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1
Mod Releases / Broken World
« on: April 20, 2024, 04:54:53 pm »
No one remembers how the Great War started, but everyone knows how it ended. The powers of the time spent generations for their mad conquests, never giving us a reason, never telling us why, until hardly anything was left. Just the scraps. And their monsters. It all slowly fell apart, and the remnants drew new borders and hardly remembered anything about the old ones. We grew more careful with what we had, and we built new cities on top of the ruins. And for a time we almost thought it was going to get better.

But it didn't.

We'd torn the veil too wide. Showed too much weakness. We had our man-made monsters, but the darkness had its own, and we had forgotten that. Maybe our greatest mistake. It's not safe to go out at night anymore. Not safe to be alone in the woods. Not safe to look too long at your reflection, in the really bad places.

But we live as we have, mostly. We still wake up, do our jobs, eat, sleep, again and again. We still love and cry and hate, get drunk, sing, listen to the radio. We still wage our little wars. But slower. More carefully. We don't look behind us when we get that feeling crawling up our spine that something is terribly wrong here, because we've already started running, or shut the door and barred the windows. We know it's wrong. We made it that way. And we can't put the pieces back together.

Our world is broken.

I think we're broken too.
============================================================================
What is Broken World

Broken World is a total conversion mod that takes place in a world much like our own, but after an impossibly long and impossibly terrible conflict which shattered the boundaries between the mundane and the supernatural, leaving the survivors with a medley of high and low technology, and more besides, to make the best of their diminished existence. This is no fantasy world with elves and dragons and such, however. It's a world of the creeping, hidden unnatural, of ghosts, psychics, mad science, things in the woods which call out in your voice, stories from folklore that are all too real, creatures not of this world walking out from behind a wall that isn't there. A haunted, crippled world, dotted by islands of desperate normalcy which themselves have specters lurking in the shadowed alleys and old sewers. Humans might not be the real monsters here, but they're close. War is a cruel, terrifying affair of frantic gunfire and desperate skirmishing. There's no honor or glory to be found, just young souls sent off to die. Put on the radio and let the music wash away your anxieties, coupled with potent doses of something special to blot the memory of what you saw last night. Or you can delve deeper. Brave the madness to try and make the world a better place, or just grab what you can before it all comes crashing down. Be a private investigator, a mercenary, a politician, a man-made monster, a psychic anomaly, and more, in a broken world.

Download Link: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=17065

===============================================================================

Changelog:

1.3 Changes
-Mod released

2
Mod Releases / Haemothearchy
« on: March 18, 2024, 03:58:45 pm »
Within the conquered sky there dwelt
A newborn God, to which man knelt.

Across Its Earth the gospel spread,
"My children, thou art painted red."

-Author unknown


The sky blazes crimson above the depleted Earth. A God newly risen watches from high orbit as Its children feast. Blood, flesh, and metal are the currency of the world and the source of your power. Life as you know it, worthless mortal that you are, is utterly destroyed. The seas boiled and the forests burnt to ash in the fires of global revelation. And yet, things still crawl in the remains. Survive if you can, so you may bear witness to the unending final act of the tragedy of mankind.
===============================================================================
What is Haemothearchy?

This mod is a high difficulty total conversion set in a future of utter ruin, where an ascended machine god has shaped the world to its image and humanity and indeed all life is sustained and nurtured by the consumption of blood, the strength it imparts, and the power it possesses to fuel the holy cybernetics by which mortals may find parity with the monsters they share the wasteland with. It is a world of predator and prey, scarcity and sacrifice, and above all the precious tenacity of the human spirit in the face of the darkest of all futures. Be it a scavenger sifting through ash for mere vermin to squeeze the life from, or a superpredator who rules upon a throne of sacrifice, we yet remain human at our cores. For better or for worse. It is this story alone which awaits you in the Haemothearchy.


Download Link: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=17034
===============================================================================

If you like what you see, please consider donating to my Patreon so I can continue to work on it: https://www.patreon.com/themodsmith

INSTALLATION:


To install it, drag and drop it into the 'mods' folder in the dwarf fortress main folder. If there is not one, make one. DO NOT PUT IT IN THE installed_mods FOLDER, THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT FOLDER.

This mod is an entirely self-contained experience. When selecting it for world generation, DEACTIVATE all other raw files, including the vanilla ones, from the selection. The Haemothearchy comes with copies of those raws within it, meaning it needs nothing else from any other folder to function. All you need is the mod to be active. Feel free to experiment if you really want, but if it causes problems I can't help.

Also, it comes bundled with custom worldgen and colors data. Copy the worldgen data into the worldgen file in Dwarf Fortress\prefs (if you do not have a prefs folder go to advanced world generation and hit save, this will generate one). You do NOT need to override any pre-existing worldgen templates. When you load the Long Night mod, only choose from these world presets in Advanced World Generation unless you really know what you are doing. If something goes wrong and you haven't used these to gen your world, I won't be able to help you, because that can cause a lot of problems I can't fix. You don't need to delete these if you want to generate a vanilla world, just don't choose them when generating a non-Long Night world. These parameters may change, requiring an update, but I will announce in the changelog if that is done. If you do not have a prefs folder, got to advanced world gen and SAVE the parameters. That should generate one.

The colors are not as necessary, just choose them if you prefer that palette.

===============================================================================

1.61 Changes

-Fix to biology crafting description error.
-Crafting low-quality biology now only requires low-quality blood.
-Smelting low-quality machinery now has a 5% success chance instead of 1%.
-Fix to anvils not spawning
-Adventure mode crafting prepped for release.

1.6 Changes
-Mod released for .50

3
Mod Releases / Fall From Grace
« on: December 31, 2023, 11:52:57 am »
Man's reign was born from sin, and to sin he shall return. So it has always been said. Since the days of the First Men, who ate the flesh of gods and in doing so became them, only to turn against one another in anthropophagic frenzy, ruin has followed our people. Stumbling from one madness to another, the world crawls with our mistakes. Warring kingdoms, monstrous creations, shameful degenerations, and things far worse. But even so, the degraded world clings to whatever yet offers hope or comfort. The Great Faiths, wardens of civilization, grant what succor they can, and salve the cannibalistic hunger inflicted upon us through the deeds of our ancestors, so long as we follow the alien scriptures they have brought forth, carried from the fathomless Outer Dark. And at the fraying edges, the powers banished by holy writ yet ever watch for weakness.

In this world, El-Enlil, the soul of man is laid bare, in all of its terrible wickedness and all its righteous passion. When humanity is truly a people cursed, afflicted with consuming destructive impulse only restrained by devotion to alien gods, what figures shall rise among them? Who shall pick up the sword or the sigil or the word and strive for greatness, or become but another forgotten soul in a realm which ever seems to change, yet never truly has. Here, in the distant and untamed Borderlands, is a place where futures can be made or broken through skill and chance, through cunning and bravery. So will you seek glory? Power? Respite? Or will you simply be a pawn to those who do?

We have fallen from grace, and little hope remains.

We can only struggle on.

==========================================================================
What is Fall From Grace?

Fall From Grace is a total overhaul mod which takes the game Dwarf Fortress and transplants it into a dark religious fantasy setting inspired by media like Berserk, Dark Souls, and other dark fantasy fiction, where humanity, afflicted by the supernatural burden of their past actions, have pledged themselves to alien gods for salvation, or through hubris have sought to become gods themselves. But such apotheosis is not to be our story. Ours takes place in its periphery. The ruins of countless civilizations litter the land, and the place where the tale is told, the ever-changing Borderlands, is a dismal patchwork of feuding kingdoms and decaying empires. It may seem like a typical medieval fantasy world on the surface, but the deeper one pries, the stranger things become. Play a landed lord, a noble knight, a powerful sorcerer, a cunning mercenary, a wandering barbarian, an inhuman monster, a cannibal demigod. The world of El-Enlil, the grand argument for the soul of man, awaits.


Download Link: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16953


========================
==========================================================================
What is Fall From Grace?

Fall From Grace is a total overhaul mod which takes the game Dwarf Fortress and transplants it into a dark religious fantasy setting inspired by media like Berserk, Dark Souls, and other dark fantasy fiction, where humanity, afflicted by the supernatural burden of their past actions, have pledged themselves to alien gods for salvation, or through hubris have sought to become gods themselves. But such apotheosis is not to be our story. Ours takes place in its periphery. The ruins of countless civilizations litter the land, and the place where the tale is told, the ever-changing Borderlands, is a dismal patchwork of feuding kingdoms and decaying empires. It may seem like a typical medieval fantasy world on the surface, but the deeper one pries, the stranger things become. Play a landed lord, a noble knight, a powerful sorcerer, a cunning mercenary, a wandering barbarian, an inhuman monster, a cannibal demigod. The world of El-Enlil, the grand argument for the soul of man, awaits.

Would you like to help support the creation, maintenance, and improvement of this mod and others like it? Consider donating to my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/themodsmith
Have an issue? Report it in the bug report channel of the Discord: https://discord.gg/hDY8KT7pXE

========================

INSTALLATION:


To install it, drag and drop it into the 'mods' folder in the dwarf fortress main folder. If there is not one, make one. DO NOT PUT IT IN THE installed_mods FOLDER, THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT FOLDER.

