[mod] Better Fauna [0.1.2] [better_fauna]

[ElCeejo]

Better Fauna adds mobs with consistently styled models, group spawning, and minimal lag.

Phases
Currently the plan for this mod is roll out various mobs through phases.

Phase 1 (Basic mobs)
Phase 1 adds basic mobs that are meant as livestock

Phase 2 (Companions)
The plan for Phase 2 is to add tamable companion mobs, such as cats, wolves, and horses.

Current Mobs

Cow
Cows spawn in Grasslands and Savannas in groups of up to 3. Drops: Raw Beef (Leather if mobs redo is enabled) Follows: Wheat
Can be milked by right-clicking with a bucket

Sheep
Sheep spawn in Grasslands in groups of up to 6.
Drops: Raw Mutton, Wool Follows: Wheat Can be dyed any color

Pig
Pigs spawn in Grasslands and Deciduous Forests in groups of up to 3.
Drops: Raw Porkchop
Follows: Carrot

Chicken
Chickens spawn in Grasslands and Savannas in groups of up to 6.
Drops: Raw Chicken
Follows: Wheat and Cotton Seeds
Occasionally drops Eggs (if female)

Turkey
Turkeys spawn in Deciduous Forests and Taigas in groups of up to 6.
Drops: Raw Turkey
Follows: Wheat and Cotton Seeds
Drops more meat than Chickens

Items:

Animal Net:



The Animal Net can be used to capture and hold animals one at time.

To-Do

- New Textures

- Add more functionality to certain items

- Add Phase 2

- ???

Compatible Mods
Mobs Redo - If enabled, Cows will drop leather and sheep can be sheared

License: GPL 3.0
Dependencies: default, mobkit, mob_core
Download
Source

[sirrobzeroone]

Wish there was a thumbs up, alas not so thumbs up

[Ignaramico]

Bur exactly what avantage would have this mod over other?, i mean so far i could say that maybe the spawn would be more reliable, since the mobs would spawn in group would let you have a breeding couple fast.
Are they able to be tamed as with mobs redo?, is easier to move them around in that mod

[sirrobzeroone]

Bur exactly what advantage would have this mod over other?, i mean so far i could say that maybe the spawn would be more reliable, since the mobs would spawn in group would let you have a breeding couple fast.
Are they able to be tamed as with mobs redo?, is easier to move them around in that mod

For myself it's anyone using the mobkit framework from scratch, not so useful for servers (fairly sure mobs:redo has a performance advantage and is better suited for the server environment) but for single player or local multiplayer games mobkit from what I can tell allows for much more natural looking behavior long term. Runz has done some great work creating some "brains" for his petz mobs as has Gundel developing some very impressive behaviors, Termos has also demo'd some cool stuff.

Mobkit in general very much reminds me of an old NWN module which allowed animals to queue behaviors and have priorities. The demo's that author put up were very similar wolf pack hunting deer and deer reacting more naturally. For the life of me I cant remember the name started with M..something anyways the underlying principals from what I remember are very similar to mobkit

but I personally like when anyone gives mobkit a try as it might show some unique development or behavior that others can build on. My only fear is that Termos will vanish and mobkit will not be able to remain updated in the future....

anyways I've probably hijacked this thread enough :)

[ElCeejo]

Sorry for the relatively late response, I'm a bit burned out from Minetest at the moment.

Wish there was a thumbs up, alas not so thumbs up

Not sure what that is supposed to mean but ok.

Bur exactly what avantage would have this mod over other?, i mean so far i could say that maybe the spawn would be more reliable, since the mobs would spawn in group would let you have a breeding couple fast.
Are they able to be tamed as with mobs redo?, is easier to move them around in that mod

At the moment there is no obvious advantage over the alternatives,. There aren't as many mobs, the ones that are available are basic, but the less obvious advantages are important.

First off, the pathfinding works better than that of petz, water_life, or mobs_animal.

Second, the model style is consistent. There aren't some models with some okay textures, then some with flat boring textures like petz. There are no models with hundreds of triangles, then some with maybe 8 cubes total like water_life. And mobs_animal is just a mess.

Third, lag. I tested 1 chicken against a petz chicken and found that (according to the built-in profiler) my chicken causes 124% less lag on average against a petz chicken.

As it stands right now I rushed this mod out because I wanted to take break from Minetest modding, but when I'm back into it I'll be polishing things and adding more mobs.

Also, I forgot to mention in the thread, There's a net that can hold one animal that's only available in creative for the time being.

[freshreplicant]

I for one welcome Better Fauna! I really like water_life (except the seagull) and would really like a fully featured land animal mod to accompany it. Petz has tons of mobs but I just can't take the style seriously, it feels so silly being mauled to death by a blocky lion.

Haven't seen all the mobs for this yet, but definitely already an improvement model wise over mobs_animal.

