Bay 12 Games Forum

Perhaps caged or pitted prisoners could engrave on the floors and walls around them when they have nothing to do. Suppose you constructed a labyrinth and dropped goblins and monsters in it. The goblins would wander, never to see the light again, and chronicle the beasts that stalk them. This would require it becoming something of a free action that can also be ordered through the designation menu, so a bored prisoner could engrave his meager nine tiles. Perhaps this would make it another skill that children have access to, as they run around the fortress drawing on the walls. Of course, they would have to smooth any rough walls first. Maybe they would only go to the trouble to actually smooth a wall first if they're really grasping at straws for something to do, as would be the case with prisoners.

I have to say, I agree with some limitations on held and associated items, but I don't think that there should be much, if any, limitations on animal associations. Take for example Legend of Zelda's Windfish, Poseidon's creation of horses, the flaming Phoenix, the Thunderbird, or Capricorn, the goat of the sea. Think about how cool it would be if a god of fire was surrounded by a swarm of beetles. It might not say it in the game, but you might imagine them as having a ruby sheen, and being hot to the touch. That's one of the great things about Dwarf Fortress, is that it supplies these odd match-ups and you glue them together with your imagination. Frankly what comes to mind for me when I hear that an ocean god is riding a Giant Desert Scorpion is that the dwarfs misinterpreted what is actually a lobster.
Perhaps what is in order for the deity association system is an overhaul of spheres. Everything would have a sphere, biomes, gems, plants and animals to an extent, tools, professions, etc.. Then in the rolling for the god when it gets to associated items and animals it will have maybe a 50% chance of picking something from an associated sphere. Maybe there will be a 10% chance that the god will have a profession picked for it, and then because a profession is very telling of what you do, professions would have closer to a 90% chance of being from an associated sphere. So a god of the ocean would have around a 50% chance of being a fish person, and if it makes the roll to have a profession then it would most likely be represented as a fisherman, or sailor.
Overlapping spheres would also make things interesting. If this system worked properly, god of Fire and Trees or something would have a lot of overlap into various forces of nature, and would end up with its associations pointing it towards being a force of nature and disasters. A god of Fire and Protection however would have associations suggesting a hearth fire god.

That's exactly the kind of thing that modding newbs do. You go to your game directory, raws, objects, entity_default.txt, it's right there on top. You just need to type in [WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_MAUL] right next to the other ones. And if you want all dwarves to be able to wield them, not just the huge freakish ones, you copy/paste [TWO_HANDED:37500] [MINIMUM_SIZE:32500] from the warhammer raws in item_weapon.txt.

I think the first option best describes what I wanted to do. Really what I want is to create a big humanoid creature that can randomly have gills or tentacles or wings or fins or what-have-you, and stick a megabeast token on it. Also, being able to create a couple new spheres would be fantastic as well.

It says that generated, titan, feature_beast, demon and unique_demon cannot be specified in user-generated raws. I've also looked at the articles for all of the procedurally generated creatures and I can't find anything suggesting a way for me to make my own. Am I missing something? Or were you just saying that I can't make these?

Yeah, when I first started doing this I had no idea the wiki had so much info on all the tokens and everything. I was just kinda frankenstiening the raws of different creatures.

Should this work? When I try to use 'Emit bees' from my natural powers in arena nothing happens. The hive colossus has a mouth.

[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:GAS:CREATURE_EXTRACT_TEMPLATE]
[STATE_NAME:ALL_SOLID:frozen killer bees]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:frozen killer bees]
[STATE_NAME:LIQUID:molten killer bees]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:LIQUID:molten killer bees]
[STATE_NAME:GAS:killer bees]
[STATE_NAME_ADJ:GAS:killer bees]
[STATE_COLOR:ALL:YELLOW]
[MELTING_POINT:9870]
[BOILING_POINT:9930]
[PREFIX:NONE]
[SYNDROME]
[SYN_NAME:killer bee sting]
[SYN_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
[SYN_INHALED]
[CE_PAIN:SEV:50:PROB:100:RESISTABLE:START:50:PEAK:500:END:1500]
[CE_SWELLING:SEV:75:PROB:100:RESISTABLE:START:50:PEAK:500:END:1500]
[CAN_DO_INTERACTION:MATERIAL_EMISSION]
[CDI:ADV_NAME:Emit bees]
[CDI:USAGE_HINT:ATTACK]
[CDI:BP_REQUIRED:BY_CATEGORY:MOUTH]
[CDI:MATERIAL:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:GAS:GAS]
[CDI:TARGET:C:LINE_OF_SIGHT]
[CDI:TARGET_RANGE:C:15]
[CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:C:1]
[CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:50]