Additional Butcher Products

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

So, I’ve always wanted to add additional butcher products from butchering alll those creatures the world offers us.

I had in mind:

  • Heart
  • Brain
  • Lung
  • Liver
  • seperate small and large bones
  • guts
  • that’s all for now

I (think) I know how to add those things, but before I start I’d like to hear if people like the idea as well or not.

Also, there are a few balance issues and general questions, with which you might be able to help me:

  1. The amount of meat received has to be reduced, if other edible parts are received instead.

  2. If more, smaller organs are added (gall bladder, teeth, …) those have to be reliably receivable only with a really high survival skill, imo.

  3. (!) Should the specific organs be displayed as “piece of a heart” (5) or represent just one whole organ “heart”(1)?
    This is important for balance reasons, as squirrel and moose hearts are very different in size and therefore nutritional value.

  4. Is there a specific reason why zombies and humans yield only meat when butchered (IIRC)?
    Especially zombies could instead provide some interesting (high-level) reagents, I believe.

  5. (technical question) The flag “MF_something” of the corpse that is checked when butchering is a automatically converted version of the same flag of the creature when it was still alive?
    So, the creature that has the flag “CHITIN” is automaticall converted to “MF_CHITIN” when a corpse? For some reason I couldn’t find corpses as actual items in the json files.
    To go even further, could I add a specific flag to a specific creature, which is then called upon automatically in the game.cpp to yield special results? (Is it clear, what I am trying to say?)

That is all for now, please tell me what you think and answer the questions, if possible.

2

I like the idea. And to answer your questions:

Reasonable.

Eh, I’d rather not have small organs. The major organs are fine.

[quote=“Snaaty, post:1, topic:7672”]3. (!) Should the specific organs be displayed as “piece of a heart” (5) or represent just one whole organ “heart”(1)?
This is important for balance reasons, as squirrel and moose hearts are very different in size and therefore nutritional value.[/quote]

Small heart for small things, and a just “heart” for regular things?

[quote=“Snaaty, post:1, topic:7672”]4. Is there a specific reason why zombies and humans yield only meat when butchered (IIRC)?
Especially zombies could instead provide some interesting (high-level) reagents, I believe.[/quote]

Because when you get bones, you can eat the bones without any sort of penalty. So zombies dropping bones when butchered is kinda gamebreaking is when you have to do for food is kill zombies.

And can’t really help with those code questions. Sorry :stuck_out_tongue:

3

I endorse borrowing more stuff from Dwarf Fortress. There’s already magma, but everything’s cooler with gibs.

Did you know you can get monsters to explode into chunks of meat when you hit them really, really hard? Now imagine if they exploded into proper parts and organs.

4

First thing’s first:

Have humans drop bones and leather when butchered.

Because when you get bones, you can eat the bones without [i]any[/i] sort of penalty. So zombies dropping bones when butchered is kinda gamebreaking is when you have to do for food is kill zombies.
Have zombified creatures drop tainted bones. Can still be used for making tools but can't be eaten.
5

[quote=“Bonevomit, post:4, topic:7672”]First thing’s first:

Have humans drop bones and leather when butchered.[/quote]

Human skin*

6

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:5, topic:7672”][quote=“Bonevomit, post:4, topic:7672”]First thing’s first:

Have humans drop bones and leather when butchered.[/quote]

Human skin*[/quote]
Yeah but then you need all new recipies for it.

Maybe keep it as leather, but only drop it for cannibals.

7

As much as I approve of Dwarf Fortress I can’t see getting a laundry list of organs in the butcher as being useful considering the additional work that’d be needed to make /everything/ drop additional “butcher” stuff according to some list somewhere that says how much brains, heart, lungs, etc should be dropped.

On the subject of Butcher products of Humans Regardless of the suggestion here I have a semi-related one, a morale loss for butchering humans/human-alikes without the ‘psychopath’ trait. People get wonky when they see cows and chickens getting butchered for meat. I don’t see people being chipper about… chipping bob, maybe zombie bob but still, smashing is a lot less ‘work intensive’ than chopping up a former human so you can get to their precious, precious used bionics.

8

Doesn’t seem worth it unless you’re going to put in the effort to do a whole load of recipes involving them.

Might be more sensible to just add a generic ‘giblets’/‘entrails’ item and a couple of recipes for e.g. paté, stuffing or haggis.

9

Eyeballs can be tasty too. Kinda buttery.

10

My mother, who grew up on a farm somewhere in communist romania always told me that there they ate every part of the animal, even brain, exeballs and who knows what.
I believe the post-apocalyptic scenario we find ourselves in is definitely justifying to really “salvage” any part of any creature you kill be it animal, human, zombie, or other horrors.

Back on topic: Thank all of you for your input!
Regarding the workload neccessary, I believe that I have most of it figured out in the butcher function of game.cpp. I am not sure what’s the best way to balance the amount of stuff you get, but I think I know how to add new stuff that spawns when something is butchered (though some help on my first coding questions is appreciated :wink: ) it and it doesn’t really seem like too much work to me.
On the other hand, I (or someone?) has to come up with neat recipes for all those extra organs, otherwise adding them really doesn’t make that much sense, as already pointed out.

@Ekarus: The amount of things you get when butchering stuff depends entirely on the size. If you want to see the code, go to game.cpp and search for “butcher”.

