Bay 12 Games Forum

So here we are, in yet another Succession game thread among many others. Or well, maybe this will be a Succession game. In case people aren't eager to jump into this godawful mess, I'll just play a fort by myself and have a Community fort. It's all good.

My very first Succession game of my own, and I just had to make it as insane as possible. Which is why we are using the MixMod! What's that, you may ask? Why, it's a mod combining as many of the current DF mods there are into one huge clusterfuck from which none will survive, those lucky will merely be drawn insane.

Included are 40 civilizations(at least at the start of worldgen), hailing from fantasy- to scifi-mods. Metal weapons, crossbows, gunpowder-based guns and so on and of course a crapload of creatures, each more horrifying than the last(as seems to be tradition when making a new mod for DF)!

The embark spot? Oh, a lovely area by the ocean. It's quite nice, really. What will we find there, who are our friends and who our enemies? None can say(or well I could, but wouldn't that ruin the SUSPENSE and SURPRISE?)!

I have to warn you that due to the large number of modded things, the save folder filesize is around 25 MB's(or something, 257x129 world). This leads to longer than normal saving and loading times, so be prepared for that!

It should also be noted that this is the newest bundle of MixMod. Updates all over the place, bloated even more-so than before. And it's not exactly tested that much during gameplay. But hey, all those people who created the mods in this thing knew what they're doing, right? Right? In before a dozen gamebreaking crashes and I end up having to shamefully retreat.



The following people are crazy enough for some MixMod mayhem:(In order of gameplay turns)
- Leb
- Person Was driven crazy by the state of the fort.
- nogoodnames Was too busy to deal with this shit.
- Deathsword
- Crazy Cow Was struck down by low FPS.
- davros Was too busy to deal with this shit.
- Tersr Was too busy to deal with this shit.

But anyway. LET'S GET STARTED!



I should have known, an aquifer. Salt water too. Oh well, we'll get through somehow, right?



The following has been brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood Dwarven Translator crew, who are hoping that the tome they worked on was really covered in mud and dirt rather than what everyone guessed.

You would be surprised what a man can agree to when asked in a convincing manner. A few weeks back I might have laughed and shook my head just like anyone else upon hearing what the King had to say. Something about fifty years of disappointment and failure which would not stand anymore, the drunk general swaying by his side while singing a dwarven drinking song(which turned out to be what all of their entire musical genres were composed of). A few walked away but I stayed, because if there's one thing I can say it's that I've always had the knack to see opportunity when it arrived.



I'd been living at the Mountainhomes since I was a wee lad, can't remember much from the first years but that we found we weren't the first to crawl out from the ground and start building civilization. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen anyone but dwarves. I'd heard stories of fantastic creatures just roaming the above and even wilder stories about the people who lived up there. In houses that were build upwards too!

So when the King told that the nobility would be sponsoring several expeditions to expand dwarven territory and gain a foothold on strategically important locations, I knew what I had to do.

By the end of the week we were already on our way. They didn't hold a parade or even a speech, just a few people stared at our group of seven dumbfounded as we got the wagon moving and left behind all which we had known for the whole of our lives.

Now I'm not a greedy man, but a life of expedition has it's merits, even when they appointed Rith as the leader of our group(she did better than I did at the exam apparently). Back home all I had was a crummy little hole in the wall and that was all I could pay for. Here, we can have anything we want. It didn't take a lot of effort to talk Rith confused out of her head either, poor lass might have done well on the exam but I was the man with ideas!

It wasn't too bad. Just a nice comfortable set of rooms, you know. Maybe a statue garden.
Might even get a garden of my own to tend to later on. All we're supposed to do is to get this place up and running so we can call it a real dwarven fortress. And then, let the world be known that it was I, Leb Tulonlitast, who helped make it so!

3rd of Granite.

Spit and curses, to hell with the gods damned King and that twice damned drunk of a general! I knew that it'd be bad enough we had to obey to orders given to us(something about securing a route by the sea for future expeditions across it(by BOAT, can you imagine that!?)) but this is just ridiculous!

We arrived just two days ago. The longer we went the more we all wanted to turn around, the ground started to become mush and the trees more bent and threatening the further we went. Not to mention how hot it was. Tropical marsh, they said. Exotic trade goods, they exclaimed. I'll wipe my ass with your exotic trade goods, mark my words.

