Bay 12 Games Forum

But it is!

No worries, I know it's a compliment. "Cryptic" just struck me as an amusing way to describe it, although I guess it's accurate 

    I don't know if anyone remembers good old storyteller v1 which I posted here a full decade ago (man, time flies), but although I stopped updating it on the forums long ago I have been continuing to rework and refine it in the years since. With the Steam release just around the corner, I figured now would be the perfect time to finally unveil it to the public.

    Like the original, this tileset aims to reproduce blackletter script, a.k.a. gothic script, in Dwarf Fortress to give the stories it creates the rich and historic ambiance of a medieval text.

    Also available on DFFD in case of imgur downage.







Q: What's changed between v1 and v2?
A: Pretty much every tile has been modified in some way. Some just by a few pixels, others completely reworked. The numerals 0-9 and most special symbols (Greek letters, special punctuation, formula symbols, etc) were redrawn from zero to better fit the intended style of the pack. Shading was also completely reworked across the whole tileset. Several important text characters (uppercase and lowercase letters + common punctuation) were modified to improve readability, such as it is.

Q: Why make a new thread for this instead of bumping the old one?
A: Aside from the fact that it would be a 10-year necropost, which is pretty incredible, I really didn't want to go back and cringe at my "witty" teenage writing. Considering the extent of the update I figured a new thread was justified anyway.

Q: Is v1 still available anywhere?
A: I don't have it on my computer anymore, but it's probably still buried in the depths of this subforum somewhere if you care to go digging. I don't.

Q: Isn't this pretty unreadable? How do you play like this?
A: Readability is not a main focus of this tileset, obviously, but I can tell you that you do get used to it. I can read it as easily as Arial at this point, but admittedly it's been the only tileset I've used for the past 10 years.

Q: Will this be posted on the Steam Workshop?
A: Maybe eventually. To be honest, I'm an ASCII freak and prefer the look of the old free version and probably won't be upgrading to the paid one. As much as I'd like to support Bay 12 monetarily, I can't really justify purchasing a version of the game I'll probably never play on my current budget. If there's ever a steep sale or if I'm ever flush with cash then I might buy the game and upload this tileset to the workshop, but no promises.

Q: What colour settings are you using in the screenshots?
A: [BLACK_R:21]
[BLACK_G:19]
[BLACK_B:15]
[BLUE_R:45]
[BLUE_G:90]
[BLUE_B:160]
[GREEN_R:72]
[GREEN_G:122]
[GREEN_B:18]
[CYAN_R:25]
[CYAN_G:140]
[CYAN_B:140]
[RED_R:160]
[RED_G:20]
[RED_B:10]
[MAGENTA_R:122]
[MAGENTA_G:54]
[MAGENTA_B:117]
[BROWN_R:150]
[BROWN_G:75]
[BROWN_B:55]
[LGRAY_R:171]
[LGRAY_G:170]
[LGRAY_B:167]
[DGRAY_R:111]
[DGRAY_G:105]
[DGRAY_B:111]
[LBLUE_R:100]
[LBLUE_G:110]
[LBLUE_B:225]
[LGREEN_R:125]
[LGREEN_G:185]
[LGREEN_B:55]
[LCYAN_R:67]
[LCYAN_G:205]
[LCYAN_B:197]
[LRED_R:220]
[LRED_G:50]
[LRED_B:20]
[LMAGENTA_R:209]
[LMAGENTA_G:121]
[LMAGENTA_B:204]
[YELLOW_R:230]
[YELLOW_G:180]
[YELLOW_B:55]
[WHITE_R:232]
[WHITE_G:227]
[WHITE_B:232]

Quote from: hopefullynotobvious on July 28, 2022, 10:28:16 am

Does the [ATTACK] token for ammunition affect using the ammunition as a melee weapon, ranged attacks made with the ammunition or both?

bolts being ITEM_AMMO makes them ammo, I believe. Can't melee with an arrow.
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Ammo_token

[ITEM_AMMO:ITEM_AMMO_BOLTS]
[NAME:bolt:bolts]
[CLASS:BOLT]
[SIZE:80]
[ATTACK:EDGE:19:1890:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000] "tore muscle, bruised stomach" of a duck.
   [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]

