Beta 30 - pottery, skills and modding script

Beta version 30 published!

Skills are now grouped under categories COMMON, SPECIAL and TOOLS. There is a separate skill for each tool category like knives and axes. Skills are now defined in XML, making them moddable. Each skill has a learning curve, making some skills slower to learn. And some skills start to slowly degrade if not used regularly enough.

When people work together, the lesser skilled ones (typically children) gain more XP when they are accompanied by more talented person(s). Also, they perform better when instructed and guided by others. This is affected by the parenting skill of the teacher and the general skill of the student. Some skills, like smelting iron, are so hard to learn that it might easily take a few generations of accumulating experience to master the secrets.


Added pottery and related tasks; constructing a pottery kiln, crafting clay items and firing them to produce ceramics. There are mugs, bowls and jars



The barter logic now keeps track of player reputation; if you repeatedly make good deals with this or that NPC, they will remember you, being more likely to accept a lower barter if you eventually need to ask for one.

Added new ailments; bruise, fracture, broken bone. A wound and an infected wound. And a burn. And accidents. The likelihood of an accident taking place is affected mostly by character fatigue, and partially also by skill. An accident can simply spawn an ailment, or it can trigger  an interactive text story, so that player decisions affect the outcome.

Just like most other game elements, ailments, accidents and interactive text stories are defined in XML files making them fully moddable. The modding system uses a simple script language which can handle variables and logical conditions. Now there is also a GOTO statement which can be used to conditionally control the script flow. For an example see 'attack_ranged' in entry 'human' of animals.xml ; it now simulates each fired arrow individually, looping until there is a hit, or too many misses.