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Dwarf Fortress => DF Modding => Mod Releases => Topic started by: IndigoFenix on January 26, 2015, 02:41:53 pm

Title: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: IndigoFenix on January 26, 2015, 02:41:53 pm
This mod adds a few new creatures, a bunch of interactions, and a whole lot of potential fun. Dwarf Fortress meets Lovecraft. Encountering an elder god in the lower caverns may cause a hidden cultist to appear among your population, who will cause strange things to happen in your fortress - pools of slime and piles of tiny fish skeletons will show up in the halls, corpse pieces will sprout legs and tentacles and begin to scuttle around, fish will grow aggressive and start to walk about on land, and one by one, your citizens will start to turn into the Deep Ones, monstrous fish-frog people. The effects will grow more frequent every year. You have three years to find the cult leader and kill them before all hell breaks loose...

Based on Meph's Cult of the Carp God for Masterwork.

LINK (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=10500)
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Deon on January 26, 2015, 04:30:01 pm
Thanks for releasing that. Mind if I take a look how you did it and steal borrow the code if I like it? I need lovecraftian entities in The Fall and I was always thinking about incorporating the carp god mechanic from Masterwork.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Meph on January 26, 2015, 04:35:12 pm
I havent looked at IndigoFenix Raws yet, but they are probably less invasive than what I did. I had a hidden migrant, while this is based on a cavern encounter. Similar to the facehuggers I made for the third cavern, just more complex.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: IndigoFenix on January 26, 2015, 05:20:41 pm
Quote from: Deon on January 26, 2015, 04:30:01 pm
Thanks for releasing that. Mind if I take a look how you did it and steal borrow the code if I like it? I need lovecraftian entities in The Fall and I was always thinking about incorporating the carp god mechanic from Masterwork.

Sure, go ahead.

This isn't quite as complicated or involved as it could potentially be.  No real 'intelligent' interactions or anything, it's just a couple of basic effects that grow more frequent as time passes.  It does use a lot of long-range non-line-of-sight interactions, though (which pass through walls).  The overall effect should be one of vague weirdness (What are these little piles of fish bones I keep finding?  How did a live carp wind up in the hallway?  Why are there suddenly so many dwarves with flat noses and bulging eyes?) that slowly spirals into horror (zombie seafood popping up all over, and everyone's turning into fish people).  A slow, steady progression towards destruction, rather than an intense battle as the original cultist system worked.

I'm not sure how well it works in practice though - it takes six months after an encounter before the first signs show up (and the chances are very small, though they increase significantly if the fort's population is greater), and three years for it to become fully manifest.  I have never actually seen it in game.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Meph on January 26, 2015, 07:07:07 pm
I'd raise the chance in that case. Not many people venture into the deep caverns anyway, and finding a specific creature is even rarer. I'd personally would make the chances realistic so that people who breach the cavern face it once.

But thats only for Masterwork, because I'd make it an optional module. If you play with it all the time, the player might get used to it too quickly.

Maybe add a secret to worldgen too? That way a migrant might arrive with "the blessing of the old gods" once in a while.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Deon on January 26, 2015, 10:13:56 pm
I found that interactions seem to work differently in the new version. Their effects are not always applied. I may have missed something.

And I initially thought it's with DFHack and uses some script. Can someone remind me who wrote that mod which allowed to have "nature/technology affinity"? I thought it was part of gnomes in Masterwork.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: IndigoFenix on January 27, 2015, 01:11:51 am
Quote from: Deon on January 26, 2015, 10:13:56 pm
I found that interactions seem to work differently in the new version. Their effects are not always applied. I may have missed something.

And I initially thought it's with DFHack and uses some script. Can someone remind me who wrote that mod which allowed to have "nature/technology affinity"? I thought it was part of gnomes in Masterwork.

