Flocks

Flocks brings new bird species to the world of Vintage Story, with a particular emphasis on seasonal migration and natural behavior.

During spring and autumn, flocks of geese and mallards take to the skies as the seasons change. Some geese and mallards descend to settle on lakes near the player, while existing populations gather and depart for the winter. Other flocks simply pass overhead.

Species

Beyond migration, Flocks introduces seven bird species to the world, each bringing a little more life to the wilderness:

• Greylag Goose, on lakes from spring to autumn
• Mallard, on lakes and ponds from spring to autumn
• Golden Eagle, over open high ground all year
• Grey Heron, wading in shallow water
• Herring Gull, on the sea along the coast all year
• Carrion Crow, on open land near trees all year
• Tawny Owl, in the woods at night

Behavior and Harvesting

Golden Eagles

The eagles in the mod are predatory and are treated as such. Each eagle keeps a territory over open high ground, where it perches on the most prominent point around, such as a peak, a crag or a tall tree, and soars in wide circles on rising air. When it spots suitable prey, it will sweep down at rapid speeds and strike, before eating a bit of the carcass and flying off.

The Mallard ducks are often preyed upon by the eagle, but are much better at avoiding its strike compared to the average hare, which almost always falls. Within the config there is a setting to let eagles strike chickens as well, but this is disabled by default.

Carrion Crows

Crows feed in small, wary groups on open ground. If the player comes too close, the whole group flies up into the nearest trees and waits there until it is safe to come back down, and at dusk they roost in the trees for the night.

Crows eat crops. In order to prevent this, the straw dummy has been repurposed as a makeshift scarecrow. Any crop within 15 blocks of the straw dummy will be safe, as it terrifies the crows. I am aware that crows adapt to the existence of scarecrows. This is a concession.

Waterbirds

Geese, mallards, herons and gulls remember being disturbed. A flock that keeps getting flushed becomes warier, and eventually abandons the lake for a couple of days. A flock that leaves in autumn will eventually return in the spring.

Tawny Owls

Owls are more often heard than seen. By day they roost hidden in the trees, and at night they hunt wood mice from tree tops and fence posts, hooting through the night.

Hunting

Arrows, other projectiles and melee attacks will bring a bird down, but a thrown spear will always miss. Birds drop poultry and feathers, with the larger birds giving more meat.

Installation and Compatibility

For Vintage Story 1.22. Install on both the server and every client.

Flocks works with these mods out of the box:

• Biomes: birds spawn and fly only in their own realms.
• Butchering: geese, herons, eagles and gulls become carcasses to butcher.
• Animal Cages: every Flocks animal can be caught and released.
• Scarecrow: Scarecrows scare away the crows, as one might expect.

Known Incompatibilities

 

• Synergy: with Synergy's default settings the game can crash a few minutes after loading into a world. To fix it, open VintagestoryData/ModConfig/Synergy.json, set "EntityLoadBudgetingEnabled": false and restart. The only cost is that entities appear all at once after a teleport instead of over about a second, which is how the game behaves without Synergy. If it still crashes, also set "EntitySpawnPriorityOrderingEnabled": false and "DeltaEncodingEnabled": false, and please let me know.

Separately, Synergy stops updating creatures more than 48 blocks from any player, which leaves Flocks birds frozen in mid-air. To keep them flying, add them to ActivationRangeExcludedEntities in the same file, keeping the smoke entry that's already there:
"ActivationRangeExcludedEntities": ["smoke", "crow", "eagle", "greylag", "gull", "heron", "mallard", "owl"]

 

Configuration and Commands

The server config, flocks-server.json, can switch each animal on or off, let eagles hunt chickens, and adjust crop raiding and how wary the waterbirds are. The player config, flocks.json, controls the flocks passing overhead.

Use /flocks send to call a flock overhead and /flocks schedule to see the day's migration plan.

Future Development

The mod is still in active development, with additional species and features potentially arriving in future updates. Planned additions include juvenile birds and, potentially, falconry involving the golden eagle. 

I am willing to replace the generated models (yes they are generated, yes I am scared) with ones made by willing artists. Assuming any artist is willing to be associated with this.

Credits and AI Usage

This mod uses AI. If that's a deal breaker for you, I extend to you my most humble apologies. If you want to argue about it, that's fine, I would just suggest finding a place other than the comments section. I need to know what works and what doesn't work, so feedback. That means keeping the discussion on the mod.

The Biomes realm data was contributed by Hydromancerx of the Biomes team.

The bird calls are real field recordings, shared under Creative Commons licences:

• Joost van Bruggen (greylag goose, wingbeats), CC BY-SA 4.0
• Wikimalte and V. P. Volkov (common crane), CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC0
• Extemporalist (geese overhead), CC0
• Aubrey John Williams, British Library (mallard), CC BY-SA 4.0
• Jonathon Jongsma (mallard), CC BY-SA 3.0
• Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart (mallard, carrion crow, gull colony), CC BY-SA 4.0
• Sharad Apte (grey heron), CC BY-SA 4.0
• Bubulcus (golden eagle), CC BY 3.0
• Lawrence Shove, British Library (golden eagle), CC BY-SA 4.0
• Sonothèque ADVL (herring gull), CC0
• Alvaro Ortiz Troncoso, Alexander Kurthy and Benoît Van Hecke (tawny owl), CC BY-SA 4.0

Full sources are in CREDITS.md in the download.