[runs]

Petz has tons of mobs but I just can't take the style seriously, it feels so silly being mauled to death by a blocky lion.

Better Fauna is welcomed, but its target audience is different.

Just one note: Petz is intended for players 6-12 years old = PEGI 6 compliant. The description of the mod already indicates this clearly, it has never pretended to be anything else. So it is in a blocky style, simple and with flat vibrant colors that young kids demand.

More realistic models are possible indeed. For example, the alternative to the default kawaii-cute-blocky-dull lion in my private game is this one:



But when I went for more realistic, the people complained, cos lag, and the kids would scared by it.

[freshreplicant]

Petz has tons of mobs but I just can't take the style seriously, it feels so silly being mauled to death by a blocky lion.

Better Fauna is welcomed, but its target audience is different.

Just one note: Petz is intended for players 6-12 years old

I appreciate the explanation (though we're veering off topic here), but I am most definitely not your target audience - off by several decades. Nothing wrong with your mod, I just want an alternative. More variety and diversity is good for the Minetest community, so I'm all for ElCeejo entering the fray.

[Adnunano]

Petz has tons of mobs but I just can't take the style seriously, it feels so silly being mauled to death by a blocky lion.

Better Fauna is welcomed, but its target audience is different.

Just one note: Petz is intended for players 6-12 years old = PEGI 6 compliant. The description of the mod already indicates this clearly, it has never pretended to be anything else. So it is in a blocky style, simple and with flat vibrant colors that young kids demand.

More realistic models are possible indeed. For example, the alternative to the default kawaii-cute-blocky-dull lion in my private game is this one:



But when I went for more realistic, the people complained, cos lag, and the kids would scared by it.

Well,if you add those kind of models i wouldn't complain.Instead,it will make petz more good looking cuz standard models look wierd.I don't think it will scare kids because kids who go to zoo see real animals but do they get scared?

[Termos]

For myself it's anyone using the mobkit framework from scratch, not so useful for servers (fairly sure mobs:redo has a performance advantage and is better suited for the server environment)

The last time I checked it was actually quite the opposite.
Any specific reasons why you think that?

[ElCeejo]

I can confirm that mobkit is indeed faster in this case. My Chickens are 66% faster (less laggy) on average than a mobs_animal Chicken. Also keep in mind that my Chickens even use pathfinding and still manage to be noticeably lass taxing on servers.

[twoelk]

just had a glance.
nice mod
I really like the creature design although there is still room for improvement of course.
Goats and ducks would be nice for farms as well.

From there I would think wild versions of each that change to tamed versions (including model/texture change) if bred might be an interesting path.

[sirrobzeroone]

For myself it's anyone using the mobkit framework from scratch, not so useful for servers (fairly sure mobs:redo has a performance advantage and is better suited for the server environment)

The last time I checked it was actually quite the opposite.
Any specific reasons why you think that?

Sorry Termos Im slow on the keeping up, I've been reading around and around a fair number of threads on mobkit trying to get handle on brain building. I thought one mentioned a performance hit but to be honest I couldn't point you at the thread or even a date.....sorry

Really like mobkit wish I could link through to some info on that old NWN mod but I cant locate it

More on topic - Elceejo I have an Auroch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs) model I've been working on for a game I'm working on, It includes a male, female and calf version - the calf has male and female but its just a texture switch. Animations are walk, trot, run, die, eat(head down), chew cud and attack. If your interested I'm happy to share as b3d files and textures or the raw blends. I have some plans for my game to allow breeding from Wild>>Domestic but knowing me I'll never finish so happy to share :) (with anyone for that matter)



Edit: Upload to Git, I'll try and get my standard cow/bull/calf up as well. The animations I'm still working on, at the moment it's pretty basic - i used the same armature that I created when I fixed mob_redo_animals cow awhile back.
https://github.com/sirrobzeroone/Animal_Models

[ElCeejo]

Nice Models, I'll check them out. That being said, we have a patch!

- Fixed crash with Sheep

- New Raw/Cooked Chicken textures

- Whiter White Chickens

- New Pig/Chicken Spawn Egg textures

- Added Net craft recipe

[Sokomine]

Third, lag. I tested 1 chicken against a petz chicken and found that (according to the built-in profiler) my chicken causes 124% less lag on average against a petz chicken.

Certainly important for industrial-scale livestock farming. At least in an MT world they don't mind :-) And of course anything reducing server load without restricting functionality too much is great.

The chicken model and the straw they stand on look nice. Do groups of animals stick together? Where's the shepherd?

Animations are walk, trot, run, die, eat(head down), chew cud and attack.

The models look very nice in the screenshots. But it'd be great if the auerochses could lie down from time to time as well. They need to sleep sometimes...and chew their food a second time as well.

