Cataclysm through a child's eyes

[Karol1223]

Summary

Content "Environmental storytelling about what children in the cataclysm had to go through"

Purpose of change

For absolutely AGES there's been a discussion about adding children NPC to the game and I am of the opinion that they should indeed not be added, at least not for a long while until they can be made in such a way that their implementation is both tactful and not annoying for the player.

However, there is no reason not to include environmental storytelling about children that had to endure the cataclysm and the events leading up to it. And that's what this PR tackles. New bugout bags and note snippets that tell some amount of stories of the children who had to go through the end of the world.

Describe the solution

Existing itemgroups

• Remove a bunch of items that spawn on zombie children that should not be spawning on them - currently affected: 2l plastic bottles, crack, breadboards, voltmeters, multimeters
• Clean up toastems and bottled soft drinks into their own itemgroups
• Make an itemgroup for pens, use it in place of where only regular pens spawned so far
• Make all children zombie variants actually use the child clothing itemgroup as opposed to the adult clothing itemgroup
• Make the child clothing itemgroup actually contain child appropriate clothing and not holsters, garter belts or hip flasks for FUCK'S SAKE

New itemgroups

• Toy and Child Snack bugout itemgroups that contain the items corresponding to their names and the attached note
• The Child Bugout itemgroup that contains both of those as well as some other items children running away may take with themselves

New items

• Children Notes and corresponding snippets telling the stories of children who witnessed the events of the cataclysm (or leading up to it) - Done, but we could always use more. The doc file is still open
• More toy variety
• School supplies
• Lunchboxes
• Other assorted stuff to make things work; Currently:
• Medical scissors

Other

• Make the children bugout bags actually spawn on zombie children
• Change numbers for pens and pencils
• Fix numbers and materials on scissors
• Obsolete makeshift scissors - I initially only added them to make a steel alternative, turns out scissors are almost always made of steel anyway and whoever changed the material to aluminum initially was in the wrong
• Obsolete dirty toothbrush and the 'grave' teddy bear. Both could easily be handled with filthy and damaged versions of existing items
• Children clothing (or most of it, anyway) should now spawn UNDERSIZE

Describe alternatives you've considered

Tons, really. Most regarding the stuff that is not in the PR yet, though. @GuardianDll rightfully suggested that children would likely not be using paper to write down notes the first thing all hell breaks loose, and that suggestion was on point, although I am of the belief that paper notes work far better for storytelling (and don't require c++ to add some form of text messages and the such to existing mobile phones we have in the game).

Testing

No errors anymore, which is nice. Spawning works mostly fine except for lunchboxes - for some reason they only spawn rotten food. Asked in the devcord and nobody was able to help me fix that.

Additional context

First and foremost - this is a very rough draft. I am not 100% sure what I want this PR to do other than what I outlined in the earlier parts of the description but I do believe there's room for more. I am very open to suggestions and I would ask anyone to point out any mistakes or nonsensical choices I may have made.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RsZBQ9dXbbicVxwYyYI9IQ8Zk8uFgFBZI_OAThe9I88/edit?usp=sharing - this is the link for the google doc that is open for edit and is used for writing down ideas for children diary snippets. No, I don't believe I can make enough of them myself, my creativity is very limited. And yes, I am purposefully keeping some grammar and punctuation errors because, well, they're supposed to be written by children

RE: Removal of crack from children zombies - I just know that some people will cry about this. This is a whales era artifact. It's been there since 2013 if I recall, and it does not fit the CDDA theme. We can't, at the same time, want zombie children to be unsettling and to upset the character's morale for killing them and go 'haha kids do drugs lolz'. This does not add up. Yes, there are children who do drugs, I am not denying this, but:

• this was not any attempt at realism given how common of a drop it was and for how long it stuck around
• the zombie children are, most of the time, implied to be around primary school level - if they were high schoolers, or hell even middle schoolers, I could see that working but not with primary schoolers

[GuardianDll]

Re:drugs, i think we can make some zombie variation, that looks_like zombie with a small note like "it was younger than zombies that surround him", where we can do teenagers stuff, including some rare drug loot

[Karol1223]

Re:drugs, i think we can make some zombie variation, that looks_like zombie with a small note like "it was younger than zombies that surround him", where we can do teenagers stuff, including some rare drug loot

Possibly. Seems like something not worth the effort to me, personally. Plus this gives me the same vibes that feral grandmas currently do. Just don't feel right.

