Bay 12 Games Forum

So I'm channeling out a pit in my fort for some goblin killing and I noticed this:



Somehow, one of the miners got stuck in mid-air above the pit with 2 or 3 z levels of open space beneath her and didn't fall.  She was just stuck there in the air, Looney Tunes style.  I had a wall built in that narrow passage so the dwarves wouldn't try pathing down it, and I thought somehow maybe the wall got her stuck?  I deconstructed it and she stayed there in the middle of the air.  Then to make things more weird, she pathed into the passage, then stepped back out into the middle of the air where she was without falling again and then back into the passage and went on her merry way. 

Still scratching my head over this one.

After several failed starts, I think I'm about ready to do some serious DF modding.

The modifiable nature of DF has always been interesting to me.  People often say DF has a high learning curve, but I've never found it to be the case; rather I think the modding is the serious learning curve.  Or if DF has a steep learning curve, then DF modding is a sheer cliff a thousand feet high.  In any case, I've been having some trouble wrapping my head around the basics, but I think I understand them enough to start playing with things now.

The first mod I played with was the Dig Deeper mod in late 31.25.  There was some interesting stuff in there and it gave me my first ideas of what could possibly be done with modding.  I was running a big vanilla fort though, and I didn't want to simply abandon it.  So I waited until 34.02 came out (waiting for stuffs like Therapist and DFHack) and then tried to use the mod to make a new fort, but it wasn't compatible and the game crashed when the humans came to trade.

So I thought about trying to mod myself instead of just adding new material.  The first thing that came to my mind concerned custom workshop reactions, I thought it should be possible to have the dorfs make bread in the kitchen.  I checked the wiki for info on custom reactions, but I wasn't sure how to tell the game to make a bread item.  Checking here, I noticed at least both Genesis and Masterwork had a bake bread reaction, very similar to what I thought was the right way of doing it.  The one thing that had me confused was the output, both mods used the same code (I'm guessing from a common source somewhere), but told the game that the bread was a type of cheese (the more I see dwarf cooking, the less I want to experience it for myself ).  I assumed from that that modding can't create an item type from scratch, but it has to be related to something in the game already.  So I simply copied the code into a new file, genned a new world to test it...and nothing happened.  I tried several times, and confirmed it worked in MW with a quick test, but I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, so I ditched it.

So about two weeks ago, I was playing around a bit with adventure mode, and read on the forums here that I could give non-human sites human-like cities by adjusting a few lines in the code.  I did that, but I noticed the entity file had a whole bunch of lines that read [PERMITTED_REACTION:...].  My jaw dropped; apparently this is what I was doing wrong, I need to tell the game that dorf civs can bake bread.  So I put in the new line of code...and nothing happened again.  I took another look through the raws, and found that I needed to adjust all the plants that make flour so that game knows the flour can be used to make bread.  Did that and tested it again, this time the kitchen did allow for bread baking, but it was all coming out as cave wheat plant, whip vine plant, etc.  I haven't fixed this problem yet, but I think I'm supposed to add a material template for the bread too.  In the meantime, I ran a Masterwork fort to get some more practical experience in seeing what I can do with mods, and it gave me some ideas of what I can do with modding.

So, I haven't gotten around to getting bread off the ground yet, but I've already added some custom content.  I'm starting off with the Black Powder Firearms mod, and I'm going to add stuff from the Flora and Fauna mod.  I don't want to use everything from Flora and Fauna though.   I'm mostly satified with the vanilla selection of normal animals, though I did add various extinct stuff like mammoths, smilodons, terror birds, etc. for some interesting additions to savage areas.  I'd really like to add some dinosaurs as well (I'd prefer this stuff over the hordes of useless animal people for savage areas, to give them a kind of lost world feel), but the only ones I've seen are the sauropods and raptors in Masterwork, and that mod has an altered body plan, so I'm fairly certain I can't just copy that stuff into my raw folder and get it to work properly.  I checked a while back, but it didn't seem like there were a lot of serious attempts to add dinos in the 31.x days.

