this, whether I should add some missions, whether it would be too cheaty, some opinions on balancing this. I will continue to add things for my own game, but if people like this, I should upload it.

    Thanks in advance for your opinion and advice!


    Edit 15 sept

    Brainstorming:

    Animals
    - slaughterable : higher yield, diminishing source of stuff
    - harvestable : lower yield, steady source of stuff

    When slaughtered drop different goods than when harvested. Have a certain, but low chance of dropping an egg to replace animal.

    Plants
    - harvestable meats


    New types of meat with new cooking recipes?
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2016
    SpaceDonkeyKong likes this.
  2. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    Sounds like a pretty fun idea for me. I'd say go for it.
    The new stuff sounds pretty good too. There's always milk, eggs, the materials from flesh biomes like strands, blocks, brains and eyes, probably plenty of restorable cut foods, and things stat strandle plant and meat like boneboo or enemies that drop living root.
     
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  3. FrAndromeda

    FrAndromeda Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Thanks, Zaroth!
    I've added an egg for a fluffalo that drops alien meat, for people who want another alternative to just creating it at a crafting station. I'm thinking about other, more crazy/silly creatures like a giant turkey or chicken that drops poultry, a weird tentacle monster that drops the tentacle, etc. Maybe new farm animals that drop new types of meat, unique animals who's eggs that can only be created at the mod's stations. I already have plants that grow fish and other meat, but I thought that was a bit boring to add to this mod. Or just too much.
     
  4. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    I wouldn't say that's too much. There are already farmable crops that grow meat, trees that drop meat, and the breakable bushes from the old heck biome did.
    I mean, it might look a tad silly if it's just a fish or a fillet hanging from a vine, but your art so far looks like it'd be a bit better than that.
    Overall, those all sound fine. It'd be nice to have more ranchable stuff too, the only mod I've seen in that vein are slaughterable meat mooshis.
     
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  5. FrAndromeda

    FrAndromeda Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Hahah, the first plant that actually worked that dropped fish filet actually did have fish filet growing from vines! :lolwut: I changed it to a capsule that would 'print' meat, then it became a crafting table that creates meat.
    I wish I could make something that takes the ingredients and has some kind of animation, and gives you stuff at regular intervals. It will look more like something is being processed or created or grown. And not just a dumb time-sink, I want you to be able to walk away from it while it does it's thing, and for it to have an animation going. I think that takes Lua coding, I'll need to look in to that more. I know it's possible, Frackin' Universe has several contraptions that have delays before you can 'harvest' the results.

    I will also update the art, it looks a bit too blue (the glass), maybe a bit too simple. The orange could be replaced with a different color, or a different logo/graphic all together. The In Vitro Meat Lab glass thingy was supposed to have a clump of meat being printed, it's not all done yet. If possible, I want the clump of meat to match the type you're making, but I've never seen that type of thing done.

    What would be preferable?
    - Animal drops meat, doesn't die. You feel good. You want chorizo pizza.
    - Animal gets slaughtered/dies, drops plenty of meat (probably leather, wool, or something), you'll have to raise a new one. You feel nothing, you have a hole where your compassion was. The hole can only be filled with an excellent steak. Maybe several. With some fries, maybe.

    I'm thinking the second one would give the possibility of more drops, but it could be a pain to keep creating the eggs, unless they drop an egg. Which could be too easy. But another option would be breeding... oh boy. Sounds cool but I'll likely need Lua.
     
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2016
    jonathonspy likes this.
  6. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    Hmm, harvestable for certain things that could be taken without harming them. This could potentially even include some meats, as in the case of your tentacle haired fluffalo, or some passive relative of the hemogoblin who could shed mass and later regrow it.
    But I'd make them also slaughterable by normal attacking for a much larger gain (not a chance of a single this or that, but a guaranteed chance of several of several things, like you're actually properly butchering the animal.) Perhaps have the eggs drop at a chance between 30% to 50% of the time, or have it 100% for either a viable or unviable egg, the later being just food. Harvesting live ones perhaps dropping them, but at a much lower rate.
    So this provides a balance, living animals produce a more limited variety and much lower quantity than slaughtering, but slaughtering would, at best, whittle them down to none in a few generations without some waiting or a non-slaughter pen.
     
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  7. FrAndromeda

    FrAndromeda Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Those are some good idea's, sounds like it would be balanced and still a good alternative to hunting.
     
  8. jonathonspy

    jonathonspy Existential Complex

    hmm....on the fish vine thing, a plant that slowly grows animals, rathe rlate game unlock, and when its interated with/automatically when ripe, it spawns in an animal?
     
