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Hey, everyone. I'd like to go over where the next Frostfall update is heading, and what you can expect. I'd like to start publishing these kinds of posts in this new space (thanks, Skyrim Nexus!) to help keep everyone abreast of what's going on with Frostfall.
If you'd like to look at the entire task list for Frostfall 1.6.1, click here.
- A major change in the next version sure to confuse a few people is a change in terminology. I am ditching the term "Exposure Points", in favor of the more succinct "Exposure". The system will also work in the opposite direction; your objective will be to reduce exposure, not increase it. 0 is good, 100 is death. I feel that this brings the terms more in line with Bethesda's way of using resources ("health", not "Health Points"). This also falls in line with how other survival-based mechanics from another mod planned, Last Seed - Primary Needs and Primitive Cooking, will function. You will be trying to keep Hunger, Thirst, and Exhaustion at a minimum in Last Seed.
- I am prototyping a new way to detect whether you are under any porch, outcropping, roof, and so on, and using that information to allow you to dry off from rain when you step under something. So far this works fairly well, but needs work.
- I have put together a new help system to help new players ease into Frostfall's game mechanics, without having to rely on reading my ReadMe or front page as much. It will display contextual message boxes depending on your situation or activities to help you understand how to play with Frostfall and how it works. It will work similarly to Bethesda's current help system. "Hey, you're wet, here's what that means to you." This system can be easily toggled off.
- A lot of the primary script for Frostfall has been rewritten and analyzed from the ground up. This will hopefully result in much better performance for everyone. Frostfall was my first "major" mod for Skyrim, and was littered with the vestiges of the past when I had no idea what I was really doing.
- Dynamic backpacks: they're coming, and I'll have more to show on them soon. This is the feature that most folks are waiting for I think. I haven't worked on it lately because it's "a devil I know". Other things, like script rewrites and ledge detection, got addressed first because I usually work on unknowns before knowns.
- The weather detection system has been entirely rewritten. and the system should now accommodate for custom weather types from mods (Project Reality, etc). I now infer the weather based on your location in Skyrim, and the weather's classification (clear, rainy, snowy, etc).
- In the next version, your Woodcutter's Axe will have a durability rating and can degrade with use (gathering firewood). This is to bring back some measure of feeling of preparedness necessary before setting out into the wild, and giving you an excuse to come back to civilization from time to time. As it stands, one can acquire a limitless amount of firewood at essentially no cost.
- The campfire system is being overhauled. Fire Kits are going away, and will be replaced with a new power, "Build Campfire". I am doing my best to make sure that the system is as easy (if not easier) to use than Fire Kits. The main focus of the overhaul is to allow you to potentially burn more than just firewood. Think books, old clothing, and so on. I'd also like to spice up Manual Fire Starting some by making it more difficult to start a fire in inclement conditions (rain, snow), but I don't have the details of this worked out yet. I'm going for the man vs. wild sense that nature is your opponent, who is actively trying to extinguish what you're trying to light. We'll see where it goes.
- The coldest weather condition (blizzards) have been made slightly less murderous. The "baseline" survival time in that condition has been bumped from 5 minutes to 8 minutes 30 seconds. This was done so that there wasn't this huge jump in exposure gain (to use the new terminology) when entering this weather condition. The progression from one temperature along the graph to the next is now much more linear.
- I have put together a new weather message system. This system will alert you to changing weather conditions shortly before they happen. For instance, you may get the message, "Grey skies loom on the horizon." right before a rain shower starts. This system will be on by default, but is optional.
That's all I've got today. I'll write again soon when I've made more progress. Hope everyone had a good 4th, and I'll see you in the comments. Peace!
16 comments
i noticed you are adding degradation to the wood cutters axe.
is it possible to create a script that will lower armor rating and weapon damage over time.
basically weapons and armor wouldnt break, but would loose their rating over time and battle to become basic and eventually lower to zero over time. if your smiting skill is high enough, maybe your weapons and armor would maintain longer or something. its seems plausible because you can refine weapons and armor anyway, this would just require more of the same for upkeep.
anyway. awesome mod, realism is the only way to play skyrim.
also, i have the merc mod, it would be cool to have to supply them with food and water. that would make hiring a dozen mercs require a ton of resources.
thanks again for your hard work.
There are alot of variables that effect total exposure protection eg food, drink, clothes, wether you are wet etc etc.. it makes trying to work out what to wear /eat etc before going on a long journey a bit of a hit and miss. Some may find the fun in the experimentation but personally I dont have time to play skyrim all day, everyday. So spending the 1 hour (real time) walking only to die in a blizzard is a bit frustrating because I couldn't tell what my exposure protection was for a given weather condition.
If you know your protection rating then you can plan better eg I need a rating of 80 to survive for 1 hour in snow conditions. So therefore i need to bring 3 firekits with me to survive for 3 hours. and need to wear full protection clothes + cloak , tea and torch at all times (which gives me a base rating of 80 etc etc)
Note to everyone im just making up ratings here.
Still I'm realy looking forward to it.
I'll be bumping this up to more sane levels, and will probably be dependent on the size of your fire.
I'll also be offering options to toggle the image space effects, character shader effects, and Fast Travel "processing" (basically, tell Frostfall not to touch Fast Travel availability ever, to ensure other mods that affect Fast Travel function correctly.) There's a really good mod out (the name escapes me) where you can only Fast Travel when on horseback, which I think is really cool, and I want to support that.
@BarbasTheDog - Thanks for the praise, but be warned. Frostfall 1.6b is extremely stable and works really well, but boy is it not the example to learn from to learn good scripting practices. I phased out over 50 useless properties during my rewrite, and in general cleaned house. If you want to look at well-written code, go look at anything written by Thomas Kaira (of Economics of Skyrim). Also look up CDC_PapyrusSpeedTester, that really helped me learn what is fast and slow in the Papyrus language. Game.GetPlayer() is literally 1000 times slower than storing the player reference as a property, for starters. Good luck!