This mod is an entirely self-contained experience. When selecting it for world generation, DEACTIVATE all other raw files, including the vanilla ones, from the selection. The Long Night comes with copies of those raws within it, meaning it needs nothing else from any other folder to function. All you need is the mod to be active. Feel free to experiment if you really want, but if it causes problems I can't help.

Also, it comes bundled with custom worldgen and colors data. Copy the worldgen data into the worldgen file in Dwarf Fortress\prefs (if you do not have a prefs folder go to advanced world generation and hit save, this will generate one). You do NOT need to override any pre-existing worldgen templates. When you load the Fall From Grace mod, only choose from these world presets in Advanced World Generation unless you really know what you are doing. If something goes wrong and you haven't used these to gen your world, I won't be able to help you, because that can cause a lot of problems I can't fix. You don't need to delete these if you want to generate a vanilla world, just don't choose them when generating a non-Long Night world. These parameters may change, requiring an update, but I will announce in the changelog if that is done. If you do not have a prefs folder, got to advanced world gen and SAVE the parameters. That should generate one.

The colors are not as necessary, just choose them if you prefer that palette.

===============================================================================

Changelog:


2.7 Changes:
-Change to races and race terminology. See the bay12 page on races for more details. Basically this makes it easier to tell what is a human, what is mostly human, and what isn't human. These distinctions are important.
-Multiple new races added, golems overhauled, and more clockwork constructs added to the world. Landships are back, but they are very expensive and exclusive to clockwork using factions, at least at first. Said factions now include clockwork men, demihumans who incorporate clockwork prosthetics into bodies that would otherwise fall apart.
-Regarding demihumans, angelic demihumans and half-giants (now called demigiants) now exists as castes WITHIN the human creature. This is actually important because it means that civilizations of humans can and will be ruled by them. Titan-worshipping realms will be ruled by giants and demigiants, while angelic demihumans will appear prominently where the faith of the Sacred Host dominates.
-Dragons altered. There are now dragons, wurms, drakes, and wyverns, in addition to serpentine men becoming dragon spawn and draconic demihumans.
-Some new spells. More powerful banes and an AOE variant have been added for logotheurgy.
-Monsters reworked. Thanks to bugfixes, I can now cram more variety per biome, which is nice.
-New lore. The sections on the Great Gods each have several paragraphs which state plainly their faith's idea of heaven, their greatest virtue, greatest sin, benefits, and flaws. Hopefully this aids in roleplay of such factions.
-Various bugfixes.

2.67 Changes:
-Fix to some wizard transformations not working, and elemental-based ones are now castes within the human creature.
-New creatures added to the fungal zones of the Deep Continents.
-Blighted humans should rot slower.
-Fix to some nations not having altars.
-Two new kinds of beaver added.
-New spell type added, "Bane". This makes enemies more vulnerable to physical attacks.
-Demonic invaders should be more aggressive.

2.63 Changes:
-Fix to being unable to appoint sheriffs.

2.62 Changes:
-A fix to being unable to appoint multiple captain-equivalents. It may still be restricted depending on if you have nobility in your fort or not, depending on your location, but you should be able to appoint them when you are supposed to as of now. However, this change is an experimental one to streamline the process of appointing soldiers, so if it fails it may cause issues. If you find anything odd pertaining to off-site wars or the ability of nobility to appoint soldiers, please let me know.

2.61 Changes:
 -I accidentally left in an old set of worldgen parameters. New ones have been given which I feel are better. Use these for a better experience, unless you really like the old ones.
-Fix to the Altar of Gnosis system. It didn't work but now it does. You can use the Altar of Gnosis to learn mesotheurgic spells, the simplest and weakest ones, but still formidable. Want to learn stronger spells? Send parties out into the world to steal books of powerful magic, or enlist a powerful sorcerer as a citizen of your fort.
-Giant chieftains will now be elected without waiting for 50 citizens to join your fort.
-Fixed a crash caused by eel duplication
-New spells added. Mesotheurgy gets the spell Lesser Slowing, which can reduce the speed of an enemy. Logotheurgy gets Greater and Mass Slowing.

2.6 Changes
-A complete overhaul/revamp of the lore and setting, additional data will be forthcoming but it is completely playable as of now


4
DF Suggestions / Make ranged weapon reload time adjustable and manual
« on: March 05, 2023, 04:45:18 pm »
Currently DF struggles with ranged weapons in adventure mode. This is primarily because reloading a ranged weapon is both automatic and time consuming. One or the other would be fine, but as things stand using a ranged weapon is essentially suicide, as you'll only get one shot off before you are forced to reload your weapon, during which time you are highly vulnerable and easily dispatched. It makes things like bows and crossbows unusable for solo players, and even with NPC allies you might be rushed down anyway. If the player could choose to reload their weapon, then at the very least they could get one shot off and then look for a good opportunity to reload. If it were made faster, then an automatic reloading situation would be more tolerable. I personally think implementing one or both of these features before adventure mode is re-integrated would be a good idea, as then players wouldn't have to deal with these issues from the get-go, and it would also open up modding opportunities for things like repeating crossbows for faster-firing weapons, or heavy arbalests for more powerful, slower weapons, to give some examples.

5
DF Modding / Making trolls join squads? (50.0X)
« on: December 20, 2022, 01:09:28 am »
As it says in the title, I would like to make trolls join military squads. In 47, this was possible, though very finicky. However, I am having trouble making trolls join military squads in the current version. To test, I added trolls to the dwarven civilization with as few other changes as possible.

This mechanic is particularly important to me primarily because of what it represents. If sapient pets can be purchased and conscripted, then you are effectively able to buy a weapons platform. Instead of a troll, you could purchase something like an "AI-piloted heavy mech chassis" and from there equip it with appropriately scaled weapons and armor, just as you would assign them to normal soldier in a squad. This neatly sidesteps the difficulties of making a different caste for every unit type (via assigning them different biological attacks) and allows you to directly control these entities instead of assigning them as war animals. If the current version of dwarf fortress has lost this functionality, that would be unfortunate. To this end, I'm hoping someone can prove otherwise through one means or another, with the given example (trolls) seeming like the best way to confirm or deny it can be done.

6
DF Modding / Making metal clothing appear in worldgen?
« on: December 16, 2022, 03:17:59 pm »
So I've found if you remove the restrictions from adamantine to make it available on embark and appear in worldgen, metal clothing (cloaks etc) doesn't appear as artifacts and adamantine thread can't be embarked with even if other adamantine can. Is there any way to make metal thread and clothing appear in the world? I think it'd be cool but I can't figure out how to do it, and I'd like to avoid a fix like a reaction that turns metal bars into a renamed plant or something but I'll do that if there's no other option. Ideally, I want to make leather clothing using a particular metal. I am aware there are many ways to do this via reactions with silk or plants or leather or what have you, but I'm curious if it can be done in a more direct way, though if you can't do it with adamantine that's probably a bad sign.

7
DF Modding / Steam Workshop modding question
« on: December 01, 2022, 02:09:05 pm »
Here's what we know: https://bay12games.com/dwarves/modding_guide.html

Am I right in understanding that this new system would prevent mods from removing vanilla content? It seems like you can add stuff but not necessarily remove vanilla files, which is bad for my own work. Can anyone confirm or deny? Would total conversions such as my own mods be incompatible with this system? I might just have missed some info, I apologize if so.

8
DF Modding / Cool Civ Site Configurations
« on: October 17, 2022, 06:23:20 pm »
Let me explain. So, while there's five civ types (dwarf fort, human city, goblin tower, kobold cave, elf forest) there's still ways to configure them differently to get results which let them be visually distinct from one another. I'll start with dwarf sites and the styles I've discovered.

Configuration 1: Default vanilla, they'll build all three dwarf site types (fort, hall, hillock).

Configuration 2: Single Fortress. If you set the starting biome to a specific non-mountain biome, and then set the biome support to a single biome, the civ will only make one fortress, and every other site will be hillocks.

Configuration 3: Road Network. If you set the start biome to ANY_LAND, and settleable biomes to ANY_LAND, what will happen is that the civ will spawn forts in such a way that each fort is spread apart from the next, usually connected by roads, and with around 4 or less hamlets adjacent to each fort.

Configuration 4: Single-Site. Setting the start biome to be EXCLUSIVE_START_BIOME: any land and having BIOME_SUPPORT be ANY_LAND will cause the civ to only spawn a single fortress and never expand.

Basically, I'm curious about other memorable and visually-distinct-on-the-world-map styles of civ-site spread you may have discovered, any are appreciated and this will probably be useful to various modders.

9
Mod Releases / Dwarf Fortress: Broken World 1.2
« on: September 29, 2022, 08:51:00 pm »
Those alive now scarcely remember the old world, but they remember how it ended.

Long ago, a league of forgotten powers declared war upon the world. It was defeated, but dragged the rest of civilization down with it. The earth, a depleted husk after one hundred years of industrial war, bears scant resemblance to what it once was. Pocketed with the scars of chemical storms and artillery barrages, it hosts a humanity which has forgotten the luxuries and gentleness of that forgotten age. A low, perpetual state of conflict exists, over land, over people, and over matters long forgotten, waged by the ghosts of long-dead ideals.

