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Generic leather

Animal-named leather

[Deon]

I've decided to revert to animal-specific leather in the next version because it's easier than to make workarounds to make civs use leather at all. If there is just generic leather, the game assumes there's no access to animals with leather and does not generate leather armor at all.

Hmm...I haven't yet seen this problem in my own use of the generic leather mod, as both my home civ and others use clothing items made out of generic leather.

Huh, that's strange. My civ cannot embark with leather at all. I should definitely check what I missed there.

[Zucchini]

Do the false creature entries show up in dwarf preferences?  Like, will it show stuff like "prefers hatches,  ,  silver,  , and plump helmets for their rounded tops..."?

(I know it's a piddly concern, but I'm looking at quite a few possible entries, which could add up to a large occurrence that might make it feel really workaroundy, so I'm curious if that's avoidable.)

[Grimlocke]

You do realize you can add any number of materials to a single creature? There is no need to make 50 creatures for 50 types of leather.

Anyhow, I dont know if you can remove prefstrings, but possibly the DOES_NOT_EXIST tag (one of my favourites!) can help. Beside that you could remove the prefstring tag, though that might just result in "Urist likes  for  ". In the worst case scenario you can just call all the creature 'muffin' with prefstring 'tastyness'.

[Zucchini]

What you say !

I kind of assumed not -- I think I was conflating the use of variant creature entries for value/quality gradients ("tough" or "fine" or whatever) with the variant kinds of skins themselves (if that made any sense). This is good, then!


Thanks for the ongoing advice, guys, by the way.  It's been hugely helpful.  And comments and votes too.

I see the tide has turned on the voting, and the traditionalist voting bloc has come out in force.  Would it be annoying/inappropriate if I wiped the poll and put in a new one, refined it a bit?

[Zucchini]

Individual more aesthetic questions I'd like thoughts opinions on -- sorry for the length, and HUGE thanks in advance for reading it :

(1) Sharkskin, Snakeskin, etc.: Some kinds of leathers have names that resonate differently, as in "hide" and "fur" versus "leather."  But there's also, say, "sharkskin" and "snakeskin" -- would these be appealing as generic leather types for mundane snakes and sharks (except whale shark, which would be specific)?

(2) Cave Spider Chitin Armor?: Chitin is a weird case. The way I'm thinking of it, most insects less than man-sized have chitin that's pretty much useless (or at least usable only industrially, as in shellac). For giant beetles and monster crabs and the like, though, armorable chitin seems appropriate. But for some reason giant cave spider chitin seems wrong, like it would still be too thin or something, but I'm no arthropologist (spiderologist?).  In fact, I HATE spiders.  Haaaate.  But that's beside the point.  Any thoughts on where that line should be?  Which chitins should be usable, or even perhaps if chitin armor is just silly altogether, etc.

(3) "Fish scale" and "lizard scale": Aaand the sort of complicated question: Is it just me, or do these names seem off?  I've never heard fish, leather, lizard, alligator, etc., skin been referred to as "scale" or "scales."  Everyone just says "fish skin" and so on.

I'm wondering if it would be better to just change the display name to "skin" or even use normal skin material templates for them.

To explore a bit further:

Fish scales are useless.  Snakescale is just, really, decorative.  Sharkscale is a weird bone/tooth/scale thing built very finely into the skin. Alligator scales are really only vestigial, since the damned things have pores and hairs in them and really aren't scales in the sense we (I?) tend to think of (in the way, say, snake scales are -- you know, overlapping rows of hard, shiny flaps connected at one edge).

For tanning mod purposes, it gets weirder, because, in fact, the only scaly animal that I know of ever to have its scales used as actual animal-scale armor...  is a MAMMAL!  (The awesome pangolin, which my friend pointed out to me.  Which is definitely gonna get its own special case -- hello giant pangolin scale armor.)

In vanilla, aside from the "scales" display name, the only difference between SCALE and SKIN *as body part materials* is that scale has better stats. But on many of the animals it's used on, it hardly seems to matter.

So. What's the best way to deal with this?  I have two main thoughts:


(a) Just migrate them all to normal skin types. It's not like smaller fish and reptiles are gonna get the benefit of higher scale-skin stats.  Have larger reptiles use the normal leather entries materials and naming rules (alligators would yield "leather" while giant alligators and allosaurs would yield "giant alligator hide" and "allosaur hide"). Have special cases have special leather types (the aforementioned snakeskin and sharkskin).

(b) Make a full range of scaly skin and leather types, with more finely-tuned naming and stats. Again, special cases for snakeskin, sharkskin, etc.

