[Mod] villages built up by villagers [working_villages]

[theFox]

Just like many of you, I wanted some villagers doing some useful stuff.
So I started making a mod which contains villagers doing work.

Planned Features

• Villagers
  • trading and building up an economy
  • building their houses
  • working / doing their jobs
• Jobs: miner, farmer and many more

this version:
no crafting recipes yet (you will have to use creative)

Spoiler

• talk to the villagers by right-clicking them
• home markers to save the position of the door and the bed
  • some jobs will let the villagers return home at night
  • at home the villagers will go to bed
• spawn-eggs for villagers
  • female and male
  • just for a nicer look
• commanding scepter to access the inventory of a villager or to pause/resume his job
• jobs:
  • builder (builds the building at the next building marker)
  • woodcutter/lumberjack (cutting trees and planting saplings)
  • plant/herb collector (collects all sorts of plants that might be useful)
• player follower (following any player, night active)
• testing jobs:
  • snow clearer (clearing snow away)
  • torcher (following player and placing torches in the dark, night active)

Spoiler

view in ContentDB
download latest zip from GitHub
browse on GitHub

License: **MIT**
dependencies: default, modutil?, doors?

[Sokomine]

Sounds very intresting. I don't have time to take a closer look at it right now, but from the description it sounds as if the mod provides the NPC willing to do the work. I'm working on a citybuilder mod which will handle the building side of it but not cover npc. The plan is to provide a townhall-chest where cityfounders can pick up plans for structures of level 0 which they can then place somewhere in the landscape and either supply the materials themshelves or let (not yet existing) npc do the work. Upgrades for buildings are certainly planned. It takes some time to build some intresting structures. Perhaps I got carried away a bit and built some of them too large...but the level 6 mine and house are pretty nice :-)

[theFox]

I was a little negative so I changed the forum topic.
I also had to fix a fatal bug and I improved the registration for new Jobs.
And I added a Job for clearing away snow... just for fun ;)

[azekill_DIABLO]

cool! i wanna see a picture of it!

[theFox]

cool! i wanna see a picture of it!

Added screenshots to the topic!

[Sokomine]

* * trading and building up an economy

The act of trading could be done by my mobf_trader mod. It provides all that's needed. The trades I've set up so far just aren't particulary intresting for players as most things cost as much or more as the crafting indigrents. The traders want to earn a bit after all..

* * building their houses

With my upcomming citybuilder mod all a mob willing to build a house would have to do is to scan the area where the house will be built for "dig here" indicators and (configured) scaffolding nodes and then either dig or just call the on_rightclick-function of the scaffolding node in the right way. The purpose of the scaffolding nodes is to give the player a vague idea about the dimensions of the building project, to allow placement of house nodes by the player and to fascilitate "helping" for players. And it just looks good if there's some scaffolding instead of a house beeing built bottom-up by a mob waving hands nearby :-)

* * working / doing their jobs
* Jobs: builder, miner, farmer and many more

Very good! Such workers are very welcome :-)

* home markers to save the position of the door and the bed

In the version I've tested, doors and beds required manual setup. Scanning for them would be better. citybuilder can certainly provide positions of doors and beds (and other things the workers might be intrested in?). It doesn't do so yet but that would be a minor change. Most of the mg_villages houses built by me would probably be problematic for mobs as there's not much space between all the furniture and even normal players may get stuck by accident sometimes.

* * some jobs will let the villagers return home at night
* * at home the villagers will go to bed

Very good! I'd love to have such a feature. zorman2000 seems to work on something similar, and ErrorNull provides diffrent clothing and appearance for his mobs.

* * woodcutter/lumberjack (cutting trees and planting saplings, not night active)

The first lumberjack in the first version of this mod who started his work did something not entirely unexpected: The tree logs of a nearby house where just too tempting :-) He took those from the house first - and only afterwards started searching for real trees. I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to assign a certain area to the lumberjack where he can dig all trees he may find.

[BrunoMine]

I'm dedicating myself to improve the intelligence of NPCs.
I would accept help to improve my npcs behavior from mod sociedades (in this new development stage).
If you have the patience for that, of course...

[Sokomine]

I'm dedicating myself to improve the intelligence of NPCs.
I would accept help to improve my npcs behavior from mod sociedades (in this new development stage).
If you have the patience for that, of course...

It would be great if modders could cooperate on creating such a nice villagers mod as you suggested. There's enough work for all :-) Hope this will work out. I'm working on the schematics/houses part.

[Casimir]

I agree with Sokomine.

I really hope some time we could get all those mob/village mods work together to create something like the one vision I had every since I got started with minetest.

Having villages where you can make friends with the mobs living htere and then add them to your team, employ them for work, play them (like in MirceaKitsune's creatures), take over the village, change to bird view and continue playing like a RTS game (Settlers or something the like), collaborate with or fight against other players and their civilisations.
Kind of a game that incorporates all scales, from the single person to the whole population.

We more or less have the basic elements already distributed in several mods. The hard part is to establish standards and combine what's there.

Back to the mod the topic is about: It's really fun to use. With my selfplanting threes I have the villagers cutting trees all the time and don't have to aid the in any way. They gather wood and spread the forest at the same time :]

[azekill_DIABLO]

awesome!

[pandaro]

It's nice to see ideas shared by experienced modders grow into something acclaiming. Why do not you join forces in a single common project?
It would be curious to see the result, good luck at all!