By the time we got to the marked location we couldn't but help to whimper a little. This was not at all what we had imagined. The waves of the sea crashed on the beach in an otherwise ominous silence. We had marvelled, even grown a liking to up-above wildlife and their chitter chatter, but here, all we could hear was the moo'ing of our brahmin.

This ain't a place for a dwarf. This ain't a place for anything. And oh look, I was right!



To hell with this, I said and started doing my thing. Which meant cutting down trees. We're getting the hell out from here, underground and safety right away. Might as well get some logs and beds for it though.

4th of Granite.

Miners have told me that they think there's an aquifer around this area. Apparently the geography is just right or something, geology, fuck if I know. They dug their way through soil to stone without trouble though, so maybe they're just screwing with me and want some time off. Well too bad we don't have time for time offs! Get back to work!

They did marvel at some of their discoveries, debating what strange things used to lay here. The only strange things going to lay around here are going to be our pecked corpses if we don't get down and fast, I told them.



13th of Granite.

Took well over a week, but the miners finally got back up and told me they were finished what I told 'em to do. It's not much, a crappy little corridor in clay(sandy clay, they specified) but it'll do for now. Got to move everything indoors now, get our crap into place and make sure none of the... Natives get indoors. I don't know about you but god damn those birds freak me out.



23rd of Slate.

Slowly getting somewhere. Managed to hide from the things above without them noticing. Made some beds and crappy sleeping holes. Spend the rest of the time making more beds and barrels. That's about it for what they want from us carpenters, beds for sleeping and barrels for drinking away the reason we went to bed for.

I may not be an engineer but I know that if there's one thing every fort needs, it's a good raising bridge! Mestthos is finishing it right now, apparently it's going to be one ugly mother, but it'll be sturdy.



I've also paid note to the delightful actually living creatures around the area. They're still a tad creepy, but anything with living flesh on it's bones is better than those god damn rotting things a while back.



24th of Slate.

Fuck and damn, we got a problem.



The miners told me that my plans for a glorious hallway down below had one LITTLE problem in the form of "stone unlike anything we've ever seen". Their picks just kept on clanking off from it. They got no idea what the hell that rock is, but they can't mine through, that's for sure.

Great. Just fucking great. I'll have to revise my plans a bit then. On the bright side, they also told me that my plans led them straight to a large deposit of gryl. Well that's just great, I said. Hell if I know what they even do with gryl.

13th of Felsite.

Well the miners started to dig down, had to find some softer rock they said, otherwise we got no fucking way to get anywhere anymore. Found some more gryl, actually scratch that, we found a shitload of gryl. And to top that off, some rock our miners can actually dig through! Finally things are looking better.

10th of Hematite.

Finally, some proper dwellings have been dug! Now it's just a matter of finding a diggable route from our current rooms to further down and moving everything to place. We can convert what rooms we have now to farmland later on, or something.





Annnd that's all the time I have to play right now. Will play more later on, but yeah, anyone feeling crazy enough for some MixMod mayhem?

So around Monday I started to think that it sure would be nice if you could sort of play Dungeon Keeper, but in Dwarf Fortress.

Then I started to think that there was the problem with only one race supported right now in Fortress mode.

Then I started to wonder, if the game would support having different races within the entity creature file, but as castes.

So I tried it. And it worked. Sort of, there is an issue with blood being spilled odd, but I blame that on my horrid excuse of making a mod.

These past few days I've been editing away, modifying the creatures to be as close as possible to the ones in Dungeon Keeper, and of course the new modding system has me by my groin region, and it still hasn't opened up to me enough to let go and accept my work.

IN OTHER WORDS

Here it is, a playable mod.

So how does this work?
You as the Keeper, have a variety of creatures that serve under you. I pretty much just made a creature file that had all of the different sorts of creatures under castes, and gave them symbols of their own so you could separate them from each other. For example, imps have i, warlocks have w, salamanders have A etc.

They all can be assigned labors, or recruited to your military, and pretty much function like any other race that you control under Fortress mode. They don't have nobles, but your first leader, the Keeper's Voice, which handles liaison talks and so on, wants a nice shiny room for his/her/its efforts.

So what's the point of this mod?
I just wanted to see if I could do this. And since I could, I started to think that hey, maybe other people would like to play a mod that has you making a dungeon with deadly traps and deadlier soldiers to kill your enemies with. That and hey, Dungeon Keeper. That was a good game series.

Okay so, what do you have for us then?
Not much besides the creatures that work under you. I didn't really know what else to add from the DK series but them, and I pretty much just copied the goblin entity file and changed a few lines. Their selection of weaponry also seemed proper for your minions to use, so eh.

