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Topics - ChickenLips

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DF Modding / Experimental Mod Variant: Hobgoblin Fortress v0.96 (Civ Forge)
« on: July 29, 2010, 04:13:56 pm »
This is a first attempt at modding DF for me, and is basically an expansion of the hobgoblin entity file from Mephansteras's excellent Civilization Forge (CF) v2.22, into a full-fledged playable hobgoblin civ with all game technology available (steel, Meph's alchemical reactions, and so on, though those parts can be removed).

I put a bit of work into coming up with a fairly full-featured, but hopefully different-enough, noble/position structure.  I used a slightly modified version of Deon's dungeon master positions.

If I haven't screwed it up too badly, you can basically now play Hobgoblin Fortress, and I definitely recommend it be played under CF.  (At minimum, you'll need to use Meph's hobgoblin creature raw file, and, for more vanillaish play, edit out custom mod buildings and reactions, add normal steelmaking reaction back in.  But I've clearly annotated them, so that shouldn't be difficult, hopefully.)  But note that if you play with an otherwise vanilla layout, the hobgobs will probably overrun worldgen; they need some firmer resistance.

EDIT: Oops, yes, there are custom weapons, armors, toys and instruments in there, so, unfortunately, you'll have to rip those out as well for vanilla play.  Either that, or use those elements of CF.  (Thanks for catching that oversight, Mephansteras.)

Anyway, any feedback or technical gaffes pointed out are welcome.  Don't know if it's anything to shake a stick at, but, like I said, first attempt at anything substantive and usable by anyone but me.  If anyone does find any part of it useful, it's free for any use whatsoever, with proper credit given (particularly for work traceable to Mephansteras and Deon).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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DF Modding / Entity modding -> Exploitative division of labor possible?
« on: July 28, 2010, 10:42:21 pm »
I'm working on a full-out playable hoggoblin civ for a friend, and was wondering if anyone could tell me whether it's possible to make it so the entity/civ disallows one race from, say farming, while allowing or specifying it for another.  Here, the goal is to make Hobgoblins do everything but farming, and have goblin slaves/laborers do the farming and perhaps some other jobs.

Is that doable?


EDIT: Also, is there a way to either disable marriage, or have it be polygyny/concubinage?

3
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Blackspire: Worldgen/Embark site so good I've got to share
« on: July 13, 2010, 04:35:56 pm »
Alright, this may be my inexperience speaking, so if it's not nearly as good as I'm making it out to be, oh well.

But if it is...  Oh the joy.

DOWNLOADABLE PREGENERATED VERSION HERE (requires Ironhand graphics set)


I stumbled across what seems to me an incredibly awesome layout, and a rather unique one.

It's a savage neutral shrubland/mountain region, split in half between the biomes, with a somewhat-sheer cliff between two relatively flat areas.  There are two rivers streams running through but not joining: one on the higher cliff side, and one 6 z-levels down on the other side.  So waterfall potential galore.  But what's really nice and unique is that the lower stream cuts through the area occupied by the higher cliff (about 6 z-levels), making for three beautiful and spacious somewhat-roomy canyon spires, on which my embark site is precisely centered.

As genned, the site has major limestone layers, it lacks native aluminum (so beware native-aluminum-loving nobles).  It also has sand for glassworks -- pretty much everything except for alignment-differentiated plants (though I've been trying to regen it with different settings to try and get alignment diversity in that area without changing the lay of the land).  No aquifer.  No horribly difficult wildlife (sigh).

Anyway, again, it may be my inexperience in the game talking, but it's really incredible and unique -- great for a castle tower and easily-made waterfall (the higher stream).  I'll put a few screenshots below.

Original Site (5x5, northernmost)

Level 149
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Level 148
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Level 146
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Level 144
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Embark Location
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Alternate Site 1 (5x5, slightly moved 2 tiles south)

Level 149
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Level 148
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Level 146
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Level 145
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Level 144
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Embark Site
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NOTES FOR USE: Note that I use a 5x5 embark location.  If you use an alternate size, obviously you may need to do some adjusting to get it relatively centered.  Unfortunately, though, it's on the edge of its map tile, so there's only so much site-size-modification flexibility you've got without de-centering it on the spire.