So far I've been sort of going with option (b), and it looks like this (parentheticals won't be part of display name -- skin (scaly strong) will just be "skin"):

[Grimlocke]

You may wish to leave the default material template names for the FBs, I dont think there is any way to change what they use.
Scratch that. FBs use the standard body detail plan. Just make those to fit FBs and adapt the regular creatures.

There is also the option of adding more than one type skin/hide/fur for once creatures. For instance, cows hide can be turned into leather, but also into fur depending on the treatement. The way I did this once is to do this:
      [REMOVE_MATERIAL:SKIN]
      [USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SKIN:FUR_TEMPLATE]
         [STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:WHITE]polar bear or whatnot.
         [DISPLAY_COLOR:7:0:1]
This FUR material still has the same reaction tag, letting you either tan the hides into regular leather, or use another reaction that instead of using the leather material just uses the skin material to make fur.

Naming during combat logs should still be normal, and you can seperately set a materials adjective and regular item name like this:
   [STATE_NAME:ALL_SOLID:hide]
   [STATE_ADJ:ALL_SOLID:fur]
So that when you butcher a cow it yields 'cow hide' but when tanned and made into clothes it will say 'cow fur mittens' or whatnot.


This example is for a mod with unique names for every creature, but can be adapted for generic names easily enough.

[Vattic]

If you are going to have both fur and leather you'll want to stop the tanning reaction from being automatic.

[Zucchini]

My first inclination was to make only thinner skinned furry animals furrable as an alternative to tanning them to suede (choice of either one). Both suede and fur from these reactions are used like cloth. But I guess that could be applied to default-skinned furry animals as well. Wolf fur gloves and the like.

As for autotanning, I wonder at what would be more annoying -- having to cancel leather tanning jobs in order to have it tan furs instead, or having skins go miasmic because you fail to notice untanned skins in your stockpiles.

[Grimlocke]

Automatic reactions keep adding themselves after each use. They are a massive nuisance when you dont want them to happen, though I vaguely remember the option to turn of certain automated reaction off ingame.

I remember I once tried to just leave both reaction on auto, and suspended one of them. What I dont remember is whether or not it works.

[Zucchini]

I see what you're saying.  I'll turn it off by default for skins where there's a choice, and see how that handles on the road.

As for what you were saying about alternative fur/tanning reactions (as well as other products), does this look about right?

Code: [Select]

(from the material templates)

  -- Expanded Tanning Functionality
[MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:SUEDE_MAT:CREATURE_MAT:ANIMAL:SUEDE]
[MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:FUR_MAT:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:FUR]
-- Library Functionality
[MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:PARCHMENT_MAT:CREATURE_MAT:ANIMAL:PARCHMENT]
[MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:GLUE_HIDE_MAT:CREATURE_MAT:ANIMAL:GLUE]
Along with appropriate reactions at the tanner.

Code: [Select]

[REACTION:TAN_SUEDE] -- Tier 1 (Small or thin-skinned animals)
[NAME:tan suede]
[BUILDING:TANNER:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE][USE_BODY_COMPONENT][UNROTTEN]
[HAS_MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:SUEDE_MAT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:SKIN_TANNED:NONE:CREATURE_MAT:ANIMAL:SUEDE]
[SKILL:TANNER]
[AUTOMATIC]

[REACTION:TAN_FUR] -- Tier 1-2 (All mundane mammals with significant fur pelts)
[NAME:tan fur] -- furs only usable for clothing and other soft items
[BUILDING:TANNER:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE][USE_BODY_COMPONENT][UNROTTEN]
[HAS_MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:FUR_MAT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:SKIN_TANNED:NONE:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:FUR]
[SKILL:TANNER]
[AUTOMATIC]

[REACTION:TAN_LEATHER] -- Tier 2 (normal animal skins)
[NAME:tan leather]
[BUILDING:TANNER:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE][USE_BODY_COMPONENT][UNROTTEN]
[HAS_MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:LEATHER_MAT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:SKIN_TANNED:NONE:CREATURE_MAT:ANIMAL:LEATHER]
[SKILL:TANNER]
[AUTOMATIC]

[REACTION:TAN_LEATHER_TOUGH] -- Tier 2+ (High-quality/value mundane animals)
[NAME:tan tough leather]
[BUILDING:TANNER:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE][USE_BODY_COMPONENT][UNROTTEN]
[HAS_MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:LEATHER_MAT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:SKIN_TANNED:NONE:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:LEATHER_TOUGH]
[SKILL:TANNER]
[AUTOMATIC]
That all look about right?

[Grimlocke]

Dont think LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT in those reaction products would do you much good. They are reactions, dont have local mats.

