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[Boltgun]

Progress : I finally managed to wrap my head around the interactions involved in a summon.

After a few unsuccessful tries, I copied over the summoning from masterwork and edited it to use truetransform.


Here I summoned dogs as a test. I still have to fix the messages (Milith McSuccubus transformed into a nothing) and I used a duck midway.

Sadly you need to lock the door to the circle too because the worker often leave before it is completed, causing the summoning to fail. I need to properly immobilize the worker until it is done. Perhaps the timers can use a change too so you can chain them without having several worker break each other jobs.

Last thing to check before I add proper summons, the creatures summoned are 'friendly'. You can move them to pets by typing 'tweak makeown' in dfhack and get access to training, I'll try to have autosyndrome do that for you.

Edit : I fixed the messages and added a dummy creature for the transformation. If I can fix the 'friendly' part, we will have the summoning AND invader conversion ready. A strange thing is that you often end with 2 summoned creatures, as the worker tent to rip a part of the dummy creatures and raise both. I like it that way. 

Also using tweak makeown on those creatures cause them to be untamed but non hostile, you'll need animal caretakers. (I tested it and it works)

[Spirit of Power]

For the worker-leaving problem, couldn't you include a temporary paralysis syndrome? Or perhaps a syndrome which reduces their speed so much they won't be able to move until the reaction is done?

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

the creature that the worker transforms into, make sure it has IMMOBILE this stops the summoner from leaving. If you want it can be a impossible to be born caste of succubi/inccubi that is considered "meditating"

By this I mean Worker > Meditaing immobile worker with rotting parts, casts transformation/summon spells > reverts back into normal worker

I do this for a private mod for making blood thirsty rat swarms.

[Boltgun]

There is a transformation into an immobile creature already, a part detach itself and is then hit by 2 interactions : One animating it and transforming it to a dummy, and one resurrecting the dummy.
The detached part is sometimes animated before the transformation end, but ultimately I need the worker to revert back to finish it. Every attempt to make the transformation longer fails.
I tried stun but this block interactions and somehow I failed to paralyze the worker. Reducing speed is helping but there is a cap about how low it can go.

I sometimes had 0 creatures and sometimes 2. The duplicate seem to be linked to the personality of the worker. An aggressive succubus will tear the dummy in two parts and transform both every time and a timid one will go to a corner. Failure is linked to the detached part disappearing, I need to find out why.

I am sure that speeding up the process will help, currently parts are not detaching quickly, same for the animated dummy that need to drop dead.

Still no progress to move those in the pet list, I don't think truetransform ever work on targets, even less supply a selected creature. Perhaps it is time to learn ruby and write a wrapper. (attempt in using the spawnunit.lua only crashed df so far)

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

if you want I can supply the raws for how I get my Giant Rats to turn into a rat nest, which spawns rat infants, which are then turned into large rats out for blood. it work all the time. I know the total process take 5000-7000 ticks to work perfectly. oh and tempeture needs to be activated in "d_init.txt"

[Boltgun]

That would be cool if you send me by PM, if I compare the different timings I can make the whole things reliable.

My process take 2000 ticks. I kept trying to make it faster, maybe that's why I got such issues.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Yeah i'll send you the Raws through PM, thing is bodyparts take roughly 2000-3000 ticks to melt off, and then from what I hear you require the worker to murder the "transformed-animated" part so it can be resurrected to the final outcome. My way that I have is completely automated, better watch that inbox.

[Boltgun]

On my side the tranformed-animated creature has an explosive brain, this kills it by itself but quite often the head detach and I end up with 2 creatures.

Currently it goes like this :
- Worker use the reaction, autosyndrome kicks in
- Worker transforms into a 'summoning ritual', a creature with a part attached to a boiling limb.
- The part drops, the summoning ritual has received an interaction raising that part and transforming in a "incoming".
- The ritual revert to its original form (bad timing)
- The incoming's brain explode (or the worker kill it first if it likes to hit the undead), it dies.
- The worker resurect the dead creature, and transform it into the targeted creature.

Now I have been thinking, does a creature spawned from a pet become a pet as well ? The worker may get an interaction that target a pet creature to transform it, done and no bug.

Let's say I add a "soul" creature, with pet tags so you can embark with a few of those. You pasturize a few around a summoning circle, the worker transform it in a creature, job's done. That will add a constraint, but with a correct reproduction and hopefully trade with your civ you can get more and that will be pretty stable.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

my method the head doesn't boil off, the head itself boils to nothingness so only 1 part is left, then being resurrected to the final product.

Also I use your second idea too, but it goes like this:

Transform a pet (dog/cat/whatever) to a male and another to a female creature

these two creatures can only give birth to a special caste that is designed for being transformed into other creations.

[Boltgun]

I'll tried a simpler road and this seem to work without issues, you can order them in the job manager and forget about it. 

I have a creature 'soul wisp', that work a catalyst for the summoning. Those are available for embarking for 26 pts. They reproduce like any creature so you can create a breeding stock of those. I still have to check the caravans to see if they bring more wisps in case you use them all.

To summon a creature, you have to create a pasture next the summoning circle and put one or more wisps in it. The worker get for 50 ticks an interaction to transform the wisps into whatever we want. I reduced the worker's speed for security. The resulting creature is a pet, fully tame and can be ordered around without typing commands in dfhack.

The only quirk to that is that all the wisps in sight are transformed, attempts to limit the interaction made it unstable. I can leave it that way, but it will be hard to balance when it will come to reagents. I plan to use plenty of otherwise useless material, some summons will be powerful but hard to achieve.

I don't have everything I wanted there (untamed would be cooler). But tame creatures will do until I have enough knowledge of dfhack's api to do more advanced stuff.

Anyway, I am now through the brick wall of interaction tokens. It is time to add the creatures, then the reagents.

[Black_Legion]

How's the progress coming along on the summons?

[Boltgun]

How's the progress coming along on the summons?

Summons is working well. As long as I have creatures, putting new ones is a couple of minutes of copying and pasting.

I am putting a first batch of new creatures (3 out of 5 done). First tier will be easy creatures with useful purposes, edited from existing creatures. Once those are done, I need to add sprites and reagents and it will be ready for a test.

[Trapezohedron]

I'm interested to know how you did the summoning interaction thing. Did you use DFhack in order to simplify it, or did you use the utterly complicated mix of polymorphing a creature into something that breaks down and uses the reanimation/body transformation combo?

[Godlysockpuppet]

I'm interested to know how you did the summoning interaction thing. Did you use DFhack in order to simplify it, or did you use the utterly complicated mix of polymorphing a creature into something that breaks down and uses the reanimation/body transformation combo?

Second one.

[Boltgun]

It is not a very complicated system. I created a cheap pet that evil civs can embark with and transform into whatever you want it to. Technically it is more a 'transform a blank creature' then 'create a creature from scratch' even if I try to make it look like a sacrifice. I did use trueTransform however, and the pets act like a fully tame creature with all its features included.

My first attempt was a transform/split/reanimate syndrome. It did the job but I could not move the creatures in the pet list, despite having a dfhack command for it. I gave up because I found it unstable and I rather use something less impressive but usable through the job manager without worry.

My longer goal is to rewrite this as a dfhack script, at least to solve the pet list issue, I am more comfortable with scripting then raws but first step would be to learn the current tools before wrapping my mind on the lua or ruby API.

I'll post the raws tonight.