Bay 12 Games Forum

I've found some link about a x86 decompiler into LLVM intermediate code. AFAIK it isn't yet released, but I wonder if it might be of some help for people to port DF to some new architecture (like x86_64 or ARM) or maybe even producing a more optimised exe or something.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTc1OTQ

They look alright to me.

I once did a 16+ pump mist generator over my dining hall, but decided it was a massive overkill. I forgot if I used clusters of 4 pumps or if it was all linked together with 1 stack of 7 water going through all pumps in turn. Now I just use a 4 pump setup with social zones both under it and in all 4 places where the water can be on the upper level (over floor grates). It seems sufficient, is faster to build and even trains some drowning swimming.

> Any glaring issues that needs to be "hotfixed" before a major feature release?
NATURAL_SKILL:DISCIPLINE to military castes and dogs, maybe?

You don't need to cut down the number of gems and can instead use them for reactions with reaction classes, like FoE did. For example:

[INORGANIC:CITRINE]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:2][DISPLAY_COLOR:6:7:1][TILE:169][IS_GEM:citrine(R1):citrines(R1):OVERWRITE_SOLID]
[ENVIRONMENT:ALL_STONE:CLUSTER_SMALL:100]
[REACTION_CLASS:RESTORATION_LOW]
[SOLID_DENSITY:2650]  Common to quartz gems
[STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:CREAM]

I think this is a strong alternative to reducing variety of gems.

> Spells are already planned, Tho they'll probably be imparted via syndromes rather than castes,
> because castes has a nasty tendency to scramble the pony descriptions
Of course you need syndromes for spells. Namely syndomes from evaporating rocks from workshop reactions which give the pony a CE_CAN_DO_INTERACTION. But you could make some spells stronger or exclusive to unicorns with magical cutie marks. In FoE there were 5 or so schools of magic, each having 1-3 basic spells, 1-2 advanced spells and 0-1 master spells. Normal unicorns could learn basic spells from one school and that's it, but you could choose which school. Some Unicorns were talented in one school of magic and those could learn all basic spells from all schools (and cast them more often) and advanced spells in their own school. Finally a magic master could learn all spells and was the most effective at casting them. Non-unicorns got sick from using magic reactions.

While not be-all-end-all of spells, FoE system worked quite well. It took some effort to develop all basic spells, the necessary workshops and finally teach them to at least half the Unicorn population and wasn't that overpowered, especially that the more powerful enemies were resistant to magic.
Some notes on FoE magic system: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118893.msg3959710#msg3959710
Reactions and necessary infrastructure: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118893.msg4157271#msg4157271

Here is another thread on spells, but I didn't find it all that useful for ponies. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101264.0

One downslide of FoE spell system is that it uses skill Alchemy, which you already use for could factories and I don't think there is another good candidate. Trapping maybe? No one uses that.

> I should perhaps also point out, Ponies will have items available that can
> counteract the lower than normal skill gains, through magic items, food [...]
I'm all for wearable magic items with \ITEMSYNDROME. For the most part they seem to work pretty well as long as they're somewhat scarce, so only veteran soldiers get them. Food is another matter. It is prone to either being too rare and short-lasting to matter or spammable via farming. I think Masterwork even went as far as to make certain plants only give one crop per year to nerf magic drinks and poisons, but I don't like having to wait that long; my forts tend to die of FPS or other issues in 5-8 years.

> ...Hay just a thought since your planning on removing uncut gemstones for flavor reason...
> I was just wondering what are we supposed to do when a pony goes into a fay mood and
> wants rough uncut gemstones?

After I repeatedly asked for it, FoE eventually got a reaction to turn cut gems into rough ones with 60% chance, so getting gems from a caravan became viable. I used it to order what gem types I didn't have in abundance from the liaison.

[REACTION:RECOVER_GEM]
   [NAME:prepare polished gem for carving (60% chance)]
   [BUILDING:ARCANE_GEMCRAFT_STATION:NONE]
   [REAGENT:A:1:SMALLGEM:NONE:NONE:NONE]
   [PRODUCT:60:1:ROUGH:NONE:GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT:A:NONE]

I have one request. Armour User gains are the slowest of all military skills (unless using danger rooms withhout shields or something), so please make it at least INNATE for all ponies. Preferably 500% and no rust. In my experience it is that bad.

