Bay 12 Games Forum

Since we are into the second millenium now, I thought it would be good to post an up to date version of the population graphs:

Very unusual uptick in gremlins around year 874. And then a second population spike around 899.  I like it.
Anyone know off-hand what happened during those years, which evidently led to the creation of a stable world population of gremlins?

Just support for things like sun damage. 

It's weird that we have [CAVE_ADAPT], but we aren't able to define custom variations of it. 

My hope is for a tool that allows my custom thurz creatures to turn into "creature:gabbro_boulder"s consistently, whenever they're exposed to daylight.  As of now, theres no way to repurpose CAVE_ADAPT, or apply a syndrome to a creature automatically, without loading it onto the map.

Workin' on my Thurz, which are intended to be a type of boulder mimic, thats only present in savage biomes. They start off sessile, and transform into rock trolls by night. And at dawn they go back to being "gabbro boulders." Theres a lot of stuff to iron with these guys though. Mostly, it's issues with how to synchronize the start up delay and end time, in ticks, so that their transformation only happens at night, for both fort mode and adventure mode.

Some images:

Spot the mimic.


Totally called that this would happen. (Note that the night troll hasn't even transformed yet.)


Fighting rocks, etc.



Ideally, these guys would also stay in their night form while underground, but I don't think thats happening.  Although I could solve that issue, maybe, by using a whole other set of castes within the thurz_night_form, which would be those by default, as opposed to the other way around, and actually spawn during world gen, and have them spawn in underground caverns. In the event they ever get to the surface, they use the interaction which sets them on the crazy transformation schedule. I've tested the location hint interaction token, and while the interaction version of the token is bugged, CDI:LOCATION_HINT:OUTSIDE might not be, it certainly does not prevent a creature from using the interaction while outside, but its not clear whether it actually prevents the creature from using it inside.

Also been working on good biome regional effects, as well as some "magical item" prototype mods. I'll start thinking about what additional items DFhack will allow, but so far I've only considered "magical items" that the raws can facilitate on their own. Such as fixed mat material items; an inedible item, which continually rots into itself, and continually produces miasma in cycles; and an item that naturally produces discrete quantities of any item, like meat or soup ladles, and slowly repeats this over an infinite cycle.


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Edit: ☠ Working on a pestilence mod. ☠

I'm actually surprised to see how well the lice infestations are working. And I am VERY SURPRISED to see how well my plump helmet mimics are working. These things are evil!

Regional interaction causes a dwarf to occasionally spawn a couple "plump helmets", which stack with normal plump helmets, but aren't plump helmets at all. When eaten raw or brewed, they inflict an ingested food poisoning syndrome. For premium, they'll probably use a slightly modified plump helmet sprite. (I'm doing the modding in 47.05 for now)

Lice have been given a special vermin bite attack, which inflicts a syndrome, which causes a creatures with head hair to be able to spawn lice around them, which leads to anyone getting close, getting lice as well.

Feral rats should also be fun to work with.

Images:

Stainless Steel

From the Chromite raws in game:

Stainless steel, for those reading, is odd, in that it is sort of in the game already, although there is no way of currently producing it.  The metal seems to have ended up getting dropped on the cutting room floor.  However, its raw file can still be found in the material_template for metal itself, where the comments specifically make note of this.

The reason for its lack of inclusion in game is likely due to the tech cut off point.  But I believe that irl has provided a solution for this.

After some cursory research, I learned a bit about ferrochrome.

The section on wiki notes there are no citations for its production section, so take this with a bit of salt.  It states, "Ferrochrome or ferrochromium (FeCr) is a type of ferroalloy, that is, an alloy of chromium and iron, generally containing 50 to 70% chromium by weight. ... Production of steel, especially that of stainless steel with chromium content of 10 to 20%, is the largest consumer and the main application of ferrochrome.

Production
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Ferrochrome production is essentially a carbothermic reduction operation taking place at high temperatures. Chromite (an oxide of Cr and Fe) is reduced by coal and coke to form the iron-chromium alloy."

So if we're not trying to isolate chromium, we don't have to worry about electrolysis, or overly complicated multistage refinement. And since our final product is an alloy of iron, chromium, and carbon, I think this is an easy enough production chain to work in.

For gameplay purposes, let's just ignore some of the more complicated modern refinement techniques out there, and the various multi-metal alloyed stainless steels which can involve nickel and manganese, etc. and we'll just focus on this 11-15% chromium content steel.

Heres the production chain:
1a.) Steel refinement
1b.) Mine Chromite and smelt ferrochrome. (include metal raws for ferrochrome, which likely isn't great for making things with.)
2.) Refine stainless steel: combine 3 steel bars + 2 ferrochrome bars + coal + flux =  4 stainless steel bars.


Note 1: While the addition of another metal is always neat, until corrosion becomes a thing, it doesn't really serve a whole lot of purpose, unless it does the whole bigger numbers thing better than at least some other metals. That said, corrosion would be really neat.

Note 2: I've already modded it in to mess around with. But I figure it's still worth posting about, since the comments for stainless steel are still included with the current edition of DF's raws.

Do you have any plans for the underworld pre-magic, after which it will (presumably) be overhauled and left completely up to world generation?  For example, adding something valuable there to make it worth venturing into?  Or maybe creating underworld structures like fortresses/pits with cages and other evil contraptions of hellish depravity^TM?

No longer in the game, but there used to be stuff in the older editions.
As of 47.05: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Demonic_fortress
In 0.34: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Demonic_fortress

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What is the EQUIPMENT creature flag used for?
I tested a summon unit interaction for creatures with the EQUIPMENT flag, and it ended up summoning a wagon.  This is the same as summon interactions which only summon creatures with the EQUIPMENT_WAGON flag.  I don't think these flags are redundant though.

edit: added question

New [POSITION] tokens for the following would be appreciated:

[CHILD_MALE]
[CHILD_FEMALE]
[MENIAL_WORK_EXEMPTION_CHILD]

Being able to identify a prince or princess more readily would be helpful at times, for figuring out a narrative.
And the menial work exemption might give us some useful flavor, or useless flavor, depending on one's perspective.

Hehe, yes. It occurred to me not long after this post that inhaling vampire blood sadly wouldn't spread vampirism.

The question posed was less about aesthetics, and more about bizarre non-well-like functionality.

I posted this question in the modding forums, since I'm curious as to what very bizarre non-standard materials might allow. For instance, if one were to say, build an entire well out of a colony of bees.