But it is no longer man alone that claims this earth. From his laboratories and abandoned trenches stumble new breeds of life, staking their own claim upon the blasted soil now too ruinous for humanity to retame. And from the deep forests and endless caverns crawl things which have not been seen by the eyes of men for thousands of years, woken by the thunderous last gasp of human civilization. And stranger still, whispers from nowhere, spreading madness and delusion amongst those who would dabble in the esoteric arts, which yet remain incomprehensible even in an era where rationality seems to fracture.

It is an era of deprivation and struggle, fraught with war, banditry, and desperation. Only the most cunning, stubborn, and simply lucky can rise to power, and it may all be for naught in the end. But what else is there? Only a broken world awaits.
==================================================================

Do you like my stuff? Consider donating to my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/themodsmith/posts
Are you a patron with a pledge that needs filling or just have questions to ask? Visit my discord: https://discord.gg/dGzGr5svS2

If I can get enough money to reach my goal, I can focus on modding full time and put out bigger and more frequent updates.
===================================================================


Broken World is a dieselpunk setting with supernatural horror elements, depicting a humanity living in the apocalyptic ruins of their ancestors after a sanity-shattering era of industrial conflict. The focus is on the struggles of the inheritor nations for supremacy and the human element which lies underneath, along with the encroaching threat of a entirely new kind of horror. Plenty of opportunities exist for the player, but be aware that more often than not the impact of a single fort or adventurer in this world is far smaller than most of my settings, as worlds are designed to have large populations and huge conflicts. Even a playthrough that does everything right might succumb to an endless tide of enemy invaders.

This mod was originally intended as an overhaul of Broken Chain, and can essentially be considered its sequel.

HOW TO INSTALL:
Just download it, place the folder somewhere, and play it. This mod comes with its own .exe and everything, you do not need to copy and paste, drag and drop, or otherwise move any files around beyond the initial step. It works exactly like installing and playing the vanilla game.

Also, there are presets in Advanced World Generation with the proper parameters for playing the mod. Not using these parameters may cause crashes or weird things to happen.


Download Link: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16097

===================================================================

Changelog:


1.2 Changes:
-New "workshops" added, trench segments and barbed wire. They function as cheap defenses which can be rapidly produced and turned into sprawling networks which can be shot through, but not moved through. However, they can be destroyed by building-destroyer type creatures. Most big vehicles or machines count as that. This should allow you to create sprawling networks of defenses which repel infantry but are weak to tanks, in keeping with the spirit of the mod. It is also cheaper per tile than fortifications or walls, so you get a lot of bang for your buck.
-Armor types changed from breastplate, light, and heavy to breastplate, half-armor, three-quarters-armor, and full-armor in keeping with historical armor coverage designations.
-Clubman and poleman renamed to "light fighter" and "heavy fighter" respectively, so they can use a wider variety of weapons (some have also been renamed).
-Forklifts added as more expensive but higher-load alternative to wheelbarrows, there's also handcarts.
-Abhumans changed to vivisects. The concept of monsters derived from the Great War is that they are openly half-formed, malcreated things, butchered by surgery and chemicals into monsters. Taking a page from the good doctor Moreau, vivisects are living beings with surgically altered bodies, which unlike reanimates are capable of reproduction, and also unlike reanimates have a very short lifespan. This will also help contrast them against the genuinely supernatural, which are horrific monsters that, against all reason, lack the markings of human butchery which people see as a requirement to go against natural law.
-New enemies added, the Branded. Humans enthralled to the will of an ancient occult civilization, those who delve too deep can awaken a new player in the great game all too happy to combine modern warfare with their own forgotten knowledge. Really, they should just be humans, but the game won't let me do that. Think of them as a culture more than a race. As for their masters, they are not set in stone, but should be suitably terrifying for the time being.
-Taverns will now have names with shack, hut, inn, bed, bar, or shelter etc in them rather than random foods.
-Advanced Worldgen Parameters now clarify how populated the map will be in a more concise way.
-"Magnetic" weapons changed to "electric" weapons. Same principle but with more zapping noises. Back in the day electricity was the quantum mechanics of its time, used to pull sci-fi wonders out of the air and justify the inventions of mad scientists. I intend to keep with this trope.
-Weather changed to be a bit more manageable.

1.1 Changes:
-Fix to various caravan issues.
-Fix to coal mining.
-Kingdoms will now use horses.
-Reanimate civs will not have reanimate pets.
-Reanimates will have properly dulled emotional propensities rather than whatever I did before.
-Automated Surgeons SHOULD only reanimate corpses or heal people which are adjacent to them. Also, they will only regrow the limbs of reanimates now. The living just have to suffer as cripples, but if their bits are intact can still otherwise be healed. Let me know if there are still problems.
-You can now construct brainjacks of all types using a new workshop, the Brainjack Dock. The dock allows you to manufacture bodies, armor, and weapon types for a brainjack, and combine them to create brainjack bodies. When a human is placed in a room with an empty body, they will (eventually) be integrated into it through an automated surgical process, becoming an immortal warrior machine. Do be aware this is expensive, and something to be bestowed upon favorites. Currently the customization options might be lacking but you should be able to make a diverse ensemble overall. Also, this is complicated and something might go wrong, do tell me if you run into any errors.

1.02:
-Fix to "butchering" vehicles, it should yield metal blocks which can be melted to get bars of the material.
-Some lore about common technologies on the bay12 page.

1.01:
-Fix to Brainjack stuff

1.0:

-Broken World released
NOTE: As this is the initial release of this mod, expect potential bugs and errors, and lots of changes in the future. However, it is playable and does not CTD, so if you feel like trying it out in its current state any feedback is appreciated.

10
DF Modding / Books made of metal? (or only paper)
« on: June 18, 2022, 09:33:53 pm »
Trying to make a book that's a single item completely made of metal. This is my crude prototype, based off of the scroll item.

[ITEM_TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_DATACARTRIDGE]
[NAME:data cartridge:data cartridges]
[VALUE:5]
[METAL_MAT]
[TOOL_USE:CONTAIN_WRITING]
[TILE:'-']
[SIZE:200]
[NO_DEFAULT_JOB]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:1]


When I add this to a world, however, the data cartridges are made from parchment when they spawn, and not metal. I feel like I'm missing something here, if it's even possible at all. The fact it does spawn in the world is encouraging at least, though it might not mean anything when it comes to making it out of the proper material. Ideally it could be narrowed down to a particular metal. The most important thing is that it appears naturally in the world. It would be easy to do this via fort mode interactions, but that's not the goal. I want to replace books and scrolls entirely.

Edit: Removing paper and parchment from the world entirely make the data cartridges spawn from rock and metal, but as this is an extreme option I hesitate to go through with this, but I will if I must. The problem with this method is that I can't seem to control what rock/metal is used to make the cartridge, which is not what I want.

Edit 2: More specifically I suppose what I am trying to do is make all writing-holding objects analogous to scrolls or books be made of the same substance. As this is for an overhaul mod I am willing to twist the game's arm in whatever manner is necessary to achieve this result, it won't negatively impact anything else since I'll have total control over all parts of the raws rather than trying to fit an addition into the vanilla ones. However, it needs to be something that is only used to make books, and not for example clothing as well.

Edit 3: Turns out that if you remove all references to parchment in the game, scrolls will be made out of stone and metal, but never paper, which is weird since paper still exists in the game.

Edit 4: At my wit's end. Maybe I'm missing something crucial but it seems that if you remove a civ's ability to make parchment and nothing else, it will still make stuff out of parchment. Just a way to fix this would be incredibly helpful.

11
DF Suggestions / The ability to tell how big something is
« on: April 06, 2022, 08:58:18 pm »
Currently, there's no easy way to tell how large something is unless it is stated in the description or exists in real life so you can estimate it. If I make a custom creature, just like a Scroolex or whatever, that has no relation to anything found on earth, the problem is even worse, since just by looking at it there's no way of easily telling its size, since it's just a letter on a grid. And if you check the description you might learn a bit more, but even then it runs into the problem of size descriptors being a very relative thing. If I describe a Scroolex as large, does that mean it's the size of a dog or a horse? Is an enormous monster bigger than a gigantic one? The only way to really ensure the player knows exactly what they are looking at is to just clinically say "it is 70000 units in size" or something like that, which is what i do currently since it is important the player understands the scale of a monster they are facing in my opinion, due to how much it impacts gameplay. This however runs into the problem of just not being very pretty to read, which is unfortunate. And in the event the creature grows in size as it ages as an adult, such as dragons, description-based size explanations are suboptimal since you cannot readily tell how old a creature is unless it is a member of your fort or you happen to have a duplicate save in which you can access legends mode, either option being a chore that drags out the process of a single fight by the player having to leave it paused until they can figure out whether what they are fighting is a horse-sized whelp or castle-sized monstrosity.

I think something added to the secondary bit of the creature description which handles procedurally generated parts like proportions and coloration, which just says something along the lines of size relative to you (it is about your size, it is twice your size, it is ten times your size, etc, maybe getting vaguer as the differences become more apparent like "it seems a few hundred times your size (100-200)" "it is hundreds of times your size (300-600)" "it is many hundreds of times your size (700-1000)" or something like that) would be a useful quality of life improvement.

