Bay 12 Games Forum

I've mostly finished combing through Vanilla-Spice Revised, which has brought in a ton of nice improvements. Now I'm revisiting the below, because I was feeling kind of guilty about it. I was probably too petty.

I've already reverted elves to vanilla.

I'm putting some thought into elves, but I'm not sure exactly where I'll end up. Despite the many additions in the pending release I'm still very much a minimalist, so I don't want to go crazy. I'm thinking of bringing in flint from Vanilla-Spice Revised (and maybe bog iron) and then maybe they can start using stone weapons, but that kind of goes against my image of them. I might go back a few versions to the aztec-inspired spear throwers and weapons, those were fun. Maybe it was a mistake to get rid of them.

I've already gone through the material template file with a massive banhammer. I quite like Sver's work but there's some pretty significant differences between Revised and DF Combat Reworked already and I don't want to try to support these changes (balance-wise) independently.

The materials file remains tricky. Sver uses really high values in many cases and I worry about breaking combat, and I don't know if I have the energy for extensive testing. Some of it (like the linen buffs) seems to have been balanced specifically for Sver's armor, as well. That being said I agree with the motivation for a lot of it. I'll see where I end up in this file. I'm unlikely to bring it all back in but maybe I can compromise.

The banhammer will fall next on the plant files. I'm a little obsessive about Revised (if it wasn't obvious already) and I'm not confident I can give the plant files the attention they need going forward. Every creator has different interests, and while Button seemed to quite like modding plants I've never had any interest in it. As with the material template file I won't revert everything blindly, just the non-obvious changes.

The banhammer has lifted on the plant files. I was much too harsh on these files and a lot of the changes are a lot more straightforward than I'd thought after some study. Still unsure about the 'seeds come in pods' changes and 'more plants have seeds' changes. I just haven't done much gardening in Dwarf Fortress and it shows whenever I go to touch these files. Still, I do grok most of the other changes so I've brought them back in.

I'm also re-thinking the Coherent Weapons changes I'm currently making to the weapon files.

I'm mid-way through Coherent Weapons and my old weapons changes now. Some of them are pretty straightforward, but there's a few others I'm unsure what the motivation was. For example, spears have a smaller contact area, which helps them penetrate better...but I don't think spears have much problem penetrating already and the DF wiki doesn't indicate spears have any problems. I also made a bunch of changes to bows, crossbows, arrows, and bolts, and I'm not actually sure why (I just propagated the changes blindly, which I'm trying to avoid now).

Friendly neighborhood debugger here, i moved the entity data from entity_bug_evil to entity_default and that resulted in the civ spawning again.
Seems that the file is being ignored.
 The header on entity_bug_evil seems fine, but I debug, not mod, so what do i know.

Thanks for the information. I'm in the middle of combing through VSR for more changes to import into "normal" Revised, and the report helps (although I'm not sure yet if I'll be importing the custom civilizations).

Finished comparing to the Modest Mod again, now I'm on to vanilla-spice revised. The next release will definitely include a ton of fixes and improvements I'd previously deleted or said no to. I'm trying to be more lenient to improve Revised, so long as the change is easy to grok and unlikely to cause problems. You can see my progress and changes in the github repository.

Anyone that's followed Revised for a while will probably know that I'm a little obsessive about consistency. I want to revisit the "weak elf problem" and I can't help but notice that pretty much all animal people in Revised have NATURAL_SKILL, amplifying the below problem. I'll probably change all of that to SKILL_LEARN_RATE tokens instead as Sver suggested and add some for elves, because then I can avoid the adventure mode inconsistency. It's unfortunate that this bug still hasn't been fixed, despite Toady making significant changes to character creation recently. Oh well.

I'll also be comparing Revised again to LargeSnail's updated Modest Mod. I've definitely been too harsh at times on some minor fixes so this is a good way to go all the way back and compare against what I started with.

Otherwise, I'm thinking about bringing in some of Modest Bodies now that I'm looking at it again. For reasons I explain here there's a reason I didn't use it, but maybe I could bring in things like renaming upper legs to thighs and lower arms to forearms. You tell me if it would bother you to have "lower legs" and "thighs" instead of "lower legs" and "upper legs". I remember reverting some things in body_default to keep things closer to vanilla, but with the new internal limb changes the file's already a nightmare to compare against, so there's little point in holding back in that file.

