Status Updates!

I've had two new crafting type mods in the works this month, and one of them sort of led to the other. I lost some time to the flu this month, but got pretty far on these in the meantime.

Apothecary Mod

The first is one that adds an Apothecary skill (tentatively named at this point -- I considered 'Pharmacology' as well). It's about drugs, but the medical kind, not the Basemental kind. This skill allows your sim to make several (about 20) new products on the Chemistry Lab from GTW. 

The premise behind this mod is that years have gone by before scientists 'discovered' the various Serums in the scientist career, and they are now being produced by pharmacists, etc. Same idea with Herbal potions from Outdoor Retreat. 

While discovering a new serum is research, simply following a recipe to make the serum is much easier. Also, it's hard to mass market open flasks or mason jars of brackish, twig filled liquid so maybe there should be a better delivery format for retail consumers.

Here are the new types of products so far:

Herbal Potion Gummies

Herbal Gummies come in bags of 6, and eating one provides the same effects as drinking an herbal potion of the same kind. 

Serum Tablets

Serum Tablets come in bottles of 6 and provide the same effects as drinking a serum from the Scientist career.

At the moment, the ingredients for one of these is the same as for a potion or serum, but I may adjust the quantities required. Some of the serums and tablets are pretty powerful ("Ox Strength" is kind of startling, for example. Your sim instantly becomes musclebound). 

My plan is to make it possible to sell both of these in quantity to the Hospital. It would also be nice to be able to buy them from various vending kiosks.

Progress

I have all the potion and serum crafting recipes working, and still need to come up with about a dozen custom bag and bottle labels. Also need to hook up the sell-at-hospital interactions.

"We can't mine here, this is bat country!"

Mine Crafting

When I was working with the Apothecary mod, I noticed that it was kind of hard to find metals for the recipes.  I like to be able to produce the materials needed for my crafting mods, rather than have to hunt around for them, so I came up with the Mine Crafting idea. With it, you can 'farm' crystals and metals by building and improving mines, then excavating their resources.

Mines can be built using Mining Charges, which you can place anywhere they fit, including off lot (so you can go dig a bunch of mines in Granite Falls if you wish).  Once the mine is constructed, you can excavate for crystals or metals. Mines have limited resources and can be exhausted. Once they are out of minerals, they can be dug deeper. You need a pickaxe to work in the mines, and they can wear out over time. There will be upgraded pickaxes available that are more reliable and productive. There may also be more references from Minecraft...

I think it would be fun if you could end up with a specific type of mine, like a gold mine or a diamond mine, so I might do something to implement more specialized mines. Then you can have "The Lost Windenberger Gold Mine" in your game, if you like. I think that regions should be differentiated by different types of resources, so I'm going to add more of that, so that gold is more common in Sulani and diamonds in Selvadorada, for example.  

Mines need to be cleared of debris periodically, and the more debris that builds up, the more hazardous and less efficient mining becomes. Hazards include collapses (mine is out of commission until cleared), flooding (same) and getting haunted (which makes mining fairly scary and can summon ghosts to the nearby area, as well as bats).

Mineralogy Skill allows you to dig deeper mines. In addition to getting access to more resources, deeper mines also provide rare minerals and crystals. Mines can get upgrades to include things like water pumps (to prevent flooding), reinforced beams (to prevent collapses) and conveyor belts (to remove debris automatically).

"You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike..."

Since most of the mining interactions are in a rabbit hole (ie., inside the mine), I'm working on some Adventure Moments that can occur while you're down there (warning: I have the entire transcript of the "ZORK I" text adventure sitting here, lol).

All in all, I'm hoping to create a 'gardening' type feel for mining, in that it can be done at home (or off lot), requires regular upkeep of some kind, and is also something you can get better at to make more money. I am going to add some interactions to allow you to sell metals and crystals to the Science Lab as well. Although it's basically a rabbit hole, this gameplay is working out to be fairly interesting so far, as it's a bit different than anything else in the game right now.

Smelting and Refining

To help you create value added products from mined metals and crystals, the Mineralogy skill allows you to refine crystals into Gems on the Archaeology table, and adds a new crafting type named Smelting. Smelting uses a Smelting Station to refine metal nuggets into ingots, which are worth far more.

I added gold and silver as metals you can find, since they exist in game (as various objects), but you can't find it anywhere. 

The completely obvious next step after this would be to make things from the ingots of metal. I'm thinking a lot about that (and have various ideas so far). It might end up as a subsequent mod.

Progress

At the moment, you can build a mine, mine it until it's out of resources, make it deeper, manage debris, smelt several types of ingots and refine crystals into gems. I have more ingot types to add, and still need to add adventure moments, implementation of a few hazards and selling the products to the Science Lab. 

Cyberpunk Mod Update

I'm still looking for the hook that makes this one fun. Right now, it's sort of an active delivery career (since most Cyberpunk protagonists seem to have delivery careers...) with a lot of new nifty tech gadgets. It's needs something I haven't figured out yet -- some sort of progression and/or set of goals, idk.  I'll find it. :)

If you have any ideas or feedback about these works in progress, this is the best time to let me know! I'm always happen to hear what you think.