Mods / Truth and Beauty: Detailed Animals

Category: #Creatures
Author: sekelsta
Side: Both
Created: Sep 24th at 5:00 PM
Last modified: Oct 23rd at 6:31 PM
Downloads: 1111
Follow Unfollow 99

Latest file for v1.19.8:
detailedanimals_0.1.6.zip 1-click install


After over 5 months of development I am excited to finally share with you the beta version of Truth and Beauty: Detailed Animals! Currently we have a nutrition system, a genetics system, and a number of tweaks.

Nutrition: Keeps track of how much the animals have eaten, how much they weigh, and how healthy their diet is based on whether they've eaten the right amounts of fiber, protein, etc for their species. Improves accuracy on which foods each species can eat. Allows hand-feeding foods to animals or feeding them from the existing troughs. They can also get food from grazing or rooting around in the soil. Very young mammals can have milk from their mothers. Growth to adulthood is gradual and comes with increased nutritional needs especially for protein.

Genetics: Most of the work here has been on back-end support for being able to have genetics at all. On the frontend, you'll see new and more detailed chicken textures in 10 different plumage colors, which follow realistic genetic inheritance. Genetics and breeding are meant to be less of a focus than care and husbandry.

Real quick, here are the main practical impacts on gameplay, though not what the mod is really "about":

 - Butchering drops from all animals have been adjusted to be consistent based on real-life relative sizes. No more getting paltry scraps from a moose.

 - Animal breeding now takes place in accordance with the seasons, making it generally much slower. Animals are able to breed in the wild, but it will likewise be very slow.

 - Cassava can be grown safely outside a fence, as like onions it is poisonous to all in-game animals and they won't eat it

 - I taught the bears how to steal berries off your bushes and honey from your skeps, like the raccoons. You're welcome :)

 

Nutrition

Animals need to eat food regularly. Most species will be able to take care of this themselves if given an appropriate space to forage. Herbivores can graze, and pigs can root around in the dirt for, well, roots. Very young mammals nurse from their mother, or rarely from a foster mother of the same species. Over time they'll gradually start eating solid food more often until they are fully weaned. You can also hand-feed an animal by right clicking with an appropriate food, or leave it in a trough or dropped on the ground for them to munch on.

Here are the hunger levels you may see:
Starving - In a bad situation and losing weight fast
Famished - Desperate for food
Very hungry - Has been hungry for a while and is beginning to feel worried
Hungry - Would like to eat food now
Somewhat hungry - Might maybe like to eat food, or maybe wait until later
Peckish - Might accept some food if offered, but more focused on other things
Not hungry - Has eaten enough food for now, but may still get tempted if offered something extra tasty
Full - Has eaten enough food and more would be unhealthy
Stuffed - Cannot possibly eat another bite no matter how tasty

Note that hunger has no effect on anything except food pickiness and weight gain or loss. Weight as part of body condition is what actually matters.

Different species have different nutritional needs, for instance goats need more fiber in their diet than pigs do. Certain species are able to eat items not normally considered food, for instance grown wolves can crunch bones. Foods that closely match the animal's nutritional needs will give small bonuses. Animals may refuse to eat a food if the nutrition it provides is very different from what they currently need. For example, pigs can eat a little bit of grass, but would like a more nutritious food for the main part of their diet. Sheep on the other hand will be healthiest eating mainly grass or hay. Animals will also refuse very sour foods such as lemons or pickles.

Creature weight no longer changes semirandomly with the seasons. Instead, animals who don't eat enough will lose weight, while those that eat too much can gain weight. You can see an animal's weight in pounds and/or kilograms depending on the config. I have endeavoured to make the weights shown as accurate as possible for the animal's species, sex, age, and condition. (No thanks to all those websites playing telephone and turning "can grow up to a maximum of X pounds in rare circumstances" into "weighs X pounds on average".) Females will generally weigh less and also look smaller than males depending on how much sexual dimorphism is typical for the species.