The problem with Natural_Skill, is that it doesn't work on Adventurers due to a bug. That leaves you having to roleplay as the one Elf who can't shoot and dodge like the others. Kind of annoying (I ignore it and grit my teeth with my personal mod because it is a lot of fun in Fortress, but then, I don't share my mod with hundreds of Adventurer loving fans).

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9280

It can be worked around somewhat, by using the SKILL_LEARN_RATE token instead. As far as I could observe, it works on adventurers.

New release! Now with no known bugs in any module.

Modest bodies is very strange. It renames upper bodies to chests, for example, but a chest is by definition only the front part of the upper body, not the back. It reads very strangely in combat to have somebody stabbed in the chest from behind.

It also renames lower bodies to abdomens, which I don't really object to—although when I reverted chests to upper bodies it read strangely to have lower bodies be abdomens—but the above changes do make these bodygloss lines useless.

[BODYGLOSS:INSECT_UPPERBODY:upper body:thorax:upper bodies:thoraxes]
[BODYGLOSS:INSECT_LOWERBODY:lower body:abdomen:lower bodies:abdomens]

I like the renaming of upper legs to thighs but as with the chest change, renaming lower legs to calves seems just wrong. Calves by definition are the back part of the lower leg (once again making it a bug IMO to be struck in the calf from the front), and aren't even the entire back part of the lower leg.

The above issues are why I ended up giving up on Modest Bodies in my updated copy of it and Revised (although from the OP it doesn't look like you started from my updated version, but from Button's last updated version). I quite like the idea but IMO it's a bug to be stabbed in the chest from behind or in the calf from the front, but without those body parts being renamed the remainder seem a little out of place.

Cheers!

Just wanted to post a quick status update. I've been rather busy IRL (Coronavirus has only decreased my free time, not increased it) but it's now pretty clear to me that I've lost most of my interest in DF and Revised, but I've not had the heart to just abandon it all again.

To avoid more future delays and potential problems I've decided to revert the parts of Revised that I'm personally just not that attached to. I've already made good progress and I genuinely expect an update in the next few days. Any unexpected significant blockers will probably also just get quickly reverted back to vanilla. I'll focus on what I'm good at.

• I've already reverted elves to vanilla.
• I've already gone through the material template file with a massive banhammer. I quite like Sver's work but there's some pretty significant differences between Revised and DF Combat Reworked already and I don't want to try to support these changes (balance-wise) independently.
• The banhammer will fall next on the plant files. I'm a little obsessive about Revised (if it wasn't obvious already) and I'm not confident I can give the plant files the attention they need going forward. Every creator has different interests, and while Button seemed to quite like modding plants I've never had any interest in it. As with the material template file I won't revert everything blindly, just the non-obvious changes.

After this I can consider Revised 'finished' and focus just on updates and bug-fixing going forward.

Before anyone panics, I do expect the vast majority of Revised to escape unscathed. I'm just focusing on getting rid of the parts that have consistently prevented me from releasing updates.

I'm just getting back into Dwarf Fortress after an extended break and I'm super happy to see you're still working on this tileset. I've always hopped between this and CLA as I love them both so much.

The kind words are appreciated. Thank you.

I think the tileset you posted on the 5th with the new grass is beautiful. I'd love to use it but 9x9 is just a bit too tiny for me to comfortably use. Would it be possible to get that version in 18x18?

Regardless, keep up the great work!

No problem, here it is.



Just note that the warning below still applies. This tileset was created as a mockup to prepare for the Steam release, not for the current version of the game. If you have any feedback or critique, please let me know. It's why I post mockups.

Keen observers will probably notice new stair, barrel, switch, hill, and trap graphics. The hills are terrible, though. Just note that there's a reason my tilesets weren't this way from the beginning, you'll have all kinds of stupid looking weirdness in places you don't expect it. Enjoy the magical barrel-shifting screw pumps.