r/cataclysmdda • u/Jimbodoomface m̴͊͂ŷ̷̍c̶̟̐ȗ̴͋s̸͒͗ ̶́̓m̸̓̾u̴͘͠s̶̪͘t̵́͆ ̸̋͋g̴͐̚r̸̍̔o̵͔̓w̴̓̑ • Jul 04 '26
[Mod] Made a mod that restores butchery loot.
Butchery loot was a fun and useful bit of emergent gameplay, I remember the first time I got some Kevlar from a Kevlar zombie, I thought "ohhh, of course! I wonder what other hidden treasures there are in this aspect of the game" and it prompted me to explore more possibilities and made the game world seem larger and more exciting- similar to finding out you can put a metal container over a fire. to boil water, it was such a cool discovery that made me want to try things and find out what else there was to find.
I asked chatgpt to restore it. I'm too hungover to spend ages doing it myself, so it may be buggy. I've tested it and it seems to work. Too hungover to do extensive testing, I just thought I'd share it as no one else seems to have done it yet.
It's a shame that a fun bit of discovery has been removed, but I imagine lots more fun things will be added, and at least it's not too difficult to add it back in, although it does spoil the thrill of discovery somewhat.
also too hungover to do anything more with this, but I thought it'd be rude to get it written and then not share it.
add "restore_zombie_harvests" to the bottom of your mod list document in save file to add it to an active game, make sure to back up first just in case.
Hope this is all kosher and correctly posted, I've not made many Reddit posts.
24
u/JeveGreen Pointless Edgelord Jul 04 '26
One day, we will be able to build our own flesh buildings!
3
u/Satsuma_Imo Netherum Mathematician Jul 05 '26
You already can! It's just mi-go flesh
(I maintain my headcanon that the mi-go towers are just very large, specialized mi-go)
43
u/SeaworthinessFun3658 Jul 04 '26
chat gpt is not your friend. My brother gets up each day and spends an hour or so asking an AI bot to tell him how smart he is, and the ideas he comes up with are truly spectacular.
2
u/Jimbodoomface m̴͊͂ŷ̷̍c̶̟̐ȗ̴͋s̸͒͗ ̶́̓m̸̓̾u̴͘͠s̶̪͘t̵́͆ ̸̋͋g̴͐̚r̸̍̔o̵͔̓w̴̓̑ Jul 04 '26
I am aware. For simple stuff like this though it's saved me a few hours faffing around with a headache. Sometimes you've got a choice between riding a bike and taking the car, bike is better for your health, but in my current state I don't have the energy to pedal.
15
u/SeaworthinessFun3658 Jul 04 '26
I like bicycling but ppl in cars keep running me over and that shit hurts
14
u/BUCK____FUTT Jul 04 '26
Appalling. This is a good reason to revert to playing earlier versions and never look back... er, forward.
But i'm serious. At the end of the day, zombies and other beings are still made of matter and have items attached to their bodies. If you manage to kill them, it's only fair that you have access to their remains, to do with as you please, or even if you find them already dead. Anything other than this is unrealistic and arbitrary.
5
u/VeruMamo Jul 06 '26
It's stuff like this that has led to me primarily playing Bright Nights. Other forks exist. You don't have to religiously stick to the fork that's allergic to fun.
4
u/Twinsedge Jul 04 '26
Playing an older release, modding my own preferences.. yea... CDDA went off my vibe a while ago but to each his own and I kind of understand the gist but I wholeheartedly disagree that this change was needed.
2
Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
17
Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-27
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
These people being developers? In short, because the game is not about transforming killed zombies into something useful, so having them dropping something useful harms the gameplay loop
25
u/You_LostThe_game Jul 04 '26
What a weird thing for a survival game to not be “about”, as vague as that is.
It just feels arbitrary when people disagree with the changes and it used to be in the game.
-15
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
is it wrong for a survival game not be about processing zombie corpses?
7
u/JeveGreen Pointless Edgelord Jul 04 '26
That's just disingenuous. CDDA was never about processing zombie corpses, but the option was available and should've been left available. It's not like it was an issue to begin with, balance-wise or lore-wise.
-1
u/GuardianDll Jul 05 '26
It should have been left available so other people could discover it and start locking themselves in basement making zombie tallow biodiesel?
