WorldPulse

WorldPulse

Wildlife that reacts to hunting, seeks refuge, breeds and grows
For single-player worlds, friend-hosted worlds and dedicated servers.

Hunt the same area every day and its wildlife becomes scarce. Leave it alone and populations recover, with suitable neighbouring regions helping them return. Healthy wildlife can breed, and young animals grow into adults. Eligible animals can seek safer areas, while hungry predators search for prey, investigate food and remember successful feeding sites.

WorldPulse runs automatically in single-player worlds, friend-hosted worlds and dedicated servers. Install it and play. Commands are for administration and diagnosis.

■ Features

• Regional populations: each species has its own population health in every region, 8 x 8 chunks by default. Player hunting reduces future natural spawning there.
• Recovery and hunting pressure: populations recover over in-game days. Habitat and pressure affect recovery, while healthy neighbours can support recolonization.
• Physical breeding: eligible natural wildlife can produce young when parents, population health, habitat and native spawn limits allow it.
• Growing young: young animals start smaller and weaker, then grow gradually. Native juvenile roles are used when a reliable relation exists; otherwise the original model is scaled.
• Notices for each affected species: optional nearby chat messages cover decline, scarcity, recovery, hunting pressure, actual births and adulthood, with cooldowns. They are disabled by default; enable enableEcologyMessages in the JSON to receive them.
• Native and modded wildlife: registered role metadata supplies classification, models and names. No player setup or built-in list of another mod's animals is required.
• Predator food relations: conservative starter diets support eleven common terrestrial predator roles. Repeated native kills teach additional local prey links, and prey scarcity can reduce future predator spawning. Other unknown diets remain neutral.
• Persistent worlds: populations, pressure, breeding cooldowns, young animal state and learned food relations survive saves and restarts.
• Hungry predators: 20 configured native predator roles can search nearby loaded terrain for food using native navigation. Prey scarcity accelerates hunger. Supported predators can pursue compatible prey, and selected roles can hunt nearby players at higher hunger. Native aggression remains independent.
• Flock warnings: eligible natural adult wildlife can alert nearby compatible flock members to observed threats, using native defensive responses.
• Meat and Predator Bait: compatible predators can approach dropped raw meat or craftable placed bait and take time to eat.
• Investigation and food memory: supported predators briefly investigate and remember up to two successful feeding sites. Empty visits grant no food, and repeated unsuccessful returns erase the memory.
• Marker and beacon fauna: eligible natural animals from map markers and ambient beacons participate in ecology and breeding within their own native spawn limits. Pets, monsters and scripted encounters retain their exclusions.
• Seeking refuge: eligible natural adult animals can walk toward safer loaded neighbouring regions when hunting pressure rises. Native navigation, defensive behaviour, identity and spawn ownership are preserved.

■ How it plays

Each region keeps a population-health index for each wildlife species. Hunting reduces future natural spawning, while habitat, hunting pressure and suitable neighbours influence recovery. Existing animals are not removed. Healthy eligible wildlife can produce young animals within native spawn and collision limits.

Species names and capabilities come from the registered game data, including other mods. Eleven common terrestrial predator roles have conservative WorldPulse starter diets. Other unknown diets remain neutral until repeated natural predation supplies evidence. No player commands or manual species registration are needed for ordinary play.

■ Animals seeking refuge

This refuge implementation requires natural world-spawner ownership. Marker and beacon fauna keep their existing population, breeding and foraging rules; template compatibility alone does not enable relocation for those sources.

Eligible natural adults using the supported neutral walking template can leave a region under hunting pressure. The default starting threshold is 35% pressure. A destination must already be loaded, have at least 50% observed habitat suitability and pressure at least 15 percentage points lower. Predators keep their separate hunger-driven system; pets, monsters, scripted encounters, juveniles, aquatic animals and birds do not gain this refuge behaviour.

This moves existing individuals rather than creating replacements. Defaults allow four simultaneous journeys per world, at most 25% of the observed adult cohort leaving a region within five minutes, and at least two adults remaining. At least four eligible adults are needed before a departure can be reserved. Destination reservations limit incoming animals and participate in native spawn and breeding capacity checks. A journey has a three-minute deadline and a one-minute retry cooldown.

Native threat responses and combat take priority. Destinations are selected within 256 blocks and travel uses short native navigation steps through loaded terrain. A blocked path, lost habitat, role change, taming, death or unload releases the journey. Only successful arrival changes the native home point. Travel does not directly restore the population-health index.

Only the remaining loaded-time cooldown is saved with the animal. Restarting discards destinations and rechecks conditions; offline time does not create journeys. Completed journeys apply a five-minute cooldown. Use /wp inspect <role> for eligibility, destinations and blocking reasons, and /wp stats for movement counters.

■ Predator hunger and foraging

Eligible adult predators accumulate hunger only while loaded. With normal prey availability, the default pace is 24 loaded minutes from fed to fully hungry; known prey scarcity can double that pace. Searching starts at 50% hunger, uses 24-block steps and allows up to eight simultaneous searches per world by default. Successful eligible hunts reduce hunger.