Every single one of your minions prefers to eat meat, so plants are only good for brewing booze to make them happier.

Here's a list of your minions and short explanation about them.

- Imps. They are without gender, emotion and are content with gnawing nothing but bones. They're also reasonably fast, but also quite fragile. Not the best choice as melee soldiers. However, they're not really smart(slow learner), but they're at their best in crappy jobs like mining, or tending to food supply or the farms.
- Goblins. These goblins have pledged alliance to you, rather than their previous demon overlords.
- Trolls. Like in the DK games, trolls aren't much bigger from goblins, sort of dumb(slow learners), but at least they can pack a bit more of a punch.
- Warlocks. Human spellcasters able to shoot fire and shield themselves from it's harmful effects. They are quite frail though, so they're best at ranged support rather than the front lines. That, or counting beans.
- Salamanders. Bi-pedal lizards able to survive in magma, they can spit fire at enemies, and have claws instead of hands.
- Dark Elves. Like elves, except evil! I mean, eviler.
- Beetles. Insect warriors with large mandibles. They're perfectly content at biting people in the head and crushing their skulls.
- Spiders. Big intelligent spiders. Like to shoot web and bite things with their poison fangs. Just like a certain other species further down the list.
- Bile Demons. Legless demons who move with their hands instead. Quite tough and strong though. Also have a pair of horns to gore with. They also lack genders.
- Dark Mistresses. Female humans, quite fast.
- Dark Knights. Male humans, big and strong and full of RAAAAGE.
- Vampires. Undead and bloodless, it takes a lot of damage to take down a vampire. They also don't need to eat or drink, all they need is a nap. They're also really super fast and really super strong.
- Maiden of the Nest. Half-woman, half-spider. Likes to shoot web and bite with their poisonous fangs. Quite rare.
- Demon Spawn. Small adorable fast creatures with claws for hands and feet, they like to bite and shred. BITE AND SHRED YOUR GUTS. Also, they are really fast. They lack genders, and are perfectly happy to be without them to be honest.
- Dark Angels. Huge winged humanoids, quite rare, they shoot fire and are really super strong.
- Dragons. Ah yes, the dragons. Just like the megabeast, they're also really rare to have around.
- The horned devil. The rarest of your minions, it takes a lot of damage to kill Horny. Or maybe he never really dies, he just gets cast back to the pits of Hell he came from. On a vacation. Filled with blood and screams and all the things that make him moderately content.

Wait, how do they even breed?
From the looks of things, quite well. Although I will be honest. Due to work and so on and of course, modding to make minor adjustments to body size, strengths, looks etc. have left me with little time to test conclusively.

However, migrants have shown up with kids that are of different "race" than their parents. The most odd of families that migrated was a troll mother, troll kid, a salamander newt and a bile demon that was the father. Or as the game referred to it, "parent".

I'm THIS sure that the fortress mode breeding will work without problems. If I'm wrong, hey, I'm sorry. I really thought this would work. It SHOULD work. What with them all being different caste rather than different race. Despite the fact that most of them are totally different races but yeah.

So you said there were issues?
A few. The blood one is the biggest, but it's not game-crashing from the looks of it or anything negative to playing with the mod.

I have no idea what causes it, but your minions all bleed either unknown substance, material, or unkown plant material.

Demonspawns also shoot unkown plant material.

If anyone knows what I did wrong with that part, speak up and make me facepalm back here because I have a feeling it's something obvious, and right in front of my face and I just was too stupid to realize what it was.

The blood however doesn't seem to bother any of your creatures, or do anything except show up all wrong.

Of course, since this is, to me, in 0.1 stage what with the blood being stupid, I'm open to suggestions from people. Like, if there's something from the Dungeon Keeper series that you think I should have in the mod, do tell what so I can add it.

Speaking of which, here's one last part of bolded text that is me asking a question, masquerading as someone else in order to appear all smart and snooty and yeah let's just get on with it.

So did you screw up anything else with this?
Besides the blood, yes.

I had intented to add all the creatures you could have in both DK games, so at least orcs, hounds and ghosts are missing(I didn't add skeletons, because I'm hoping to add that in one beautiful day when you can create skeletal creatures from corpses that show up as real creatures rather than vermin. Does that still happen? I think it does.). The reason for this is an odd bug that happened the moment I tried to add them.

