Prays & Blessings

[ozcodex]

Adds a new object, the efigy, that allows the player to raise one prayer each day. this prayer have a probability of result in a blessing from god, that replenish the hunger, energy and thirst.

Future plans include use the character lore tho change the probability of getting a blessing (for example: low if is atheist, higher if is believer), and also make each player to have a different god in which they believe. Im thinking also in include different effects for the different gods, even negative ones (maybe you preffer not to pray if your god is not a nice one)

im open to discussions about this idea. Also I would appreciate receiving a code review, since i have no experience coding mods for minetest, so a lot of mistakes could have been done.

[jeremyshannon]

All in all, this is a neat idea and appears to be written well, but I'm afraid it might have to live as an optional mod, as it clashes with the first point in Dokimi's design philosophy: #23

Genre: a hard-scifi core underneath an ambiguous fantasy-sci fi surface. Supernatural elements can exist, but there should be at least the possibility that a scientific explanation exists.

This is basically just straight-up magic. Which is a shame because it's a cool mechanic to invest some time early on carving a statue in exchange for a chance at filling your belly. I just don't see a way to explain it with technology that doesn't sound very hard to swallow.

[ozcodex]

Shame on me that forgot about that, but maybe we can change it a bit, making it not a miracle, and more some phsicologycal, remove the part where the stats are replenished, and just leave cool messages and make it more related to the lore.... less mystical/magic and more like a funny mechanic that allow us to define aspects of the personality of the player.

for example: keep a track of how many days the character pray, and if is at least 80% of lived days, give the trait 'devotee' in the biograpy tab, or if is less than 10% give the trait 'atheist'...

and some times the message is "nothing happens", but other times can be "you feel a soft breeze that comforts you"... and have like a tier of messages, and the players can try to pray every day to see if they get a different message.

I will think some good and even funny sentences and make the proposal.

[ozcodex]

By the way this is how the efigy looks

[ozcodex]

Thank you, i didnt know what happened with naturalslopeslib, sorry for that. I solve the issues and I think is done!

[jeremyshannon]

Code all looks good now! Though it occurs to me we could make something like your original idea work, if instead of just restoring your stats directly, it beams you a sort-of care package of special food that meets all your nutritional requirements, which is manufactured somewhere in the city below. The words of the prayer could be a memory of the proper request code for a machine in the city to send you food via a transporter. Though even if you got the words and everything right, the machines don't work very well anymore and may fail to receive your message or fail to make or send the food. I'm unsure how it would hear you though. @DokimiCU your thoughts on this PR and what I wrote?

[ozcodex]

I was thinking in a small boost in energy, since you feel better with yourself after praying, your hope and believes give you the encouragement to keep going.

we can also justify a small increment in hunger and thrist, as a psicholomatic effect, the character feels better with himself because thinks god is by his side, and manifest that as the strenght to continue working... is not like food and water coming from no-where, it's the determination of the character that makes him resist better the hunger and the thrist.

and about the old technology.... maybe add efigies in other materials, such glass, iron or antiquorium, the last two working as antennas that can be activated (casually some prayers have this effect, low probability) and result in access to this ancient mechanisms than bring the precious ambrosia.

[DokimiCU]

I haven't play tested this, so it's hard to judge, but here's some thoughts:

• this is why modding support is important #26. I love the experimentation and ideas. It's inevitable people will come up with stuff that is great content, but doesn't belong in the core game. This might be one of those times... maybe.
• This could be a great custom craft feature limited to specific character backstories #28. In fact, I suspect that's where this best belongs, rather than being accessible to all players at all times. e.g. your character has a "Priest" or "Shaman" backstory, giving them access. but maybe "Philosopher" or "Scientist" don't get this, they get something else.
• Small energy boost sounds good to me (rather than giving food or water boost - meaning the gods are real). In the sense of a psychological boost.
• Primitive player crafted items maybe shouldn't be able to trigger Artifact technology. e.g. an artifact might deliver teleported food, but not an idol made of sticks (makes more sense to me). Teleportation food idea is an interesting one, but don't see it needing to be "religious". e.g. it would be like worshiping the TV remote control ("Oh mystical power I press thy buttons!").

Overall interesting idea. I think using it as character backstory might be the way to go. We need something to fill out that feature, small weird and amusing things like this are perfect for that. This would add uniqueness to religious characters, and their struggles with their god abandoning them here.

[ozcodex]

I love the idea of this being linked to the character backstory, I will work over it, thank you DokimiCU for the comments, It's really appreciated. I will focus on the Role playing part and leave the technological part aside for now.

I have conflicts with the idea of block/enable crafts depending on backstories, from one side I think that all characters should have access to all crafts, but makes sense that the previous knowledge should affect your skills and the things that you can do!

Whenever I come with the next version of this idea I will put it on review again.

Even if the modding is an important part of the game construction, even more in an open source environment, I'd love to see this as part of the core game, so I will mutate it to match the philosophy of the game even if it result becoming something completely different!

To my mind comes ideal like instead of "Religion" this can become in background professions and and extra boost starting item or an extra craft available... This can be just an small mechanic, or create a entire different way to play exile (maybe I'm being too ambitious)

[DokimiCU]

Character backstories still needs a framework for how that will be handled, beyond just this idea. I'll leave that one to the skilled programmers. Suggest ideas under #28 .

Inspired by this I've added a suggested principle to Design Philosophy #23 (many ideas like this might best be handled by character backstories)

Also, this idea touches on potentially controversial subjects (e.g. religion), so I've opened a more general discussion #159.