The plants are good, but I want to check them carefully to see what their uses are, and eliminate stuff that's very similar or which has limited use (i.e. food only).  Also, I want to make my own underground plants.  There doesn't seem to be anything wrong in particular with the Flora and Fauna underground stuff, but there's a certain logic I want to go with for new underground plants.  Vanilla underground plants are pretty simple and work like this:

• Plump helmets, the basic dorf staple, grows year-round and can be used for food and drinks.
• Sweet pods grow in the spring and summer and can be used for drinks and cooking ingredients.
• Cave wheat grows in the summer and autumn and can be used for drinks and cooking ingredients.
• Pig tails also grow in the summer and autumn and can be used for drinks and thread.
• Quarry bushes grow in every season except winter and can be processed into cooking ingredients.
• Dimple cups grow year round but are only used for dye.

So what I want to to is add new underground crops that can be grown in different seasons or even year round to cover certain gaps.  I want to have new crops fron the second layer that grow in different seasons to facilitate crop rotation (I've already replaced summer with winter on cave wheat for this), and have stuff in the third layer that either grows year-round or has seasons but is more valuable.  I don't want to simply copy and tweak the stuff in Flora and Fauna though, because it has a few new plants for cavern 1, and I don't want to just take someone else's work and rewrite it.  Similarly, in Masterwork each cavern layer has different types of grass, so I've added some different grass types for each layer so they look different, layer one is now greens and browns, layer two is bluish, and layer three is reds and purples.

I've seen how some modders have altered the item_food raw to add new types of meals, but I don't want to take this approach.  I got my first look at it back under Dig Deeper, but it really didn't add anything to the game, it just gave new names to biscuits, stews, and roasts but the stuff was just 2, 3 and 4-food meals.  I think instead I'll borrow stuff like boiled eggs and sausages from Masterwork, and have the dwarves use raw materials like this to make more elaborate types of food.  After seeing how the bread reaction worked, I wondered if it was possible to have the dorfs bake pies by using flour and either meat or fruit.  And not stop there either if I can, maybe have them make all sorts of things like pastries, cakes, cookies, and so on (even if they end up thinking everything is cheese ).  Let them churn butter from milk for another type of ingredient.  A reaction to make blood pudding to give a use to all those blood barrels the merchants like so much.  Maybe even have them make haggis, which seems kind of dwarfy to me.  Then after that, have them combine the stuff into prepared meals.  I might change the meal names to things like dinner or feast or something, to better reflect what I'm doing with it.

Another thing from Masterwork that got my attention is reduced item types to improve FPS.  I've already tweaked the inorganic_stone_gem raw, combining a lot of the similar gem types into a single generic type, so all the stuff like opals, agates, garnets, and zircons have been reduced.  I then reorganized the raw and alphabetized them under each value group to make the stockpile lists easier to use.  The end result was few gem types to plow through, but enough for some variety.  Then I added amazonite to the raw, it's gem-quality microcline, and since just about every single map I do seems to have a fuckton of microcline I figured why not?  I just took the code for sunstone, changed the colors and names and told it to spawn only in microcline clusters and it seems to work.  I still need to work on the tourmalines, they have a lot of different colors and I'm not sure which to go with for a generic tourmaline.  I want to adjust sapphires and rubies too, right now they only appear in bauxite which I don't run into a lot, and this seems to make them a bit too rare for my taste.  I'm thinking of adding corundum mineral veins for them to spawn in, much like how diamonds appear in kimberlite veins, but I need to figure out the mineral raw so it works properly.

Other items I want to reduce like this are leather and wood.  I don't really need all the different types of leather clogging the game like they do right now.  I'm thinking of doing it like this, a basic leather type for hides from common domestics and the like that functions like leather does now.  Then an exotic leather category for the higher value stuff that comes from predators and the like which is the same as normal leather but more valuable.  Finally a thick leather category for stuff from animals like elephants, rhinos, dralthas and the like which are big and have thick tough hides, this stuff will have better stats than normal leather.  I don't want leathers that are as good as or nearly as good as metals though.  As for wood, the rough wood from Masterwork helps simplify a lot of things, though I think I'd like to go with two categories of generic wood, hardwood and softwood.  Softwood should be easier to work with, but hardwood should be better for making charcoal, but I'm not sure how to do this or if it can be done.  Also, I want to keep woods with special properties like featherwood or nether-caps in place.