Every single creature(the mod ones, I mean) suddenly came to possess a body that all melee attacks flowed right through. First I thought it was something with the orcs gone wrong(having added them first), so I replaced them with hounds, but the problem showed up again. It went away when I removed the hounds as well.

I have no idea why that happened. I blame shoddy modding, really, or in the extremely unlikely case, I hit some sort of caste-limit. I don't even know if there is one, so I'm going with "I screwed up" for now.

I also had planned to mod in a Casino for your minions to use, carrying coins to gamble with. However, it seems that instead of the old version of DF where you had a percentage that had to be filled to 100% before you got something, they were getting gamble winnings all the time.

It's once again possible that this was just because I suck at modding.

But yeah. For the playability part, the mod works. The creatures that show up seem to obey the code for the most part. For example, spiders, beetles, salamanders and demon spawns don't show up with clothing on them. However, they CAN equip things. I have a spider that's holding a shield in one mandible, and a crossbow in another.

I think he just glued them on. It's also put on bronze armor all over itself.

They SHOULDN'T be able to wield things, but eh. At the moment, I just point at 0.1 and act like it's not my fault, it's the code!




So yeah. I hope someone out there might enjoy this.
And I hope those more skilled in modding DF don't claw their eyes out once they see what horrors I've inflicted upon the raw files with my meager ability.

LATEST UPDATE WAS ON 9TH OCTOBER AND IT BROUGHT THESE THINGS
- Added 2 of my own custom workshops, Casino and Temple. Added 2 from Deon too because he's such a swell guy he gave permission for 'em.
- MICRO-PIGLETS
- A metal for the trouble of all that sacrifice you do on the Temple. SHOULD be better than steel, worse than adamantine. I hope. I sort of just threw numbers at it and hope that it works without being too crappy, or too great.

In 250, the Dwarven civilization of Searing Gloves gave permission for the Vault fortress. Stationed far from the capital, where the goblins held strong amidst another, now dead, dwarven civilization, it had a single goal. To advance the knowledge of science, through experimenting both physically and mentally.

Of course, everyone migrating there was to be told only that it's yet another fortress out there, looking for strong arms and backs to work.

And so, on the year 251, the SCIENCE began.



So, while waiting for the new version, I sort of got bored from making all those normal forts, running them for a few days and then getting some crazy idea that forced a regen and starting a new fort.

So hey, I thought, why not do some SCIENCE and maybe have a few cheap laughs while at it?

So this is it.

Ekastekast Ekastekastekast Ekast.
Safesafe the Safe Safe Safety of Safety.
The safest fortress in all of Safedom.

With a name like that, what could go wrong?

So yeah. Community fortress. Original Seven are going to be Safe Keepers, who are in charge of opening/sealing the Safes they will be constructing for migrants.

Sign up now for your Test Subjects, six people per Safe, and you will find out which Safe your dwarf has been assigned to later on when the Safe has began it's experiment.

Your safety is not ensured guaranteed to the best of our ability.

Things really get off for this thing as soon as the first migrants arrive. Before that, it is all very super-top-secret, so the goblin's don't get any good ideas based on the stuff we're going to be testing here.

Due to the fact that no one is really going to do anything else in the Safes than subject themselves to the various experiments, I'm going to be renaming the dwarves who show up according to the signup list, not based on their jobs. Artifact makers are granted access to the Artifact Safe, where they either can complete their work, or fail horribly and go insane. In case they do succeed, they are added to the Safe Keepers so we will always have people monitoring the various Safes.

List of Test Subjects in order of Arrival:
- Goden Gomez.
- Arcayna.
- Desturan.
- Tannen
- Shebi
- Rubble
- Argatson
- Moose
- Gomez
- Snappy Chappers
- 100killer9
- Overlord
- Steve
- Fin/Blair
- Itnetlolor
- Zeddy
- Urist
- Steejan
- Labs

Alternative title, "Damn it Urist where the hell have you led us now?"

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/9237/thatsnotsupposedtohappe.jpg
That's what I'm talking about.

To those wondering what that is, when I embarked on a tile next to lake for a community fort to start, I noticed that. It's like... a natural aqueduct. The brook flows from the level my dwarves start from, and goes forward on a rock formed path. There's nothing around it until few Z-levels down.

They wanted a lake to embark at, hell, I just channeled this thing open and it's currently happily flooding the lower levels to MAKE me a lake to embark on. HA. HAHAHA.

This is the result of heavy worldgen setting editing, by the way.