It's not the interactions that are different, but the AI's affinity for using them.  It seems creatures will only use 'friendly' interactions when having conversations, or occasionally with creatures they won't actually talk to but at about the same frequency, where before they would use it on basically every friendly creature in range.  600-1200 ticks used to be ample time to guarantee an interaction between two nearby creatures would be used, now it can take a week or more - or it might be quick and frequent depending on what's going on.  This makes interaction-based 'intelligence' (for example, the kind used in Plump Helmet Man Overgrowth) much harder to create, and 'communicable syndromes' will 'spread' much, much slower.  There are tricks, though; a creature in combat (possibly only lethal or no quarter combat) will throw out every interaction they have almost immediately at every valid target.  The disadvantage being that they must be in combat, so it isn't exactly subtle.

I usually try to avoid using DFHack in mods, except when it's necessary, at which point I like to create entirely new, game-changing systems.  Some people can't use DFHack and some don't want to, and I like to keep things open for them when possible.  Or maybe it's just the way I challenge myself.

The druidism plugin is here (https://gist.github.com/IndigoFenix/2df9cbfd95c54a954126), although it hasn't been fully tested for DF2014.  It should still work, since as far as I know animal taming is still controlled by the same flags.

Quote from: Meph on January 26, 2015, 07:07:07 pm
I'd raise the chance in that case. Not many people venture into the deep caverns anyway, and finding a specific creature is even rarer. I'd personally would make the chances realistic so that people who breach the cavern face it once.

But thats only for Masterwork, because I'd make it an optional module. If you play with it all the time, the player might get used to it too quickly.

Maybe add a secret to worldgen too? That way a migrant might arrive with "the blessing of the old gods" once in a while.

I added it as both a secret and a curse, and increased the frequency of the creature probably much higher than it ought to be.  (They are tough, even stronger than demons - but 'benign').  It should show up.  The thing is that it's meant to be a late-game effect; even if you encounter the creature the chances of a cultleader actually showing up is low unless you have a decent population, and some of the effects don't show up for a few more years.  My test runs usually don't last long enough to see how threatening they actually are.

Interesting thing to note - you don't even have to breach the caverns.  The chances are low, but if someone's a few tiles away and behind a wall the effect can still take hold.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Zucchini on June 20, 2015, 07:23:59 am
Sorry for the necro, but thought I'd post that, using your mod, I'm getting some errorlog messages:

Code: [Select]
*** Error(s) finalizing the interaction CULTLEADER_DEEPONES
Error Initializing Text: raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt
*** Error(s) finalizing the interaction CULTLEADER_DEEPONES
Error Initializing Text: raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt
*** Error(s) finalizing the interaction CULTLEADER_DEEPONES
Error Initializing Text: raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt
*** Error(s) finalizing the interaction CULTLEADER_DEEPONES
Error Initializing Text: data/save/Primia/raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt
*** Error(s) finalizing the interaction CULTLEADER_DEEPONES
Error Initializing Text: raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt
Impoverished Word Selector
*** Error(s) finalizing the interaction CULTLEADER_DEEPONES
Error Initializing Text: raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt
*** Error(s) finalizing the interaction CULTLEADER_DEEPONES
Error Initializing Text: raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt
Impoverished Word Selector
The game was also crashing when finalizing a world, but I can't be sure it was your mod causing it.  Still, thought I'd bring it up just in case.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to note that I guess raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt is not in your archive.  I'm imagining it's supposed to be?
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Untrustedlife on July 04, 2015, 06:18:51 pm
I have a cult in my mod inspired by mephs as-well! we are like... awesome.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Meph on July 06, 2015, 01:55:22 am
Now we just need to make a mod with all three, and have fortresses contantly being overrun by cults. Great. :D
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Jazzeraint on August 17, 2015, 04:39:15 pm
Quote from: Zucchini on June 20, 2015, 07:23:59 am
Sorry for the necro, but thought I'd post that, using your mod, I'm getting some errorlog messages:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The game was also crashing when finalizing a world, but I can't be sure it was your mod causing it.  Still, thought I'd bring it up just in case.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to note that I guess raw/objects/text/secret_fish.txt is not in your archive.  I'm imagining it's supposed to be?

