Bay 12 Games Forum

From what I have so far seen the races do not seem to live in strict isolation, which makes me wonder why we do not allow different races to marry and produce hybrid offspring.  I have seen a large number of dwarf fortresses in Adventure mode with apparantly quite well integrated goblin and human inhabitants, so the lack of hybrids is a question.

I used to think this would mechanically be a problem but since I have been working on creating new creatures I have realised it would not actually be a problem at all to implement.  The reason is that the physique of all creatures of the same are actually distinguished by a set of numbers. 

Creatures would be able to hybridise if they both have the exact same body type, are both intelligent and one partner is not hugely larger than the other (I would say 1/4 size should be the limit).  The hybridisation mechanics are not really very complicated , we simply scramble the values of both parents to produce the child.  Immortality would be treated as a either/or trait, either you inherit elf immortality or you don't. 

As for the question of the interance I think we should base this upon entities if the total amount of both ancestries is equal.  In a human society you are half-elf while in an elf society you are half-human.  We take the foreign race (or the one lowest down in the entity file) and we make them a half-something, so a dwarf breeding with a goblin produces a half-goblin that uses the goblin marker.  On closer examination of the creature we would be informed of the creature's exact parentage by %. 

So we have 50% dwarf, 50% goblin written down in the creatures ancestry.

I have created a mod to bring the lovable blue skinned swordwielding maniacs from Baldur's Gate over to Dwarf Fortress.  The inspiration for their entity comes from a mixture of the information provided here and the appearance of the xvart village in-game.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Xvart

This is I hope is to be the first of many mods introducing more and more elements from the Forgotten Realms Universe (that is Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights) to the game.  Ideally all of them that it is mechanically possible to reasonably add without stretching the lore (or the game) to breaking point.

As this is an ambitious project however I do not wish to commit to it and let everyone down so instead I have released a singular mod to add xvarts (and only xvarts) into the game.  Eventually I can progress to more and more creatures until I have downloaded the whole wiki onto dwarf fortress. 

About Xvart Village
Xvarts are small creatures with blue skin and a small amount of whiteish hair on their heads.  They live in and around mountains, avoiding open areas.  They can live for up to 400 years, but usually die violently before this.  On the plus side they kill plenty in their lifetimes and are often found covered in trophies from their many victims.

They do not however have much metal armour and xvart entities carry short swords exclusively.  Even the civilians carry swort swords and they are inherantly skilled in the use of swords and knives. 

Xvarts are ruled by a Supremacy, who appoints a set of Bosses to rule each village.  Xvart government is not in any way hereditery but neither is it democratic; the stongest Boss siezes control of the Supremacy when the former Supremacy dies.  Boring menal and civilian tasks are presided over by an elected Chief, elected by the people of the xvart settlement he rules.  This sharing of power is possible because the bosses do not care to concern themselves with 'menial tasks', leaving the adminstration of such to the Chief and the Chief does not normally dare to challenge the Boss because he can be 'replaced' rather easily. 

Download Link
http://dffd.wimbli.com/download.php?id=9704&f=Xvart+Mod.rar

Location Link
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=9704

Version 0.2 changes.
*Xvarts no longer have pouches because these are bugged at the moment.
*Xvart civilians are fixed to always have swords or daggers on them by duplication of tool items.
*Xvart naming has been further restricted in order to limit the appearance of un-xvartian names.

Version 0.3 changes.
*Xvarts description has been changed to simplify it, leaving the bulk of the description to the actual in-game creature.
*Xvarts appearance has been changed to better fit with the 4th Edition Xivort creature.
*Xvarts have been given blowguns in line with the 4th Edition Xivort creature.
*Xvarts now occasionally have axes or maces in line with the 1st Edition Xvart creature.

Version 0.4 changes.
*Xvarts now have blowgun ammunition in their entity file.

Version 0.5 changes.
*Xvarts likespan has been reduced to about half that of a human and they now grow up faster in line with 2nd Edition rules printed in Fiend Folio Appendix.
*Xvarts now occasionally have spears and a 'two handed' sword of their own described as a xvart longsword.
*Xvarts were supposed to come in litters off 1-3 but this does not seem to work in World-Gen which does not support twins or triplets so this is not implemented.

Version 0.6 changes.
*Xvarts no longer have BONECARN. I thought that this meant that xvarts would eat bones, it actually defines the creature as a Carnivore meaning it does not eat plants. Now xvarts can actually eat the plants they grow in their gardens.

Since playing Adventure mode I have found the travel map a great deal of use as a guide for travelling normally, because it is a far more detailed map than anything else.  But the game you does not allow you to travel in mountains or close to rivers, this means that one often has to leave rivers in order to simply look at the map to figure out where you are.  This is funny, if we have a map then why can we not read it even when we cannot travel effortlessly over the landscape. 

I propose that we be able always to look at the travel map but not actually travel.  More ambitiously I propose we be able to zoom in and zoon out the map manually rather than automatically (as at present). 

At the moment our settlement enjoy a certain surflait of political stability.  We have our ruling party and it manages to stay in power forever unless it is overthrown from without.  I think the game could add in greater political instability in the following manner.

Each dwarf has a loyalty value, alongside their happiness value.  Happy dwarves are generally loyal and the other way around, but the former changes more slowly than the latter AND is also affected by their personal opinion of key nobles including particularly your settlement leader. 

Disloyal dwarves are inclined to leave your fortress's ruling party and create a named rebel party.  You can only control dwarves that belong to your own party, rebel dwarves are instead controlled by an AI that goes about giving them work orders and generally doing stuff entirely autonomously.  They also cannot become nobles, be appointed nobles and if they were nobles before joining the rebel party they resign their posts. 

When the rebel party becomes strong enough, they will apoint a secret shadow bunch of nobles based upon their own members proficiancies.  They will then rebel and try to take over the settlement, the rebellion can only be crushed violently with the death of all the secret nobles in the rebel party.  They try and kill off or force into exile all remaining government party members.  When you have no nobles left in your settement, you lose the game and the rebels party become the new ruling party of the settlement.

As the settlement is still inhabited, you will not be able to reclaim it. 

At the moment it is kind of unclear as to what civilization owns what holdings.  This is because all holdings of the same race are color coded the same. 

What we need is to color code each settlement depending upon owner, with a particular color reserved for settlements controlled by bandits.  We would continue to use the same symbols as present according to the settlements race.

So elves would continue to use an i. But instead of all of them being yellow, we would say a red i and a purple i.  That way we can clearly at a glance determine the borders of civilizations in the game. 

I keep observing the same basic problem.  Everytime I make a new game, it turns out that a large proportion of the nobility of my dwarf civilization are some variant of goblin judging by their proffession.  Sometimes even the king/queen.  I do not see elf, human, kobold etc nobles alongside them.

Why does this happen and can it not be sorted out!