FurstMate 0.9.6 (beta)

Three ship's animals for Sailwind: a dog you buy, a tavern cat you win with food, and a wild booby who finds you at sea. Each one lives aboard your ship, needs feeding, and does a job for you.

This is a beta. Everything below works in testing, but it has only been sailed by one captain so far. Please read Testing the beta at the end and tell us what you find.

All three work the same way with your hands: look at her to read her name, what she is doing and her food; hold food and click her to feed her; click her with empty hands for her board.

The full FurstMate Manual, with pictures of every pose, comes with the mod. It covers every behaviour, every note and every setting.

The dog: an Aestrin Shepherd

• Find her on Bone Isle, about 12 km north-west of Fort Aestrin. Anchor off the long south-east beach and walk up to the terrace below the lighthouse. The keeper is at the kennel gate from 7:00 to 18:00.
• Buy her: click the keeper, his puppy or the sign; click again within 8 seconds. She goes aboard your ship. You need a ship of your own.
• She grows up over a year of game days (the Climate mod's year, or 92 days without Climate): puppy, young pup, big pup, half grown, nearly grown, full grown. A note tells you each step.
• Feeding: hold food and click her. Meat and fish fill her three times as much. Bowls and soup mugs from Vittles and Stir-Fry work. At 0% she falls asleep and does nothing until fed.
• Commands on her board: Heel, Stay (a minute for each day of her age, up to 92 minutes full grown), Sleep, Sleep spot, Pet. Here (Alt+H, or the F1 switch Here now) brings her to you, or makes the ship or home you stand on hers.
• She walks the decks with you, up and down stairs and through open hatches. A shut hatch or door stops her as it stops you.
• Her job needs the Dangerous Waters mod: she scents a pirate at 1 km and gives tongue; full grown, fed and aboard, boarders take one item fewer and half the coin, and with her at your side each blow to their nerve costs them 15% more.
• Weather: ordinary waves don't bother her. A storm or a hard lean and she braces; a severe storm sends her to shelter, whining.

The cat: the ship's mouser

• Find her in the tavern at Gold Rock City, on the rumour man's table. The bartender will warn you about feeding her.
• Win her: hold food and click her. Step aboard a ship of yours and she is there.
• Her job: all the food on her ship spoils 40% slower, Vittles and Stir-Fry dishes included, even while you are ashore.
• She lives her own life: strolls between her roosts, washes, sleeps, hunts under way and plays with what she catches. Each mouse adds 1% to her food, so she needs feeding far less often than the dog.
• Pet her from her board and she settles and purrs.
• She crosses to another ship of yours within 50 m by herself.

The bird: a wild booby

• She finds you: sailing over 3 knots in warm open water, more than 6 km from land and out of the storms, a booby may come in from astern and land by you. A visit lasts 10 to 15 minutes, and she comes down to you three times.
• Keep her: hold fish or meat (a raw slice will do) and click her. Let three visits pass unfed and she stops coming (F1 Reset her tries now starts them again).
• Her jobs: she senses land within 75 sea miles and calls from the bow; in fog or heavy rain with land hidden ahead she hangs over the bow and cries; in calm weather she dives and drops a real raw fish on your deck now and then.
• Perches: mast tops, yard ends, the bowsprit, and the rails by you.
• She feeds herself by diving under way, and comes to whichever ship of yours you stand on.

Living at home

Press Here inside a home you own, and the dog and the cat live there instead of on a ship: in the house and on the ground around it (20 m by default, F1 Home). Stand on a ship of yours and press Here to take them back to sea. The bird stays with her ship.

F1 settings

Every number in this README is a setting: prices, sizes, the dog's name and coat colours, how fast bellies empty, how loud each pet is and how far each sound carries, the bird's chances and waters, and more. Each has a note in the F1 menu, and the manual lists them all with their defaults. The Testing section has switches to give, starve, tame or summon a pet at once.

Works with

• Dangerous Waters: the dog's work against pirates. Without it she is company only.
• Climate: the dog's year follows Climate's year.
• Vittles and Stir-Fry: bowls and soup mugs feed the pets; the cat's spoilage cut covers their dishes.
• Stock ships and modded ships alike: each pet reads the decks of the ship she is on.

Installing and removing

Put the FurstMate folder in BepInEx\plugins. It holds FurstMate.dll, three model files (furstmate, furstcat, furstbird) and a Sounds folder. All of them must stay together.

FurstMate keeps your pets in the save's mod notes, which the game holds on to but ignores without the mod, so a save still loads without it. Long play without the mod has not been tested.

Testing the beta

Please tell us when something looks wrong: a pet stuck, walking through a wall, on the wrong deck, too loud, or simply not doing what this README says. Each report helps most with:

1. what you were doing, which ship, and where on her you stood;
2. the file BepInEx\LogOutput.log, from the same game session, before you start the game again (it is replaced each time the game starts).

Pressing Here (Alt+H) fetches the dog or the cat out of almost any trouble.

Credits

• Models: the dog, puppy, cat and booby were made with Meshy (Models created with Meshy, CC BY 4.0), then cut, rigged, posed and animated for the game by Dixiecapt.

• Booby calls from xeno-canto, cut and cleaned:

  • Roger Ahlman, XC135237, www.xeno-canto.org/135237, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
  • Oscar Campbell, XC332855, www.xeno-canto.org/332855, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
  • Manuel Grosselet, XC335797, www.xeno-canto.org/335797, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

  The files made from them (bird_call.wav, bird_alarm.wav, bird_brown.wav) are shared under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: free to use and change with credit, not for sale.

• Wing beats (bird_beat1-7.wav): cut from Bird Wings by Dragon Studio, Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

• Dog sounds: Pixabay (Pixabay Content License).

• Cat sounds: Pixabay (Pixabay Content License), with purrs and meows from BigSoundBank and freesound (CC0: cubilon, lostphosphene).

• Mod, behaviour and testing: Dixiecapt.

Version history

• 0.9.6 (beta 1): the first public build. The dog, the cat and the booby, with their deck maps, stairs and hatches; pets at home; Pet for the dog and the cat; Stay that grows with the dog's age; pets used to ordinary waves; quieter, shorter-carrying panting and bird calls; the bird's perches found on rails, mast tops, yards and the bowsprit.