This update mostly deals with improvements to making clothes as we proceed to make the whole process more detailed, realistic and eventually also pausable.

The most notable additions on that front in this version are obtaining and crafting sewing needles, and harvesting tendons for sinew yarn making.
And more is to come, but that will have to await until next year.

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CHANGELOG

Version: 3.87 (stable)

** Saved characters from version 3.80-> are compatible with this version. **

 - added: tendons and sinew

          You can now harvest tendons from butchered animals. The tendons can then be processed into sinew yarn. While yarn spun from plant fibers requires a lot of work and season-dependent processing, sinew yarn can be made year-round with varying amounts of effort.

          Tendons are usually harvested from the legs of large mammals such as elk and reindeer, but tendons from smaller animals — starting from hare-sized ones — can also be used, though they yield less useful sinew.

          The bigger the tendons, the more convenient it is to utilize them, as the process of extracting sinew fibers for sinew yarn involves several steps.

          Tendons can be picked up from the ground after butchering a decent sized animal. They are categorized as food type items in character's inventory, even though fresh tendons are too tough for humans to chew. The actual processing of tendons is then done with these new TEXTILECRAFT commands within Make menu:

          * Tendon drying

            First of all, fresh tendons need to be dried. They will also spoil in few days if not dried, so it's best to do it soon enough after butchering.

          * Separate sinew fibre

            Next, the dried tendon is pounded with a club or similar tool on a hard surface until the sinew fibres begin to separate. The obtained bundles of sinew fibre are categorized as tool type item in character's inventory.

          * Sinew yarn

            Finally, the sinew fibers can be twisted together to form sinew yarn. This is done entirely by hand, as a spindle cannot be used. As a result, making sinew yarn is much slower than spinning plant fiber yarn. It is even slower than making plant fiber yarn by hand, but the simplicity of the other steps compensates for the extra time required. The downside of sinew yarn is that it is vulnerable to moisture, as getting it wet will cause it to soften, stretch, and come undone. For this reason sinew yarn cannot be used in fishing tackle.

 - added: TENDON, SINEW FIBRE and SINEW YARN game-encyclopedia [F1] entries

 - updated: TEXTILECRAFT game-encyclopedia [F1] entry

 - added: water-use yarn is now required for fishing tackle

          As the sinew yarn isn't suitable for wet conditions there's now new yarn type requirement; water-use yarn. This covers all other types of yarn except sinew yarn, and water-use yarn is now required for fishing tackle.

 - added: easier browsing of crafting and cooking options with [ESC] returning to parent menu

          Upon browsing sub-categories of Make menu, mOdded handcrafts menu or cookery options, pressing [ESC] now gets you back to the parent menu rather than exits completely. This makes looking for a specific entry far more convenient, especially for newcomers.

 - changed: craftable containers moved to their own category in Make menu

          All the craftable containers now appear within their own "Containers" category in the Make menu.

 - added: nested menu for making clothes

          Upon selecting [C]lothes option from Make you will now enter a sub-menu with three categories; fur clothes, leather clothes and miscellanous clothes. Options to make clothes from different materials are arranged into these nested categories. Miscellanous category contains the few birch-bark accessories.

          This new menu arrangement preceeds the upcoming clothmaking improvements and more nested categories will be added in the future.

 - modding add: new diy_* submenu tags for adding clothes into the new categories

          There are now "fur clothes", "leather clothes" and "miscellanous clothes" submenu tags to use when adding items into these new clothmaking categories.

          For example, to add new items to miscellanous clothes menu place your diy_*.txt item definitions between the following lines:

          [SUBMENU_START:miscellanous clothes]

          ...your items go here...

          [SUBMENU_END:miscellanous clothes]

 - added: sewing needle - for making clothes

          There are two types of sewing needles; iron sewing needle and bone sewing needle.

          Iron needles can be obtained from the village blacksmiths and bone needles can be crafted by the player character from Make menu under Utility articles.

          A needle is now often needed in making of clothes. There's no distinction between leather or cloth sewing needle although in reality different materials would require a different kind of needle.

          Iron sewing needles are more expensive and also more handy to use.

 - adjusted: material and equipment requirements for making clothes

          A needle and yarn are now needed in making of almost all the leather and fur clothes. There are only few exceptions where using other kind of tying equipment and/or only a knife is sufficient.

          The following pieces of clothing don't need sewing in their making. For these pieces cordage requirements have been checked and adjusted.

            * leather belt           - no changes in requirements

            * leather cuirass        - no changes in requirements

            * leather forearm guards - 9 ft of thin cordage is now required

            * leather shin guards    - 9 ft of thin cordage is now required

            * fur cloak              - 3 ft of thin cordage is now required

            * fur hood               - 3 ft of thin cordage, and 1.5 lbs of fur is now required

          To make these fur clothes yarn is now required as follows:

            * fur cap     - 15 ft of yarn

            * fur shirt   - 60 ft of yarn

            * fur mittens - 9 ft of yarn

            * fur leggings - 18 ft of yarn and 4 ft of cord

            * fur footwear - 30 ft of yarn

            * fur overcoat - 75 ft of yarn

          To make these leather clothes yarn is now required as follows:

            * leather cap      - 9 ft of yarn

            * leather shirt    - 60 ft of yarn

            * leather leggings - 18 ft of yarn and 4 ft of cord

            * leather shoes    - 12 ft of yarn

          For the birch-bark clothes the amount of birch-bark has been checked and now required as follows:

            * birch-bark shoes - 60 ft of birch-bark strip is now required

            * birch-bark cap   - 75 ft of birch-bark strip is now required

 - added: pausable repairing of clothes

          Repairing clothes is now pausable tasks allowing you to have breaks and continue at will later on. To continue paused repairing, use the repair option again standing beside the said partially repaired item. Depending on the cloth you may now also need newly added requirements eg. needle and thread also in the repairing process.

 - added: repairing of birch-bark clothes

          It is now possible to repair birch-bark clothes, ie. birch-bark cap and birch-bark shoes.

 - fixed: feathers on the ground not being consumed when making arrows

 - fixed: irrational damage for the armours reclaimed from robbers, or other NPCs

          Player character's armours that ended up in the hands of robbers, or other NPCs, often experienced irrational damage upon being retrieved. This has been fixed now, but as a result migrated characters may encountering NPCs whose gear is in top-notch condition if their armours were assigned in the previous version. Newly generated NPCs will utilize the fixed armour damage system and condition of the gear in their possession, or reclaimed from them, will be rational.

 - fixed: broken "menudef_*.txt" submenu functionality

          New modded "menudef_*.txt" submenus displayed normally in the Make menu, but they couldn't be opened.

 - fixed: using spruce withes in the making of shingle basket handle was not possible

          This was due to missing no minimum length [nominlen] tag in the tying equipment requirement.

 - fixed: double link for "pot" in Tools chapter in the game encyclopedia

 - fixed: making boards from logs produced branches too

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Cheers!