Modding help - to increase resources and animals spawn/counts

[mnhonline]

Anybody been successful in modding the resources spawns/counts like berry bushes, rose hips bushes, reeds, typha plants, boars, deers etc ?

I tried modifying the index.art files and increase the "count" and "density" parameters of different resources and animals, but so far it's not working and I don't see any changes in the spawn rates, counts or density.

Any help by devs or people who have tried this would be great 👍.
Thanks

[LadyLillyno]

Thats one heck of a cheat :o

[mnhonline]

Originally posted by ladylillyno:

Thats one heck of a cheat :o

Yeah, but just curious if modding really works like they've mentioned on the forums. And it can be used optionally in the beginning to get some grip over the game mechanics without having to bother about food and people leaving the tribe or dying of starvation very early

[UncasualGames]

Density is for initial spawn when you enter a new location but it is not for the resource itself is for the entity than "has" the resource. Then there are several and different parameters for reproduction of plants and animals ( you can check them in each Entity )

[mnhonline]

Originally posted by UncasualGames:

Density is for initial spawn when you enter a new location but it is not for the resource itself is for the entity than "has" the resource. Then there are several and different parameters for reproduction of plants and animals ( you can check them in each Entity )

Thanks. But any Wiki or documentation of what the parameters mean and how the numbers affect the entity would be helpful for modding, as they are now somewhat "cryptic" to understand 😉

[UncasualGames]

Originally posted by mnhonline:

Originally posted by UncasualGames:

Density is for initial spawn when you enter a new location but it is not for the resource itself is for the entity than "has" the resource. Then there are several and different parameters for reproduction of plants and animals ( you can check them in each Entity )

Thanks. But any Wiki or documentation of what the parameters mean and how the numbers affect the entity would be helpful for modding, as they are now somewhat "cryptic" to understand 😉

There are some guides in the mod section of the forums. Also you can ask what you need to know an we will be glad to help.

[mnhonline]

Originally posted by UncasualGames:

Originally posted by mnhonline:

Thanks. But any Wiki or documentation of what the parameters mean and how the numbers affect the entity would be helpful for modding, as they are now somewhat "cryptic" to understand 😉

There are some guides in the mod section of the forums. Also you can ask what you need to know an we will be glad to help.

Thank you.

[ladicken]

Originally posted by mnhonline:

Anybody been successful in modding the resources spawns/counts like berry bushes, rose hips bushes, reeds, typha plants, boars, deers etc ?

I tried modifying the index.art files and increase the "count" and "density" parameters of different resources and animals, but so far it's not working and I don't see any changes in the spawn rates, counts or density.

Any help by devs or people who have tried this would be great 👍.
Thanks

That sounds like an awful lot of trouble if you're having food production problems. Not that I don't as well. LOL. But if you're going to go to the trouble of "fixing" your food production problems, just lower the rot factor on the food. That's a lot easier than what you were talking about. And probably safer. I've crashed this game before changing stuff not knowing what I was doing. LOL

[mnhonline]

Originally posted by ladicken:

Originally posted by mnhonline:

Anybody been successful in modding the resources spawns/counts like berry bushes, rose hips bushes, reeds, typha plants, boars, deers etc ?

I tried modifying the index.art files and increase the "count" and "density" parameters of different resources and animals, but so far it's not working and I don't see any changes in the spawn rates, counts or density.

Any help by devs or people who have tried this would be great 👍.
Thanks

That sounds like an awful lot of trouble if you're having food production problems. Not that I don't as well. LOL. But if you're going to go to the trouble of "fixing" your food production problems, just lower the rot factor on the food. That's a lot easier than what you were talking about. And probably safer. I've crashed this game before changing stuff not knowing what I was doing. LOL

Yeah 😅 LoL... I've tried to fiddle with some of the parameters and it crashes for me too, so I just left them at default.

I feel it's really the issue of getting the right migration location the very first time. In my case it was an old save which was a very bad location. But I started a new game and now the bunny rabbits and nettles and reeds seem to generate properly.

Also I feel the tribe does a better job for the initial few days if left alone, without actually creating any work groups LoL. I just placed a campfire, few storage areas for food, stone, rope, fiber etc. , baskets and pelt tents, and they just built them, gathered nearby food, ate when hungry and not complained.

I created a hunting group and gathering group only after the initial few days and now I don't seem to have food issues till Winter 😀. Yet to continue playing and check if it's sustainable.

[ladicken]

There's nothing in this game too terribly difficult to keep up with playing by default rules once you get a feel for the micromanagement necessary. It's just once your population starts growing food management can get dicey without constant migration and paying attention to what you're doing. I get to a point where I don't like dealing with the larger population sizes and all the migrations, so I just start a new game rather than seeing how far I can go with the population size. Once the game becomes work I'm done. Or I "mod" the game and have fun with it. LOL

Besides which, as long as you keep everyone fed they all grow up and die old, which didn't happen in the Mesolithic or any age. I'm curious to see how that gets handled by the developers when they introduce other groups to interact with for trade and whatever. All you really have to do in this game is keep everyone fed and build a few houses, that will probably change in later developments.