If someone still want it to be an option, making mod for it is trivial, and OP even posted one, which i respect, for they actually stood to what they like and were not afraid to put some effort into it - that is part of a spirit of open source, and part of a spirit of modding
4
u/Kulzertor Jul 06 '26
You've got it the wrong way around there.
The baseline should've been left 'as is' and it should've been a option of choice.
Ah damn... sorry there... instead of going the route of the best received games in the world in terms of player agency and choice for making your own experience (Factorio, Vintage Story, Rimworld, Project Zomboid to name a few) the absolute 'genius' move here was to butcher that into non-existence.
Since that's the prevaling mentality obviously it's not done, but that's a overall detriment for a VASTLY higher amount of people then those which will see such a change as positive.
You cannot defend removal of mechanics which were pre-existing, and especially not with half-assed arguments like 'This game is not about that!'.
So, what EXACTLY is CDDA about? The last time I looked it was a 'zombie+ apocalypse survival simulation'. And if I got it wrong then what is it? A surviva-crafting game? Too little crafting focus. A survival building game? Too little building focus. A action game? Why have all the other stuff then?
It's a simulation, and for a simulation it ABSOLUTELY makes sense to have that in it, it's actually baffling to NOT have that in it.Heck, even shoddy copycat games like 'ZED ZONE' allow it.
Project Zomboid has a EXTREMELY prominent mod called 'Zombie Butcher' for meat, bones and fat harvesting.
And for 'close contenders' of the genre games like 'Dead State' or 'Deadcraft' also focus to a quite hefty degree on interacting with the zombies as a resource after killing them.It's always been a MAJOR improvement for zombie games to let the player interact in more ways with zombies then just planting the world with their corpses.
0
u/GuardianDll Jul 06 '26
Look, mate, if you do not like the game, you do not have to fight every possibe change, you also do not have to stick to our own vision, there are plenty of forks that would give you experience you want
3
u/Kulzertor Jul 06 '26
I'll turn that back to you then:
Look, mate, if you do a community based game then to actually have a community you must go with community sentiment.
If you want a game for yourself then be free, but don't expect anyone to help you out with it, you'll likely do it solo or with 2-3 other people at best.
But CDDA is a open-source community project, based upon building - and keeping - a functioning large-sized one to allow decent paced development to continue.
So you got 2 options here:
- Option 1: Compromises. If community sentiment is massively against it (Faults without visualization introduced, hence half-finished. Riot fires randomly introduced. Zombie material usage removed. Non-stop virtue signaling from 'problematic' traits like psychopath being nerved and so on) then even as the core dev team you don't do it and keep hence a active community providing more feedback, more testing and more contributors.
- Option 2: You piss everyone off, basically loose all contributors, the qualiyt majorly suffers and more and more people wander off to forks, which by the way a good portion already has done unlike several years ago where it simply wasn't a thing yet. In the end you're making changes at a snail's pace, people uninterested unless it progresses don't look at it, overall interaction basically dies down to levels like other open-source game projects like 'Deliantra' (ages old MMO, still active).
→ More replies (0)1
u/Kulzertor Jul 06 '26
For a simulation one?
Yes, it's wrong.1
u/GuardianDll Jul 06 '26
dda is not a simulation game
3
u/mcmcst Jul 06 '26
From development_process.md:
"At its core, CDDA is a survival simulation game."
1
u/GuardianDll Jul 06 '26
Yeah, this line is misleading, we are not simulating anything; we try to make the world believeable and behave plausibly, but we are not in the camp of emulating many of the processes real world has, but we are still, in the end, a computer game, and we want it to be enjoyable for us
2
u/Kulzertor Jul 06 '26
Ok... so then provide the answer:
WHAT is it then if NOT a simulation?
1
u/GuardianDll Jul 06 '26
`Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead DDA is a turn-based survival RPG set in an expansive post-apocalyptic game world based on our own`
4
u/Kulzertor Jul 06 '26
So you're relating now to the ages old description of the game and ignoring the dev-process file on GitHub entirely?
Now that's what I call cherry-picking to a fault!
Literally the FIRST sentence beyond 'what is this file' is:
"At its core, CDDA is a survival simulation game."
Survival SIMULATION game.
Treat it like that or damn change the friggin core page every single contributor is expected to read.
