The Evolving Society Mod

[Boss171]

id love to do some writing for the mod, really. however, i have no skillin the actual technical stuff at all, so if some one snt me something like: sorry, could nt do that quest, the Ac balance would mean that the mahjigger files would need new cell scripting, my response would be along the lines of um,....yeah.....of course. idea for how you obtain the island

 

 

ALSO, IF YOU DONT LIKE ANY OF THSES IDEAS AND WULD RATHER DO OTHER ONES, THATS FINE I SORT OF FEEL LIKE IM TRYING TO STEAL YOUR MOD, SORRY

 

 

when you talk to people and ask after "rumours" they say,: have you heard about the Juneflower, its a ship headed for a new world, where crops are plentiful and the sun always shines, its getting ready to leave from the water front, which triggers a quest where you have a to prove your a worthy passenger, and so on.

 

on arrival, its not quite what you had in mind. its all forest, with wild beats and native tribes. here comes the fist decision, you can either befreind the tribes, rising through their ranks to become cheiftan, or begin to wipe them out. if you choiose to befrend the tribes, you have to prove your self by going hu ting with them, succeed and you began as a Tribesman. you gain welath and ranks by going to chop wood, mining, and if your armorer skill is high, creating weapons and ramour, helping them grow crops. and so on. when you reach cheiftain, more settlers come, and try to turn the island into new imperial city. you can either choose to resist vehemently,going on mission to pioson water and crops, kill live stock and flood villages. or you can choose to join them, and hepl them build a new society, as i wil; describe in a the other option, of wiping the tribes out(minus the stuff involving tribes)

 

Wiping the tribes out,

 

now, its not stricly wiping them out. you can either choose to go to war, but its more like burning religious artifacts and sites, destroying mines, and a few small skir mishes, and eventually subjagating them as your slaves. Or yoo can chooseto befriend them and turn them over to your way of thinking, with speech craft and showing off orgign and speels and house biulding, etc, bnut not actually joining the tribe. eventually you become friend and work tghether to build a utopia

 

The "bits minus the tribes"

 

this is afetr either subjagting the tribes, converting them or choosing to hepl the new settlers (as cheiftain)

You must build a new city, and first off all you must clear the are. youhav to cut down trees with axes, the sped of your cutting is determined by your strength and blunt skill, also you must clear out wild beasts. once this is done, you must make fields and irrigation systems, the effectiveness of which is determined by alchemy and armorer skills respectively. you must go collect wood for houses, the better woods(offering more warmth and strenght0 ae found deeper into the woods, and are harder to find the basic forest edge woods. you must keep building ho mes, sorting out quarrels, clearing land and mining for more pipes and wepons until yopu have a fair sized town.

 

Farming

to farm, first you must clear an area and plant a field. then you must collect seeds or leaves or whatver,and plant them. they have a base 505 chance of growing when they can be harvested ans old. this chance can be improved with irrigation pipes. each field has a maximum of three pipes, each giving a bonus to the chance of succesfully groing plants. pipes have different effectiveness. a pipe made by a novice armoere will give a 25 bonus, and apprentice as 5% one, an expert an 8% one, and a master a 10% one. also they will need reairing, a novices each day, an apprentices once a week, an experts once a month, and a msters once a year. ipes can be made of iron or steel, steel ill ad a 5% bonus to growth chance.

 

Metals and mining

in the ilands forests there are many natural caverns where there metals. the most common one is rion, which can be made into steel at a forge, found in a town or village or city, it is just liking repairing a weapon, it starts at zero and you must get it to a hundred, a with all the usual armoere bonusses. they way metal woks is it is found in peices, and different objects will need different amounts of peices to create.

 

to mine metal you must get a pickaxe, and strike a metal vein with it. iron wil be there 90% of the time, other metals differ. to create a mine, click on the place on the map and select "create mine" npc will then go there and mine for you, getting more metal,but you have to pay them wages.

metals

iron

steel(iron)

dwarfen bronze

white nikiliuem

ebony gold

 

ill touch on house making, making objects and weapons, commerce and anythingelse some toher time if you want me too

right now my fingers hirt too much:)

[QQuix]

bshaeffer

Loved the suggestion of rotating and tilting to get a more natural look. Thanks.

I implemented a random 0-360 Z rotation and 0-10 tilt on the X and Y axis'. It happened to be quite easy to do it.

