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[Thndr]

Just added a movie of the streaming forest on the development page.  Check it out:
  http://www.arboreantears.com/fief/     

Great! next comes, well... everything 

Also, if you have a city on 4 square miles of manor with ~150k....what are they eating? Trust me on this, you are not going to be able to feed that many people and house them on 4 square miles.

From your stats website: A square mile of settled land (including requisite roads, villages and towns, as well as crops and pastureland) will support 180 people.

In the modern world:
meat eater: 100 acres per human per year
vegetarian: 10 acres per human per year
vegan: 1 acre per human per year.

640 acres in a square mile
4 square miles = 2560 acres / 10 acres per person = 256 people you can feed off of 4 square miles
and that is with mechanized agriculture!

assuming a vegetarian diet for the paupers and somehow they are as efficient as modern agriculture:
~150,000 humans will require 2343.75 square miles

In the modern world, people eat a hell of a lot more than they used to in the past. What we consider a 'meal' would have more in common with the royals' meals than it would with the peasants' meals.

But your point still stands about the amount of space needed for farmlands.

[Zangi]

Don't forget, hunting is not confined to the estate...  though some others may be inclined to disagree or even have the gall to call it poaching... >.>

[quinnr]

_{Thread watch.} ^{This sounds awesome, btw.}

[LegoLord]

Here's the update:

   I just got back from a conference and the threat of my school work hangs over my head.  So for the next month or so I'll be putting Fief development on hold in order to keep my head above the threatening waters of grad school.  So in the mean time keep your spirits up and heads held high until the day we are building castles, planting crops, and assassinating peasants who speak ill of your name a little too loudly.  The world of Fief awaits...

    I'll update here as soon as development resumes.  Thanks everyone

Man that stinks.  Good luck with it though, this really does seem like a neat idea.

[Thes33]

Hey everyone!

   I think my school work is taken care of for awhile.  So it is back to Fief development.  Hooray!  I've been looking over the code and my pile of late-night scribbled notes from the last few months and things are getting complicated.  I'm going to try to rehash some of the engine this week and hopefully by next week I'll be back to full development.  My first items to tackle is to implement time and seasons into the game, then I'll get to items and tools, then to animals and plants.  I would like to get a survival-based demo out by the end of the summer.
     So here goes...

   Thanks everyone for your interest and patience! 

[quinnr]

-is still watching thread-

[Calhoun]

This is relevant to my interests. I look forward to more information.

[Dwarf]

Relevance to interest? Check.



Mac version, eventually sometime maybe?

[Paul]

Good to hear you're back at it. Too many of these things die before the developer ever gets a working version out

[Mephansteras]

Excellent!

[Grakelin]

In the modern world, people eat a hell of a lot more than they used to in the past. What we consider a 'meal' would have more in common with the royals' meals than it would with the peasants' meals.

But your point still stands about the amount of space needed for farmlands.

Then again, a seaman on Captain Cook's vessel during 1768-1771 would receive eleven pounds of biscuit per day, plus whatever the allocated vegetable/meat was that day.

That's half a ton per day for a crew of 100.

[Dwarf]

Yeah, they would eat a great amount. Medieval peasents were probably slightly underfed but they literally worked the fields the entire daytime.

Spoiler: To quote Hurstwic.org: (click to show/hide)

Norse Era Nutrition: After writing this summary of dietary practices in the Norse era, I was curious how Norsemen avoided deficiency diseases, such as scurvy (vitamin C deficiency). To find out, I did a nutritional analysis of hypothetical Norse era diets made up from the foods described in this article, using diet analysis research software developed at Syracuse University. I created hypothetical meals, using the foods that probably were available, creating different diets for each of the four seasons of the year. I assumed that a variety of foods were readily available, so this study is not applicable to times of famine, or to Norse era town dwellers.

For the first analysis, I assumed the kind of serving sizes that we consume during Hurstwic feasts. That analysis showed that it would be possible for people living in the Norse era to have a well balanced diet, even on a winter diet. Although some of the nutrients would have been a bit low by modern standards (for instance, less than 40mg of Vitamin C on the winter diet), no essential nutrient was so low as to suggest ill health, with one exception: energy.

I was surprised by the low caloric content of the diet: only 1200 Kcal (5MJ) for the winter diet. A Norseman could not have survived for very long with such a low energy intake.

I reanalyzed the diets, using much, much larger portion sizes. It required enormous quantities of Norse era foodstuffs to get the diet up to the 3000 Kcal (12.5 MJ) level, probably the minimum required for good health given the active lifestyle of that era. Serving sizes several times larger than would be considered normal today were needed: hundreds of grams (nearly one pound) of meat and fish; hundreds of grams of diary products; hundreds of grams of nuts and vegetables and grains.

With this much food intake, the analysis showed that all the key nutrients were consumed in adequate quantities. However, even a 3000 Kcal diet was probably insufficient to cover daily energy expenditures during much of the year. I analyzed required caloric levels for a hypothetical day of Norse era farm chores and hand labor. A energy expenditure of over 10000 Kcal (42MJ) was predicted.

This number is quite believable. Modern athletes routinely require these levels of energy intake, and a fascinating observational survey of college athletes' eating habits in 1983 showed that some athletes averaged over 11000 Kcal (46MJ) daily intake.

[...]

Archaeological evidence confirms this conclusion. A recent study of 11th  and 12th century skeletal remains from Skeljastađir in Ţjórsárdalur in Iceland showed little evidence of nutritional deficiencies.

[Paul]

Then again, a seaman on Captain Cook's vessel during 1768-1771 would receive eleven pounds of biscuit per day, plus whatever the allocated vegetable/meat was that day.

That's half a ton per day for a crew of 100.

where did you get that from? There is no way a vessel could carry enough food to feed its men 11 pounds of biscuit a day, let alone how much that would be to sit down and eat. You sure that wasn't 11 pounds a week or something?

[Zangi]

Interesting thing Dwarf has...  I do agree, having an active lifestyle amounts to needing a lot more calories.

Who knows how much nutrition/calories those 11 pounds of biscuit give.  Maybe they weren't paid all at once?  Maybe they ate 6 or so pounds per day?
The rest was paid out on shore leave, maybe in whatever coin conversion of the local market, the 'spare' biscuits owed as.

Need more information.

[Grakelin]

No, that was the ration they fed everybody per day, and you were whipped if you turned it down. I think if you look up documents from Captain Cook's second voyage, you will see that this is true.

Why couldn't a vessel carry enough food to feed its men 11 pounds of biscuit a day? Even if we ignore the fact that this particular voyage wasn't carrying any cargo besides some scientific instruments, a ship can carry many, many, many tonnes of cargo. They had a chance to stock up in South America, too, and then again when they were waiting in Tahiti.

After Brazil, however, their shore leave would have consisted of wandering around the shores of uncharted New Zealand and Australia. At least until they got to India, but then they were struck by massive death after their water was contaminated anyway.

Which I suppose made it easier to feed the survivors.