Bay 12 Games Forum

This is pretty cool. Maybe I'll download this and give it a shot after I finish my current fort.

Too bad Spouse_Converter only works with Night Creatures. Gerudo's kidnapping men and forcing them to be their spouses would fit them. (A Gossip Stone in OoT does mention this.)

Hey, can you make a Gossip Stone creature? Immobile, Immortal, and Intelligent enough to speak. That way you can get leads and quests from the Gossip Stones. J/K

Seriously though, I'd like to see how this mod evolves.

Edit:

Finally, under the hope that they get traded in world gen in the next version, zoras get the animal part furniture workshops and the associated reactions. If it does work, you might see the occasional fishbone table or shell chair in hyrulean towns.

Fishbone Guitars FTW!

There was a general whose wife was the leader of a civilization. In the year 8, she was kidnapped and turned into a bleak horror. Over the decades, the general became obsessed with his own mortality and sought out the necromancer's tower, becoming a lowly apprentice in return for eternal life. Years later, he wrote a 30 page essay about his horror wife called Victory By The Creature. He also took an apprentice of his own, a former queen of the dwarves, and wrote a touching and concise 282 page biography about her. You end up with quite a few formerly important apprentices, since it only concerns itself with the secret worries of important people at this time -- a technical hurdle which needs to be worked through now or later.

When you say 282 page, do you mean literally or informatively?
To clarify: Is it actually written out or does the game just tell you that is how long it is?

Wait... you mean, that power can't be used in buildings?

I assumed it was in there already due to the mills. Dang.

At least I didn't start trying to mod that then.
I was going to mod it in for my next fort, I thought it would be fun to make it require
a lot of power just to make it so the magma is still the better option.

Oh well. I simply assumed all the stuff that other buildings could do would be available to use as tokens.

As for the main part of my idea, I thought it would be a decent idea. It probably still needs a bit of polishing and pounding out and it wouldn't be very useful in the short run. Though as the game gets bigger and interactions become more complex, it will help keep the reactions down to just the lines that change. Ultimately, it is kind of like how other objects are already handled and it simplifies things a bit .

Of course there are still cons to my idea, by taking some of the stuff out of the main reaction you can't see the entire reaction.  Part of my idea is to take some of the clutter out of the reaction, so you can see what makes the reaction unique. At the same time you can't see what makes it the same as the others without looking at the template.

It also becomes useless if there are tons of reactions that are completely unrelated to one another. My idea would still be used along side the current one, so you can still use reactions without using a template but it simply wouldn't be of use in a situation like that.

Another problem is how often will someone want to make a workshop that serves a similar purpose to one that already exists. I mean, besides my weird idea of a smelter I came up with I have trouble thinking of a similar example. In this case, the interface-like design of the template would be useless unless there were more reasons to make custom workshops that do similar things in only a slightly different way. Most of the time when people do make custom workshops, it is to produce things using reactions completely different from the others and there is no reason to use a reaction template, because they don't care about what was going in the original reaction or it is something unrelated.

It honestly needs so fixing, but I haven't done much modding to the game and therefore I'm not sure how helpful it would be. I put it here, because I saw there was nothing like this that I could find by searching. I know what I put here isn't an original idea, far from it in fact. It is a common programming design pattern and it is used in several different places already in the raws. My big thing about this though was also using it like an interface as well as a template, but like I said other than my odd grind-smelter, what else would use that?

I have faith in Toady, but even he admits he sidetracks a lot. Longer development cycles has been proven very hurtful to the game - just look at 31.01.

He set himself the plans for shorter development cycles with bugfixes releases in-between, and it was a really good plan - it would appease the "moar bugfix" masses and would still bring the game forward. It is a pity he can't attain to his own plans. The last release was almost(more?) than six months ago.

Yeah, but his sidetrack here came about because while the new cities are interesting and cool he wanted to add stuff to do in them as well. The catacombs would be cool but ultimately pretty boring without all the other stuff he added. Granted this entire release wouldn't have even had fortress mode improvements if it wasn't for the side track. Thanks to interactions there's a good deal for everybody to have fun with.

Man, by the time this is released there will be so much new content to enjoy.
Cities, new night creatures, sewers, catacombs, temples, monuments, even books.
I certainly going to take a stab at some of these new features and I can wait to see the rest.

You know, that bit about books really got me thinking. Someday in this game it might be possible
to walk into a library and start reading around for info on treasures, hidden locations, and creatures.

In your studies, you travel far and wide to the libraries of all the major cities. One day, you read a
book of fairy tales that tells about a town you are familiar with and how an artifact of great power
was hidden there long ago. You slowly begin to find similar tales, some that expand the story, some
that twist it, and other that embellish it. Eventually, you track down a version of the story with more
details and use it to track down the artifact.

Something, like this might be possible someday. I mean the game already keeps track of historical events.
Once people can write, sing, and tell fictional stories, they can incorporate history in the tales. Since there
is already plans for more personalities, the changes made to a historical account can be based on the
story-teller's preferences. In example, the artifact might be a wooden amulet, but someone might like gold and
decide a golden amulet is better for the story. (Though I guess it could just as easily be changed to a wooden
cabinet by the right person.) 

The day DF is capable of that, will be a fine day indeed. I mean the game can already put together interesting
stories, but just think of what it might someday be capable of is astounding.