[GuardianDll]

I mean, in the best scenario, having a variety of zombies instead of common "zed/fat/brute/child" would be nice touch

[ADekema]

Added some horror snippets for children that may or may not have gone feral.

[Termineitor244]

Added some simple but sad snippets that I could think to give more variety, also, the voltmeters and multimeters are my fault, I added them to the loot list because I thought zombie children represented a wider variety of ages, sorry.

[andrei8l]

Remove a bunch of items that spawn on zombie children that should not be spawning on them ... breadboards, voltmeters, multimeters

Some children play with these things. Are there are no electronics clubs for primary education-level children in New England? Children can still pick up electronics as a hobby for a variety of reasons (ex: super geeky parent(s)).

[Night-Pryanik]

Could you please check if wedding dresses still spawn on zombie children? I recall there were several posts on this matter on Reddit. I think these dresses shouldn't spawn on them.

[Karol1223]

Some children play with these things. Are there are no electronics clubs for primary education-level children in New England? Children can still pick up electronics as a hobby for a variety of reasons (ex: super geeky parent(s)).

You are entirely correct, the odds are there, this does not mean they should randomly have them in their pockets when they zombified. Having them in science classes, electronic clubs and possible their rooms at homes would make sense. Having them in their pockets really does not.

Added some horror snippets for children that may or may not have gone feral.

I absolutely forgot that kids would be going feral as well, that is a good catch!

Could you please check if wedding dresses still spawn on zombie children? I recall there were several posts on this matter on Reddit. I think these dresses shouldn't spawn on them.

I'll check in a bit and remove them if that's the case. Obviously they should not spawn on primary-school children, yeah.

[Karol1223]

Wedding dresses cannot be found on zombie children specifically but can be found on many of their variants, which is kind of weird. I'll take a look at fixing that when I have a moment.

[PatrikLundell]

I think other weird stuff can be found on children, such as sex toys, "sexy" clothing (high heels, garther belts, maid outfits...), and guns. Wedding rings are as out of place as wedding clothes, by the way (As an aside, multiple wedding rings can be generated on (adult at least) zombies currently, and I don't think polygamy is legal in the game area. I guess there might be weirdos who are serial marriagers and add the new rings to the collection, but that ought to be exceedingly rare. Another alternative might be if people take the ring from their dead spouse as a weird memento).

[Karol1223]

I think other weird stuff can be found on children, such as sex toys, "sexy" clothing (high heels, garther belts, maid outfits...), and guns. Wedding rings are as out of place as wedding clothes, by the way (As an aside, multiple wedding rings can be generated on (adult at least) zombies currently, and I don't think polygamy is legal in the game area. I guess there might be weirdos who are serial marriagers and add the new rings to the collection, but that ought to be exceedingly rare. Another alternative might be if people take the ring from their dead spouse as a weird memento).

There, currently, are at least like 7 child zombie variants that use regular zombie clothing group so yeah, I'm not surprised that it generates a bunch of weird shit like this. I'll take a look at the child clothing group to see if there's anything inappropriate there but I suspect it was because of the wrong itemgroup being assigned.

EDIT: Yeah the child-specific clothing group appears fine, you've got your culprit. I fixed it on my device already, I'll push the commit when I have a bit more time to add the new snippets from the doc file.

[andrei8l]

You are entirely correct, the odds are there, this does not mean they should randomly have them in their pockets when they zombified. Having them in science classes, electronic clubs and possible their rooms at homes would make sense. Having them in their pockets really does not.

Doesn't make sense is little more than a hand-wave. There are plenty of reasons for children to have these, or any other items, in their pockets. Maybe they were bringing class materials to/from home, or had just bought them for themselves or as an errand, or maybe they just picked up whatever garbage was nearby in their feral state before they died.