[sirrobzeroone]

Animations are walk, trot, run, die, eat(head down), chew cud and attack.

The models look very nice in the screenshots. But it'd be great if the auerochses could lie down from time to time as well. They need to sleep sometimes...and chew their food a second time as well.

Lol , I'm trying to add it back but a bit more efficiently than the way I did it for the mobs_redo cow, I need it back as I want it for sheep as they definitely sit way more than cattle. For the minute focused on wrapping up Mouflon(Sheep), next will be Red Jungle Fowl (Chicken). Then back to laying down, I might make my own thread just so i dont clutter up Elceejo's. I had most of the static models done for Cow/Sheep/Chicken (wild versions) with a rigged armature I could use for Cow/Sheep they "only" needed cleanup texturing and turning into male/female/baby. Chickens a bit more work as the armature animation is in-complete from memory.

[Sokomine]

Great to hear that the mobs will learn how to lie down and rest. Thank you!

Chickens a bit more work as the armature animation is in-complete from memory.

Probably matters less because they're smaller animals. The larger they become the more they have to do in order to appear realistic. Chicken may get away with some hopping around now and then :-)

[ElCeejo]

Thanksgiving is tomorrow in the U.S, and while it's not a holiday I'm very fond of, it's a perfect excuse to release a new mob, introducing the Turkey!

Turkeys are very similar to chickens in behavior, they drop more meat. This means that they are better to farm for meat than Chickens. They spawn in Taigas and Deciduous Forests in groups of up to 6.



This update also comes with support for frame blending, which makes animation transitions a lot smoother. Because not everyone is on 5.3.0, this feature is disabled automatically on versions 5.2.0 and earlier.

Happy Thanksgiving!

[sirrobzeroone]

Like the Turkeys :). I tried to find shears to shear the sheep but they seem to still be tied to "mobs:shears"?

[ElCeejo]

For the time being I've just left those as the shears to use until I can get around to doing an item overhaul. You may notice cows also drop "mobs:leather". Things like that will be changed by the time phase 2 is here.

[Ignaramico]

damn, those turkeys looks nice.
Will all your animals be practical?, just to know what to expect, with the petz mod i disable most of them except for the farm animals,

[ElCeejo]

The plan is to have practical animals like the ones included right now, animals that can assist the player in some way like the ones in the next phase, and animals that are there to add challenges and/or ambience. 2 things I have planned are rats that destroy crops, and owls you can "befriend" that will stay around your property and scare rats away, in this case the rats are a challenge, and the owl is both a solution to the problem in addition to being night time ambience. Once there are multiple groups of animals (livestock, ambient, pest, etc.) I'll add toggles for them.

[Adnunano]

The plan is to have practical animals like the ones included right now, animals that can assist the player in some way like the ones in the next phase, and animals that are there to add challenges and/or ambience. 2 things I have planned are rats that destroy crops, and owls you can "befriend" that will stay around your property and scare rats away, in this case the rats are a challenge, and the owl is both a solution to the problem in addition to being night time ambience. Once there are multiple groups of animals (livestock, ambient, pest, etc.) I'll add toggles for them.

So you are talking about porting these? https://github.com/Adnan1091/mobs_animal_pack awesome.

[freshreplicant]

The plan is to have practical animals like the ones included right now, animals that can assist the player in some way like the ones in the next phase, and animals that are there to add challenges and/or ambience. 2 things I have planned are rats that destroy crops, and owls you can "befriend" that will stay around your property and scare rats away, in this case the rats are a challenge, and the owl is both a solution to the problem in addition to being night time ambience. Once there are multiple groups of animals (livestock, ambient, pest, etc.) I'll add toggles for them.

Cool! The rat/owl thing sounds really nice. All for more ambiance. I would actually enjoy more mods that add birds, like even just tiny robins, sparrows and stuff that don't do much. Maybe you can feed them seeds or something? I use the Aero Test mod already, but sometimes the skies feel pretty empty (though I do have the wasps from d00med activated on my single-player worlds).

[cuthbertdoublebarrel]

love the turkey and chicken they look top notch sounds are spot on too , the rats sound a great idea . . A barn owl would really fit the stylized look.
One little problem . pathfinding ? the sheep appear to be moving too fast to follow when i hold wheat . they fail to navigate the open double metal doors that provide entry to my field . they will run straight to me, then when I go through the gateway . they will just run back and forth without turning . the Mobs sheep and pig appear to take more time to navigate and shuffle slowly into postion always turning to face me . i have wacked walk speed up to 8 so that maybe a factor . or prehaps its the snow and puddle patches from etheral . . nevertheless its still a great mod for adding realistic herd numbers as i observe when walking in the forests myself. minetest worlds are now starting to appear more lifelike .
not far off a RLcraft experience but without the corperate eyecandy. .