Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jacob/Lee]

Right, so I finally picked up modding. To train myself, I'm doing a personal pet project of mine which will add aliens. It's probably going to be unbalanced, buggy, and overall a not public domain-worthy mod. I have questions, though:

1) Is it possible to change a creature's caste when it grows up? Dwarf Fortress animal children are basically small versions of the adults, like something out of Spore. As all of you who have seen the movie know, there's a pretty big gap between this and this. Necro gave me an interesting idea of making the larvae emit a gas that affects only themselves and makes them transform into the new caste after X time.

2) Can you split 1 transformation into 2 transformations, one with a higher chance of occurring? If you could, I would make it so a facehugger's attack has a 99% chance of spawning a normal alien, and a 1% chance of a queen. If not, I'll crib the concept of a royal facehugger from that AvP: Extinction game and make the queen have a low chance of giving birth to one.

3) How would I make the concept of an egg work? For obvious reasons, the aliens will be aligned with nobody and will kill anything that moves so I don't think eggboxes will work. If it can't, I'll just bend the canon and make the queen give birth to small facehuggers.

More to come as I think/remember what else I was going to ask.

[Deon]

1) No, a child is born of a determined caste, and then it's just a matter of a size, abilities and naming. You cannot do gender swaps at 13 years.

2) There is a way to do so. Make two transformations within the same syndrome, and make the first one to have 99% chance and the second one 100% chance. It will mean that if the first one fails (1% chance), then the second transformation works. Just simple combinatorics.

[Jacob/Lee]

Huh, that's pretty cool. Thanks a bunch, Deon!

4) How would I make a facehugger die after facehugging something with its interaction? Is there any interaction token that attacks the user?

[Putnam]

Huh, that's pretty cool. Thanks a bunch, Deon!

4) How would I make a facehugger die after facehugging something with its interaction? Is there any interaction token that attacks the user?

Yes, but creatures won't use an attack interaction that hurts themselves, so far as I can tell. This has caused many a problem for absorption-type interactions.

[Jacob/Lee]

Huh, that's pretty cool. Thanks a bunch, Deon!

4) How would I make a facehugger die after facehugging something with its interaction? Is there any interaction token that attacks the user?

Yes, but creatures won't use an attack interaction that hurts themselves, so far as I can tell. This has caused many a problem for absorption-type interactions.

Hmm. I'll keep that in mind.

5) Can wild animals breed? If so, how could I set it up so only the queen and drones could breed, and not any of the other xenomorph castes?

[Lycaeon]

5) By giving only those castes [MALE] or [FEMALE] tokens, and giving the rest [NO_GENDER].

[Jacob/Lee]

5) By giving only those castes [MALE] or [FEMALE] tokens, and giving the rest [NO_GENDER].

Ha, I was looking over the antman raws and noticed that the drone and queen were the only castes with gender tags and came to that conclusion, then came back here and realized you posted. Thanks for the answer!

EDIT: I need a little help with bodies. If I, for example, chose HUMANOID for my body type, would I be free to add a tail in the xeno's RAWs or do I need to make a new body type that includes all the parts in HUMANOID plus a tail?

7) How do I make the queen only give birth to facehuggers?

[expwnent]

It should be possible to have probabilistic transformations. Here's the simple way:

Code: [Select]

[SYNDROME]
[SYN_CONTACT]
[SYN_INGESTED]
[CE_BODY_TRANSFORMATION:PROB:50:START:1]
[CE:CREATURE:HUMAN:MALE]
[CE_BODY_TRANSFORMATION:PROB:50:START:5]
[CE:CREATURE:ELF:MALE]

Preliminary tests are promising. I got this to get one guy to turn into a human and another to turn into an elf. There might be a risk that neither happens. I have not observed both happening. Try it and see. If you're worried about both happening though, make the more likely transformation happen first.

The complicated way is to make them ALWAYS turn into a normal alien, then have another emitted thing from a normal alien have a chance of turning it into a royal. If you do this, you'd have to make sure that they only get one chance to become a royal (do it by adding cannot already be effected to the syndrome or something).

You should also be aware that if you emit a gas all the time, then that'll impact your framerate, and if you're not careful, they'll just emit it their whole lives. To prevent this, I'd recommend making them emit a gas from a gland that burns off shortly after birth as in (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=107423.0). You could also consider making them emit a liquid like cave blobs. Might be easier on the FPS. Might not. Haven't tested it.

[expwnent]

1 should also be possible. Have them emit a gas/liquid that turns them into a new caste, but have the effects start at twelve years in the future. (note that this won't work during worldgen and if they invade you, it won't take effect until twelve years after they invade you, even if they arrive as adults)

edit:

4) Material emissions often hit both the target and the caster. If you add a syndrome to the material emitted that affects only facehuggers and kills them, it should work.

[!!crundle!!]

Is it possible to make creatures grow new/extra body parts using syndromes and such?

[expwnent]

You can make them transform into creatures or castes that do have the extra body parts. You can have a caste which has body parts that another caste does not. Just make a caste with POP_RATIO:0 with the extra parts.

[Deon]

7) How do I make the queen only give birth to facehuggers?

POP_RATIO:0 on other castes, POP_RATIO:100 on facehuggers. Note that worldgen won't pay attention to it though.

[expwnent]

7) How do I make the queen only give birth to facehuggers?

POP_RATIO:0 on other castes, POP_RATIO:100 on facehuggers. Note that worldgen won't pay attention to it though.

Just tried something like that and it worked fine even in worldgen. Never had a problem.

[Deon]

Well, maybe it's adventure mode then. My [POP_RATIO:0] witchers were still appearing in hamlets and setting people afire.

[Jacob/Lee]

Thanks for all the help, everyone. Got one I need answered, though:

EDIT: I need a little help with bodies. If I, for example, chose HUMANOID for my body type, would I be free to add a tail in the xeno's RAWs or do I need to make a new body type that includes all the parts in HUMANOID plus a tail?

Scratch this. The hydra RAWs gave me all I need.


EDIT: Can I build a creature without selecting a pre-built body first? I wanted to try to ignore the step of making a new bodytype that fits only the facehugger and just define the parts it needs in its RAWs.