Forage, What can be done?

[Maybe42or54]

Forage annoys me.

Look

You are in a room with basalt everywhere. This is a narrow room.

Forage stones

You find a blocky piece of white alabaster and pick it up.

Think Fuck! I want basalt.

*You spend 20 minutes foraging, finding everything from blue rocks to grey pebbles.. but no basalt.*

I have two ideas for this. The first of which is to let you forage for stones that are actually in the room description.


So the above room said they're diamonds deposits everywhere, none of which let you single them out with a pick axe. In the above case it would be "forage basalt." This will actually let you forage for what the room says in it.

My next idea would be to make forage like crafting.

You enter a room.

forage food

(A few seconds go by.)

You look around the area for food to forage.
You can forage roots, bulbs, fruit, grubs, peppers, ants, and anything here. (this would be a randomly generated message from the things craftable in the room, so if you didn't find what you wanted, you would just forage food again)

forage food anything

You search the area over for anything.

You find a grub and pick it up.

Forage food anything

You search the area over for anything.

You find a bulb and pick it up!

forage stones


You search the area for stones to forage.

You can forage basalt, agate, marble, granite, shale, and anything here.

forage stones basalt

You search the are for basalt.

You find basalt and pick it up.

-or-

You don't find basalt.

[Morfeus]

You can forage basalt, agate, marble, granite, shale, and anything here.

I am sometime happy to find something I did not expect to be in the room at all. This would spoil the surprise.

[Maybe42or54]

That is why you can just look for anything.

Sometimes, I don't give a damn about those sapphires I find, I want that damn marble.

[Morfeus]

I like being able to "forage alabaster".  But I do not like the idea of getting the list of items if "forage stone". I mean, that spoils the surprise in finding something you did not expect - you know from beginning what everything could be foraged.

[Maybe42or54]

Uh.. no you wouldn't. What you could forage would be randomized with the minerals that appear most in a room.

If you are in a room that is described as sandstone.

Than your outcome might be:
You can forage for sandstone, slate, or anything here.

With a bad forage skill you might only be able to single out "sandstone, or anything here." So if you don't want sandstone you can just forage stones anything and it would be like it is now.

[Morfeus]

So, with a good forage skill, I would.

[Anonymous]

I think the part of forage that I really like is that it's, well.. foraging.

You'll get better at finding stuff, or you won't.  It's either there, or it's not.  It's foraging

I think the real issue is that, in your case, the room may need to be changed to have basalt in it - or that it should be easier to forage in that room.

I don't like the idea of changing the way forage works.  I mean, what if they just hadn't set it for that room and your version of forage were implemented?  you'd still be sitting there screaming at the computer because "basalt" didn't show up in your list.

[Maybe42or54]

As it is, a Pc walks into a room blind of what -is- the ground. I don't need even need to forage to look around for the basalt and grab it off the ground. I'm not going to dig or pick up and move rocks that I really don't want, just to get at the stone beside it.

[Anonymous]

Let's say that the given chance of finding granite in a room was 10%.  If forage granite just meant that I avoided finding other stones but still was only getting granite 10% of the time I typed 'forage' I'd be fine with that.

There are times that I am specifically looking for granite to the point that I would rather type 'forage granite' 9 times before getting a success than have to junk 7 pieces of sandstone or drop them with the same ldesc and then realize that there's a typo and then have to pick them all up and drop them again but then some of them got the old ldesc because I scrolled too far back in my command buffer and now there are two groups of sandstones so I've got to pick them all back up again....

That alone would be a nice change, I don't need to have a higher success rate or a list of anything.

[Maybe42or54]

Yea, CRW. That's pretty much what I want.

[Agent_137]

it would also prevent me from happening into rooms with piles of various rocks from a spam forager, who only wanted the sparkling diamonds and not the 797 other stones (NO LIE. I have the log.)

[Cenghiz]

I junk unwanted items as a player courtesy.. If the other player coming to the room doesn't want the things I foraged, he won't see the messed up room. If he wants the things I foraged, he won't get them instantly and work 'forage' instead, upping his own skill :p

And about being able to find something specific? Good idea.. But how would one manage to forage the artifact 'ancient sexy bra'?

