Musical instruments

Game Talk The Lab
1

Musical instruments are in. The system was written by me (merged by Kevin), then a set of instruments added by PropaneSoup (adjusted and merged by KA101).

You wear or hold those, then activate to start playing. This gives you a speed penalty, but a morale boost. Morale scales with perception.

Now, why perception and not a new skill:
While a new skill would be “more realistic”, as music practice takes time, it wouldn’t be very realistic for apocalypse survivors to carry a tuba everywhere, practicing it constantly to level up the skill. Currently hordes are both off by default and generally not dangerous enough to stop players from practicing playing on the tuba.
Plus, a big part of feeling better from playing an instrument is the sense of progress rather than just being good.
Picked perception, because it makes sense (tone deafness, absolute pitch etc.), because perception could use a buff and because it is a stat that already exists and varies between survivors.

There were suggestions such as capping the skill gain (and requiring NPC teachers to level it up above that). The problems I see with this approach are:

[ol][li]Linear morale (no morale boost for sense of progress, no penalty from boredom = not that much more realistic)[/li]
[li]Having to spend xp to practice but only for a while (first week?) making it useless to actually keep focus up until the cap[/li]
[li]Tuba practices in the middle of an apocalypse[/li][/ol]

Problems with the current perception-based ones are:

[ol][li]Gigs in the middle of an apocalypse. Chopping zeds with a bladed guitar and then rocking out on it is just a bit less silly than chopping zeds with said guitar and then going “D…-A…-D-G…-A-D”[/li]
[li]Everyone (except for the optimized world-wrecker characters) starts with quite good musical skill[/li]
[li]Musical skill drops significantly with pain and similar effects, can’t play funeral march for self[/li][/ol]

Current issues with the system itself:

[ol][li]No penalty for covered or weird mouth[/li]
[li]No penalty for encumbered (including weapons) or weird hands[/li]
[li]All music is either good or bad, no way to randomly strike a bad chord and get mad[/li]
[li]No static instruments like pianos[/li]
[li]No electric instruments - those could work even with the current system, but would be quite clunky (you’d need to first turn them on, then start playing) and would work on batteries[/li]
[li]Playing more than one instrument isn’t handled nicely (doesn’t do anything special, should probably turn one off)[/li]
[li]Instruments have a (1) in name. This is due to me not being able to figure out how to make them not disappear when they reach 0 charges. I think I got it figured out (changing the type from TOOL_ARMOR to TOOL should work, right?) but didn’t fix it yet.[/li][/ol]

What content is lacking:

[ol][li]A musician profession[/li]
[li]A trait that could boost musical skill[/li]
[li]Recipes for instruments[/li]
[li]Improvised instruments[/li][/ol]

2

nice idea im looking forward to see this

[spoiler]things to do after this get into game

find guitar
get ak
get vodka
wear gas mask
light campfire
start playing on guitar
[/spoiler]

3

I agree the system could be expanded a little bit, certainly with at least having a non-static ‘skill’ of music that you can play, although I have no brilliant ideas on a good way to handle that.

For the issues with the mouth/hand penalties, that should easy enough with some flags [PLAY_HANDS,PLAY_MOUTH] on the instruments, and then some checks in the music playing code, it’s just a matter of putting it in.
I realized the powered instruments limitations when I tried to make an electric guitar, and like you said, it’s possible, just very cumbersome.
For the having a (1) in their name, changing it to TOOL doesn’t work, unless you’re thinking of something else. All that would do is stop you from wearing them. Perhaps another check in the display code as an override to hide it? If (use_action == musical_instrument) {…

I do disagree about recipes for instruments, at least the majority of the one’s I’ve made. Those are usually incredible hard to make reliably (Thinking of the sax and violin). Perhaps a standard survivor could craft a simple ocarina or percussion instrument though.

4

[quote=“PropaneSoup, post:3, topic:9252”]For the issues with the mouth/hand penalties, that should easy enough with some flags [PLAY_HANDS,PLAY_MOUTH] on the instruments, and then some checks in the music playing code, it’s just a matter of putting it in.

For the having a (1) in their name, changing it to TOOL doesn’t work, unless you’re thinking of something else. All that would do is stop you from wearing them.[/quote]

Not really flags - this stuff would go to the use_actor part (like the messages, their frequency, fun bonus etc.). The things that stopped me from adding this stuff in was mostly that I wanted the first PR to be small and that I didn’t really know what penalties should those be.

I mean, that (1) in the name is because they have 1 charge. They have 1 charge because some items (I think all non-tools) that are processed while active with 0 charges are removed from the game.
If their base type was TOOL and their “wearability” was implemented in the similar way to bows, I think it would work.

I didn’t mean the “professional” instruments (though making a violin would be a good 7-9 fabrication recipe), just anything. Some simple bone flute/whistle on a string (more to make noise than music) or other primitive and semi-primitive stuff.

5

Oh, the tuba in the mall full of Zs.
Dear Lord, the improvised instruments. :slight_smile:

6

[quote=“Arek_PL, post:2, topic:9252”]nice idea im looking forward to see this

[spoiler]things to do after this get into game

find guitar
get ak
get vodka
wear gas mask
light campfire
start playing on guitar
[/spoiler][/quote]

Lookin’ for the sarcophagus.

7

Was about to make a new thread about these but i’ve thought of searching first.
[sup][sup]( surely its not necro-posting if the thread is about specific feature / addition )[/sup][/sup]

i just wanted to say they’re a great addition to the game imo,
positively affect the playstyle aswell as the RP / realism aspects of the game

really love this sort of passively-active items in concept and practice
wouldn’t mind seeing more features working like this :slight_smile:
cheers Coolthulhu, great work!