New esp just uploaded at TES Nexus.

 

Juderodney and Boss171

Thanks for contributing.

As I said before I am not going to give my opinion. First of all, because I dont have one. I like all the ideas. Second, because I want to keep all approaches open.

 

I hope this don’t sound rude or inappropriate or inconsiderate or negative in some way.

 

Besides, I am still a long way from the point of deciding the main storyline.

I suspect that whatever the final lore will be, it will be a merge of all the contributions and will have a little bit of every one that contributed.

[Khet]

I actually really like the idea from Juderodney. That said... I've been giving your mod a bit more thought (and as a result I want to scrap Evanore and start completely over, making the entire thing more complex) but here's what I've come up with. These are just a quick overview and if you want better explanations of what I'm saying then I'll be more than happy to provide.

 

First off: The storyline. There's been a lot of good suggestions here, but short of explaining how the player acquires said land, do you really want one? Throughout it's development (I'm referring to Evanore a lot since our mods are very similar in concept) I was constantly feeling that working within such a strict storyline was hindering my progress. I couldn't do what I wanted to do in some parts because it wouldn't fit within the story line I had planned out. Personally, what I would highly recommend you do is give a storyline as to how the player acquires your island and then STOP. Make the rest of the 'story' explained through quests and books and notes.

 

Secondly: Evolution. This has been talked about in some of the earliest posts, mine included, but I wanted to touch base on this once again. There are literally thousands of ways you can handle this, but the problem is only a handful will feel 'right' and 'natural.' One of these, I believe, is what I've done with Evanore. After the town is completed Prosperity is enabled. You start at 50 Prosperity (out of a total of 100). Once a week prosperity is calculated and then objects are enabled/disabled. However, for something as complex as your mod having a global 'Prosperity' would be the worst idea you could possibly have. So, what I would recommend is splitting it up. Say, Industrial Prosperity (Farms, Mines, Smith, Alchemist, various other industrial-like positions) then have a Port Prosperity. (to control the size of your port) Another option you could split it into is Residential Prosperity. This would control how well your citizens are living as a whole. The higher it is the more money they have and their homes reflect that. Vice versa for a low prosperity. This is the method I wish I had chosen for Evanore, as opposed to a Global prosperity but it's too far along now to completely scrap it and start over. It'd push me back a good two or three weeks worth of work.

 

Third: Growth. I know we've spoken of this before is PMs but I think I've found a solution of sorts, though I don't know how well it would really work nor how complicated it would be. Basically, you create a custom mesh that would follow the formation of the terrain and then give it your 'default' textures. Underneath that mesh is the 'evolved' textures in terms of cobbled roads, tilled earth and all that. Having a custom mesh follow the terrain might be the best bet as it would look more natural and such.

 

Mining. Every town needs it. However, what I would recommend to show growth of the mines is to have certain areas blocked off ahead of time with rocks. Then, based on some variable or whatnot those new areas are revealed (rocks are disabled). After another variable becomes true the support beams are then built and enabled, and miners can then be found in the new parts.

 

Farming. Well, you've pretty much got this covered it seems.

 

Ports. While it's been said before the size of your port should determine what is sold by your merchants. If the port is small it's obvious that they wouldn't have much, mostly stuff found around the island. But, as the port grows the more 'exotic' the merchant's goods become.

 

People. This is kind of hard to do. There's so many choices you could go with but there's two that stand out to me. The first would be traveling to the settlements scattered throughout the game and recruit/hire peasants to come to your island. However, after the island/town is evolved enough people will start coming there voluntarily.

 

 

There was more, but I seem to have forgotten the rest while typing this up. ah well, if they come back to me I'll post again.

[SteeleMagic42]

I could probably do some voice acting/soundtrack writing if you needed it...that's all I really think I'm somewhat good at. Example of my songwriting capabilities here:

[exanimis]

I don't mean to hijack this thread but I've built an entire continent and many of these ideas would work well in Pellucidar (My world) I'm in the process of starting up a forum where I hope to get all the information about modding Oblivion with Blender, Nifskope and the Gimp into one place. Please take a look at the link and consider helping out with getting it started.

 

The Pellucidar Project

 

I would welcome any input and am not opposed to giving you moderator control of your own topic/ catagory. I will not however be having a download section, I want it to be more for keeping up with the development of certain mods and finding the help you need along the way.

