well, pets reduce the chance of being surprised by encounters, and they are another NPC follower you can give combat orders to.

It seems that the type of pet is more important than the amount of interaction with the pet, you could do a kind of Pokemon thing where players attempt to capture and tame powerful animals for their abilities.

This would go well with a hunting mechanic as it will force the player to decide: Will they kill the mammoth for huge amounts of food and other recources or tame it, for transport and a war beast.

If Norman is going for realism this would severely limit what animals can be domesticated. Many animals are wild and have a mean or stubborn streak that prohibits domestication.

A good real world example is horses vs zebras. They look the same but psychologically they couldn't be further apart.

Those animals could be tamed but never really domesticated e.g. you could perhaps have a mammoth learn that humans = food provider, but would they fetch, hunt or guard your camp? Not likely...

I was always told the simple rule "if it's in your house or garden it's domesticated and if it's in a circus it's tamed". There are still gotchas to this though. We have a bearded dragon lizard at home which is very much domesticated and a snake that obviously is only tamed.

If it's not obvious to the player what they can domesticate successfully before they try it could lead to some interesting emergent Gameplay...

Can you have an option to use the dog to hunt and follow a scent? E.g. you have some fox hide, you let the dog smell the fox hide and say "find it boy" and they sniff out and track the nearest fox for example. Would be good for finding meat or tracking an enemy caveman...

since you can control more than one caveperson, like a household in the sims, the game always stops the simulation and displays a message whenever any band member gets any kind of encounter. this gives the player a chance to react. i haven't figured out any way around this. because of this, any critters out there, you will at least already be aware that something is in the vicinity, even if you don't have a visual on it to make a positive ID as to critter type. animals spawn points are only at caves and rock shelters, and inside caverns, all others are random encounters. so its not so much go hunt for something as it is go to an area with lots of critters and wait for something to wander by. also, since most of the critters are megafauna, a dog can only take on maybe 10% of the types of critters in the game.

if you get an encounter, but don't know where they are or what they are, you can always give your dog an attack or alarm order. this will make it close for attack if it has target. when near their owner they automatically attack targets within 50 feet. but either way, at 20 feet they will decide fight or flight, and will only press the attack against equal or lesser targets.

Another one that might be implicit? "Keep guard", you can rest in peace in your camp and if an intruder comes close the dog wakes you.

that one's already in there. dogs decrease the chance of the party being surprised.

I was trying to suggest something that would avoid players trying to grind at dog-petting, and that kind of situation.

not sure there'd be much point. all you have to do is keep relations above zero to keep them from running away. at least that's the only effect i've thought of so far.

Also, why not have a spontaneous NPC triggered minigame opportunity?

its on the todo list. make NPC's spontaneously walk up to the player and engage in various dialog actions. on the todo list, one of the examples is "ask to go bowling" from GTA. <g>.

already in the game: when you encounter friendly cavemen, their leader may walk up to you and engage you in random dialog (exchange greetings, news, maps, trade, etc).

so that will be easy to add as an occasional AI action on the part of friendly NPCs near the player. and playing a mini game will be easy to add as one of the dialog options.

believe it or not i've only got 6-12 features like that left to do and the entire gameplay is DONE! nothing left but final graphics and help.

Honestly, the description makes going more in depth sound a bit on the tedious and Grindy side. Particularly since it sounds like a lot of menu surfing.

However some immediate examples of this concept that I do enjoy spring to mind.

For me, if an animal companion begets useful enjoyable changes in gameplay, I will be inclined to 'play/praise' them in any way I can express. I often pet Agro in Shadow of the colossus, despite it being meaningless. I love that horse, the gameplay we engage in together is sublime. So I pet him When things are calm, or after getting back on him after doing something epic.

I like my pets in minecraft, particularly horses and dogs, and even cats. I feed them nice things, I build elaborate dog houses and horse stables.... Because I appreciate what the pet does for me in game. The dogs have my back and the horse let's me travel faster and even expand my inventory (which is huge for me in Minecraft the way I play).

If I enjoy the animal I will seek out ways to praise it, whether its explicitly in the code or not.

I feel if that is something I am forced to do to keep the critter around, then it becomes a chore, and I will probably quickly begin to see the character as the mechanics I dislike and toss it off a cliff. If the critter is necessary to go through later levels of the game at a reasonable difficulty, then I will probably just hang it all up because of the tedium of simming the critter.