Here are the body condition levels you may see (actual effects on health and stats still WIP, but until then picture them as this):
Skin and bones - Extremely low weight, in bad shape and very unhealthy
Malnourished - Unhealthily thin, needs to eat more
Underweight - Should regain weight to be healthier
Lean - Healthy with little to no spare fat
Moderate - Healthy, medium
Thick - Healthy and on the heavier side
Chubby - Starting to get just a little bit too fat
Fat - Gained an unhealthy amount of weight
Obese - Way too fat, in bad shape and very unhealthy

Weight affects what you can get from butchering an animal. Meat is roughly proportional to total weight. Fat is strongly affected by condition, with very underweight animals dropping none at all and plump animals dropping lots extra. To discourage players from mistreatment, no bonus is given for animals at an unhealthy level of obesity. Hides are roughly proportional to surface area, that is, weight to the power of 2/3.

Newborn animals will gain in size and weight gradually as they grow up, which comes with an increased need for protein in the diet. Young animals will not need to eat as much as adults, because they are smaller, but they will need to eat more relative to their weight than adults, because they are growing. Most species begin to look and act as an adult quite some time before they reach their full size. They will continue to gain weight during this time, but generally at a much slower pace than when they were young.

Pressed fruit mash now takes longer to spoil (5 days instead of 1.5), making it a more viable animal feed.

As a related tweak, hares no longer eat out of large troughs.

Genetics

Chickens have been given three color genes: extension (duckwing, birchen, extended black), blue/black/splash, and recessive white. Together there are 10 different possible plumage colors. Even with a rooster around, there's no guarantee that every egg will be fertile. The chance of eggs being infertile will increase if the chickens are inbred, but can be decreased.

Included in this mod is a library (Genelib) allowing other modders to add genetics to animals with a relatively small amount of code. If you're very adventurous you can do that already, but beware that the API isn't considered stable until we have a 1.0 release.

Along with genetics are some changes to breeding. Pregnancy and egg incubation lengths are now accurate and consistent with the length of an in-game year. The animals will go in and out of heat on their own, you don't need to worry about this but can just see what's going on as either "Ready to mate" or "X days until ready to mate". Most species breed seasonally - goats, deer, sheep, pigs, gazelles, and wolves during the fall and winter, hares, foxes, chickens, and raccoons during the spring and summer - but hyenas can breed at any time of year. You may notice that many of these species were not able to breed before, but now they can. Once the offspring are born, you'll be able to see which gender they are right away without waiting for them to grow up. 

Animals are able to breed without player interaction as long as they were able to forage for enough food to stay in healthy condition. However, generation will not increase unless the mother has been fed by the player at least once in her life. Hand-feeding and feeding from troughs both count.

Nestboxes have been modified to allow genetic data to pass to the next generation. While I was at it, I fit in an extra egg (so they hold four, not three) and also made it so you can take eggs out and put them back without them instantly losing their fertility. New egg items have been added that look more egg-like. They come in different sizes, however chickens have not yet been given the ability to lay different sizes of egg, so you'll only be seeing medium eggs. To help the chickens know what the nestbox is for, you can make fake eggs out of clay and leave them inside. For technical reasons, the ability for chickens to lay an egg on the ground has been temporarily removed, but will hopefully come back in a future version.

 

Tweaks

 - Female goat-antelopes have horns, and female caribou have antlers.

 - The timing of antler growth and shedding has been adjusted to be a bit more accurate.

 - Gazelle calves have a more accurate hitbox size, and are capable of growing into adults eventually.

 - You can craft a creep gate, which allows small animals to pass underneath while still blocking larger animals.

 - Baby hares are called "leverets".

 

On existing worlds

Yes, you can use this on existing worlds. There's just a couple things to be aware of:

 - For the chicken genetics to work, you'll need to change out any henboxes you already have for nestboxes, crafted using the same recipe. (On version 0.1.5 and later, you can simply pick up your existing henboxes and put them down again, they'll transition when they go from being a block in the world to being an item in your inventory.)

 - The feature where baby animals have genders won't kick in right away. It'll only be for new animals born after the mod is installed.

Other than that, you should be able to add this to existing worlds with no issues.