And that first number is not the number of XP per try, it is a multiplier. A workshop job usually grants 30 (or was it 60?) XP, while a single use of military skill grants like 2-15. Then that is multiplied by XP rate (0-500) and divided by 100. Seeing as integer arithmethics works, even 99 learning rate can severely slow down training of those skills that give particularly low xp per use (namely military and especially armour user).

Do 40.05 saves work in 40.06?

> tho i may make a larger layer type of "gem filled soil or rock" where you can find large quantities.
FoE had a rock grinder with a reaction to grind 10 rocks and possibly get some gems out of it. Between that, concrete slab production, masonry and making mechanisms, I had no such thing as too much stone.

So I made a rather long rant about FoE, but I really liked that mod to the point of reading through the RAWs after each release. I sincerely think you should take a peek too, Sorcerer. There are a lot of good ideas in Lycaeon's RAWs that could be applied here (Well, maybe except for expeditions).

Cutiemarks do make quite a difference already both in terms of skills (for most CM castes), stats and personality (for a select few)
In general they improve the skill between 10% for a non favored skill and 25% for a class favored skill, depending on amount of skills improved.

I'm coming from this: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=118893.msg3953300#msg3953300 where CMs can more than double a learning rate, but that's probably a bit much. 10-25% is not that impressive and even insufficient to override racial penalties. I remember when Pony mod had up to 130 learning rates from just the race, so I wonder why you toned it down so much that it is hardly worth it to even keep track of CMs. In FoE getting a military class or an "extra-magical" unicorn was something that I looked forward to with each migrant wave. It was balanced by having multiple "social" CMs that weren't much good for anything.

Masterwork actually had some castes have maximal learning rates for a skill or two, but made them slow learners at anything else.

In any case, there should be a race and CM guide for this mod. 

I deleted all the RAWs, from Starter Pack, then put the RAWs from 40.x Pony Mod in, but it complains it can't find a file. It would appear your RAW pack is incomplete. If I was supposed to overwrite and not replace the RAWs with it, then that was counter-intuitive.

EDIT: It does work when I just copy the pony raws over raws from Starter Pack. I'll generate a world and see if anything ?funny? happens.

The "improoved hauling" is irritating to no end, as far as I'm concerend. The main problems are that fetching containers tends to take more time than save and all the cancellation spam from inaccessible items in bins.

It is nice to see some sensible solution proposals. While there are work-arounds like a no-bin stockpile that feeds to stocklie that has bins or railcart-dumps to a quantum stockpile, those are annoying. I'd much rather simply designate a stockpile, allow bins and have it just work. I understand the view-point of "OK, if you follow these instructons, it will be much less painfull", but I'd rather see the underlying issues reduced in severity and now would be a good time.

Ponies are about the size of a german shepard, except for the oversized head. I'd say 30-50kg for an average pony tops. Then 50-80 kg for Big Mac or Luna and 100-150 kg for Celestia (she is very slim for her size).

If ponies are pushovers... well, it is bad from gameplay perspective, but in the show the guard never seems to be able to accomplish anything anyway.

Well, on the plus side, equipment weight scales with creature size, but encumberance does not, so smaller creatures are less encumbered by armour.

As for gems, Fallout Equestria mod has a rather interesting system. Gems were renamed like this [IS_GEM:rose quartz (D1):rose quartzes (D1):OVERWRITE_SOLID] and assigned to a reaction class: [REACTION_CLASS:DESTRUCTION_LOW] Then they could be made into items, most notably spell hologems which could be used to teach magic to Unicorns. Unicorns were sorted by CMs, most able to learn just low-level spells in one single school of magic, but others could get some pretty powerful stuff. It wasn't that overpowered for the amount of effort and book-keeping it took, but it was still rewarding to have a magic CM pony in the military throwing down spells. Too bad they only worked against the weaker enemies.

I think these images are a bit on the big side as far as ponies go. There was an older chart I can't find that put pony head height at 1.2m maybe. Or was it 1m?