 

@ SteeleMagic42

 

I love the music

[QQuix]

Khet and exanimis:

The way I see it, all ideas and suggestions presented in this thread are public. I certainly don’t see them as exclusive to my mod and would not mind if anybody uses them. I suppose that asking permission from the original contributor would be a necessary courtesy.

I actually would be happy if some ideas from the people who tried to help me here were put to good use sooner than expected.

And I would be pleased to help you guys with some scripting, if I can. Preferably covering some common ground between our mods. Not sure if I mentioned before that I am no modeler.

 

This mod, if proven feasible, will not be ready in less than one year.

What I have in mind as the next steps:

- First, I will not do anything else like the farming thing. I did enjoy doing it, but, after seen what the NWJ - NPCs With Jobs team is doing, I realized that all I could ever imagine (and more) has already being done.

- In the last couple of days I have started working on the dynamics of the evolution, and I can tell you it will not be a simple task. It is along the lines Khet mentioned, but not quite. I will try to write down the general ideas and post here in a couple of days (I am a very slow writer. Believe me! This text took me well above one hour to write)

 

Khet: As I said, I will answer you in a day or two.

 

SteeleMagic42: I loved the music too. I will certainly check with you when the time comes. Meanwhile, there are many mods closer to completion that, I bet, would welcome your work.

 

exanimis: I checked the site. As an old Tarzan fan, I wish you all the best. BTW, I have that "Tarzan of the Apes" movie made in 1918.

 

And I encourage everybody that got interested in my initial description to check the "NPCs With Jobs" mod. Good chance it is what you want.

[EDIT] and chek this page at their forums. It links do a dozen videos of NPCs doing their jobs.

[juderodney]

Woohoo! Someone actually likes it! :D

 

Here is the topic with my original idea, but nothing has to be set in stone: :)

 

http://thenexusforums.com/index.php?showtopic=85032

[QQuix]

OK. Here are my initial ideas about the 'TES engine' (that is The Evolving Society engine):

 

SOME GENERAL RULES/ALGORITHMS:

a) Things flow like this: A + B + . . . + Z >>[Process]>> Product

 

b) A, B . . Z are inputs for the process.

They may be raw materials, tools, places etc

Some are required, some are optional

 

c) Each process is a cycle that takes a fixed amount of time. Not the same for all processes

Examples:

Seeds + Land >>[Farmer]>> Food after 3 days

Axe + Trees >>[Lumberjack]>> Lumber after 1 day

 

d) A process will not start unless all required inputs are available

 

e) The quantity produced at the end of the process cycle is variable and will be affected by the presence/absence of optional inputs and external variables and events.

Conceptual examples: Availability of fertilizers would increase food production for that cycle. A completed side quest would increase a global variable (like happiness, health or Khet's Prosperity)

 

f) The product of a process is stored in a global, virtual warehouse and may be input to other processes, consumed or exported.

 

 

With these mechanics, the player will be able to influence the speed and direction of the society growth by:

- Assigning an NPC to perform the process

- Providing the required inputs

- Providing optional inputs to improve production

- Somehow affecting some global attributes of the society.

 

 

PROCESSES and PRODUCTS

 

FOOD

Food is mostly used to keep the population alive.

A quantity of food is consumed by each individual resident in the island

A vanilla farmer should be able to produce food to keep 2 people alive

Food surplus is a requirement to increase the population

 

Required inputs: land and seeds

Optional inputs: Fertilizers, improved tools (plough?)

Other variables: Farmer experience, global society attributes

Other possible ideas:

- Different food products like: cereals supply basic food to keep the population alive, while fruit production adds to a general attribute like health or happiness

- Maybe an individual would require an increasing amount of food along his life (this would be good for the general mechanics of the engine as it would allow the society to grow fast at the beginning and slow down as it gets bigger and more sophisticated)

- A second process to produce more elaborated food, which complements the previous idea

 

WOOD

Wood is mostly used to build/improve houses/shops (initially) and boats/ships (later)

Wood is stored in the warehouse to be used by other processes or exported

 

Required inputs: Trees and tool (axe)

Optional inputs: Improved tools (?)