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  9. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    So how goes the progress? Kinda antsy for an alternative to milk other than mooshis, because they have a bad habit of invading the buildings of my colony
     
  10. FrAndromeda

    FrAndromeda Subatomic Cosmonaut

    I got stuck on trying to mod a farm animal to also be capturable. If they're in a capture pod, and I can get the breeding station (stuck on that too) to identify the creatures within, I'm pretty much set for the breeding!
    I did do a lot of drawings and designs on the types of animals I want in the mod. I have also planned bosses, even. But I'm stuck at getting the farmable animals into a pod and the breeding station being able to identify them and use that info to create an outcome.... :cry:

    Basically, the farmable animals have different behaviors from normal monsters, and the normal monsters are capturable but never farmable. I'd have to combine that somehow in a new .behavior file, which I tried, but I'm in way over my head. SpaceDonkeyKong is helping me but he has his own mod to work on.
     
  11. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    Hmm. Any way you could, instead, make it so you put the creatures in a pen or a pit with the relocator, and it "scans" them.
    Think of the base in a box mod, where if there happens to be an npc or creature in the way, including a farm type animal, it will hit them with a 0 damage damage tick to sort of tell you they're there.
    All said, a simple placable trigger box or proximity sensor, modified to detect the creature type within might do what you're trying to do.

    But overall, what's the purpose of the breeding station that couldn't be done via simply eggs or whatnot? Or we simply not pretending all these mammal-like aliems are egg layers?
     
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  12. FrAndromeda

    FrAndromeda Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Well, I figured they would lay eggs only with a mate of the opposite sex, and I would also want cross breeds. So you grab a male and female in pods, place them in their slots and they will produce an egg every now and then. But it would be kind of like the pet tether where they'd wonder around outside of their pods. The result would still be eggs because I honestly think having live babies in any kind of inventory or storage slot would be impossible for me to do.

    I could see the proximity thing work for sure, but would prefer the egg drops in a storage for the player to pick up. It's likely possible, is there an example somewhere where monsters get scanned and the bench produces something/does something? Should I look at turrets, maybe?
     
  13. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    True, excluding certain species who could believably be capable of asexual reproduction. Our hypothetical domesticated hemogoblin comes to mind, being able to clone themselves from cuttings like a flatworm. Or was it a sheep fluke?
    One possibility is always collecting a sample from the male, which can be used as an active on the female. Of course, this lacks a potential for automation, as I don't think there's a way to create automatic breeding while limiting it to only when there are two individuals. Though, if you're doing a tiered thing, this is mid step up from letting them just go at it, and down from automated breeding racks.
    I suppose the way the honey extractor/jarrer work in frack could work, with a specialized tether that links to or detects a nearby tether, but we're still back on the problem of getting farm creatures to work in capture pods like we want.
    The overall problem is also marrying creatures to their capture pods. But I guess once you pick one as a breeder, that's it.

    There's always modifying the relocator, to instead work as a scanning or item creating device instead of a self contained holder.
    And back on base in a box, it creates blueprints of existing chunks of landscape and structures within its scan zone on the fly. It's not inconceivable it could be adapted to instead scan creatures.

    Speaking of, assuming you can get all this working like you want, will selective breeding be a possibility?
     
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  14. FrAndromeda

    FrAndromeda Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Thanks for your suggestions, I should look into them. The possibilities are a bit limited by my own limitations (I need way more experience in LUA) but with so many possible options, I may be able to find a way that I can implement.

    The only way I could think of of implementing selective breeding would be a 'mutation' system, but the results wouldn't be truly random like random monsters (I would love that, though, maybe it's possible?):
    - You breed two animals and they have a certain % chance to lay an egg with a mutation. Possibly an item is needed to cause a mutation.
    - Mutations look different, could possibly be used in combat (better stats), drop different things that can be ingredients for weapons, armor, etc.
    - Mutations can be bred with other mutations , etc.
    - Certain mutations can be a strong boss that becomes aggressive on adulthood, when you capture it you have a great pet, when you kill it you get great items.
     
  15. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    Hmm, it was more of a throwaway idea, really. Probably not feasable without hundreds of little inbetween monsters.
    Though mutations being possible, like with bees in the bees mod could work. Not sure exactly how it happens, though, as I rarely keep hives, just that it happens.
     
  16. Zaroth

    Zaroth Pangalactic Porcupine

    So I've been seeing you about the frackin' universe page, and got to remembering this. Is it still being worked on, or no?
     

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