 

With other mods

Especially recomended:

 - Berry Bush Fixes: Fixes the vanilla bug where berry bushes take forever to ripen after being harvested by an animal.

 - Fruitpress Fixes: Makes the fruit mash stack properly, making it easier to feed to your animals.

 - Animal Cages: Note you will need to adjust the config like so to catch gendered baby animals:

Add this to the Animal Cages config small cage section
{
    "name": "sheep-bighorn-female-lamb",
    "scale": 0.85
},
{
    "name": "sheep-bighorn-male-lamb",
    "scale": 0.85
},
{
    "name": "chicken-male-chick",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "chicken-female-chick",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "hare-male-baby",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "hare-female-baby",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "pig-wild-male-piglet",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "pig-wild-female-piglet",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "wolf-male-pup",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "wolf-female-pup",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "fox-male-pup-red",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "fox-female-pup-red",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "fox-male-pup-arctic",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "fox-female-pup-arctic",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "raccoon-male-pup",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "raccoon-female-pup",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "hyena-male-pup",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "hyena-female-pup",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "gazelle-female-calf",
    "scale": 1.0
},
{
    "name": "gazelle-male-calf",
    "scale": 1.0
},

Depends on playstyle:

 - Grassier Grass: Makes hay collection easier and fairer by letting you scythe more from taller grass.

 - Natural Trails: Makes you need much larger, more realistic pasture sizes as sheep and other grazers may trample some of their grass (details configurable).

 - Every mod not specifically mentioned goes here, I guess

Minor incompatibilities but overall still recommended:

 - Wolf Taming: Wolf pups can become a different gender of wolfhound, so if you're taming one just pretend it's still genderless

 - Cuniculture: Lets you put more types of food into small troughs, but hares will have a purely visual effect where breeding info is shown twice.

 - Expanded Foods: Eggs cannot be cracked, but can still be hardboiled, pickled, water glassed, used in pies, or used (whole) in scrambled eggs.

Major incompatibilities:

 - Animation Manager Lib: Causes off-by-one errors on every clientside behavior patch

 - Creatures and Critters (unofficial): Patch conflicts for multiple species may cause animals to act strangely

 - Butchering: Game crashes if you attempt to butcher certain textures of chicken, but keep an eye out for newer versions of Butchering which may fix this

Languages

Supports English, Spanish (Español), German (Deutsch), Polish (Polski), and Russian (Русский).

Thank you to Niexyk, BradyThe, and ИгОорКа for providing translations.

 

You're welcome to join the discord and ask questions or share your animal adventures. It's shared with my mods for that other block game.

 

Development

If you find a bug, please let me know on discord or on the github issue tracker.

Does not yet work on 1.20, but an update is in progress.

Version For Game version Downloads Release date Changelog Download 1-click mod install*
v0.1.6 218 Oct 23rd at 6:31 PM Show detailedanimals_0.1.6.zip Install now
v0.1.5 217 Oct 17th at 1:55 PM Show detailedanimals_0.1.5.zip Install now
v0.1.4 107 Oct 14th at 9:10 PM Show detailedanimals_0.1.4.zip Install now
v0.1.3 185 Oct 11th at 2:23 PM Show detailedanimals_0.1.3.zip Install now
v0.1.2 116 Oct 9th at 2:41 PM Show detailedanimals_0.1.2.zip Install now
v0.1.1 137 Oct 6th at 4:39 PM Show detailedanimals_0.1.1.zip Install now
v0.1.0 131 Oct 4th at 7:24 PM Show detailedanimals_0.1.0.zip Install now

34 Comments (oldest first | newest first)

💬 sekelstaAuthor, 5 days ago

Aedis Base game lets animals mate from several meters away, it's something I want to change at some point but I haven't gotten to it yet

💬 Aedis, 5 days ago

sekelsta I of course can gather log files, but there are few other mods which may be guilty too. I'll observe more tho, another little thing I noticed is that I have separated female hare, and in next fenced area (shared fence but 2 separate areas) male, there is some bunny with male that I caught from wilderness, and there are 2 with female that are her offspring, and to my surprise female got pregnant again despite male is behind fence and her offspring is still far too small visually to be guilty doing so. Is it some base game feature or that might be something your code did touch? (also wrote on discord)