Predators use native navigation and combat. They search nearby loaded terrain and suitable neighbouring areas, with bounded work and retries for blocked routes. Selected sufficiently hungry predators can pursue players they perceive nearby, subject to a separate threshold, pursuit limits and cooldowns. WorldPulse does not locate beds, homes or distant players and does not spawn or teleport predators to create encounters. Existing native aggression remains active regardless of hunger.

The default list contains 20 native roles. Adding a modded role to foragingRoles does not guarantee compatibility: the role also needs a supported native template, movement and usable metadata. Tamed animals leave this system. Loaded-time hunger and lifecycle state persist with the animal; offline time does not accumulate a queue of hunts or births.

Compatibility uses registered data rather than bundled copies or per-pack patches. WildTale 5.2 was checked alongside WorldPulse, including eligible wildlife and capture/taming transitions. Invalid third-party roles and item spawners remain the responsibility of their source mod. Foraging support is narrower than population tracking; an animal can participate in ecology without gaining a new foraging AI.

■ Predator Bait and remembered meals

Craft one Predator Bait from three raw wildmeat and two sticks through Fieldcraft Tools or Workbench Survival crafting, then place it on supported ground. Eligible hungry predators can detect loaded bait within 128 blocks by default, even without direct sight. Detection does not guarantee arrival: terrain, native danger responses, appetite, search limits and available routes still apply. Dropped compatible raw meat is a separate nearby food source.

Eleven meat-compatible predator profiles have brief investigation and feeding motions. Feeding takes time and requires the food to remain valid; interruption does not award a meal. Bait is a food source rather than a guaranteed trap or a way to summon animals.

Each predator can remember up to two places where it actually ate. Defaults retain those memories for sixty loaded minutes, allow a return after a ten-loaded-minute cooldown and limit returns to loaded locations in the same world within 128 blocks. Two unsuccessful returns forget a location. Memories are individual and are not inherited or shared; offline time does not advance them.

■ Hunting controls

Additional prey hunting, player hunting, domestic prey, flock alerts, dropped meat and placed bait have separate configuration switches. Additional player hunting starts at 85% hunger by default and permits at most two simultaneous player hunters per world. Disabling it does not disable the game's own aggression. Set enableDomesticPrey to false to exclude domestic animals from WorldPulse's additional prey selection.

■ Optional dependency

WildTale - Safaris, Animals & Zoos is an optional dependency that adds more wildlife to your world. WorldPulse works on its own with native Hytale wildlife. When WildTale is installed, eligible animals can participate in population tracking and breeding through their registered role metadata. Foraging, bait feeding and refuge movement each require compatible roles, templates and models.

■ Installation

1. Requires Hytale 0.7.0+.
2. Download WorldPulse-0.4.0.jar from the CurseForge Files tab.
3. Close the world or server. Replace the previous WorldPulse JAR in UserData/Mods/ or the server's mods/ folder, keeping only one copy.
4. Start the world. No player commands are needed. Configuration is created at mods/durkz_WorldPulse/WorldPulse.json.

■ Commands

Admin command: /wp. When enabled in the JSON, regular players receive ecology notices without command permission.

/wp here
/wp set <species> <percent>
/wp tick <days>
/wp reset
/wp stats
/wp inspect <role>

■ Config

File: mods/durkz_WorldPulse/WorldPulse.json. Restart after editing. Automatic ecology chat notices are disabled by default; set enableEcologyMessages to true to enable them. Breeding, foraging, refuge movement, messages, automatic wildlife discovery, habitat, migration, the food web and encounter features have separate toggles. Use enableAdvancedHunting, enablePlayerHunting, enableDomesticPrey, enableFlockAlerts, enableDroppedMeat and enablePlacedBait to control encounters. Investigation and feeding-site memory use enableFoodInvestigation and enableFoodSiteMemory. See the documentation for all defaults.

■ Permissions

• durkz.worldpulse.command.wp: access to /wp commands and update notices. Operators have it by default.

■ Recommended

• Start with the defaults and give populations several in-game days to respond.
• Additional player hunting and domestic prey are enabled by default. Disable their separate switches if they do not suit your world.
• Rotate hunting grounds. Raise recoveryDays or lower killImpact to adjust the pace.
• Use /wp inspect <role> before adding compatibility overrides. Most correctly classified wildlife needs no manual registration.
• Back up world data before changing regionSizeChunks; a different region grid changes how saved coordinates map to terrain.

■ Status and known limitations

Automatic discovery depends on usable role metadata and valid models. Broken third-party assets can exclude individual roles. Regional recolonization changes population health. Refuge movement for compatible natural adults and hunger-driven predator searches separately use native navigation through loaded terrain. Searches depend on terrain, prey and native behaviour and do not guarantee an encounter or arrival at a particular building. Automatic population tracking covers more roles than foraging, bait feeding or refuge movement; those behaviours require their own compatible templates and models. Existing animals are not culled. Ecology message sentences are currently English; species labels use available game translations with a readable fallback.

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