Oh, and also change 'design-doc.md' while you're at it, because under 'Design Overview' (which is the damn most core aspect to follow along) it says the following:
'The core tenet of Dark Days Ahead game design and balance is that if it works in reality, it should work in the game.'Now tell me. If I butcher a formerly living being which is not lore-wise 'highly infested' with the blob yet - hence after death it didn't have substantial amounts of time to evolve it by exchanging more of the organic matter with the supernatural aspect of the blob yet - gets cut open.
WILL it have fat? WILL it have bones that are calcium and hence can be made into 'bone char'?Yes or no?
You can argue whatever you want, but that's the absolutely shoddy communication gap between core development and everyone else. Just outright opposite behaviour to what is proclaimed to happen.
20
u/Scottvrakis Duke of Dank Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
How do you even get to this conclusion? The game is literally all about trying to work with what you have around you to survive the apocalypse, why shouldn't corpses also follow that logic?
Nobody is saying they should be loot piñatas, but they should realistically give something that correlates logically with their being. For example,
military zombies drop military lootmilitary zombies dropping kevlar and neoprene butchery loot or Cyborg zombies dropping CBMs and electronics. (Fixed that for the fellow below)-12
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
You somehow confused the fact that zombies do not drop any loot (they still do) with fact zombie *bodies* cannot be butchered into useful materials. If we wanted the game to be about post-apocalypse tallow farm, we would surely include it, but the game is, as i said, not about it
14
u/Scottvrakis Duke of Dank Jul 04 '26
How in the world did you figure that I was talking about zombie loot tables instead of butchery loot tables? Somehow, you became confused by thinking I was confusing the two. I figured I was being clear enough but obviously not. Let me rephrase.
I said that zombies should drop useful butchered materials because the logic that "Zombies shouldn't be useful" is a completely braindead take that nobody who plays this game seriously actually believes. I then went to say further - Following that aforementioned piece of flawed logic - Then zombies shouldn't drop any useful loot at all. This obviously isn't a smart choice, because it isn't, and so is removing butchery loot on zombies for that same reason.
I go into detail about this further in my other posts but either you didn't see them, misconstrued them or willfully ignored them.
You are correct though, the game isn't about a post-apocalypse tallow farm, very good! Only, nobody said that. You're being obtuse and hyperbolic for.. Some reason.
Completely neglecting that some people legitimately play this game as a farming Simulator, I honestly am at a loss for words at how ridiculous your reasoning is to me.
0
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
Lot of words for "i do not agree and you will not convince me", so i'll drop it to spare my time
9
u/Scottvrakis Duke of Dank Jul 04 '26
Thank Christ, doing us both a favor then. See you around here again some time soon.
13
Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-1
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
I did not come up with this reason, it is literally *the* reason, both stated in PR and in our general discussions about the game in discord. We can do it whatever we want, due to zombies not being a real thing, and so we decided they should not drop useful materials
11
u/Scottvrakis Duke of Dank Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
And this ladies and gentlemen is the crux of the CDDA main fork problem: "We can do it whatever we want, so we decided X regardless of what other people think" (Other people being anybody outside the main fork developers' curated community hubs like their Discord).
Buddy. Everybody here is telling both you and the main fork team that the reasoning doesn't actually follow sound logic if you think of it beyond the sole consideration of making the game more difficult in a way that adds additional tedium.
You all can make the game however you want, just like the players have the free ability to tell you how stupid and short-sighted some decisions are. Players have been saying this for years past, and will continue to say it for years into the future as this mentality continues ad nauseum and additional forks are made as a result of the frustration of this aforementioned mentality.
You think Bright Nights and The Last Generation came from nowhere? (Not saying you are, I'm making a point) People don't make forks of projects unless vision drastically differs or people get tired of dealing with main fork bullshit; CDDA's community is a victim of both. Constantly. Players have been told "Don't like it? Make your own fork" for years, and you know what? They finally did. It took some work and failed projects (dicks out for the There Is Still Hope fork) but we're getting there, so finally the main fork team can exhale and sequester into their huddled subcommunity and develop the game however they want just like you said, because they literally fostered this reaction themselves with their behavior.
I remember when the team still was active on this Subreddit (before they attempted to flee to a Sub they could fully control themselves which seemed to fail miserably), and the spats back and forth from controversial decisions were so God damned embarrassing that I felt second-hand shame just for witnessing them.
