Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: xkcd1963 on July 31, 2021, 02:07:53 pm
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Hi, I'm new here, wasn't sure if this is the right room to post my idea.
Would it be possible to customise an entire map, that means tiles, units, and conversations? I know that tiles can be manipulated through dfhack (tiletypes) and some parameters for units can be changed too (gui/gm-editor).
My idea was to copy the world of Gothic 2 and go through it as adventurer. It's just so similar. When you play Gothic 2 you stumble across countless carcasses (treasure skeletons); That is just Fortress reality right there. Also the world is rather tiny so the whole map of Khorinis could be put into 4x4 I assume.
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As far as I'm aware it's not really possible to completely customize a df world. The closest you could get would probably be using perfect world, but that's more of a "I want mountains here" kind of tool.
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There's a few utlities that can give you a map (at the world level) with customised terrain.
I saw DwarfHeightMap (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=22342.0) (fairly old) and PerfectWorld (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57428.0) (fairly recently updated), when I had a quick search. I've never used anything like that, myself, to know if they still work but I've heard the latter mentioned more recently. That's if you need the entire world to sufficnetly reflect the Gothic II map (not familiar with its extent).
[Ninjaed, on that point...]
On the localmap scale, i.e. the ground-upon-which-you-will-adventure, if you need a lot more reflavouring I think you're normally more at the whim of how the world tile(s) then render into exact terrain, but I'm sure that with enough DFHack manipulations piped from suitable inspirational material you could tweak the land even more to your liking that if you or someone else has put enough effort into working out what to do to replicate it (Quickfort (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=176889.0) might do much for you, or clue you in on what's actually needed).
Then I think you might need a smattering of modding to implement custom containers (to be placed by the above?) and anything else you think you need for your revamped immersion. There's a whole lot of people around these parts who can advise on such experiments (not me, so much).
How much of a project it'll be is, I think, up to you. It'll be a project and a half. But as an xkcd person I could imagine you being thoroughly nerdsniped by the implementation and having at least as much fun as any playthrough. ;)
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Thanks for the replies! The ground-upon-which-you-will-adventure is fairly small for Gothic 2, I imagine one large embark side would be sufficient for the map of Khorinis. xkcd person xd
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Conversations...might be tricky.
DF dialogue tree total structure is hardcoded. Sure, you can talk about different creatures in the world, or have different conversation options with your lord than a bandit, but you can't really add all-new options the NPC will use on their own as appropriate.
So you might need to code your own things that accomplish the same effect (of displaying the test that NPC said these words) if what conversations you want to accomplish cannot be done in that system. I don't know what Gothic 2 conversations are like, though, so can't say myself.
For map tools, there's indeed tiletypes (and builder (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167487)). But more usefully maybe: myk is currently working on stuff like dig_now and build_now plugins for dfhack in development branch to ensure automatic testing of quickfort maps, which might mean you might only need to convert the Gothic 2 map to spreadsheet for broad structure creatable by dwarf.
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Hm yes, I would need to convert the 3d world of Gothic2 into a 2D raster. Might be easier to use something like tiletype/builder for placing all the tiles
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Well, you can define a predefined map for height, rainfall, drainage, volcanism and evilness if I recall correctly (perfect world may or may not do all thease aspects).
As for civs, I would advice to change the raws to have the wanted number (you can fix maximum civ occurrences)
Then in a few gens you might get close (remember to save the history seed if you like what you found)
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Hmm.. I wonder if there is a heightmap of Mars that one could import into Perfect World because Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system would be pretty cool. That or maybe the Grand Canyon.
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https://www.mars.asu.edu/data/mola_color/ (conversion needed for your purposes).
I once grabbed a vector/contour map of Mars, for reasons I forget, which might even give you something better in a more recent dataset with more accurate recent data, when converting a significantly curved surface feature to a flat map with something like a 20:1 width to height requirement to properly frame it. (And do you keep height-scale in relative proportion? You might need to experiment with the possibilities.)