12
DF Modding / Summoning creatures workarounds?
« on: April 05, 2022, 11:20:17 pm »
As you may know, summoning creatures is a bit messed up in fort mode right now. As far as I can tell, if a creature not part of your fort summons a thing, and it isn't crazed or opposed to life, it will register as a pet of your fort, or otherwise allied to it rather than the summoner, which can cause all sorts of weirdness to occur. I would really, really like to know if there is some way to avoid this. Am I just doing something wrong? I just want to know how to set things up so that the things summoned by a summoner will be loyal to it and attack its enemies rather than attack the summoner or everyone.

13
Mod Releases / Dwarf Fortress: The Long Night 4.6 BETA
« on: March 25, 2022, 08:04:45 pm »
Man ruled the solar system, once. In its grand epoch spanning thousands of years, Earth was the jewel of a great empire, its shining cities the capital of a vast civilization which stretched from the pitted surface of Mercury to the freezing depths of the Oort Cloud. But from the festering stagnancy of its millennia-long reign came resentment and ambition, culminating in its catastrophic end. From this arose a new age, an era of awe and horror incomprehensible to the common man, built upon the back of a new breed of scientific law scarcely understood even by its practitioners. Earth itself is unrecognizable, a broken world littered with a thousand dead nations and forgotten megastructures which obscure any trace of what was once a verdant oasis of natural life. The solar system is a haunted grave, the planets, moons, and even space itself strewn with the wreckage of long-dead peoples.

But this is all ancient history, long forgotten to the rising powers of the new Earth. They live in a different world entirely, an endless jungle of steel and carbon in which even the mightiest of cities are but mere drops in its ocean, in which even the greatest scientific achievements known to their ancient ancestors are but wheels and torches compared to the hypertechnological relics which they rely on to survive. Where mankind no longer rests at the summit of existence but submits to the authority of those who dare follow the path carved out by their forebears and seek to transcend the limits of mere biology. Where even posthuman demigods struggle for survival against ceaseless danger and overwhelming violence. A world in which the power of the individual once more reigns supreme, the ideals of equality and unity reduced to laughable fantasies. An era that waits with bated breath for its own end, and the rise of a new existence which will finally bring order to the anarchy and terror of a star system gone mad, or deliver the killing blow to what remains of intelligent life. But this terrible night of humanity's history will be long and harsh indeed, and only the greatest among the great stand a chance of bringing forth a new dawn.
===============================================================================
What is The Long Night?

The Long Night is a total overhaul mod which takes the game Dwarf Fortress and transplants it into a post-apocalyptic scifi future where the fragmented descendants of humanity struggle to survive in the broken remains of an unrecognizeable earth, filled to the brim with genetically-altered monsters, rogue machines, warring states, and countless other threats. Central to the game experience is the use of nanotechne; a programmable, infinitely mutable form of matter which forms the foundation of every civilization, and the process of transcendence, through which individuals can cultivate internal nanotechne to develop new cybernetic augmentations, and slowly obtain an immortal posthuman body which can survive the chaos to come. Of course, for every such madman who would seek such a thing, a thousand more live as mortal humans and struggle every day to make ends meet. Play a mercenary scoundrel, a village of hydroponic farmers, a biomechanical mech pilot, a posthuman barbarian, and much more. Countless stories wait for you in the far future of pan-humanity.

Download Link: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16160

Old Download Link prior to the great DFFD Crash: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14134
(don't actually use this I am just keeping it here for archival purposes)

Music Source: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcavSftXHgxLBWwLDm_bNvA
===============================================================================

Change Log:

4.6 Changes
-Some new creatures added.
-Fix to an error in bulk manufacturing armor
-Fix to ex-anthropics arriving to trade.

4.59 Changes
-Fix to combat drones not attacking things, probably. Due to hardcoded issues ranged drones may still behave strangely but the functionality is now present.


4.58 Changes
-Fix to hydroponic fruits and vegetables not yielding seeds, they should now be found in the edible products of said plants.
-Added some military skill to all races, could lead to wars being more fun.

4.57 Changes
 -Regrettably, I am rolling back the removal of forgotten beasts. The trick associated with it did cause problems, just not frequently enough that I was able to catch them on my lonesome. Big thanks to the community for bringing it to my attention. The other changes will remain in place.

4.56 Changes
 -Forgotten beasts will no longer spawn. While they are cool, many of them just do not fit the aesthetic of the setting. This is an experimental change as it relies on a very funky trick, which will spawn a lot of stuff in the errorlog. As far as I can tell, this does not actually cause any problems, so you can ignore it, but let me know if anything strange does happen.
-Machine life will probably no longer rot
-After multiple investigations I have determined that the error regarding exhuman transformation only occurs in the fortress-produced tablets due to the way consumable transformations work. Exhuman transformations will now produce exhumans with the normal amount of arms, legs, and heads. If you want more powerful configurations, then two exhumans must be made to reproduce.
-Other small fixes

4.544 Changes
-Hydroponic and factory-type "plants" can no longer be found in the wild. They can now ONLY be purchased, stolen, or produced in the manufacturing block workshop. NOTE: I have yet to see this myself, but this MAY cause freezes in that mode. It may be something super rare and thus impractical for me to test myself so if you get inexplicable freezes let me know and I'll roll this back.
-Fix to interaction targets being bugged, transmuter attacks should now only target enemies
-Fix exhumans sleeping
-Possible fix to the exhuman tablet interaction only creating one type of exhuman

4.55 Changes
-Fix to drill warlances requiring two hands
-fix to attribute tablets not functioning properly, you should now be able to have one of each tier



4.543 Changes
-Fix to upload categorization allowing for proper implementation of transmutation mechanics



4.542 Changes
-Fix to weapon misnamings
-Fix to hyperupload humanoid blueprints not being created when they should

4.541 Changes
-Fix to tertiary blank tablets not being craftable

4.54 Changes
-Fix to references to high frequency, should have been replaced by hardlight.
-fix to certain weapon powers not working or functioning incorrectly.
-fix to cyborgs lacking discipline.

4.531 Changes
-Fix to the blank exhuman tablet producing the posthuman tablet instead

4.53 Changes
-Change to harvesting lipofluid from certain creatures, should be more costly and cause less lag
-fix to title of core programs being CORE_PROGRAM
-fix to misnamed clothing
-other small fixes

4.52 Changes
-Robots will now bleed coolant
-Predators improved, they should now be less skittish and more likely to fight. Let me know if I have overtuned this. They should still run away if sufficiently threatened.
-Fix to possible issue of posthuman ascendance not happening in worldgen
-Some other small fixes


4.51 Changes
-Fix to posthumans, who are no longer immune to magma. They had the issue of coming to trade, and if magma were around, would dive right in, causing their items to burn up if even if the traders were fine. Exhumans and hyperpredators are still magma immune however.

4.5 Changes
-Hardlight is back, this time in the form of weird, ghostly entities which lurk the megastructure, capable of all sorts of weird phenomena. Some are benign, some are decidedly less so. Kill them to collect the bodies for their exotic materials or tame them as exotic companions, but either way, mess with them at your peril.
-This won't be obvious currently, but I have overhauled adventure mode crafting to be up to date with all the new additions I've been making. This means that when the adventure mode update drops, you can create pretty much every weapon, armor, and power available in fortress mode as an adventurer right off the bat. Of course, as I cannot directly test these things, I might still have made a mistake here and there, but that will be a lot quicker to fix than trying to add everything after adventure mode has already been released.
-The "high frequency" weapon variant has been renamed to "hardlight", or "HRDLHT" weapon variant. The faster attack speed remains the same, but this serves to integrate hardlight technology more closely into the world and make it feel less like an unrelated thing just shoved into it.
-New enemy class, Citizens. Grotesque cyborg monsters that seem to spawn from the megastructure. No one knows if they're a parasite or a function of the city but they're always bad news.
-Nanosuits altered. In terms of mechanics they remain the same as a light underarmor coming in flexible and solid varieties, but are now differentiated stylistically between body suits of thick tubing, mechanical exoskeletal struts, muscle fiber, and undifferentiated gel-like substance, in order of tech level. This should provide a greater level of variety in suit design between civilizations. Two individuals wearing the same armor suit style might now have a secondary style of the plates being affixed to formless semi-fluid matter or clunky hydraulics instead.

4.44 Changes:
-Fix to biojets not flying
-Fix to voidcladers and all hi-caste not properly responding to cyberization tablets
-Fix to nerve program yielding the trance power
-Other small fixes

4.43 Changes:
-Disassemblers (mining tools) can now also be made from hyperalloy. I've noticed some weirdness coming from them only being able to be made out of hard alloy so if anyone is having issues making them this should fix it.

4.42 Changes:
 -Small fix to names of wasteland creatures showing up as 'nothing's.
-Hi-Caste caravans should show up in the summer now, give some space between visits

4.41 Changes:
-Fix to plants and animals not spawning in taigas.
-Fix to some machine nomenclature
-Fix to duplicate raw bug
-Change to preservates. Their healing ability being free and their cost being low didn't sit right with me. The new repair option is a drone variant which can be purchased for a hefty sum on embark or from subsequent merchant caravans when they arrive. Preservates (in the sense of a vaguely mammalian organism with a shell-bearing exterior) are now a variant of wasteland fauna you can have as a normal pet instead. They basically look the same but are made of meat. A few other creatures can now be made into pets as well, but don't expect them to be war animals. War is something waged by sophonts, machines, and biomechanical horrors. No place for an attack dog.