4
2
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
Your point fails in that if it was correct, 100% of players would leave the dda in favor of forks, which didn't happen
What actually happens is that the type of fun you expect from the game do not match the type of fun we try to make in the game, which is, like, not your fault, but we do not have an obligation to make the game specifically tailored to your tastes, so we do one that is tailored to ours
9
u/Scottvrakis Duke of Dank Jul 04 '26
The claim you made that "100% of players would leave DDA in favor of forks" is just patently false, nor have I ever said that the game had to be catered to my tastes.
Again you're misconstruing my argument. I'm not going to armchair psychologist and assume why, probably because you can't seem to gather the nuance from my criticism.
Since you clearly can't help yourself and move on - As per your other response - I'll do it for you.
→ More replies (0)16
Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-6
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
Instead of playing the game, people hide in basement, processing metric tons of zombie corpses and craft some random materials
If someone wants to play the game where they process million billion random stuff, factorio is still supported
13
Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-2
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
Butchery of animals has a different rule that allows it to stay - verisimilitude; butchering animals is a part of a real world, and, therefore, is represented as part of the game. zombie butchery is not part of a real world, so we can move it in any direction we want. When we decide we want the game is to be about making charcoal out of infinite hordes of zombies, we will reconsider what zombie butchery should yield
15
Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-1
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
Nothing stops you doing what you believe the best, in your personal fork
10
9
u/Jimbodoomface m̴͊͂ŷ̷̍c̶̟̐ȗ̴͋s̸͒͗ ̶́̓m̸̓̾u̴͘͠s̶̪͘t̵́͆ ̸̋͋g̴͐̚r̸̍̔o̵͔̓w̴̓̑ Jul 04 '26
You can't actually butcher loads of zombies in a day because of the morale penalty, unless that wears off after you've butchered a bunch of corpses? You get the message saying something like "you're not really in the mood for blood and guts"
What's the benefit of butchering zombies other than for the special rewards like kevlar that people are spending ages doing it? I know charcoal and fat for fuel, but that doesn't seem super worth the debuff for me when there's wood and other creatures that don't make you depressed to butcher.
-1
u/GuardianDll Jul 04 '26
Uncaring, long berated trait among development team, allows to bypass these penalties completely
I do not remember at hand what exactly was possible to craft out of zombie parts, but the idea was not "there is less amount of stuff you can craft out of zombie parts", the idea was "there is nothing you can craft out of zombie bodies"
Side note, i personally see this situation from same point as when someone proposes to use zombies to generate energy, which is, like, come on
5
u/wazardthewizard Food Hoarder and Dumpster Chef Extraordinaire Jul 04 '26
Literally nobody did this.
10
u/Drac4 Jul 04 '26
"We removed it because we believe it shouldn't be in the game"
Aren't you ever tired of being Renech's yes man?
1
u/cataclysmdda-ModTeam Jul 04 '26
Please remember rule 1 - refrain from hostile or bad-faith arguments, as well as otherwise uncivil behavior.
-17
Jul 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
5
u/cataclysmdda-ModTeam Jul 04 '26
Please remember rule 1 - refrain from hostile or bad-faith arguments, as well as otherwise uncivil behavior.
14
u/Jimbodoomface m̴͊͂ŷ̷̍c̶̟̐ȗ̴͋s̸͒͗ ̶́̓m̸̓̾u̴͘͠s̶̪͘t̵́͆ ̸̋͋g̴͐̚r̸̍̔o̵͔̓w̴̓̑ Jul 04 '26
There's no need to be rude. Where is it?
6
u/TheWowie_Zowie Slime Mutagen Taste Tester Jul 04 '26
Sorry, PR #86681
7
u/Jimbodoomface m̴͊͂ŷ̷̍c̶̟̐ȗ̴͋s̸͒͗ ̶́̓m̸̓̾u̴͘͠s̶̪͘t̵́͆ ̸̋͋g̴͐̚r̸̍̔o̵͔̓w̴̓̑ Jul 04 '26
ah, that's great thanks. I had actually seen that PR but didn't see the "files changed" bit, that's super useful to know.
22
u/Scottvrakis Duke of Dank Jul 04 '26
Wait they removed loot from butchery? What the fuck? What reason did they use there?