[Maybe42or54]

Well, if the bra has a .000000001% chance of being found.

And you search artifacts bra.. Then you have a .0000000001% of finding the bra, but you wont find those sexy boots that are a part sandal.

[Cuusardo]

I like it the way it is.  Sometimes you find what you're looking for, sometimes you don't.  If you aren't finding what you want in one spot, then perhaps there's another spot that has more of what you want.

[jhunter]

I think it's fine the way it is for the most part. I wouldn't complain if you could forage specifically for one thing and disregard all else you might find though.
I think people should go ahead and leave the stuff they've foraged but didn't want lying where they drop them instead of junking. Think of it this way, those are the things you've pulled to the surface and left most visible making it not much of a search for someone else.
Also, if you are looking at it from an OOC perspective, it can help new players find out a place to forage for certain things.

"Oh look, someone has been foraging up wooden dildos here. Excellent, I've been trying to find a place to forage up wooden dildos!"

[ibusoe]

I like the original idea.  I'm not sure that it's perfect, but it has some merit.

[X-D]

I hate the way it is currently.

I hate going in, telling somebody, alright, All we need are the short twigs.

Forage wood
agafari branch
forage wood
vine
forage wood
baobab branch
forage wood
long twig
forage wood
diff baobab branch
etc etc
etc
short twig

Now, I know, for 100% certain that I've never been out looking for a mushroom IRL and picked up a watermelon instead. Or any of the other umpteen million things that might be within 10 feet of me if they did not at least look like a mushroom.

I don't even care if all thats added to the game is a little script checking the keyword and if nothing matches the keyword it does an autojunk, maybe even with a message...or without.

[spawnloser]

First, what you forage, you didn't necessarily have to dig up.  For example, who digs for wood?

Second, you don't sort the stuff out into nice neat little piles...but that's effectively what happens when you leave unwanted foragables lying around.

Third, anything left lying around would get blown away or covered again by the weather (wind has a tendency to do that, and Zalanthas has lots of wind).

Fourth, it clutters up the game.

[Cuusardo]

Try going into a wooded area IRL sometime with the intent to find only one kind of branch/vine/twig/etc.  Try going to a rocky, sandy area and look for only one kind of stone.  Then look at the foraging code again.

[Delirium]

Cuss.. I mean Cuus.. has a point.

For the sake of making fletchery a less unholy time consuming act for a lone ranger, however, it would be nice to be able to specify shards, much like you can specify kindling for branch foraging.

[flurry]

Along the lines of what Delirium said, I was thinking it would be nice to be able to forage by keyword(s).

e.g.

forage rock shard

forage rock red

forage wood twig


Or whatever.  Not so that it necessarily makes it easier to find that type of thing, but just to limit your successes to only the kinds of things you're looking for.   So you're not gaining an advantage, you're just not left with extra things to junk (if you know that's all you'd do with them).

[Morgenes]

Dude, if we do this, I'm going to make it echo:

> forage rock plain
You start foraging.

>
You find a uber powerful glowing humming rock of greatness, but chuck it aside cause you're looking for 'rock plain'.

>
You find a plain rock, congratulations.

Seriously, part of forage is the surprise, if it's not what you want, junk it and move on.  This is not supposed to be easy, it's supposed to be arduous.

[Delirium]

Then can we have the junk echo changed to 'discards' instead of 'breaks'?

Pretty PLEASE with blueberry pie and whipped cream and a mulish lust slave on top?

It would be so much more seamless and make foraging/junking feel a lot less painfully OOC.

Not to mention great for Kruth games.

[Morgenes]

Sure, next reboot it'll be in.

[bloodfromstone]

Hot. I love you.

[Delirium]

Sure, next reboot it'll be in.

Nothin' but LOVE for Morgenes!

[Morgenes]

And for all the love, I'll throw in some command emotes on the junk command too.

Don't say I never do anything for you guys.

 Heading off to the AIM soon, you kids play nice.