[bell07]

I did a small code review and tested the mod. I really like it :thumbsup:

But I miss two things:
1. Please add the code to an versions-control tool like github. That make it easier for other modders to contribute small and big changes to you, and make it easier to apply proposed changes after review to the mod for you.
2. Please write an API documentation. The documentation should help other modders to provide new jobs and villagers without reading the whole source code of working_villager

[theFox]

Its nice to hear that many people have the same idea or even had the vision (was that coincidence?) when playing Minetest.

To your answers:
I already had a look for a builder and found the npcf_builder out of the npcf mod and I am busy copying. But I will have to make the scanning and planning.

I know I have to write a documentation for my api and its already on my to-do list.

I had the idea that ordering would be an easy solution for trading, so the villagers order the stuff they need at the home of the villager that produces the things.

The problem with the compact houses with not much space is a hard thing, I guess I will also use path finding in the house.

I thank you all for the great suggestions, I will have a look what I can do for simpler cooperation (making the mod).

[Sokomine]

Its nice to hear that many people have the same idea or even had the vision (was that coincidence?) when playing Minetest.

Guess we all just wish for some more life ingame :-) Someone to share the world with. It's so empty in singleplayer.

I already had a look for a builder and found the npcf_builder out of the npcf mod and I am busy copying. But I will have to make the scanning and planning.

My citybuilder mod is making progress. All a mob will need to do there is to locate two types of nodes - one a digging indicator, the other a scaffolding node - and dig the amount of nodes found in the metadata of the digging indicator and call a function with the position of the scaffolding node in order to actually build. That's a diffrent way from the usual one (mob stands there or walks around and places nodes) but afaik it looks much better if there's some scaffolding showing which shape the final building will take. Also fascilitates moving around without fly.

I had the idea that ordering would be an easy solution for trading, so the villagers order the stuff they need at the home of the villager that produces the things.

Villagers having jobs and creating the diffrent nodes is certainly nice. I've started the basics in mobf_trader, but without better trade offers, players are usually better off to just craft the things themshelves.

The problem with the compact houses with not much space is a hard thing, I guess I will also use path finding in the house.

That would be very nice. It might be sufficient to do that once per house.

[BBmine]

Looks like it might be interesting. I see you have screenshots, but I couldn't really see any villages (Unless they aren't there yet)

[theFox]

Looks like it might be interesting. I see you have screenshots, but I couldn't really see any villages (Unless they aren't there yet)

They are not implemented yet. A builder who builds the houses is planned as you can see if you read the last few posts.

[azekill_DIABLO]

great work anyway

[Sokomine]

They are not implemented yet. A builder who builds the houses is planned as you can see if you read the last few posts.

It's time for my citybuilder mod to get suitable villagers. I'm currently taking a look at implementations of pathfinding. Your mobs are a good start, but they still have some problems and need to learn a bit more. The pathfinding from the engine seems to have its limits. The mobs have difficulties getting to the door and entering the house, even with the position outside of the door stored. Or perhaps I misunderstood that parameter on the sign?

[theFox]

The mobs have difficulties getting to the door and entering the house, even with the position outside of the door stored. Or perhaps I misunderstood that parameter on the sign?

Yes I know they are having problems with doors, because you can't find a path through doors (not even trough opened ones).

To make the villagers understand doors, I just added the parameter "position outside near door".
The position needs to be reachable and in front of the door.
A sleepy Villager tries to get to this position and if he reached it he goes straight to bed.
When he wakes up in the morning he goes to the given position outside and continues his work.
If there is a door in his way he opens it.
If villagers are night active, they haven't got this behavior.

I really need a better solution for pathfinding inside houses, has anyone got ideas how to make the villagers find their way?

[Sokomine]

A sleepy Villager tries to get to this position and if he reached it he goes straight to bed.
When he wakes up in the morning he goes to the given position outside and continues his work.
If there is a door in his way he opens it.
If villagers are night active, they haven't got this behavior.

That's what I like about this mod a lot. It's how I expect villagers to be.

I really need a better solution for pathfinding inside houses, has anyone got ideas how to make the villagers find their way?

Use burlis new pathfinder algorithm with some slight modifications.

When I took a closer look at your mod, I noticed that it seems to be a fork of Maidroid? That mod never caught my attention because I didn't like the droid's texture very much. And it doesn't have the sleep-at-night-function. Still, maybe you ought to mention somewhere that your mod started as a fork?

[theFox]

That's what I like about this mod a lot. It's how I expect villagers to be.

That's why I'm making it.

When I took a closer look at your mod, I noticed that it seems to be a fork of Maidroid? That mod never caught my attention because I didn't like the droid's texture very much. And it doesn't have the sleep-at-night-function. Still, maybe you ought to mention somewhere that your mod started as a fork?

Yes... I started with a copy of the Maidroid mod, and I am mentioning it in the description.
But I don't call it a fork because, I planned to rewrite the api and it's going to be far away from maidroid.

[theFox]

Latest changes:

• descriptions for the api
• updated home marker textures
• way better pathfinding
• bugfixes

[theFox]

Latest changes:

• woodcutter collects dropped saplings
• better obstacle handling
• bugfixes

[theFox]

new version

• I fixed the pathfinding through doors!
• I added a new job: the plant collector.
• I added a better collisionbox for laying villagers.
• and api improvements and bugfixes.

[Sokomine]

Good to see that the mod is still under development. Perhaps it could provide ressource-gathering functionality as a lib for other mods in the future?