It may also be nice to note that this location is naturally highly defensible, as the map is split by the streams.  When I played through it the first time, the demonic lawgiver of the goblins joined in their siege, plopped himself in the river waiting, and met a suitable doom when the freeze encased him in ice.  But be prepared for immediate buzzard swarm attack when you start.

I might also note that there is a...  spike...  of something very special...  that sticks up fairly high through the z-levels, and is sure to bring much joy.

I'm still tinkering with other settings to try to regen the world to get savage good/evil biome somehow in there without altering the layout.  If anyone finds the map as likable as I do, and happens to succeed at this, please do share the settings you found got some good/evil biome in there.

EDIT: FURTHER NOTES FOR USE

If it's genning properly for you, you should see two map rejects immediately, and then shortly after river/mineral generation, it should go up to 13 rejects, then gen to completion.  The name should be Ramul Kisnost.

If you move the embark site one tile to the south of the location shown above, you get a really nice waterfall where the two streams adjoin -- I actually find I like it better, so that's my stock recommendation now.



WorldGen Parameters
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DF Gameplay Questions / Worldgen -> Weird rock layers "rock, rock, rock," etc.
« on: July 12, 2010, 04:53:03 am »
I have seen this issue a couple of times, and saw a report of it on the bug tracker, and never was able to fix it without just wiping my game installation and painstakingly reconstructing it, but I've finally figured it out.  So I thought I'd share it with everyone else, since it didn't seem to be recognized in the bug report, which was closed for inability to reproduce.  ("Various Oddities": http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2022 .)

The issue is this:

After a worldgen, you look at any spot, and, instead of the usual different types of stone and soil layers, *all* layers show as "Rock".  Eight layers of it.  No other info.  If you actually embark, the game will either crash (as it did for me), or you'll see all sorts of weird stuff, as the reporter of the linked bug report saw.

I'm not sure if I ran across the only thing that can cause this, but I finally figured out what it was at least in my own situation.  (And it wasn't anything to do with the index file.)

The problem was that I kept backup/original copies of raw files I'd modified in the raw/objects directory, and that the game was reading the entries in them as hundreds of duplicates, despite the fact that the filenames were changed (even .txt extensions removed).

Originally, I had the unchanged originals named such things as "inorganic_stone_layer (Original).txt".  I then removed the extension from the filenames of all such files (names then being "inorganic_stone_layer (Original)" with no standard three-letter extension), ran a quick worldgen again, and the problem recurred.  When I removed all these files from the raw/objects directory, my worldgens proceeded properly, and I again saw proper stone and soil layers.  When I put them back in, the worldgen would again be borked.

One big telltale sight was an errorlog.txt filled with megabytes of entries like "Duplicate Object: inorganic LOAM" and "Duplicate Object: material_template FAT_TEMPLATE" and so on, for all substances.

Anyway, if you are seeing this error, it is easy to fix.  Just delete or move somewhere else all extra files you may have put in the raws.  If you have alternate copies of any of the raw files, no matter what you named them, they may be causing it.

5
DF Gameplay Questions / Stupid humans. Stop killing my dorfs' beloved pets!
« on: July 11, 2010, 03:40:23 am »
I have this strange thing going on right now, and I was wondering if anyone had any insight on it.

So I've got a mature fortress hitting its tenth year, and everything is quiet and busy, when all of the sudden I get a combat report, and find that a caravan guard just up and skewered one of my dwarf's dogs.  Nothing else going on there.  Just kind of quiet in the Trading Depot bay.  About a minute later, I get another report.  A pet cat got it.  A few minutes later, another dog.

And *then*, another minute after that, the caravan, which "departed" long ago but is just now actually moving its ass, is now facing inexplicable attacks by my dogs on its camels, followed by (this time) justified lashings and dismemberments by caravan guards.

The dorfs themselves are passively watching the show, but what gives with this Great Dog/Cat Massacre?

(EDIT: Oh, just in case it's relevant, no, no past or present hostilities with the humies.  They kind of smell, but all has been peaceful.  It's just all so sudden.  Sob.)