4.4 Changes:
-More new creatures added. There's a fair amount more now, especially underground. The plastsects have gotten many new members, as have automachines. There's a few new birds as well.
-Moss forest now has some lichen, with lichen trees found near pools and rivers in said forests. Should break up the greenery a bit.
-New weapon classifications, scythes and staves. Scythes can function like warpicks in the case of smaller ones, or glaives in the case of larger ones, with both stabbing and slashing attacks. They have saw-blade, rocket, high-frequency, and antigravity variants. Staves are blunt weapons, like hammers and maces, but are built with more agility in mind and a wider variety of attacks, coming in high-frequency, shock emitter, and antigravity variants.
-You can now breed nanotechne with both hard and soft alloys, with the soft alloy option having a 50% chance to spawn an additional bar. You can also butcher nanotechne for a chance to regain some materials, but this is mostly a trick to make civs have access to the right metals on embark.
-Change to architectural materials. Instead of using the feral architectural variants for construction, they are all convertable into domesticated architecture on a 1:1 ratio, or more enhanced architecture forms with the addition of various materials. My previous half-measure caused more problems than it solved, so this solution should ensure architecture variants are either used for all construction, or none, and there is a process for converting the unusable to the usable. You can also scavenge reprogrammed architecture from the "soil", remnants of prior attempts at settlement no doubt. This should allow for players to more easily create high-value rooms and materials, as you can commit resources to creating more valuable forms of architecture now.
-Uploads have their own power system instead of being tied to postbiology. While normal uploads can become vehicular uploads, which are larger, or they can become hyperuploads which have a hyperalloy carapace, hence the name. While not as mutable as a nanotechne one, it is equivalent in terms of durability and the hyperupload possesses enough reparative nanites that they aren't doomed to decay like their unimproved compatriots. These hyperuploads subsequently can have their own vehicular variants. In addition, a corrupted upload variant exists as well, working similarly to corrupted cyborgs and postbiologicals, being hostile to conventional life. Unlike highly mutable postbiological life, uploads have defined tiers of power and more reasonable body plans, but can have much larger bodies than exhumans. In this world, a true machine intelligence that can operate independently is expensive and valuable, so vehicular uploads are worth much more than bioframes and the like.
-A change to the Hi-Caste. Instead of being one monochromatic skin color, it's now divided into two parts, a normal skin tone and a sort of biological tattoo comprising the colors that previously made up its default skin coloration, termed heraldic pigmentation. So a civclader might have tan skin with pale red biological heraldry spreading all over its body, or a warclader might have pale skin with dark blue biological heraldry. The reason for this change is that, for various reasons both lore and bug-prevention-wise, pure-born hereditary cyborgs have default human skin, and are born from a union of any normal hereditary cyborg. By having the Hi-Caste have human skin tones now supplemented by the secondary coloration that marks their clade, two high-caste cyborgs having an unmarked offspring feels more natural in my opinion and the intergenerational change flows more smoothly.
-Sciclade can now form larger civs. They will be a technocratic counterpart to the bureaucratic and militaristic powers of the civclade and warclade civs. You can thank them for the new military drones that are now found in all hi-caste civs.
-Fix to clothing layers.
-Fix to some bulk manufacturing issues.
-Armor altered slightly to be more consistent.

4.31 Changes:
-Ex-Anthropics will only have hyperpredators which share the same features as themselves, and hyperpredators will no longer be crazed. They should still try to kill you but they shouldn't automatically murder everyone if they show up in a caravan.
-Neo-anthropics can domesticate postfauna.

4.3 Changes:
-Now that summoning has been fixed, I can make summons a thing, so I did. There's now an intricate summoning system for both you and enemies to exploit. Summoning is divided into three classes, large, medium, and heavy summons, and you can have one of each. A general rule is that if they are a summon capable of flight, the amount you can create is only half as much as if they were ground based, due to the additional resource cost granting flight requires. In addition, projectile weapons move slowly, while melee weapons are much faster. Determining the balance between air and ground focus, and what type of weapons to grant your transmuter, will be the key to victory. No combination is perfect, but some are more effective against certain types of enemies than others or have particular applications. Also, this is a very convoluted system by necessity so things might be broken. If they are, let me know.
-Attributes have also been expanded. There are now four tiers of power for them, and you can have one of each tier, so choose carefully. Instead of filling out every attribute, you have to chose a certain amount, and of them what order to place them in. Try to find combinations that work for particular roles or the kind of army you have in mind, or even to counter specific kinds of enemies. As above, this is convoluted, so if there are issues let me know.
-A few more new creatures added.
-New clothing item added, bodysheets. Basically it's like a simple coat, there's six variants. Not a big thing but it's a bit of extra fashion and insulation.
-Fix to some crops not behaving.
-Fix to hi-caste training instructors being automatically appointed.
-Nanotechne Refinery renamed to Transcendence Chamber and has gotten a redesign. Blank tablets are now manufactured in the Incubation Reactor.
-Some other fixes



4.2 Changes:
-I am doing something a little crazy and experimental. I get that the long names of weapons and armor are a pain to read on the screen. However, I also like being able to design a suit of armor that adheres to your personal tastes. So I have a compromise. All armors and weapons are now defined by acronyms, which are explained in the bay12 page. I've tried this before, but back then they were about individual brands of exo-frame. Now, they denote basic design choices, and are brand-agnostic while still bringing the same level of variety. Each of the new armor pieces also has a paragraph written below the raw data, explaining the details of what you are looking at. To find out a more nuanced explanation of any given armor piece, simply search it up in the appropriate text document and read the info. Once descriptions are added to items, all of these descriptions will become available in-game. For those who don't want to engage with this system, it should also be no problem. Just make an exo-frame, exo-helmet, exo-arms, exo-legs, and a nanosuit, along with the weapon of your choice, and there you go.
-Fix to scavenging from architecture blocks using all kinds of blocks.
-Fix to hair coming from domestic cattle
-Fix to oil plants, you can now process oil from them in the manufacturing block.
-Bureaucrats will have labors enabled for the time being due to a DF bug that makes them unable to stop working if they are promoted with a labor active.
-New fauna added. Due to the above fixes it's not all the ones I want to implement but I had to get something out on account of the stuff that needed fixing. Next updates will add additional creatures.
-Various other small tweaks.

4.17 Changes:
-Change to lo-caste names. Terrans are now earthcladers, martians are now marscladers, and so on. This makes things fit in more with the naming schema of biological panhumanity and ties them more closely with the setting's history. It will also look super snazzy on the character selection screen when the adventure mode update comes out.
-Less plants should cover the screen now. Don't want to make things too easy with foraging.
-Fix to rapid gun powers, was missing a bracket
-Composite now called architecture to spell out what you're seeing.

4.16 Changes:
-Emergency fix to duplicate raw issue

4.15 Changes:
-Fix to body clothing not appearing on embark

4.14 Changes:
-Info file changed, should now spell out that the vanilla raws are incompatible.
-Overhaul to how sites work, it's a lot less tied to species and more tied to a classes of civilization. Also, hamlet civs should spawn more frequently now. However, the smaller the world, the more of a tossup it is.
-Change to worldgem params, specifically in regards to civ and site amount. Due to some other issues, I have opted to shuffle them, along with removal of some unecessary restrictions. It is recommended you REPLACE the prior worldgen params with the new ones, and then edit to taste if applicable. Ignore this if you REALLY know what you're doing and have already tweaked things to your liking.
-Neoanthropic posthumans can induct hereditary cyborgs and anthropic posthumans into Outer Pattern posthuman bodies. It's a way to get some more real posthumans if you play the neoanthropic faction, since most migrants you get will be thralls. In the future, normal organic humans will be inducted by both inner and outer pattern posthumans.
-Some minor fixes
 

4.13 Changes:
-Charged alloy can now be made in the manufacturing block.

4.12 Changes:
-Martians can now wear hereditary cyborg armor
-Armor names got too long so I trimmed them down. Some ranged weapons will have shorter names as well.
-Outer pattern life forms now have variable limb length, ranging from normal human to longer. All exhumans do as well.
-All resource materials now have "(resource)" in the name. This is to encourage harvesting rather than smoothing or otherwise retaining the material, and to make it clear that it only exists to be broken down into something usable.
-Grinder weapons are very strong, and this is intentional, but they have also become too strong. To compensate, they now have a very long wind-up and recovery time to simulate the difficulty of using such an unwieldy weapon. But to balance this, they also now have the option to attack without activating the grinder mechanism, doing conventional damage. Like RCS weapons, it is now a special attack.
-More "gem" types
-The manufacturing block can now produce bulk orders of material such as furniture, military uniforms, and clothing. Bear in mind it isn't a huge system, it simply meets the absolute minimum standards to keep people clothed and rooms furnished. I'll add more as I can think of fitting stuff.
-Vanilla sound effects enabled, mute or enable them at your discretion
4.11 Changes:
-Added tooltips to workshops
-Superstructure tile changed to be hopefully be more readable while still feeling artificial
-Various utility drones can now be purchased by most civs
-Fix to gem display issues
-Fix to soft alloy goods not having the appropriate adjective
-New material added, lightmatter. It is used to make cool glowing tubes and cylinders and affixing them to things grants you big money, which should help with room value and such without adding materials the game doesn't understand should be rare
-Digging tools and loader exo-frames/exo-armors can be made of hard alloy instead of hyperalloy now
-Fix to tool costs in embark
-Resource materials weigh much less to account for being unable to be put in stockpiles
-Upload civs and names changed. They'll now be divided into humanoid, light, heavy, and ultraheavy variants, and can upgrade between them intergenerationally. You can choose to increase them in size for a relatively low cost, or turn them into a unique kind of postbiological entity.
-Mechanical and postbiological civs can create chemical packets from energetic compound as an alternative to farming, which can sustain them just fine. If organics eat it, they'll be sated, but will also go into shock and maybe die. Use with caution.