Child full of booze bottles because they went feral near a liquor store? That's environmental storytelling, not limiting them to an arbitrary set of items from a picturesque childhood.

[Karol1223]

Maybe they were bringing class materials to/from home, or had just bought them for themselves or as an errand, or maybe they just picked up whatever garbage was nearby in their feral state before they died.

These are all valid points but at that point it does not make sense for them to only have those specific items as opposed to pretty much any other item one could buy or find at school. The way I see death-drop itemgroups is we have the most likely things a person may have had on them before they turned and breadbords and voltmeters on a primary schoolers don't really fit in that line, I'd say.

Child full of booze bottles because they went feral near a liquor store? That's environmental storytelling, not limiting them to an arbitrary set of items from a picturesque childhood.

I'll be honest, I am not comfortable with that. If the general opinion of such a way of storytelling is that it's viable for the game and accepted then so be it but it is definitely not a territory I am comfortable with tackling. Giving primary schoolers alcohol problems doesn't sit right with me.

[Zireael07]

the zombie children are, most of the time, implied to be around primary school level -

I always thought they were high schoolers, due to the crack being a drop.

Speaking of drops: why shouldn't kids have 2l bottles?

[Karol1223]

Speaking of drops: why shouldn't kids have 2l bottles?

I was on the fence about the 2l bottles because it's something a kid may have carried when they turned and it's not particularly unlikely. The unlikely part is them somehow holding on to it after death. This one, though, I am open to possibly reverse. I wasn't 100% convinced about removing them.

[Karol1223]

Also the github-actions is going to annoy the everliving shit out of me throughout this PR huh. Well, I'm not adding typos to the dictionary, so I guess I have to live with this.

[DSeyka]

Heavy stuff, but great job.

[Nebnis]

Thank you a lot for adding all this, lore and descriptions is half of the reason i play this game.

[github-actions]

Spell checker encountered unrecognized words in the in-game text added in this pull request. See below for details.

Click to expand

• "Cooper killed the neighbors cat today. dad shoot him. He was not in the backyart when we came home."
• "DaIsy gOT eaTTEN by a giant roa… (the rest of the note is just unreadable smudges)"
• "Dad said he was going to get groceries two days ago. he didnt come home yet. he told me to stay inside the shelter but im getting scared. i think i remember where the grocery store is."
• "I went and keeped only necesary items like dad told me"
• "dear diary. mr pendanski showed me how to boil water today. he told me it stopps it from making us sick like ma and pa got sick."
• "i calld 911 but no one was there"
• "mommy and daddy told me to wait here untill they got back, but I dont know when theyre coming home. they’ve been gone for two days now. good thing I have rufus, hes a good dog."

This alert is automatically generated. You can simply disregard if this is inaccurate, or (optionally) you can also add the new words to tools/spell_checker/dictionary.txt so they will not trigger an alert next time.

[Killer-Kat]

Added a form like the kind that are often kept in these school bugout bags. So far just one variant but it would make sense to have several different variants of the same form (including blank or partly filled out forms) as these would be distributed throughout school districts. From my experience some people take this more seriously than others, and if its something that is included in premade bugout bags like the kind schools have then you would expect to find them.

[Karol1223]

I think other weird stuff can be found on children, such as sex toys, "sexy" clothing (high heels, garther belts, maid outfits...), and guns. Wedding rings are as out of place as wedding clothes, by the way (As an aside, multiple wedding rings can be generated on (adult at least) zombies currently, and I don't think polygamy is legal in the game area. I guess there might be weirdos who are serial marriagers and add the new rings to the collection, but that ought to be exceedingly rare. Another alternative might be if people take the ring from their dead spouse as a weird memento).

Turns out you were right, actually. Children clothing itemgroup did have several weird shit. Garter belts, weapon storage, hip flasks, cat tails (which technically aren't erotic but spawn in sex shops so nah) and wedding rings could all spawn on zombie children. I took care of that now but... yeah...