Mods / Temporal-Life

Tags: #Other #Tweak
Author: GOTTLIEBBINICH
Side: Both
Created: May 3rd at 2:56 PM
Last modified: May 12th at 5:34 PM
Downloads: 120
Follow Unfollow 46

Recommended download (for Vintage Story v1.20.10):
TemporalLife_1.1.0.zip  1-click install


⚙ One chance. One life. Survive — or vanish.
Temporal-Life is a lightweight, immersive permadeath system designed to bring tension and purpose to every moment of survival. Inspired by the unique lore and mechanics of the temporal gear — a mysterious artifact tied to space and time — this mod turns its use into a meaningful decision.

⚙ Features:

  • Players begin with zero lives — they cannot respawn unless they earn the right;

  • Using a temporal gear grants one respawn opportunity;

  • Reusing a gear while still having a life will only update your spawn point, not increase lives;

  • Dying without an available life results in true death: the player is permanently locked out of their character and placed into spectator mode — a disembodied observer with no interaction;

  • Includes the /lives command to check how many respawns remain;

  • Fully localized in English, Russian, Ukrainian, and German;

  • Compatible with world settings:
    Requires: temporalGearRespawnUses = 1
    Recommended: playerlives = unlimited (-1) to allow full control via mod logic.


⚙ Why this mod?

This is my first mod, created out of a desire to give deeper meaning to the temporal gear — not just as a spawn tool, but as a true anchor in space and time. The mechanic brings immersion and narrative weight to player survival without overcomplicating the experience.

 

⚙ Coming Soon:

  • Integration with XSkills — death will impact your experience more than just loss of life;

  • HUD life indicator — a subtle but clear visual cue when a life is earned;

  • Support for additional languages, based on community feedback and translation help.

Version For Game version Downloads Release date Changelog Download 1-click mod install*
v1.1.0 39 May 12th at 5:34 PM Show TemporalLife_1.1.0.zip 1-click install
v1.0.1 38 May 6th at 10:06 AM Show Temporal-Life.zip 1-click install
v1.0.0 43 May 3rd at 2:58 PM Show Temporal-Life.zip 1-click install

27 Comments (oldest first | newest first)

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , 5 days ago

Froggowo

Yes, ChatGPT helped me with translation and image 😊

💬 Froggowo, 5 days ago

GOTTLIEBBINICH Chatgpt uses em dashes (—) instead of regular dashes (-), but I was mostly just poking fun, very interesting mod overall

💬 Mendall, 6 days ago

Ok, this is a very creative idea. Much respect. I'll probably try this, my next play threw. I do hope by then you have added the HUD indicator. I'm thinking that will be invaluable under these conditions.

This will add a very fun layer of risk.

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , 6 days ago

Froggowo what do you mean?

💬 Froggowo, 6 days ago

Em dash spotted

💬 Wahazar, May 13th at 12:42 PM

I tested it, now it works properly on Wilderness Survival.

Glad that you not only managed to fix the bug, but also improved whole mod, afterlife spectator is avesome idea both for multiplayer or singleplayer mode.

May I ask for additional feature, like config settings for amount of starting lifes and amount of "spare" lifes? I'm aware that "Value your life" mod exist, but your mod is more immersive with use of temporal gear, instead of crude terminal commands. I would be happy to have about 10 lives like s cat, with option to refill them by temporal gears (while spawn point set by bed mod).

💬 Froshure, May 13th at 1:34 AM

Cool! I'll add it back to my mod list. Thanks for your work and Wahazar's.

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 12th at 5:34 PM

Froshure

I did it!

💬 Froshure, May 11th at 11:10 PM

Nice

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 11th at 11:51 AM

Froshure , Wahazar 

Today i'll realese update, there this fix! 🖤

💬 Wahazar, May 10th at 3:07 PM

@GOTTLIEBBINICH I found the issue mentioned by Froshure, you are immortal in Wilderness Survival mode due to large spawn settings.

I chosen Wilderness Survival except of setting spawn area back to standard one, and respawn was impossible.