4.1 Changes:
-Fix to hi-caste civ positions
-Cheaper seeds


4.0 Changes:

-Updated to latest DF version
-Changes to the transcendence process. Transmutation programs now have an additional step, the creation of "blank tablets" which are later encoded with data, becoming consumable. Instructions on the process can be found in-game.
-Combat progtams overhauled, they'll be much better now and will take into account any limbs you grow (this will be expanded on)
-Changes to civ positions, I have tried to streamline things and make them better. They also have descriptions now where necessary or where it lets me dump yet more lore into the game itself rather than the bay12 page.
-Changes to material. Instead of just "meta alloy" there's now normal alloys and hyperalloy. While there are now various useful alloys, hyperalloy is metal imbued with nanotechne at the molecular level. Not enough to bring it to life, but enough to make it much stronger. This means you need to choose between using nanotechne to equip a large army with lots of gear, or focus on nurturing a small amount of transmuters, at least until you're rolling in the stuff. You can also strip hyperalloy of its nanotechne for a small chance to gain some nanotechne back.
-New geologic material, plastcrete. Basically it's concrete but fancier. Cheap and durable, but not magma-safe and with no resources to extract. However, composite can no longer be used to make stone crafts, only plastcrete can, though both can be used as building material. Grasses have been changed as well to reflect the new terrain changes.
-Shells changed to be the same size as exhumans and bioframes. Why? Because people are having trouble giving exhumans and bioframes armor. This way, you can give them armor by giving them stuff sized for shells, any issues with selecting armor for them can be handled. It also means shells, bioframes, and exhumans can scavenge armor off of each other, meaning a defeated foe's gear can become your victory prize.
-Exhumans changed. They'll now be more consistent. Transformed exhumans have a human body plan, but their offspring can look stranger. However, they are still divided by pattern.
-Plants redone. Many factory-type plants will only appear in civs now, not in the game world. Meaning, you only get what you embark with, or buy. Well, you can try to scavenge, but don't get your hopes up.
-Un-caste civs are now item thieves. Should lead to more wars.
-Guns changed. There's now three tiers. Light-Gas Guns, Ram Accelerators, and Mass Drivers (previously railguns), in order of power. More advanced civilizations have better guns. Each come in three tiers, light variants for Light Ranged Specialists, heavy variants for Heavy Ranged Specialists, and the rare ultraheavy variant which can be equipped as field artillery by soldiers or standard weapons for bioframes.
-It is now impossible to find a book that lets you obtain a stronger body via normal methods. But if you're willing to make a dark bargain, there's a few places you can look.
-Various little fixes and tweaks.


3.91:
-grazers can no longer climb
-bookshelves can be made of wood


3.9:
-New enemies added. You are already familiar with info-life. Under the current model, it will infect humans and turn them into a perverted equivalent of hereditary cyborgs, used to raise armies of infested slaves to grow out of control. Now that's just one of the horrible ways info-life can take you over. There's now infoviruses, which hide in human civilization wearing the skin of their prey before tearing out of it to commit horrible rampages, and proper infopredators, which use humans as hosts to construct more of their kind and hide out in the wastes, using strength rather than subterfuge. Fortunately cyborgs and postbiologicals are immune to these new creatures, so they'll be vital in dealing with them.
-6 new civilian weapons added. Not as good as proper military gear but don't underestimate them.
-Uploaded humans can now become anthropic posthumans and exhumans.
-Moss trees can now only be found in moss forests. Grasslands will have building ruins to replace them, but still have moss grass. Organic wood is also now more expensive.
-Change to crafting materials so you use meta alloy to make weapons and armor, forgot about that.
-Automachines should now be significantly less overpowered, and it is also spelled out in the description what weapons work best against them.
-Renamed pseudo-anthropic posthumans, they are now corrupted posthumans/exhumans. Unlike inner or outer pattern postbiologicals, they aren't categorized by mental state or lineage, but just that they are postbiological beings puppeted by genocidal malware.
-Some tweaks and fixes

3.85:
-Change to the power system. After much consideration, I have reworked things so that only cybernetic, mechanical, or postbiological life forms can use programs. Everything is bottlenecked through a single secret which, once obtained, will then spur on the transfigured NPCs to seek yet greater power. The way this affects the inner workings of the system is that it makes implementing new powers and even new races much, much easier. And also it just makes sense you've got some cybernetics on your body before you can start shooting blades out of it. However, if you start out fitting the criteria, you can just learn programs from the get-go. As always, let me know if there are any issues.
-New combat program added, nanotechne blade. It's a short-ranged edged attack with a high rate of fire, contrasting with slower-firing but longer-ranged attacks like bullets and missiles.
-Change to lo-caste language. The prior iteration was generated using a list of Brazilian names as a base, because it had a lot of different ethnic names in it, but the current name list is generated from the top 1000 names used across the world, creating a language and naming system which takes aspects from all the largest cultural groups, as lo-cant is descended from a pigdin lexicon incorporating aspects of all of the biggest language families.

3.83:
-Experimental change to nanotechne. So, the deal with it is that it is a self-repairing material which interfaces with biological matter and machines to create biomechanical life forms and improve equipment. This is cool and all, but the issue is that this property is not exhibited when it comes to weapons and armor. So, I have removed its functionality as a weapon and armor metal, with meta-alloy taking its place in that role. The material properties of meta-alloy are identical, so nothing about the properties of weapons or armor have changed, save for the fact that they are now more accessible. This should help with equipping armies, but will make nanotechne acquisition a bit more of a process as you can't just melt down the equipment of invaders. On the other hand, nanotechne armor will still exist in the form of biomechanical armor within cyborgs and postbiological life, as in that state it will possess the capacity for self-repair and properly adhere to the lore of the material. I suppose this also makes nanotechne more of a rare and mysterious substance in-universe rather than a ubiquitous material, it is still vital for civilization however, just in a more subtle way.
-Armor should weigh noticeably less now across the board.
-Instead of using hyperpredators as beasts of war and wagon-pullers, neo-anthropics will use the sub-anthropic posthumans for the same purpose.
-Some other small fixes


3.826:
-Custom interactions using the new fortress mode workshops will now have custom tooltips in-game explaining what things do.
-Some core programs added to fort mode crafting which previously weren't available.

3.825:
-Fix to adv mode armor crafting

3.82:
-Fix to the matter transmutation tablets, they should consistently grant the ability after ingestion now.

3.81:
-Minor bugfixes
-Wreckage and rubble renamed to "metal wreckage" and "stone rubble" to better explain what they are.
-Wheelbarrows renamed to "loader exo-frames" because it recontextualizes them into powered exoskeletons built for heavy lifting which is cool, they also only cost 1 bar now so you can make a lot of them. An even bigger "loader exo-walker" has also been added, with a greater carrying capacity.
-New civilian weapons added, random NPCs can carry them. Dust guns are close-range guns which fire clouds of tiny metallic particles that can rip through flesh but do poorly against armor, while batons and staves are self-explanatory.
-Altar renamed to datasphere communication array and dice renamed to datasphere interface modules. You use interface modules to access the datasphere under relatively controlled conditions to communicate with info-deities. Things might still go badly for you though.
-Bioframes can now learn transmutation programs.