I don't want to go too overboard with civilizations but there's a few things I want to add.  For another friendly trading race, I want to add in some hobbits.  I'm going to put them somewhere inbetween elves and humans with their goods, so it'll be something like no metals, but they'll have meat and leather.  I'll just have them use human-like villages and towns for their sites. 

For enemies there's a couple of things I want too.  I don't want to add orcs, they really don't feel like they'd be different enough from the standard goblins.  I want lizardmen, and I think LFR has them.  I also want minotaurs and some kind of giants that will attack in small groups, and it looks like Fortress Defense's minotaurossi and jotunar might be along the lines of what I'm looking for.  They're also supposed to be some of the hardest monsters in the mod, so I'm worried they might be a bit too hardcore as is.  Though with the giants, it would be cool if there'd be stuff like fire giants and frost giants occasionally mixed in (maybe depending on seasons and biomes).  Drow might be good as enemies, but underground civs right now are kind of a big meh.  I've got a map that has some fish men just standing around doing nothing interesting.  I might have them show up occasionally in small raiding parties (spawning like regular creatures) or maybe have them send ambushes, I need to see how entites and creatures work before I do this.

Anyway, that covers some the stuff I'd like to experiment with.  I think I should be able to do most of it on my own without too much trouble.

Here's a small collection of mining designation macros I use that I've placed up on DFFD for anyone who wants them:

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6691

Here's what it contains:



A desgination for a 34x34 exploratory minining pattern.



A 16x16 block of mine shafts to connect the mining pattern to other z-levels.




Designation for one floor of the housing block design discussed in this topic:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=112216.msg3404458#msg3404458




Designation for a block of bird coops or graves.  Two macros, the other one is oriented north-south.



15x15 square pattern for tree farming.  One macro for starting in each corner.

I've finished work on a new housing block design for my forts.  It has a centralized design that takes 3 dimensions into account.  There's 128 individual bedrooms (which should be sufficient with my population cap of 135), plenty of space for workshops or storage on the periphery, and a large central dining room at the bottom.  The dining room is at the bottom of a large 17x17 shaft which has windows to the bedrooms for aesthetics and hopefully it will work well as an anti-vampire measure.  The shaft can also be channelled out/caved in from the surface to prevent cave adaptation (as the dining room tiles will be marked Above Ground/Light, which I believe is needed), and it can support a mist generator in the center.  Statues can also be added to put a scuplture garden in it as well for even more happy thought overkill.

Here's the first level of the block:


It's 32 1x3 rooms with bed, cabinet, and chest, with a window and door.  There's a 3 tile wide hall surrounding it, with 3x3 stairwells in the four corners (said stairwells will have statues decorating them in a prperly finished setup).  The halls also has 24 4x4 spaces on the outer edge for workshops, storage or whatever else is needed, in the northeast corner 3 of the spaces were expanded into a large apartment for the ruling noble, there's enough furniture in there to keep a duke happy, and the walls are engraved magnetite.  The east side had some of the rooms expanded into a resevoir.  There's also hallways in the center perpendicular to the main hall, these hallways will serve as accesses to rail systems, catacombs (seen to the south), or large storage areas.

Second level:


This area is partially finished.  The bedrooms are done, but the outer rooms are largly empty.  The southeast has a large stone stockpile feeding the workshops above it, 3 masons, a stonecrafter (pots), and a mechanic.  The stockpile is obscuring it, but there are stairs linking each workshop stockpile to the main stockpile.

Nothing to really see on the third level, just more of the same, really.


Fourth level.  This is right above the dining hall.  It's mostly unfinished but the rooms themselves have been dug out.


Drain grate in the center for the mist generator.  I originally built a wall around it to prevent water from splashing all over the dining room floor, but it made the mist less effective, and I apparently didn't need it anyway.  Main pantry is to the north, kitchens to the northeast, non-edible food (flour, eggs, sugar, etc) east of the kitchens.  Refuse stockpile to the southeast with an atomsmasher.  South side of the dining room is the fort "control center" where all the levers go. 


Here's where we fill the resevoir and pump water into the mist generator from an aquifer.  Right now it's being dwarf powered, but I could likely set up a water reactor to automatically keep the pump going.  I was more concerend about getting the main features set up and make sure the mist generator would work without flooding the whole damn fort.