The default tanning reaction references the [MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:TAN_MAT:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:LEATHER] tag like so: GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT:A:TAN_MAT] telling the game to use the material specified in reagents A 'TAN_MAT' tag. Using GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT:A:NONE just makes it use reagent A material, should work well for scale or fur.

This can for instance let you use just one reaction for anything that has only 1 type of leather.

[Zucchini]

Ahh, got it!  I'm starting to get the hang of this stuff, but so easy to get all mixed up.  Thanks for explaining that! 

[Black_Legion]

** Edited because someone (me) didn't read the previous post...

I like where this mod is going. The only thing is that you may want to make the peopleskin_template be tier 1 like suede. It's obviously not really armor quality but it does give some incentive for those who may want to to use it. Obviously sentient creature skin would be a 'luxury' item usually used by civilizations with more... exotic tastes.

For wolves and deer you may want a named_fur_template... but then we run into the problem what should be named, what should have what leather, and we end up undoing what this mod seems to be fixing - solving the mad complexity of leather types while allowing for those special cases that make sense where you want to wear the thing's hide.

[Zucchini]

Thanks, Black Legion.

Good catch -- yeah, it wouldn't make sense to have it have worse stats than, say, lambskin.  I hadn't thought the whole tier system out fully yet.  I caught it too shortly after, and I've since rationalized the system a bit better (I think), placing them, as you say, at tier 1 stats. It looks like this right now.

As you can see, it's sort of expanded/exploded from 3 skin types into 19 (!).  Yay simplification!  Should hopefully, though, simplify things at the level of in-game data, if not in the raws.  I think I'm going to do bone too. (Yay mission creep.)

Which animals to let fall into the generic type and which to keep as named, yeah, that's tough.  I know I get a sad when I think of losing "wolf fur/leather", but then, yeah, so much for reducing lists down drastically.  But given the massive traditionalist voting bloc turnout favoring named leathers, I think the balance will probably be fairly comfortable.  I think if just half the leather types are cut out of the list, I'll personally be happy, but I'm wanting to make it more generally useful.

I'm still kind of torn on how to handle the different valuations of genericized leathers -- SKIN_VAL2_TEMPLATE, SKIN_VAL3_TEMPLATE?  Different spoof animal-types (ANIMAL, ANIMAL_VAL2, ANIMAL_VAL3)?  Or just letting the more valuable ones be named (even though some of these have obnoxiously long or unappealing sounding names).

The list below does not have any entry for furred tier 2 skins, as I haven't implemented that.  That'll be the 20th skin.  I'm trying to be very careful about keeping away from "moar moar" type design, and keeping it pretty rational and tight.

[Black_Legion]

No problem Zucchini, glad to try and help. It's always easier to catch things when you have an extra pair of eyes, or four, to look at something.

It looks good, though you may want to add a vermin_chitin_template to round everything out. As far as the feature bloat goes bones are a good way to brach out from this as that does mesh well with what you are doing. Thankfully you'd only need the standard bone_template in addition to possibly strong_bone (for rhinos, elephants, etc), weak_bone (for an avians hollow bones), monstrous_bone (dragon, giant, FB, ect?), and legendary (Titans, FBs?).

I'd say a good rule of thumb to follow may be if a normal person in the word could tell that the leather, fur, or material came from a very specific creature (snakeskin, dragonhide, cheeta fur) then have it be identifiable as such. In that case you just have a special_fur_template that uses the pacific animal name and that should sort out a few problems with only one type. As you said people tend to like prancing about in cool creatures skin (I'm preferential to outfitting my militia captains with bear leather (with your additions it may be fur!) or wolf leather cloaks and matching hoods. The current format you posted looks like it will have a good balance between named and generic materials so it looks good to me.

Wolf leather wouldn't be recognizable but its fur would be so given what I see you may only need two more templates: special_fur_template for distinctive furs (animal-specific of course); be it patterns, coloration, or properties (unicorn manes/fur could be used in a custom alchemical reaction by other players mods) and the presence of a carapace_vermin_template... That's only 20-21 skins right? And the potential 4 new bone templates it shouldn't be that bad outside of doing the material definitions for each. Iron and copper are good baselines to use in my experience for balancing the materials.

I was working on a boiled leather material and quilted cloth (for padded cloth/canvas armor like they had in medieval times) and it took a few tweaks to get it all working right. Mainly it's just using a quick way to run tests to make sure the aftermath looks right.

--edit: didn't see the basic carapace template... but I know crabs and lobsters have much tougher carapaces than your average beetle or spider. So the 4th carapace template still may fit.