I am also not sure which organs to use and which ones not. I believe that heart, brain, and liver are pretty basic and also conveniently “common” meals. More exotic ones like eyeballs, tongue or teeth (for creating a necklace of the teeth of your defeated enemies!) also sound pretty interesting. What do you think?

11

The cannibal trait should work also, but I agree there should be a morale penalty.

12

The cannibal trait should work also, but I agree there should be a morale penalty.[/quote]

Cannibal was separated into Cannibal and Psychopath awhile back because Cannibal used to give you the luxury of not getting buthurt when you killed a child zombie or an NPC who was hellbent on blowing your brains out so it was split up so you didn’t have to be a people-eating-person just to not get butthurt over killing an NPC.

…Which is my reasoning to only assign it to cannibal. Elaborating, there are people out there who will eat chicken, who like chicken, who would get upset if they had to run a chicken farm and butcher the chicken themselves.

13

I seem to recall this idea having been proposed earlier and failing due to no ideas for recipes. So let’s throw more body-parts recipes out there!

My ideas:

  1. skull chalice - because we can
  2. human bone club - ditto
  3. human bone broth - an equivalent to normal bone broth, for Cannibals & Psychos
  4. eyeball soup - I seem to recall an exotic soup made of animal eyeballs, could have been Asia or Amazonia
  5. heart eating was believed to grant power in primitive societies, so maybe have cooked heart grant a +1 bonus to STR?
  6. bone/skull necklace - for looks!
  7. skull helmet - ditto

Animal liver is supposedly a source of lots of vitamin A, so we could have eating liver grant a health boost.

14
My ideas: 1) skull chalice - because we can 2) human bone club - ditto 3) human bone broth - an equivalent to normal bone broth, for Cannibals & Psychos 4) eyeball soup - I seem to recall an exotic soup made of animal eyeballs, could have been Asia or Amazonia 5) heart eating was believed to grant power in primitive societies, so maybe have cooked heart grant a +1 bonus to STR? 6) bone/skull necklace - for looks! 7) skull helmet - ditto

Well, if we want more bones and skulls, we should probably make “small bones” and “large bones”, or something; same for skulls. Because making a skull helmet out of a squirrel skull is just not realistic and a moose skull necklace is just impractical.

I too remember Eyeball-soup being a thing, although you could also eat them raw.
I have also eaten chicken heart before, it is not very much different from reglar meat. I had the idea with it giving strength too, but I though it might be better to restrict that permanent bonus to jabberwock hearts. (?)
Cooked Tongue is alo a speciality in some cultures, I believe.
I have also eaten liver on numerous occasions, making it give a health boost is fine with me.

15

Squirrel or whatever bones and skulls would be useless as chalices & clubs, that’s why I suggested them as human bone specific recipes.

16

For guts, I’d include heart, liver, and generic entrails/intestines. For small animals you could include a generic giblets, which would realistically be a combination of these - just too small to use for certain recipes. Alternatively, it just translates to smaller yield. A big animal will yield a heart AND a liver, while a small one will only give giblets. You’d still be a meal behind on that count.

Heart could stand in for a number of meat items in any of the already-existing soups/dishes, or be eaten cooked as-is.

Liver: Eaten plain, super gross (eww liver). Eaten plain and cooked, is good nutrition but meh for morale. With onions, wild herbs and or jam (deluxe recipe), becomes hearty AND delicious. (Yes jam. Trust me, a little sweetness with the savoury of properly cooked liver is amazing.) The health boost is worth considering as a tradeoff for the lack of morale I’ve suggested.

intestines: useful when cleaned thoroughly for making own sausages/hotdog-type-things. I can’t remember if either of those can be smoked to make them last longer but a nonperishable food result would be nice to add to the list.

Giblets: Not as sure what to do with these. Could stand in for meat items in other recipes, like for soup stock/soups, add the deluxeness to omelette, etc. Could be cooked and eaten plain for a little nutrition, as it’s basically tiny meat. Maybe they could be added in to those sausages we’re making up above to make the meat stretch further.

I am kind of against adding too many differentiated bones, unless it’s large, small, and tainted. Size-wise that would render crafting with them akin to making needles from heavy sticks instead of splintered woods. Considering the bone armour we already have in game, I made the assumption the skulls were always getting used for the helmets, personally. Even if not mentioned explicitly.

If I HAD to pick another bone item, I’d go with teeth. Mostly for flavour, take them from my enemies killed, have a tooth added to inventory every time I do too much meth and get that message about having too many teeth. Might get weird if I manage to do that to myself more than 32 times, but I don’t usually live that long.

17

I thought that meth tooth thing was supposed to be the character hallucinating.

18

I’m rarely sure about anything; you may have a point.

19

This is pretty much the way I see this. Unless you have plans to add a fair number of recipes to utilize this, it seems that all you are doing is creating more clutter for the player to sift through because now they have a list of 12 or so organs instead of just “meat (12)”.

20

This is pretty much the way I see this. Unless you have plans to add a fair number of recipes to utilize this, it seems that all you are doing is creating more clutter for the player to sift through because now they have a list of 12 or so organs instead of just “meat (12)”.[/quote]

Have you seen the recipe ideas thrown out upthread?