With 5000 size respawn, it wait few seconds and respawn anyway, elsewhere. Hope it is possible to fix?

💬 Froshure, May 7th at 1:05 AM

Good luck, GOTTLIEBBINICH.

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 6th at 9:25 PM

Froshure

I checked, it's true. I hope I can figure out what this could be related to and fix it, this is really very strange. Cause in simple survival you can not revive after death without life.

💬 Froshure, May 6th at 7:25 PM

Survival mode. Create New World>Wilderness Survival>Temoral gear respawn uses = One time>play.

Spawn into world>find nearest puddle to drown in>drown>click respawn>spawn in, despite chat box saying otherwise.

Doing the same steps, but selecting "Standard" mode during world creation, seems to fix the bug.

GOTTLIEBBINICH

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 6th at 9:57 AM

Scornfulsix

By integration with XSkills, I mean resetting all (or most) of the skills to 0 after death, to make dying an even more unpleasant event for the player.

My idea is to give players more variability when playing with only one life, by giving the temporal gear an additional purpose.

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 6th at 9:42 AM

Sky_StarBlade

Hi! You understood correctly — it's not possible to accumulate lives, because I wanted to implement a version of the game with only one life. I believe that being able to stack lives would break the original idea behind the mod.

As Froshure rightly pointed out, there's the Value Your Life mod, which does include a feature like what you're describing, but in a slightly different way — lives are purchased using rusty/temporal gears, and the player starts with five lives (both the cost and starting number can be configured in the mod settings).

As for showing lives in the interface (HUD), I’ll do my best to implement that!

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 6th at 9:14 AM

Froshure

Please tell me, have you tested this in survival or creative mode?

 
💬 Scornfulsix, May 6th at 12:40 AM

This would be awesome with an XSkills playthrough, sp or mp, where if you perma-die, you have to make a new character with skills reset

💬 Froshure, May 5th at 9:46 PM

When using this mod with no other mods on VS 1.20.10, and with your recommended world settings (temporal gear uses = 1 and playerlives = unlimited), I'm still able to respawn after dying, despite getting a message in the chat log that says otherwise: "Respawn is impossible -- you have no lives left".

💬 Sky_StarBlade, May 5th at 3:48 PM

Froshure

I've seen that one forever ago & forgot about it! I wish it didn't use commands for trading lives or rusty gears as a second way to get them, but I guess there's ways around that.

💬 Froshure, May 5th at 5:12 AM

Sky_StarBlade In the meantime, you might like the "Value Your Life" mod. The description sounds similar to what you're describing.

💬 Sky_StarBlade, May 5th at 3:46 AM

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you can use a temporal gear to gain 1 extra life, but cannot accumulate more than one extra?

So you can have that extra life, but you can't build up, say, 5 or 10 extras?

 

If so, would it be possible to add some sort of configuration to allow/disallow accumulation of lives & if so, up to a certain number?

I like the idea of having a safety net that I build up through my own efforts, but more than just one. Just in case you get killed twice in a row by the same brown bear or whatever. That would mean you could dynamically earn or lose the luxury to be careless, creating tension when lives start running out. Plus the more you risk engaging with the rust monsters, the more you're rewarded. Lives would be another resource for the player to manage, just like food or materials.

A HUD element showing remaining lives would be cool too, but that's too much to ask, I'm just “thinking out loud.” lol

I don't mean to push my ideas btw, I just like to share my thoughts when a game mechanic inspires me.

💬 _Mason, May 4th at 7:26 PM

This mod is exactly what I wished as an additional survival difficulty option. I remember making a thread in the past about it, though I wasn't the only one.

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 4th at 2:28 PM

Novabella <3

💬 Novabella, May 4th at 8:29 AM

This mod is so creative I love it.

💬 GOTTLIEBBINICH , May 3rd at 10:34 PM

Michaloid
Thank you!

💬 Michaloid , May 3rd at 5:39 PM

I like how this mod turns the temporal gear into something essencial to permadeath runs. Great job!

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