Hey, we have cameras ingame right? I know those aren’t useful or anything but developing your own pics oldschool style is chemistry to the max. I’m really scraping the randombarrel right now, I gotta get this headcold out of said head so the good ideas can get out.
Better to scrape the random barrel than to scrape the random dragon. :V
Also, pondering uses for grade-school stuff like the vinegar and baking soda reaction.
The player could make their own long burning flares to use as a light source, and optionally add colors to them using certain compounds.
Ooh, color additives for campfires, maybe. Dunno if it should have a moral bonus. Maybe if you’re currently tripping balls. o3o
Correction for the topic, we don’t need ideas for recipes, we need fully fleshed-out recipes. A single sentence description per recipe does very nearly none of the actual work involved.
We need ingredients, tools used, skill level required, time taken, yields, etc.
Alright, time to get out the measuring spoons. Kevin makes a damn good point.
True. The discussion does allow figuring out which existing recipes could be switched to that skill though, providing a first step while those with more coding competence get to work on turning the brainstorming into genuine results. o3o
I could code the relevant recipes (I was the one to add the chemistry set months ago), so let’s dump the details here for me to pick up and PR?
Measure cups, totally a tool for chemistry. 
bumpity bump, folks give me recipes (with skill levels and requirements) so that I can sit down and code 'em!
Someone suggested making salicylic acid from willow bark…
I would really like it if security glasses, rubber gloves, etc. would be prerequisits for certain chemical recipes. Safety first, people!
The first ones should be the useful ones rather than intermediates.
Things like thermite to melt steel beams, possibly some other recipes for black powder, acid bombs from the new acids that spawn in labs etc.
Having a lot of intermediates only complicates the game. Uses first, then ingredients.
The chemistry set’s recipe already requires safety glasses.
[quote=“Muaddib, post:12, topic:9685”]From my limited experience, chemistry working off your cooking skill is perfectly realistic. Chemists are good cooks, because they won’t fuck up their spice mixing. And I still remember my first chemistry lesson. Making caramel and boiling eggs. Felt more like a cooking lesson than a chemistry class.
It might feel counter-intuitive, but from a logical perspective it makes perfect sense.[/quote]
At a higher level of skill they diverge quite a bit, yes chemists can follow a recipe like no one else, but for quality cooking diverging from the recipe is actually a good thing because unlike lab chemicals, ingredients for food come in a wide variety of qualities (and no the only quality is not good/bad).
Of course scavenged and makeshift chemicals also comes with that, but for a chemist the first order of business in that case is eliminating that.
Pairing alcohol production with chemistry seems to me like the logical choice if one splits cooking, but even if I feel that they should be separate, I’m not seeing much game play improvement coming off that prospect.
Just to note, I’ve studied chemistry at uni, I failed to keep up the studies when reaching the industrial followup on advanced thermodynamics, because of health issues.
/Zorbeltuss
I like the ideas, keep 'em coming and maybe Kevin et al will be persuaded to split.
I’ll just quote:
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:25, topic:9685”]Correction for the topic, we don’t need ideas for recipes, we need fully fleshed-out recipes. A single sentence description per recipe does very nearly none of the actual work involved.
We need ingredients, tools used, skill level required, time taken, yields, etc.[/quote]
Ah, this reminds me! My magic mod ( http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=11013.0 ) led me to read a little on the history of alchemy, which could be used for idea. I’ll try and flesh them out into actual recipes since that’s what we need.
Ashes (unless we add them as obtainable from shoveling ash piles), also usable as fertilizer:
{
“type” : “recipe”,
“result”: “wood_ash”,
“category”: “CC_OTHER”,
“subcategory”: “CSC_OTHER_MATERIALS”,
“difficulty”: 0,
“result_mult”: 15,
“time”: 120000,
“reversible”: false,
“autolearn”: true,
“batch_time_factors”:[83, 3],
“tools”: [
[
[ “hotplate”, 3 ],
[ “char_smoker”, 1 ],
[ “toolset”, 3 ],
[ “fire”, -1 ]
]
],
“components”: [
[
[ “splinter”, 20 ],
[ “skewer”, 20 ],
[ “2x4”, 3 ],
[ “stick”, 5 ],
[ “log”, 1 ]
]
]
}
Potash, usable for fertilizer, possibly for making saltwater soap, and as a historical leavening agent:
{
“type” : “recipe”,
“result”: “potash”,
“category”: “CC_CHEM”,
“subcategory”: “CSC_CHEM_CHEMICALS”,
“skill_used”: “chemistry”,
“skills_required”: [ “survival”, 1 ],
“difficulty”: 1,
“time”: 95000,
“reversible”: false,
“autolearn”: false,
“batch_time_factors”:[80, 4],
“book_learn”: [[“adv_chemistry”, 1] , [“textbook_chemistry”, 1], [“textbook_survival”, 2] , [“survival_book”, 2]],
“qualities”:[
{“id”:“COOK”,“level”:3,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“BOIL”,“level”:2,“amount”:1},
{“id”:“CONTAIN”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}
],
“tools”: [
[
[ “hotplate”, 3 ],
[ “char_smoker”, 1 ],
[ “toolset”, 3 ],
[ “fire”, -1 ]
]
],
“components”: [
[
[ “wood_ash”, 1 ]
],
[
[ “water_clean”, 1 ],
[ “water”, 1 ]
]
]
}
Slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide, a lye substitute for some reactions and for some food uses:
{
“type” : “recipe”,
“result”: “slaked_lime”,
“category”: “CC_CHEM”,
“subcategory”: “CSC_CHEM_CHEMICALS”,
“skill_used”: “chemistry”,
“difficulty”: 0,
“time”: 20000,
“reversible”: false,
“autolearn”: false,
“batch_time_factors”:[80, 4],
“book_learn”: [[“adv_chemistry”, 0] , [“textbook_chemistry”, 0], [ “recipe_labchem”, 0]],
“qualities”:[
{“id”:“CONTAIN”,“level”:1,“amount”:1}
],
“components”: [
[
[ “material_quicklime”, 1 ]
],
[
[ “water_clean”, 1 ],
[ “water”, 1 ]
]
]
}
Various properties of the recipes can be tweaked, but there’s some basics and ideas for what to use them for. Will expand on this further by plotting out recipes for caustic potash (potassium hydroxide) and alkahest (basically glass cleaner involving ethanol, caustic lime, and potassium carbonate).
EDIT: I missed some things from copy-pasting the recipe entries that I edited into these. Hopefully didn’t miss any other oddities.
Why steel and string for wood ash?
…doh. I missed that, as I copy-pasted a recipe elsewhere to edit so I didn’t have to remake the format from scratch. >_>
Put me in the camp against a skill split. I very much LIKE chemistry and cooking being recognized as part of the same fundamental process and steps.
Cataclysm is continually pressured towards granularity and needlessly increased intricacy (see, billions of munition types to little perceptible difference or even utility) because I think it’s already impressive attention to detail appeals to the sort of folks who like to categorize and simulate.
However, just having ‘more’ isn’t always good design, elegance may spring from doing more with less.