3.8 changes:

-Changes to bioframes. They no longer have innate nanotechne armor. Instead, they are given armor by you, the player. You select them to be built in the forge by selecting a piece of armor, going to details, and sizing it for the intended creature. Bioframes work off of these rules, as do a few other things. This allows you to, rather than relying on RNG to get the right monster for your army, create your own monsters and equip them with the weapons you want to see used.
-Changes to clothing. Rather than more conventional clothes and jackets and hats, clothing is now more vague and futuristic. The attire of the modern era is all about body suits, limb sheathes, protective coifs, filters, and hoods. Why? Because you can't give animals the ability to wear armor without giving them the ability to wear clothing as well. All new clothing is intended as an omni-species fit, which can be applied to any creature without making them look silly (a bioframe would look silly in jacket and cowboy hat, less so in a body suit, limb sheathes, and covered in a tarp). This should synergize with the above change and add versimilitude.
-An update to the "magic" system. Just as you can produce ascendance tablets, you can now synthesize tablets that allow you to integrate weapon programs and core programs into one's body. No longer are you reliant on finding slabs or books to kit out your warriors in fortress mode. However, this process is very expensive, as transcendant combat cyborgs are meant to be a heavy investment. Do you make a bunch of them without any special powers, or make a few and turn them into living arsenals of war? The choice is now yours.
-Change to armor. Heavy vs light is sorta redundant when it comes to armor descriptions, so I've tried to simplify it into three systems. Exo-frame, exo-armor, exo-walker. The first is light cheap armor with gaps, best paired with a nanosuit but povertycore otherwise, exo-armor is full protection, standard gear, exo-walker is big man-tank gear. By default exo-frames and exo-walkers are for ranged, who either wanna be super maneuverable or super durable, while exo-armor is for melee guys, who do best with a mix of both. However, national armies can break this rule, as can the player of course.
-Low-density anthropic posthumans can now reach a high-density state through obtaining combat programs in worldgen.
-The "Transcendant" title changed to "Transmuter". Mostly, to clarify what it actually means. A transmuter is, specifically, an individual who knows how to hack ambient nanotechne in order for it to coalesce into upgrades, weapons, and other effects. Anyone can be a transmuter just like you can be a hacker. Transmutation tech in the form of combat programs and the like is what allows for individuals to reach greater heights than they could normally, and generally comes with obtaining a stronger body as well in the form of becoming a hereditary cyborg or posthuman. You can be either of those without being a transmuter, but transmuters are the ones who take the first step. Transcendence is just the process of obtaining a better body.
-Bioships and biodeities merged into the same creature. While called a biodeity, it is more in line with the role of a bioship. It is a large weapons platform which will join civilizations because they can offer it better living conditions, and earns its keep by being a gigantic bioweapon. And like a bioframe, if you have one you can and should give it weapons and armor. It can also learn transmutation programs.

3.788 Changes:
-Certain more numerous kinds of automachine should run away from danger, not attack in swarms
-Fix to some descriptions.

3.787 Changes:
-Outer pattern exhumans should no longer cause a crash


3.786 Changes:
-Fix to posthuman skill rates again, hopefully for the last time
-Fix to liaisons staying forever. It seems that it is tied to merchant stuff. While I would have really liked for caravans to have been a year-round feature, it seems they have to come once a year or the game throws a fit.
-Fix to Neo-Anthropics being unable to go on raids probably


3.785:
-Fix to some adventure mode armor crafting
-Big expansion to armor. Helmet types multiplied by five, armor types by six. You now have much greater freedom in designing your personal coolest armor style.

3.782:
-Spontaneous combustion bug possibly fixed. Culprit may have been macrocell shells which had an accidentally high temperature. Special thanks to user Atkana for assistance. If it continues to happen let me know, it is a fairly random bug so testing it is difficult.

3.781:
-A few small fixes
-Pop cap default set to 200 again whoops


3.78:

-Fix to tablets displaying misleading information
-Inner Pattern posthumans divided between Anthropic (derived from hereditary cyborgs) and Pseudo-Anthropic (uploads). If you remember the old Collective Clade/Deva faction, the Quasi-Anthropic pattern is their return to the setting, but as a dynamically produced series of lineages rather than a civ in itself.
-Parasitic Posthumans and Exhumans changed to Pseudo-Anthropic. What is the difference between Quasi-Anthropic vs Pseudo-Anthropic? The first is more or less a human, but a little different. The second is pretending to be a human, but it isn't.
-The Ex-Anthropic variant will now have their own thrall caste.


3.753:
-Fix to preservate body issue
-Fix to crafting new workshops

3.752:
-Skill rate discrepancies fixed
-Hereditary cyborg carapace now on the outside
-Some other fixes

3.751:
-Macrocells will die in lava
-Shells are no longer considered to be demon lords by the populace


3.75:
-Composite infrastructure expanded. "Composite" is the term for the general makeup of the megastructure, all the raw material that fills it. There's now three different types. At the top is superstructure, the lightest variant with a scant amount of resources. Below that is infrastructure, the basic stuff. And below even that is substructure, the densest, most resource-rich variant. The deeper you go, the more resources you can obtain from harvesting your surroundings.
-New lifeform classification: Macrocellular life. These hardy organisms are impossibly advanced monocellular entities found in extremely cold regions like void-type biomes on the Terran Megastructure along with the moons and asteroids of the solar system. Whatever they were designed to do is long-forgotten, but their protoplasm is highly energy-dense and can be converted into fuel.
-Change to Un-Caste creatures. Instead of generic herbivore/omnivore/carnivore types, playable Un-Caste races are sapient versions of pre-existing non-sapient Human-Derived Fauna.
-Manufacturing energetic compound/meta-alloy/computing substrate should now be a more straightforward process. Instead of cutting scavenged materials into components to harvest the stuff, you can just smelt it outright. Originally I thought the cutting part was necessary for a certain trick to work, but it turns out it is not.
-Fix to hyperpredators being used by non Outer Pattern civs, hopefully.
-Slight flavor change. Instead of undersuits as mandatory "lower body" wear, instead you have connection cord rigs. Lore-wise they're basically adapters for the ports in your body as you jam them into various machinery. You don't need them but they're nice to have, so people will demand you make them if they don't have any.


14
DF Modding / Guide to (probably) making cool magic systems
« on: February 03, 2022, 03:39:05 pm »
After fiddling with this a lot on my own I have decided to try and write out a guide for making cool magic systems. All kinds of magic is possible in dwarf fortress even if the vanilla game only has necromancers, so here's how you could go about doing it.

I should clarify here that there are a lot of ways to add abilities, syndromes, powers, etc. My goal with this guide is to show how to create a system that dynamically adds magic to the world as a whole instead of just the player. As such, I won't be touching things like fort or adventure mode crafting or the ingestion of specific stuff to gain powers, as only the player can get magic that way. This guide explains how to make magic that both the player and NPCs can take advantage of. It also assumes you already have a basic understanding of the raws and raw modding. It is recommended you already have an understanding of necromancer, vampire, and werebeast mechanics at minimum.


Magic injection vectors:


1. Slabs/Secrets: Slabs are used in the vanilla necromancy interaction. An individual desiring immortality (no other goals work) will be given one by a god, and learn the powers associated with it. Slabs are very useful, but also very tricky. For one, they do not work in fortress mode. Fort NPCs will never read a slab. They will read books or scrolls copied from the slab, though, and gain the power that way. Also, slabs will usually describe what power they teach, such as in vanilla the secrets of life and death. However, if you have more than one slab secret, the description will always default to the one which is lowest in alphabetical order, but only if the slabs share the same sphere (or have no spheres attached, in which case the sphereless slab description will overwrite ALL slab descriptions higher than them in alphabetical order). On that note, slabs are tied to divine spheres. The vanilla ones are usually associate with death, for example. Slab powers can be thematically linked to spheres this way, like having fire powers come from fire gods. Usually, but not always, someone will only read one slab in worldgen. Books which copy slab secret DO NOT suffer from the description bug and will accurately tell you what they teach. In addition, removing the line about IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_RECORDING_POSSIBLE will prevent a secret from coming with a slab at all or written into a book, and removing  [IS_SECRET:MUNDANE_TEACHING_POSSIBLE] prevents the learner from teaching it to any apprentices they take on.

2. Curses: Curses come from toppling statues in and out of worldgen. Doing so in the vanilla game can result in becoming a werebeast or vampire. However, this can also be used to bestow magical powers. Curses are also useful because an individual may topple many statues in their lifetime and thus accrue many curses, making it easier for them to gain a lot of different magic types that way.

3. Infection: Infection happens both during and after worldgen. In vanilla, infection can happen from werebeasts bites. But this can be changed to grant magic abilities instead of a disease. It is a useful way to spread powers if you, for example, attach it to a powerful megabeast that "teaches" those brave enough to seek it out some secret, if they survive it of course.

4. Blood: This is one of the least effective methods of spreading secrets, at least in my experience, but it is worth mentioning. In worldgen, vampires can gain minions by offering, and sometimes delivering on, the promise of bestowing vampirism on them. This spreading system can be applied to any slab or curse based secret, giving it an alternative mode of transmission, but this has certain effects if applied to slab secrets. Specifically, it makes it so the slab will not tell you what power it teaches. While this is annoying, it serves an useful purpose of negating false information. Due to the aforementioned slab bug, where slabs with different powers that share a sphere will have incorrect descriptions, blanking out the description entirely can be more aesthetically pleasing while also preventing the player from being mislead. You can also change the learning vector from blood to, for example, brain matter, and since you can't eat sapient meat for whatever reason this would prevent this method from being used by players and would allow it to exist only to negate the slab bug. Also, blanking out the slab descriptions does not affect books, meaning if you make a book copy of a blank slab secret the book will tell you what secret you will learn.

Note that these vectors can be used separately or together. You could make an interaction which can be learned from both a curse AND a slab AND through blood, or just one of the three.

Tower Building:

Necromancers build towers in worldgen, separating them from the rest of the world as distinct factions. However, this is not mandatory for slab-based secrets. Towers only appear under specific conditions and it can easily be controlled if a secret leads to tower building. Firstly, an individual must gain a zombie-raising ability, NOT the ability to revive the dead, summon creatures like bogeymen, or raise undead lieutenants, but basic mindless zombies. Secondly, it seems to only work if the zombie ability is the FIRST secret they learn, and needs to come from a Slab rather than any other method.