Drainage system.  This is 1 z-level below the dining hall.  Both the resevoir and mist generator drain into this corridor which leads down to the first cavern.  A floodgate has the resevoir blocked up so it can fill.  There's a second floodgate in the mist generator channel to be closed off if the resevoir needs to be drained so the water doesn't back up into the dining hall (which would be so much !!FUN!!).


This is where the drain pipes empty into the cavern.  It's obscured by the water flow, but there's a 2 tile wide fortification for it to pour out of and into the cavern below.


This is the floor of the cavern where the water empties.  It's a fairly large lake that empties off at least one part of the map edge, so whatever water empties out down there shouldn't cause a lot of flooding.


Top fort level.  Nothing unusual here for me, just the entrance, trade depot, farms and pastures, hospital (eventually) and well, and such.  Damn elves snuck into the picture.     I have a railing of metal bars surrounding the upper part of the shaft.  I also took at how it would be with more bars on the second level and it looked pretty good:


Here's a shot of the shaft being caved in:


And here it is roofed over later:


Cutaway view of the whole setup:


How do my dorfs feel about this?

I don't allow pets of any kind, as a general rule.  Unfortunately cats love to break that rule, which irritates me, but cat dorf adoption doesn't happen too often, because the cats are kept pastured in food stockpiles to ensure they do their jobs properly.  Pets are forbidden because it prevents butchery, and because the pets pathing all over the fort eats up fps.  So the pets get pastured in my animal pens for breeding purposes mostly.

However, I noticed that vermin caught with animal traps can be tamed and then adopted as pets.  I'm thinking of allowing this, but there are the pathing fps concerns.  Do vermin wander around like regular pets and slow down the game?

Ok, so the autumn dwarf caravan has come time to trade.  After all the good finish getting hauled to the depot, I order the broker to duty.  The depot screen lists his current job:

Drink

*sigh*  What else is new?

So I check the booze stockpiles and breweries to keep an eye on the fool, he's nowhere to be found.  Check the unit list in case he's on his way to booze.  I find him clutching a barrel in a bedroom.  And here's where it starts to get weird.

I use "q" to check who sleeps there.  This is not the broker's room, it's been claimed by another couple.  I check the various relationship screens.  The broker is not related in any way to the couple.   The couple and the broker aren't even passing acquaintances.  And the wife who claimed the room is currently sleeping there.  I don't know if she went to sleep before or after the broker got there.

So apparently, the broker decided to go on a typical dorfish bender, but instead of getting plastered in a booze stockpile or brewery, he hauls the barrel off to a room claimed by two perfect strangers.  When he got there, one of them may have been sleeping, so he just climbs over the bed and starts to hit the barrel in the middle of the room as if this is nothing out of the ordinary (actually, these are dorfs, so maybe it's not).  Or if the room was empty when he got here, then the wife gets home, ignores the strange dorf in the middle of her room busy getting smashed, and plops down on the bed to sleep.

Sometimes, these little bearded freaks do the weirdest shit, no?

Any good methods for capturing animals from the surface areas for training?  The caverns shouldn't be too hard for capturing, since there are often narrow passages, and I can create choke points to force things into cages.  The surface is harder for setting up traps, since there are many fewer terrain obstacles, and unless you carpet everything with cages, it'll be tricky to get bears/elephants/GDS/etc. into traps.  A downside to cage spam is that they'll either make invasions pathetically easy or you'll have leaders caught in the cage with their squad milling about, and trying to dislodge squads like this often costs me more dwarves than I like.

I've been consdering digging trenches and building walls to force creatures to path towards certain areas, but I'd like to know if there are better ideas.  This game could use things like tiger/bear pits, snares, and other similar traps.

I have an idea for setting up a vampire quarantine inside my outer wall but outside the main fort itself.  But I need some information to set it up properly first.

What's the max size for an immigration wave now?  I know before it wasn't much more than 30, but kids now have the waves jacked up quite a bit. 

Are any of the vampires that arrive ever children, or are they all adults?  If there are no child vampires, I won't need to quarantine the children.

If I don't need to worry about quarantining kids, what the maximum number of adults that arrive in a wave?  I want to build a series of cells outside I can lock the adults into until they get hungry or thirsty or show signs of vampirism, but I need a rough idea of how many I should set up beforehand.