But you can add a "bayonet" to your crossbows:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_CROSSBOW]
[NAME:crossbow:crossbows]
[SIZE:400]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[RANGED:CROSSBOW:BOLT]
[SHOOT_FORCE:2400] boosted
[SHOOT_MAXVEL:410] --xx vanilla went 1000->200.   "This is just to make sure a near-weightless object doesn't go faster than the string could possibly go."
[TWO_HANDED:0]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:45000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:8:500:bayonet:bayonets:NO_SUB:950] --same as dagger but nerfed a little. Might be too elite for wood and bone crossbows.
   [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:4]
[ATTACK:EDGE:8:380:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:900]
   [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:4]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:4000:4000:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:1350]
   [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:4]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:4000:4000:fumble:fumbles:NO_SUB:250]
   [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:5:5]

Okay, thank you.

This isn't true, sorry, the [ATTACK] token always defines a melee attack and you definitely can wield ammo as a melee weapon (I believe it uses the misc. item user skill). I took a screenshot for proof-- I renamed stab/stabs in the attack definition to something "humorous" and spawned an aardvark woman with a single iron bolt as a weapon. This is the attack description when selecting an attack (collapsed because it's a large screenshot):

I had to rething the frequency of Elder Scrolls creatures. It seemed strange that so many (almost certainly) non-canon mounts and pets from ESO would be as common as iconic creatures such as guars and mudcrabs.
Oh, and I've also finalized Greg Keyes novels creatures, and frankly I was considering skipping a few of those. Soul-spinners and proforms play a very specific role in the soul cycle of Umbriel, which had my brain overheat. In the end I've decided to just ignore it all. Proforms are just aquatic vermin that do nothing but disgust dwarves, and soul-spinners can turn people into mindless, emotionless, yet still living husks.
Of other interesting creatures from the novels, there are the slarjei. I used the Beyond Skyrim idea of making them half-ton rodents. Josephoartigastia, a real giant rodent, weighted more than that, but a slarjei is more slender, similar to the patagonian mara in shape.

I haven't read the novels, but the Elder Scrolls has a ton of really cool stuff beneath the surface-- tons of interesting creatures and cultures that you'd never know about from playing the games unless you scour every in-game novel and environmental clue and scrap of miscellaneous dialogue for the deep lore. I like that aspect of the series, although I have to admit that some of the CHIM stuff gives me a headache. ESO may not be canon, but I can see how it would be helpful for filling out the bestiary of a mod like this.

I assume this elder scrolls mod is still a WIP? I'd be interested to see it when it's done.

There is no way to edit things outside the raws, at least without decompiling the .exe and modifying the source code directly (which takes a lot more technical and programming know-how than raw editing, obviously). From my interpretation of the copyright info in the readme, however, distributing a modified version of the game binary (even not for profit) would be a copyright violation. I cannot stress this enough, do not distribute a modified Dwarf Fortress.exe.

If you go down this route you might be able to distribute the final product as an xdelta patch, which is a common way for fan translation projects to avoid the legal issues of distributing modded binaries-- they're essentially a file that contains only the difference between two binaries and can be used to patch one into the other. Don't take this as advice, though. I wouldn't expect Toady to approve of such a project since he seems (justifiably) defensive of the source code and hasn't given the go-ahead to any similar projects as they've been discussed over the years, at least to my knowledge.

That's because the raws are not encoded in Unicode, they're also encoded in cp437. The ┬ appears because in Unicode á is a 2 byte code point and the game is showing both bytes as separate characters.

Edit: in utf-8 á is 0xC3 0xA1 which in cp437 are ┬ and á.

I realized I could just copy-paste the á in ngalák in dwarf.txt and that worked, although it does feel a bit cheaty. Thank you for the clarification, though-- the raw file I made was still using the default utf-8 encoding and that was part of the problem.

I'll definitely be giving it a try once I'm free in a few hours. I'll add an edit with my first impressions after I've played a bit.

EDIT: Well, it's definitely a pre-alpha game. The controls are very clunky - it almost reminds me of DayZ in the early days, but maybe that's just the graphic style. The inventory system is interesting and I like being able to make your own fortifications, so I'll keep an eye on it. But until they make it feel "snappier" and more responsive I can't see it competing with RWR.