[Delirium]

I think I just stopped breathing.

Don't worry, we'll be sure to break all your code while you're gone.

[Aldiel]

Not a bad idea.  I need to think about it more, but it has promise, IMO.

[SpyGuy]

Morgenes, you rock.  Please don't let anyone eat your brains at the AIM.  Seriously, you're putting yourself out there as the ambitious coder right now.  That has to sound tasty to someone like Naiona.

Cuss.. I mean Cuus.. has a point.

For the sake of making fletchery a less unholy time consuming act for a lone ranger, however, it would be nice to be able to specify shards, much like you can specify kindling for branch foraging.

Sure it'd be nice but like everything else it's random with forage.  There are more than enough shops in game that sell shards, of various materials, for cheap prices.  If you want a shard of something that isn't sold in most shops I'd say it's probably a rarer find and should require you to head out to forage for yourself or hire some other poor sap to pick through tons of sandstone just to find what you're looking for.

[X-D]

Alright, these things will help.

[Moving the derail portion of this post to a different post -Morgenes]

[Maybe42or54]

Well, Morgenes. I don't care about the echo, I don't want to spend an hour looking for a plain rock. Regardless of if it means I have to throw aside some "ultra fantastic rocks," (which are in usually hard to get to areas, Maybe that is just still part of the "old" game.) I want one kind of rock, I don't want 400 rocks that I won't use and wont even bother picking up in the first place, when I am looking for a specific type of rock, I want that specific type of rock. When I am a hermit, a diamond wont do me any good, when I want a shard of obsidian.

[jhunter]

Alright, these things will help.


Also, slight derail here, but I did not feel like starting a thread.

Morg, Love your work.

Insanely despise, hate, loath the change to gone.

No, really, Now if I go gone I have to minimize the window and lock the computer. And I hate doing that even more, because if I answer the door or something, I like to be able to run in and glance at the screen.

But no, now I can't do that because I own a cat and often could have small children in the house, either of which are capable of hitting the enter key but are very unlikly to type gone and toggle it off.

No, really, I hate it now, won't be using it any more. Might as well just wish up AFK or change my ldesc to afk...BAH.


Drooling over junk giving a diff message though.

Good point X-D. I didn't think about it but I've been using "gone" as sort of a safety measure when I do go afk. Now I still have to worry about commands being entered by the cat...kids...other people around...

Gonna miss that.

[Maybe42or54]

Here is a different idea, how about make it so you have to go to different places to forage for different kinds of stone? I find it odd I can go to several very differeny places and get any kind of stone imagineable.

[Gaare]

I remember a PC of mine got some type of order of a certain type of stone. I begin to forage stone close to 'nak.. Then I traveled with that PC and a few other friends to Luir's, and searched around there. Later around Tuluk, I finally found where those types of rocks are found. That's good right? I remember I got a lot of fun of that search.

[Maybe42or54]

Yea, it sure is. I greatly dislike being in a grey-walled cave and finding nothing but white, green, red, and black stones. Then I go to a canyon that just mentions the colors red and brown., but I find green, white, red, black, grey, yellow, blue, purple, etc.

[Gaare]

Yea, it sure is. I greatly dislike being in a grey-walled cave and finding nothing but white, green, red, and black stones. Then I go to a canyon that just mentions the colors red and brown., but I find green, white, red, black, grey, yellow, blue, purple, etc.

Is it that bad really? I mean, yeah I remember seeing some unrealistic forage results, but not very important ones. Hope you bugged them. In my example, I was looking for a certain type of rock. I do not recall any room desc. which suggests, "here you see a lot of obsidian." Descs are usually vague, and results differ.

[Anonymous]

I guess I just don't understand why you can't have it both ways and everyone is happy.

forage <category> <- The current way which is left intact.

forage <category> <specific keyword> <- The suggestion way which allows you to narrow down what your character will stumble across.

Doing #2 doesn't mean you have any bonus to finding what you specifically want it just means you are ignoring anything that isn't your focus.  You are so intent on finding green marble stones that you don't happen to notice the emporer diamond covered with dirt.