I was thinking of an idea.

I thought it would be neat to mod in a workshop that acted like a smelter, but instead of using a fuel (like magma or coke) it would use power. The idea was it used two grindstones to heat up a boulder into magma and use that to smelt. It would require Power and an extra stone, but gives a slightly different way of smelting.

This idea is actually pretty simple to implement (the stone turning to magma wouldn't actually happen in-game, but is simply the theory behind the thing), except when it comes to the reactions. I would need to copy and paste every single reaction and edit them to work with my new smelter.

I would need to make this:
[REACTION:BRASS_MAKING]
[NAME:make brass bars (use ore)]
[BUILDING:SMELTER:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:METAL_ORE:ZINC]
[REAGENT:B:1:METAL_ORE:COPPER]
[PRODUCT:100:2:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:BRASS][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[FUEL]
[SKILL:SMELT]Into this:
[REACTION:BRASS_MAKING_GRIND]
[NAME:make brass bars (use ore)]
[BUILDING:GRIND_SMELTER:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:METAL_ORE:ZINC]
[REAGENT:B:1:METAL_ORE:COPPER]
[REAGENT:F:1:BOULDER:NO_SUBTYPE:INORGANIC]
[PRODUCT:100:2:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:BRASS][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[SKILL:SMELT]
Now what if, I could simplify this a bit. Now notice these two key points:
First: All the regular smelter reactions share certain lines of info. All my reactions share certain lines of info.
Second: All my reactions are nearly identical to the original smelter reactions except for the lines that the first point mentions.

What I propose is a template system similar to what is used for other objects. If you separate, all the lines that stay the same between the two reactions, but differ between similar reactions I get:
[REACTION:BRASS_MAKING]
[NAME:make brass bars (use ore)]
[REAGENT:A:1:METAL_ORE:ZINC]
[REAGENT:B:1:METAL_ORE:COPPER]
[PRODUCT:100:2:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:BRASS][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
So I end up with just the formula minus some components. Now I take the parts that differ between the two reactions, but stay that same with-in similar reactions I get:
[REACTION:SMELT]
[BUILDING:SMELTER:NONE]
[FUEL]
[SKILL:SMELT][REACTION:GRIND_SMELT]
[BUILDING:GRIND_SMELTER:NONE]
[REAGENT:F:1:BOULDER:NO_SUBTYPE:INORGANIC]
[SKILL:SMELT]
Now I have all the reaction code from the two building separated. Next I would add two lines to the REACTION_BRASS_MAKING:
[USE_TEMPLATE_REACTION:SMELT]
[USE_TEMPLATE_REACTION:GRIND_SMELT]
Doing this would allow reactions to be used at multiple workshops with slightly differing requirements.

The recipe part of the reaction is reusable if someone wanted to add a fourth smelter type for whatever reason. There is also the added bonus of being able to make it so certain reactions can only be done at one building (like in this case I would make it so coke couldn't be produced from a grind smelter) simply by leaving out the template line for the undesirable building.

It also adds some flexibility for modding in general. If someone wants to use my grind smelter with metals from another mod they would have to only add one line to each metal, instead of coping and pasting, adding two lines, editing another line, and deleting another. And the reaction itself wouldn't need to be added to the civilization either (the building would still need permitted though). Overall it would greatly reduce the number of changes a modder would need to make when involved with reactions.

Also reactions would still work they way they currently do, because the current system is still versatile in other ways. You can have one building do a bunch of unrelated reactions without templates. Templates are there to add more versatility not take away from what is there.

Granted, my system isn't perfect and could probably use some other thoughts. Like I wonder if linking the concrete reactions to the templates the way I did is the best way of doing that. I would guess since the game would have to check the templates to find the building types the reaction is linked to it might cause some problems. There would also need to be a way for the reaction to ignore anything in a template linked to a different building (IE: We wouldn't want it asking for the fuel and the extra rock.). Though, most of what I put here would be superficial. It wouldn't change how the game sees things, it just makes it easier for the modders to deal with.

I imagine this has already been put up here somewhere, but I'm not so good at searching since I tend to think in off-the-wall terms. I went through three subject titles for this topic, Polymorphic Reactions and Virtual Reactions were up there before I settled on Reaction Templates.

If this has already been suggested could you point me in the right direction, as I would like to see what others might have come up with. Plus I'd really like to see what they called it so I could find the info easier. 

 

I've re-read this a couple of times but I'm still confused.  Which part(s) exactly were the lie, and which were truth?

Everything above the line.

And Mekboy, overlooking the tragedy, weeps for her fallen friends as blood starts falling from the heavens...

---

"Mek, what are you doing there?"
"I'm engraving, can't you see that?"
"Yes but... ew, that's gross. I didn't know that engravings could be so gory." I frowned. She has made an engraving depicting a battle of horrifying scale and detail.
"I call it 'The Fall of Failcannon'. It's my depiction of how this place will eventually-"

The story also implies that everything above the line was a description of Mekboy's engraving.

It should be noted, I am still not sure the rest actually happened in-game either. Mostly because I am not 100% sure what was going on. It sounded like either he seized goods from the caravan or the depot got destroyed. So I think this was just a update to the story, not an update to the progress of the fort.