Other variables: NPC experience, global society attributes

Other possible ideas:

- Improvements in wood production could rely on an improved shop instead of an improved lumberjack

- Maybe two processes: an initial, basic wood cutting, good to build basic houses and a second, refined process to allow improved houses and ships

 

STONE

Stone is needed to build/improve houses/shops (maybe roads)

Stone is stored in the warehouse to be used by other processes or exported

 

Required inputs: Quarry and tools

Optional inputs: Improved tools, some transportation technology

Other variables: NPC experience, global society attributes

Other possible ideas:

- Other later processes may be based on stone, like stone clutter or sculptures and statues

 

 

ORE

Ore is needed to improve houses/shops (initially) and boats/ships (later)

Ore is stored in the warehouse to be used by other processes or exported

Initially, miners will explore existing caves, later they will be able to excavate new mines

 

Required inputs: Mine and tool

Optional inputs: Improved tools, experience or technology (a book?) to excavate mines

Other variables: NPC experience, global society attributes

Other possible ideas:

- Maybe two processes: an initial, basic ore processing, good to build boats and a second, refined process to allow improved houses and ships

- Many other later processes may be based on ore, like building weapons and armors, clutter etc

 

 

Those are the basic ones I detailed so far.

Many other basic ones could be considered, like hunting or raising animals, fishing or even mud>>pots

 

 

MECHANICS OF EVOLUTION

Population growth:

The population will grow by one when:

- There is food surplus in the warehouse enough to keep the new member for a certain period

- There is an empty house

 

Considering all of the above, I imagine the initial evolution like this

Initial setup: An island inhabited by 2 farmers, 1 lumberjack and 1 mason.

 

Since the farmer produces food for 2 people, the population will not grow.

In order to start growing we need food surplus and a house (wood & stone).

The player will have to do something

Some options in this case:

- Get her hands dirty helping the farmer

- Reassigning 3 NPCs to farming and do the missing chores herself

- Just wait until there is enough wood & stone, build the house and then reassign all 4 to farming

- Go back to mainland and fetch some optional input to get more food production (like fertilizers)

 

Once there is the required amount of food in the warehouse, the population increases by one.

The new member occupies the new house

The player determines the profession of the new member

 

Based on some variables (population size?, happiness?, etc) new professions/processes will become available and the player may assign these new professions to new members.

 

These new professionals will bring some benefit to the island, but will also consume food, so the player will need to be careful to balance food production and population.

 

 

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION MECHANICS

 

I am planning a final scenario with a midsized town in the initial landing place (population ~12) and 3 or 4 small villages (population 4 each) scattered around the island. Max population: 25-30.

I imagine half of them (the villagers) producing raw materials and the other half living in the city (merchants, smiths, shipbuilders, whatever)

At the beginning, let's say each NPC consumes 100 foods per day and one farmer produces 200 foods per day.

At the end, maybe 6 farmers will have to produce food for 25-30, meaning, a farmer will be producing around 500 foods/day. More if we have an increasing consumption over time.

Kind of the same logic goes for the other raw materials.

 

 

Back to the initial scenario:

The initial 4 NPCs live in 4 houses at the initial landing site (where the city will grow)

New houses are built in the far villages, so the new arrivals will live there.

I mentioned improved houses before: all these houses so far are Level 1

 

Somewhere along the line, city professions will be available and they will displace one of the original residents from the landing site. City professionals will require Level 2 houses, so the player has to spend some resources to improve one of the original houses or build one, or the new professional will not come/appear/whatever.

Some possibilities:

- Level 3 houses

- All professionals, including the initial ones, require/demand better houses as they become more experienced in their respective careers.

 

- - - - - - - - - - - -

 

All of this, of course, will change depending on the technical or mental difficulties I may have when implementing.

Again, ideas are welcome.

And again, if you like any of this, feel free to use it in your mod at any time.

[XanAlderon]

I can help make side quests.

 

FOR EXAMPLE:

 

this quest is for later in the storyline

 

Fighters guild want to set up a guild on the island (this is a good idea even if everything else isn't)

But they need some way to get there, at this point if the player has constructed a pier and bought (or built) a ship, the quest may continue.

Fighters guild sends men over and they start building a guild.

 

Once the guild is built and fully functional towns people start joining up.

 

Later in the storyline pirates attack, if you have built the guild you can pay them to eradicate the pirates.

If you haven't built the guild, you'll have to form a ragtag group of villagers to combat them.

 

That way the guild benefits you, as you won't lose so many vilagers.

[juderodney]

An attack is another reason I suggested a town guard. A small Legion presence could also be called for if the area were to be populated enough.