💬 sekelstaAuthor, 5 days ago

Aedis What you're seeing with the hare should not be happening, would you mind sending log files? (might be more convenient to do on github or discord) Hares should normally be taking 2 full days to go from stuffed to starving, which is what I'm seeing, or in the worst possible circumstances of a very active hare in well-below-freezing weather, as low as 1.28 days, but never overnight.
As for the pig and the bear, I'll try massaging the numbers a bit for the 1.20 release. In the meantime I'd recommend cooking your bushmeat, as the pigs will get significantly more nutrition from it that way.

💬 Aedis, 6 days ago

Been playing a little more with it, and two observations, hare in some fenced area will get to starving from stuffed over night, biiit too quick.. (if you feed it manually only because you don't have saw/boards)
Second that when i killed bear, got 40ish chunks of meat, half of that was barelly enough to feed one wild sow from starving to hungry or so when it stopped to eat. Again half of usable meat from lean bear into one feeding seems to be little too much.
Other than those little details it is awesome experience.

💬 Aedis, 6 days ago

sekelsta Awesome, thanks

💬 sekelstaAuthor, 6 days ago

Aedis I've added info to the description above on how to adjust the Animal Cages config so that the gendered baby animals can be caught

💬 Aedis, Oct 23rd at 10:52 PM

sekelsta Hare seems to be fixed indeed thank you for extraordirnarly quick fix.
However fox pup died when I tried to capture it with cage, however maybe this is okay (one wandered into my garden fence where just plants are, was too good opportunity to not test..)
Fox kit spawned from creative inventory, chased into some corner, feed with some random food (I think soft sedge was accepted as it was famished) then tried to cage it, again fox kit got hit instead of getting caught.

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 23rd at 6:31 PM

Aedis Fixed in 0.1.6, thank you for the report

💬 Aedis, Oct 22nd at 11:52 PM

Hello,
Could it be that detailed animals break animal cages for hare/rabbit, or it is interaction between detailed animals and cunniculture?

💬 DinoCultist, Oct 21st at 4:37 PM

This is so cool! It's what I've been looking for, thank you for making this!

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 16th at 2:43 PM

Shinohakobita Glad to hear it! Hope you have fun.

💬 Shinohakobita, Oct 16th at 2:03 PM

sekelsta

 I am super excited about this mod, looking forward to testing it out in my test world.

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 15th at 10:35 PM

Aedis There shouldn't be any clashes with More Animals, I've already gone to some effort to avoid that, but you simply won't see the new features on them yet.

💬 Aedis, Oct 15th at 9:58 PM

sekelsta 

Sure, I understand, thanks, I simply asked as my test poking of 1.20 has more animals and for moment I was wondering about clashes/problems due to that. I'll make fresh world for giving it a try.

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 15th at 8:31 PM

Aedis Maybe eventually, but first I'd like to update to 1.20, polish up some rough edges, and maybe some other things. In general I try to keep my plans vague so I can work on whatever I'm most excited about (I do this for fun, after all), so while I do plan to keep making cool things, the specifics of which ones in what order are not yet decided.

💬 Aedis, Oct 15th at 7:36 PM

Hello,

do you plan any compatibility with more animals (few kinds of birds extra vs vanilla)

💬 Moonbyes, Oct 13th at 4:53 AM

yes, nice!!! this mod is just what i need! thanks for your hard work!

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 11th at 2:31 PM

The latest update tweaks hunger rates. I've gone through every number involved to make sure animals are fine with being fed just once a day, though they'll still slightly prefer to be fed twice a day. Grazing species can still be kept on pasture to avoid needing to be fed at all (at least until winter).

💬 Akiae, Oct 9th at 7:34 PM

Hi,
they are eating from through but they are almost hungry after half of day, can i descrease amount of food animal needs in config file?

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 9th at 7:29 PM

Akiae I believe what you're describing is this bug from vanilla. A workaround is to pick up the trough and place it down again.

