Farm negative free space issue addressed, and max number of interactable livestock while others shelter

[Rias]

Per the recent changelogs:

- Farms that have ended up with negative free space will now prevent most farm-related actions until the free space amount is no longer negative. (The till clear command can be used to reduce planting soil field size, or demolish to demolish structures taking up space.)

- There is now a maximum amount of interactable livestock on farms at any one time. The lead in and lead out commands can be used to lead livestock into or out of their associated shelters. Entering farmland with sheltered (and therefore hidden) livestock will give a message noting as much. Looking at an animal shelter will display any livestock currently sheltered in it. The farm animals command can be used to view all livestock on a farm, both sheltered and unsheltered.

Regarding the update to interactable livestock: This was a necessary update to keep the server performant. We have some farms with quite a few animals on them, and the more mobs there are in the same room, the more the AI scripts have to work to make all those mobs consider each other for their various action scripts. One farm had well over 100 animals and was responsible for an impressive percentage of the CPU load. This isn't meant as a punitive action - this is all my code, and it's on me if it's not efficient - but it is nonetheless necessary to keep the server from getting bogged down with lag, which has been an increasingly common complaint, and culminated in a recent crash.

[Gorth]

This has been a long term worry of mine, especially as I see farms screen scroll twice over with livestock eating food. Assumedly livestock inside of shelters will eat, still, and livestock out of shelters will still go into shelters in the rain?

Additionally, for those like me who like to wrap things up as neatly as possible, could we maybe have a command to let in all sheep or all livestock or similar? That'd be cool.

[Frisbee]

This is a very welcome change, thank you! I hope it does contribute to less server load going forward.

I would like to suggest one more potential use for the farm animals command. I believe it would be immensely helpful if it gave us some more information about each animal, apart from its shelter status, depending on what type of livestock we're looking at, such as its nutrition or how recently it's been milked/sheared. Something to think about!

[debaquila96]

Per the recent changelogs:

- Farms that have ended up with negative free space will now prevent most farm-related actions until the free space amount is no longer negative. (The till clear command can be used to reduce planting soil field size, or demolish to demolish structures taking up space.)

- There is now a maximum amount of interactable livestock on farms at any one time. The lead in and lead out commands can be used to lead livestock into or out of their associated shelters. Entering farmland with sheltered (and therefore hidden) livestock will give a message noting as much. Looking at an animal shelter will display any livestock currently sheltered in it. The farm animals command can be used to view all livestock on a farm, both sheltered and unsheltered.

Regarding the update to interactable livestock: This was a necessary update to keep the server performant. We have some farms with quite a few animals on them, and the more mobs there are in the same room, the more the AI scripts have to work to make all those mobs consider each other for their various action scripts. One farm had well over 100 animals and was responsible for an impressive percentage of the CPU load. This isn't meant as a punitive action - this is all my code, and it's on me if it's not efficient - but it is nonetheless necessary to keep the server from getting bogged down with lag, which has been an increasingly common complaint, and culminated in a recent crash.

Greetings everyone,
this change is great, also because when you look around you don't see many, many animals if a farm is very big.
However, I found myself confused this morning when I went to shear my character's sheep and alpacas. I had to name every animal with a number, and by this way I culd match everything.
There should be for example a slight change, in my opinion.
or specifying which ewe should be lead out, like... lead out ewe 3 from shed, or... lead out ewe 4 from shed 2 and so on.

[tulpa]

One solution might be to name each animal, as you would likely do in real life, with the NAME command. Most of the animals on my farm (except for the alpacas, because they're destined for the slaughterhouse) have actual names. So I can simply LEAD IN William, or LEAD OUT Cuthberta, and I don't encounter this problem. I can understand how that might be an involved task with over a hundred animals, mind! But it works well enough.

[Gorth]

One solution might be to name each animal, as you would likely do in real life, with the NAME command. Most of the animals on my farm (except for the alpacas, because they're destined for the slaughterhouse) have actual names. So I can simply LEAD IN William, or LEAD OUT Cuthberta, and I don't encounter this problem. I can understand how that might be an involved task with over a hundred animals, mind! But it works well enough.

This is why I offered my all in a a category idea above. I don't like to name livestock because, as a proud owner of twenty + beautiful sheep babies, having all of them named is a chore to read as a blind player.

[Firerose]

hello all.
I'd like to echo the following, and request it, please.
- Numbering livestock: lead out ewe 3 from shed 2
- Allow eight animals, not five, to be out at any given time. My OCD brain is upset I cannot have all alpacas, or eight sheep of a certain color, out at any given time.
- I like the idea of having information about when the animals were sheared or milked last. (Numbered in days and bells, if nothing else. Keep it somewhat vague if that's easier.)
- Let us be able to sort which animals go in which sheds. One farm has sheep spread out, alpacas, etc. I'd like to have the option of putting only alpacas in one, with brachelyr if wanted, sheep in another, etc. And if people don't care about such things, let the game do it as it already has.
P.S. Can we have a real description for sheep, please?