What we need is a sort of serious guide to this game which hasn't been done yet. I know ladylillyno says she is going to work on something, I might do something as well at some point.

My biggest complaint about the game is the migration tool which is highly inaccurate and irritates me every time I migrate.

[LadyLillyno]

We have evidence that even the Neanderthals took care of their injured and disabled, and indeed that humans did grow old, however, old in those days was around 35-40, as a normal day for them was little else than long work hours and fights for survival.
Today the average lifespan in W-Europe is 79 for men and 84 for women :)

[mnhonline]

Originally posted by ladicken:

Once the game becomes work I'm done. Or I "mod" the game and have fun with it. LOL

LoL me too, I try to mod games when it feels like a "chore" just to play it and have some fun as I don't get too much time nowadays with work and family life.

Originally posted by ladicken:

What we need is a sort of serious guide to this game which hasn't been done yet. I know ladylillyno says she is going to work on something, I might do something as well at some point.

This would really help a lot of new players, like seriously help in the beginning. Thanks for considering doing a guide some time in the future.

Originally posted by ladicken:

My biggest complaint about the game is the migration tool which is highly inaccurate and irritates me every time I migrate.

Yeah, this is probably the biggest issue along with the procedural generation randomness of materials, resources and animal spawns.

[ladicken]

Originally posted by mnhonline:

Anybody been successful in modding the resources spawns/counts like berry bushes, rose hips bushes, reeds, typha plants, boars, deers etc ?

I tried modifying the index.art files and increase the "count" and "density" parameters of different resources and animals, but so far it's not working and I don't see any changes in the spawn rates, counts or density.

Any help by devs or people who have tried this would be great 👍.
Thanks

Here's an answer to your original post. This pertains to rose hips only.

Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Ancient Cities\Ancient\Data\Ancient\Entity\Local\Vegetal\DogRose

Under Entity/Vegetal/Bush:

Set CountLimit:"16384" This increases the maximum number limit of rose hip bushes by 8 times that the game can (but might not) generate.

set Density: maybe five or six 9's. I'm actually not sure what this does, maybe it increases the number of bushes per "bunch" or something. I tried fiddling with this number a few times and didn't see where it did anything much. However when I changed the CountLimit I got tons of rose hips bushes everywhere! LOL

[ladicken]

In fact, don't mess with that Density setting. I set it to an extremely high number just to see what would happen, and I got nothing but rose hip bushes everywhere, hardly no trees, and half the rose hip bushes didn't have rose hips on them. LOL

Also in fact, I'm still testing this. But changing the CountLimit does make a ton more rose hip bushes appear.

[ladicken]

Changing those two parameters doesn't have the save effect everywhere on the map, and I don't know enough about the game to say why. My opinion is I wouldn't mess with it unless I knew for sure what it does. I had the game die on me twice, so after the 2nd time I just reloaded all my local files on steam and quit messing with it.

If someone wants to change the game to favor food production, I still say changing the rot factor is easier and safer. Or just changing the calorie count on the food. Those two items seem to be safe to mess with and not cause the game to do unpredictable stuff.

[ladicken]

Also be aware the spot you land on has it's own parameters aside from what you're changing. For instance, a coastal setting generally has less trees than a spot in the interior of Europe, so if you add a bunch of rose hips bushes more of them will be able to spawn in an area with less trees.

So in thickly wooded areas, you have to reduce the amount of trees so the rose hip bushes can spawn, otherwise you might not see the effect of the additional rose hips bushes.

So that's to much work for me, but it was fun testing it out. I did find one useful trick. If you don't use the reed for a house, but just build straw houses, all that reed does nothing for you. So if you're never going to use the reed, eliminate the reed and increase the amount of river fiber.

As to fish, I haven't found a way to increase the amount of fish bunches showing up in the river. Every time I mess with the fish, I end up with no fish at all, so I just leave them alone.

And increasing the amount of rose hips doesn't really help that much anyway as they'll all rot away quickly enough. The rot factor on rose hips increases with time, so by the end of summer they are rotting away practically as fast as you put them in the pit. Again, I tested this. I picked less rose hips a day than I would eat, so by after their breakfast all rose hips were gone and all rose hips I picked that day were freshly picked, but as soon as they go into the pit they assume the rot factor from the previous rose hips, they don't start over with a new rot line. In other words, the rot isn't by pit or when you pick the food, it's simply a timer that starts the second you put your food into the pit and increases through out the season.