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Topics - astianax

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DF Modding / on silk
« on: August 02, 2011, 04:51:44 am »
i've sort of been doing a lot of work involving silk, silk farming, and testing, modding, and creating a variety of silk creating creatures, partially because there just aren't enough different types yet in the core game (i know this is going to change when all the new creatures are added. yay black widow and brown recluse silk items)

first off, i've borrowed forest and blood spiders from deon's genesis mod (and yes, i know the latter don't make silk), as well as using the whole 8 eyes body for all my spiders. also upgraded the giant cave spider, including making it a regular [PET] class, and war trainable. the good news is war gcs *will* shoot webs while charging into combat, so makes for easier kills and lots of gcs silk for your weavers to grab up. was pleasantly happy to see that after reading about people complaining that tame gcs forgot they could web things. also, my gcs can give birth.

i've also replaced cats with the 'trapper spider' (which needs a better name, eventually). basically it's a cat sized spider that does everything cats do except adopt, and it can make silk. unfortunately, that silk is only found in the caves, since they don't seem to realize they can web...(see above gcs comment...) maybe i'll make them war trainable and see if they'll shoot webs at the vermin they attack. makes for a fun image, at least. and, we'd learn something, whether it worked or not.

another bit i borrowed from genesis was the silkworms, which i then modded to be a [VERMIN_SOIL_COLONY] like ants and bees. however, i didn't make them artificial hiveable, just because. and gave them the [PET] tag. this combination of things actually more or less mimics the early .25 'issue' that i enjoyed where a caged pet cave spider or phantom spider (or...well, any other caged vermin) would spawn lots of others around it. for the spiders/silkworms, an easy and abundant silk farm in a safe location. i've also given my silkworms the [UBIQUITOUS] to make sure they're always found in the biomes they can be found in.


my current embark has several silkworm colonies spawning silk all over the place, as well as wandering phantom spiders in the evil section, leaving a nice variety of silks for my cloth related industries. however, i realized that the good and savage biomes don't have their own version of phantom spiders, meaning resident vermin webbers, so took it upon myself to make some.

...at which point i reached a dead end. not because i can't make them, that's easy. but i don't know *what* to make. i sorta want the good webber to be somehow fairy related, but no clue what it should be. i keep picturing the two fairies moth and cobweb from midsummer night's dream. and, the savage option...well, just another spider seems a bit dull for that, so again, stuck on ideas

although, thinking of making an animal man version of a spider would be fun...now thinking of making arachnid men. with two different castes, one spider, one scorpion. hmm...

2
DF Modding / aquatic races
« on: January 17, 2011, 07:01:45 pm »
so, after cutting my teeth doing a few minor modifications of existing work, i'd decided to tackle my first 'real' modding idea...making aquatic races to fit into all the potentially useless ocean areas of the map. mostly, for the time being, they're just straight ports of dwarves, elves, humans, goblins and kobolds, but renamed to what they'd eventually become if i manage to get past the many roadblocks i've encountered

those races will be, from the d&d realm, locathah for the dwarves, aquatic elves for the elves, tritons for human (i want to keep the races able to walk on land, just to trade, so no merperson for them), sahuagin for the goblins, and because i couldn't think of any better, skum for kobolds (that and the name just fits). i'd changed all their start biomes to various forms of ocean, and occasionally added lake, as well. also made every form of fish and aquatic life pets for them, and aquatic/amphibious versions of the domestic beasts, just to make things easier on their traders, and added in a pair of really lame d&d pun critters, the seawolf and sealion. on top of that, made pond grabbers ocean goers, and added lobsters to the ocean and crayfish to lakes/rivers. all and all, seems a success...until i try to play as the locathah. the races work in world gen, and adding river/ocean products helps a ton, esp with their trade goods, but, it's impossible to get them into the water!

i did try to research, and all i found was a reference in an old carp fortress thread that there's bugs with 'dangerous terrain' ideas, so that aquatic races refuse to believe they can breathe water just fine. so, big damper on my plans. add to that the inability to build anything underwater, or use workshops after they're flooded, and the concept is pretty much dead

enter my questions...is there any way at all to work around these, or am i stuck with just using them as trader/invader races for the standard dorfs and such to encounter? i've been plotting various types of sea plants, based loosely on the seaweed from genesis, mostly for farming purposes, but could be fun just to get them in trade, i suppose

another big one is the tokens thing, i tried to make my own "domestic_aquatic" file for the ocean capable pet and pack beasts, but am told that no such token exists. is there a way to actually make them...tokenable?

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