It should also be noted that a zombie-raiser and potential tower-builder of any kind will only wage wars on other factions if they are a mortal creature with the NO_AGING tag applied, and also any intelligent beings they produce from corpses using the FIT_FOR_RESURRECTION interactions are also mortal creatures with NO_AGING. This seems to be required for them to wage wars. Also, any intelligent beings they raise cannot themselves raise corpses.

However, if a power is taught that does not cause tower building, opposition to life, or madness, something very important happens. That individual will remain within the society they were born into and retain their original loyalties. This allows for magic users to rule as kings and fight as soldiers in battles, or be wandering adventurers and mercenaries. In short it allows for more traditional magic users that are popularly depicted in fantasy.

Immortality:

Magic users can only appear from the historical figure population and of them only a small amount become magic users. As such, if they age and die, they will do very little given how small their population is. While it isn't necessary for magic systems to function, I personally recommend you give your magic users NO_AGING or transform them into immortal creatures if you want them to be relevant in worldgen. With this in mind, I personally would suggest designing your wizards more under the themes of rare and powerful individuals like Gandalf or Thulsa Doom than the typical level 1 dnd wizard.

Chance and Duration:

In worldgen, percentages and time do not apply. If you make form of interaction which has a percentage-based chance of happening, it will usually default to successful. For example, if you made a custom necromancy interaction that has a 1% chance of turning the user into a lich, EVERY individual who learns this secret will become a lich, and this applies most interactions. Furthermore, time-based abilities also do not end until gameplay begins. If you, for example, added the NO_AGING tag but set it to end after a worldgen year, then it would not actually end through all of worldgen. However, the moment that individual entered your fort, or you visited them in adventure mode, they would immediately die as the game remembers that their immortality was supposed to end.

The one finicky area of this is interactions which apply tags such as NO_AGING. I believe that, for example, adding a percentage-based chance of NO_AGING will cause the game to run those odds immediately upon loading the individual in during gameplay. So someone who learns a secret with a 1% chance of NO_AGING will be treated as immortal during worldgen, but upon being loaded into gameplay the actual roll will occur, usually resulting in them dying instantly. When it comes to creature transformations and other interactions however, as far as I know it will always be treated as a 100% chance. In general it's weird so use these sorts of things with caution.

Magic Systems:

A "Magic System" as defined by me is a comprehensive system of integrating magic into the world of dwarf fortress utilizing the above knowledge. Not just adding it to fort mode or making it available to your adventurer, but ensuring you will encounter magic users or superpowered individuals out and about in the world, and ensuring the player can interact and participate in it. I will list some "styles" that I find to be viable.


The Sphereless Single Spell System:

The Single Spell system is set up so that every interaction that is part of it teaches a single spell, and none are tied to spheres, so any god can produce any spell, which creates thousands of magic users in longer worlds. So for example, a single slab/statue topple/etc would just teach "fireball" or "firejet" instead of multiple spells, though multiple spell interactions are possible as well. The design principle of this system is to allow for a wide variety of wizards who each have a unique arsenal of abilities, because instead of becoming pyromancers or necromancers, all wizards are unique individuals who have learned individual spells, allowing for a wide variety of combinations. An example of this is my system I use in my Long Night mod, where each individual spell can be learned in multiple ways, and magic users can be combined.

In fact, this system relies on spells being accessible through curses, because NPCs rarely read multiple slabs. What happens is that NPCs will read one slab, become immortal, and then will topple multiple statues to gain many curses. But because all spells can be learned from curses, what happens is they just learn new spells an become more powerful. You can alter how safe this is by increasing or decreasing the number of actual curses which could be bestowed on the individuals that do this. For example, if there are 5 learneable spells total, and 1 actual curse that turns you into an insane monster, then it's basically playing Russian roulette.

The downside is that there is often very little thematic cohesion unless the entire system has a specific theme. Again, in my Long Night mod, everything is based around nanomachines and energy transmission, so no matter what combination of "spells" you get, it all fits together thematically as techno-wizardry. But if you were to add many different flavors of spell, it would result in everyone having a thematically incoherent arsenal of spells. Though if that's okay with you and you are focused more on a wide variety of unique opponents, then this won't be a problem.  Another downside is that due to the slab description bug, all slabs will be blank, and will not tell you what power you will learn.


Here is an example of a sphereless single spell interaction:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Sphere-Oriented Single Spell System:

This system works like the one above, but classifies spells into spheres rather than leaving them sphereless. This tends to result in fewer magic users overall in my experience but also somewhat fixes the thematic cohesiveness problem by restricting what spells someone can learn to what gods they are familiar with. A nation with a fire god would be able to produce pyromancers, one that doesn't can't.


The downside both the necessity of slab blanking and also that by tying yourself to spheres you need to come up with spells that fit all or most of the spheres to get a good amount of magic out there. It also restricts the kind of schools you can use, since they need to mesh with sphere themes.


The Sphere-Oriented School System:

The School system is the clearest-cut one. It takes the vanilla necromancy method and uses it for different themed wizard types. So fire gods bestow a list of spells based around fire to make pyromancers, earth gods bestow earth-themed spells to make geomancers, and so on. As many "schools of magic" as spheres can exist. Because each sphere only has one school associated with it, the slabs will not misinform the user and don't need to be blanked out, which makes it more intuitive. The Spellcrafts mod is an example of this magic system.

The downside of this system is the lack of dynamicism. Because of how percentage-based interactions are weird in worldgen, every member of a specific school will have the exact same list of abilities, making encounters more predictable. In addition, it can be difficult to come up with comphrehensive schools for the less interesting or more abstract spheres, or avoiding overlap between similar spheres.



Here is an example of a sphere-oriented school interaction:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


The Sphereless Single Spell/School Hybrid:

This is by far one of the most tedious but, in my opinion, potentially rewarding systems. It merges the thematic cohesiveness of the School system with the dynamicism of the Single Spell system. Essentially, one can prevent someone who learns a certain spell from learning other spell through the use of IT_CANNOT_HAVE_SYNDROME_CLASS. So, let us say there are just two lists of learnable spells, List 1 with all water-themed learnable interactions, and List 2 with fire-themed ones. Let us say that all the spells of List 1 add the tag [SYN_CLASS:WATERSPELL] and List 2 spells add  [SYN_CLASS:FIRESPELL]

So what you do is then add [IT_CANNOT_HAVE_SYNDROME_CLASS:WATERSPELL] to List 2, and [IT_CANNOT_HAVE_SYNDROME_CLASS:FIRESPELL] to list 1.

What this means is that if an individual learns a List 1 spell, it can only learn other List 1 spells. Meaning, these individuals will be "locked into" a water-themed spell list, but how many they have is dynamically generated by their actions. Some might only have one spell, others might have all of them.

And you could add even more spell lists to this, but it would work such that every new school you add, you have to go to all the old schools and add a new IT_CANNOT_HAVE_SYNDROME_CLASS category to them, which is the tedious part I mentioned.

This allows for you to add as many different schools as you like, using any kind of theming, and keep it all both thematically cohesive and dynamically generated.

The downside to this is that it is tedious to both add and remove schools, and would have to use slabs with no description so you wouldn't know which school of magic you were locking yourself into until you already read the slab.


The Sphere-Oriented Single Spell/School Hybrid:

This is like the Sphereless Single Spell/School Hybrid, but with one additional restriction. All spells of a particular list are tied to one or more spheres, making them even rarer. Pyromancers could only appear in places with a fire god, for example, but would still have to learn their spells individually. The advantage of this is making magic even more cohesive by tying magical schools to a particular god which represents that sphere.

It has the same advantages and downsides of the above hybrid school including needing to make the slab descriptions blank. In the sphereless version of this system, you could have three schools, such as witchcraft, shamanism, and holy magic, and any god could teach any of them, meaning there will be a large amount of magic users belonging to one of the three schools. Here, those three would be tied to specific spheres an you need to fill out all the other ones to have a meaningful population of magic users.


So, Spheres or Sphereless:


As you can see the use of spheres is a pretty major distinguishing factor between magic systems. Broadly speaking, the advantages of spheres is that they take advantage of the current religion system by ensuring those who worship a given god are likely to obtain powers associated with that god. On the other hand, sphereless systems let every god bestow any power, which is less thematically cohesive from a divine portfolio perspective but allows for a greater number and wider variety of magic users to appear.

Personally, I prefer sphereless systems for that reason, especially because it allows the player to create their own categories of magic rather than be restricted to the sphere portfolios, but both options have their pros and cons.



AND BEAR THIS IN MIND:


Everything I have described above is taking the existing bare-bones filler system and pushing it to its limits, and it will all be replaced and thrown out when the Real Magic Update happens 10 years from now, so if you go making a very big and complicated magic system using these methods accept the fact you will eventually have to throw it all out and start over even if you keep updating it until Myth and Magic.

15
DF Modding / What makes crops crops?
« on: December 07, 2021, 08:37:05 pm »
I'm experimenting with crops and for some reason every world I generate tells me I'm not placing enough of them in my worlds, even though I have a great deal of perfectly edible plants which spawn in every biome on the map. So what's the deal? I feel like there has to be some kind of particular arbitrary thing which makes the game recognize something as a crop and I don't have it on my plants for whatever reason.

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