💬 Akiae, Oct 9th at 5:51 PM

Hi, 
i think i found another issue, even if animals have full trough of food they dont eat often. I have too give them food by hand to get them fat and be sure they reproduce.
Is it possible to decrease amount food animals need?

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 9th at 4:17 PM

jayu None of the changes will be applied to fotsa creatures, but yes, it would just need a content mod to patch in the entity behaviors. You're welcome to contact me on discord for guidance about how to do that.

💬 jayu, Oct 9th at 3:08 PM

Hey sorry to bother just after release. Is this compatible with the fotsa mods? Would it require to just patch in the right behaviours with a content mod?

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 9th at 11:09 AM

LarekFlynn Thank you for the info, that was very helpful and I was able to pin the issue down to an incompatibility with Animation Manager Lib. Now working on getting it fixed. The new plan for this is to update to 1.20.

💬 LarekFlynn, Oct 8th at 7:44 PM

sekelsta

https://imgur.com/a/K0PEjj1 (description includes mod list) looks like it's getting stuck in the forage animation. also they dont always run away like they should. I looked at the patches and think it might have to do with mincooldownhours set to zero in behaviors for foraging.

" {
file: "game:entities/land/chicken-rooster.json",
op: "replace",
path: "/server/behaviors/10/aitasks/6/code",
value: "genelib.forage",
side: "server"
},
{
file: "game:entities/land/chicken-rooster.json",
op: "add",
path: "/server/behaviors/10/aitasks/6/eatAnimation",
value: "Eat",
side: "server"
},
{
file: "game:entities/land/chicken-rooster.json",
op: "replace",
path: "/server/behaviors/10/aitasks/6/mincooldownHours",
value: 0.0,
side: "server"
},
{
file: "game:entities/land/chicken-rooster.json",
op: "replace",
path: "/server/behaviors/10/aitasks/6/maxcooldownHours",
value: 0.05,
side: "server"
},

💬 Akiae, Oct 8th at 7:18 PM

LarekFlynn, yea i got a lot mods too, so i think we got the same issue. I have the same issue with wild animals animation too, which this mod modifies.

💬 LarekFlynn, Oct 8th at 7:14 PM

Akiae sekelsta

(I haven't bred any yet) but I see wild animals moving without animation. the look in the direction the are going but just blink forward in one block skips. seen with rabbits raccoons chickens. animals from other mods still move smoothly(aurochs, pheasants)

I have a bunch of mods so probably a conflict.

💬 Akiae, Oct 8th at 11:03 AM

sekelsta,  my domesticated goats and chicken with 2 generation walking like they animations is generated frame by frame.(they looks like they are lagged). I got 1.1 version of mod and reinstaled it.

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 8th at 12:31 AM

@Akiae I'm sorry, I don't understand "walking like they have 999ms". I tried adding this to a world that already had sheep and chickens and it seemed to work fine. Could you make sure you're using the latest version 0.1.1 on VS 1.19.8, and if so, explain more about what you're seeing?

💬 Akiae, Oct 7th at 9:35 PM

Hi mate, 
great mod, after we lose farmlife mod, now animals are more realistic, but they are walking like they have 999ms and its only problem with sheeps and chickens for my old world.
Its know issue?

💬 moosespores, Oct 6th at 6:59 AM

Sounds amazing! Really excited to try this out :)

💬 sekelstaAuthor, Oct 5th at 12:13 PM

Pigs can eat the pig food already, but it could do with some tweaks. I'll put those in the next update. (Edit: And they're in now.) And I'm not sure if this was meant to be part of the question but yes, nutritional info for each food comes from json data rather than being hardcoded, and so is something modders can customize.

💬 Jena_Thornwyrd, Oct 5th at 8:03 AM

Hello, very interesting mod, I have just one concern: can we tweak the food to allow using modded food from mods, like those from the mod "Pig Feed" (mix of grain and dry grass or fruit pulp and water)

💬 Brady_The, Oct 5th at 1:01 AM

This sounds great. The mod will definitely be added to my next world!

(edit comment delete)