Was this worked out / solved? I'd love to use this mod~
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: vjmdhzgr on August 17, 2015, 10:11:02 pm
Quote from: Meph on July 06, 2015, 01:55:22 am
Now we just need to make a mod with all three, and have fortresses contantly being overrun by cults. Great. :D
Then maybe I can learn how to make summoning interactions and we can add in a Shrek cult too. This sounds like a great idea, let's make a bunch of cult mods balanced to be on their own, but then combine all of them. You could even have cults fighting each other within the fortress. Maybe even make it so if all of your fortress was one cult there'd be some kind of upside so you could make a Carp cult fortress and whenever migrants showed up you'd have to be careful because one of them might summon Shrek into the middle of your carp fortress and convert the migrants into also summoning Shrek.

This sounds so bad that it'd be the best mod ever I actually kind of want to do this.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Meph on August 18, 2015, 07:50:21 am
Masterwork DF for 34.11 has a hidden cult and several hidden invaders/dangers like this, and I'm sure that this mod here works well, even with the error-log about the missing text file. The interactions should still run, even without the flavor text.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Jazzeraint on August 18, 2015, 12:00:28 pm
Quote from: Meph on August 18, 2015, 07:50:21 am
Masterwork DF for 34.11 has a hidden cult and several hidden invaders/dangers like this, and I'm sure that this mod here works well, even with the error-log about the missing text file. The interactions should still run, even without the flavor text.

Thanks Meph!

I wish Masterwork was modular, since I love it, but I'd only ever want to use 25-60% of it. Alas, that's a lot of extra work, so~
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Meph on August 18, 2015, 01:13:38 pm
Quote from: Jazzeraint on August 18, 2015, 12:00:28 pm
Quote from: Meph on August 18, 2015, 07:50:21 am
Masterwork DF for 34.11 has a hidden cult and several hidden invaders/dangers like this, and I'm sure that this mod here works well, even with the error-log about the missing text file. The interactions should still run, even without the flavor text.

Thanks Meph!

I wish Masterwork was modular, since I love it, but I'd only ever want to use 25-60% of it. Alas, that's a lot of extra work, so~
What? Masterwork IS modular. It's pretty much the only modular mod out there, with it's own UI that enables/disables it's features.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Jazzeraint on August 18, 2015, 01:18:47 pm
Quote from: Meph on August 18, 2015, 01:13:38 pm
What? Masterwork IS modular. It's pretty much the only modular mod out there, with it's own UI that enables/disables it's features.

Holy crap, I didn't notice the other 5/7ths of your GUI. Nevermind, that's brilliant.

...

Damn it, that just tripled my research time. TOO GOOD. :P
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Evans on September 12, 2016, 07:22:03 pm
It just hit me.

When I breached the caves all 3 levels were full of bones of different creatures.
Then, eventually, I met the Elder god.

But in my case body parts turned into tentacle zombies immediately.

Now, there is virtually no information about this mod anywhere. How do I find cult leader? What are tell-tale signs I should look for?

I have just went through my dwarves looks. Most of the first 20 already has recessed chins, white hairs and thin irises.
Well, this is going to be fun - if the cultist leader spreads syndrome to intelligent mortals, I wonder what would happen to all those tavern visitors?
Might explain why some "temporary" visitors are not leaving.

Btw you just made me want to watch In The Mouth of Madness again. I can recommend "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" for similar theme :)

Edit2:
I went through all my citizens. Almost everyone has symptoms, most worships gods of darkness or chaos.
I think you should made an anti-syndrome for a failed conversion attempt, otherwise it's pretty much game over.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: IndigoFenix on September 22, 2016, 05:04:22 pm
The way it works is that if you kill the cultleader before the transformation is complete, the changes will revert after a while.  Identifying the leader is the hard part.  The best way to figure it out is watching for fish bone and slime piles.  Residual spatter will spawn from creatures near them, but it will never spawn on the leader themself.

The worship is a coincidence; syndromes cannot change a dwarf's religion.
Title: Re: The Deep Ones: Return of the Carp God
Post by: Evans on September 22, 2016, 05:28:08 pm
Then this is a hell of coincidence :)

I didn't got fishbones. Like nowhere and never.
Are slime piles removed by clean map command perhaps? I use it a lot.