6
DF Gameplay Questions / Pausing not completely pausing
« on: June 11, 2010, 07:49:16 pm »
I've noticed some strange behavior in the game, and, though I am new and started playing only on version .03, I don't recall it in versions prior to .05, so I thought I'd bring it up here and ask before submitting it as a bug.

Has anyone else noticed that the game doesn't seem to be pausing completely?  Some passive events seem to occur while in pause mode.  For example, I just started a new game on a new map, and have not unpaused it yet.  While laying out my plans in the (d) menu and other beginning tasks, suddenly I get a notice that a cat has adopted a guy.  I've seen other things, but didn't really take note of them (I will be watching from here on).

So, is this normal, or should no events of any sort be occurring while the game is paused?

7
DF Gameplay Questions / Embarking at a cave -> Everything clumped on surface?
« on: June 10, 2010, 02:13:38 am »
Pretty new to the game still, so I thought I'd embark at a spot with a cave, saw something weird, and thought I'd ask to see if it's a bug or As Intended.

Upon finishing embark, I look and see on the map a HUGE, tightly-packed clump of trade goods, food (soon to be rotten), ettins, giant rats and blind cave bears on the surface just hanging out -- and all of it centered on top of a brook, at that.  Looks dd and inappropriate, to say the lest.

Is this, eh, how it's supposed to be, or is this "cave" somehow bugged?



8
DF Gameplay Questions / Impervious broken-legged unconscious goblin supercombatants
« on: June 02, 2010, 02:57:40 am »
Alright, I'm pretty new to the game, and started out on the 31.04 version, so, eh, hi.

Lame introductions aside, I've noticed that my dwarves seem to be horridly ineffective in combat against goblins, such that one or two can slaughter my whole population of 50-70.  I mean, it's true that they're all relatively untrained (though this also applies to the few that are Proficient or thereabouts in their combat skills), and lack decent armor (using leather), but...

Situation.  Realizing that my soldiers can't even inflict a hangnail, I retreat into the fortress and let a bunch of weapon traps chop up the persistent little fellows, along with some cagings.  One guy is left.  Heavily-wounded.  Falling unconcious.  Two broken legs and throat cut open.  I figure, alright, here's an easy win.  So I send a squad of 7 or 8 out to finish him off.  They hack, and hack, and punch, and wrestle, and everything.  Everything either does light bruises, or is deflected by the strangely-impervious broken-legged little guy.  It keeps going, into 100, 200 pages of attack text.  They're so ineffective that he literally heals over time to full capability, and wakes up and starts heavily-injuring my dwarves who have been trying to hack through his iron mail shirt and copper boots and giant cave spider silk cloak for two weeks.  I didn't let it go to a finish, as I got disgusted and killed the game process, but I've got to ask.

Bug, or feature?  I should note that at least one guy had a masterwork iron short sword (the rest seemed not to care to arm themselves despite a decent arsenal dwarf).

I've looked at a couple of other threads talking about armor being OP, and tooth and claw and so on being erroneously set to the tensile strength of skin, so I imagine/hope this is just a bug in the recent version's newer materials system implementation?  Something I should report, or something that everyone already knows about?  (I spent a few hours perusing the bug tracker and forum, and if there's anything on-point about this, aside from the aforementioned tensile strength posts, I missed it.)

And, until TO fixes it, are there any edits to the raws that would be helpful to making such combats less of a...  eh...  hummingbirds versus battle tank fight?

Specifically, I noticed that wood is also the same IMPACT_YIELD and IMPACT_FRACTURE.  Would it help to apply the same changes to wood, and is there any way to buff up the material strengths of leather and wood for armor purposes?  (Not sure if IMPACT_YIELD and FRACTURE affect armor stats and bladed weapon stats.)

Any advice would be helpful on that bit.


EDIT: Well, trying another run-through, he didn't seem to heal so superfast, and they were able to take him down after a week of all of them ganging on him.  It was pathetic, and he sent one dwarf to the hospital with a gushing leg wound, but he finally expired after a list of injuries that took two-thirds of the length of the page.  But still.

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