Hello guys,
I just wanted to judge the communities ideas for the next possible update to the mod. I am more or less finished with the Kobold Mode, which was my pet project. Of course there are still outstanding bugs and inbalances in Kobold Camp, and even two (burning/exploding ammo and deep drow worldgen crash) for dwarf mode, but these are easily fixed.
The highest rating item on the last poll on the matter was MAGIC. I devised a magic system that is as fundamental as it gets, a classical RPG system. I already wrote the groundwork, but it is all very much untested and inbalanced. It includes this:
You build a mages guild building, in which you can make expensive magical reagents. With those you can awaken the magic spark in a dwarf. He then becomes an adept of the mages guild and learns. Similar to the guilds, he will stay immobile till he is done. But it takes 3 months for this. Then you have an Arcane Dwarf.
Arcane dwarves can use magic wands to shoot magic missiles and can conceal themselves. They can also learn more magic.
Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Each learned at the "Altar of Elemental Magic". Each has 3 lvls, with every level up your mage becomes mightier. They get a new spell, a new ability and a better ward-useage with each level. Each level costs magical reagents, some standard reagents, and 3 months time. So it would take a minimum of 1 year to train a fully upgraded mage.
Mages can also transform a single sprite into a familiar. A magical pet that boosts the mages power. Fire mages would get a buffed up fireimp, water mages get a blizzard elemental, and so forth.
There will also be black and white magic. I plan to base these on reagents taken from special wood. Only with the wood from good biomes you can start white magic. Only with the wood from evil biomes you can start black magic. Each type has 3 mages.
White: Cleric Healer, Arcane Protector and Witchhunter. First one heals and resurrects, the second one has buffing auras and protects dwarves in combat, and the witchhunter fights undeads really well.
Black: Vampire Mage, Demonbound and Lich. First one is a bloodsucker, but can also do some attack-magic and still his bloodlust with combat. If he does not fight, he will suck people dry. Second one is epic in melee combat, but can go berserk. Last one resurrects both "friendly" and "tame" undead minions, bone golem with bonespear-tipped arms.
You can only have one of each white/black type. So you can have demonbound, vampire mage and lich, but you can not have lich and lich and lich.
Each mage can carry a wand that shoots magic missiles, and depending on the mage, get an extra spell. More fireballs for firemages, more waves for watermages and so on. Black/White also get a spell. All these spells are ranged attacks of different types.
Each mage can carry a shield, which is really bad as a shield, but adds an extra spell. This one is an aura, that will affect everything around the mage, in 1-3 tiles distance. An AoE Aura so to speak.
Black Altars will be able to produce a metal that really hurts good biome creatures, and White Altars will be able to produce a metal that really hurts evil biome creatures. I plan to add some tags to invaders as well, make humans, elves and gnomes good, but warlocks for example bad.
You can actually find a more detailed instruction about the currently done things ON YOUR COMPUTER. I sneaked in an alpha manual file, see your
/MasterworkDwarfFortress/repository/magic.html file.
FEEDBACK ON THIS IS VERY WELCOME.
The second point on the list is the tileset. I have a Masterwork-only tileset in the works, and I would like to add it as a default. Usually I would just go ahead, but I cant access my GUI source code atm, so I cant add it as an optional bit. I would have to replace a current tileset with it. I know many people play Phoebus, and I could probably replace Soviet/Taffer/Cla, or even better: Matrix tileset. This would confuse people a tiny bit, because the GUI would say MATRIX, and will display the Masterwork Tileset, but its better then nothing. I already have the working raws for this. The tileset is 99% done as well, just finetuning 2-3 tiles.
AGAIN, PLEASE LEAVE SOME FEEDBACK ABOUT THIS SECOND PIECE.
Here some re-imagined buildings (small changes here and there, the temples are mostly nicer)
And the new caverns. The tiles are actually unique, and not really used for anything else. The cavern 3 floor is for example not the floor you use for your fort, and the totems are the trees that you fell.
Last point for the next version is a little gimmick at embark. I know people will love this.
Anyone notices something about the number of dwarves?
You can freely chose your number of dwarves at embark with a script warmist wrote. From 7 to whatever you like. This example shows 14. You simple run the script at the embark screen before you press 'e' to actually embark. You enter "startdwarf #", with # being the amount of dwarves you want. It works beautifully.
FUTURE OF THE MOD
After these planned changes, Magic, Tileset and dfhack scripts, among some minor bugfixing, I would like to focus on threats.
Threats would include:
- Sabotuers that stop trade.
- Invaders that dig into your fort.
- Invaders that deconstruct your walls.
- Invaders that can shapeshift/regenerate.
- Assassins. Skulking race (like kobolds) that sends single, very powerul assassin-thieves.
- More possessions, with a better system to detect and cure them.
- A prison building that lets you lock away dwarves for a period of time, because you suspect them.
- A mortician that embalms/prepares corpses before they are buried.
- If you bury un-prepared corpses, they might transform into a mass of maggots or wormfolk that attacks you.
- Dwarves that learn dark magic and become hostile liches that start their own army inside your fort.
- Cursed relics your archeologist can dug up, raising all dead.
- Cursed items with negative effects, from for example warlock loot or expeditions into the deep.
- You must sanctify these items at the temple first.
- Include the better disease system that is in the works, including gigantism/dwarvism/psychopathic/depressed dwarves.
- Includes rabies, flu, the black death, and other real life diseases.
- Transmitted from curses, vermin bites, migration, expeditions, enemies, warpstone, or simply bad luck.
- Apothecaries could influence and heal these diseases.
- A fungus/thallid/myconid that might spread and infect your corpses, raising them as rotting plant mass that attacks.
- A new class of secret, possessed dwarves. Instead of actively transforming into an enemy, they covertly attack by raising dead, infecting dwarves with werebeast-curses or bloodsucker, turning your fort slowly into a vampire fort.
- Mutations from warpstone.
- Demonic possession from inorganics. Dig rock, become a risk-factor, be either killed or sanctified by a priest.
- Demon race in hell for harder conquerings of the final frontier. One specific wave of fliers in the spire, one specific race of ground units, that leave special items.
- An end-boss of the mod, summoned from the items dropped by the groundforces of hell.
- After you defeat him, summon Armok, God of Blood, as an immortal unit that you can control as a reward.
I dont know yet if all of these are possible, but I think I can do 95% of those, from my best estimates. I dont know about the wormfolk from corpses that you can treat first, I need some more info before I say something about that.
All these options would be aimed at making the mod harder, but would be fair. Each thing would get a counter-measure. Either better priests and temples, or the prison to temporarily lock them away, the mortician to prepare corpses, maybe the magic system as well. All these options would also be optional.
FEEDBACK ON THIS LAST TOPIC IS ALSO MOST WELCOME. THATS WHAT THE THREAD IS FOR. DISCUSSING THE IDEAS I PLAN FOR THE NEXT RELEASES.So we have magic, new tileset, then ramping up the enemies and dangers. After this, who knows, maybe a playable steampunk gnome race? I know goblins, drow and elves are in the works, slowly, but surely. I aim at a release of these inner threats within 3-4 months. Magic system and tileset within 1 month.
What I need is some help from the community. I need to figure out how to best to the wormfolk/undertaker/mortician system, and to balance and bugfix the magic system, which is... lets say rather complicated and way too much for my poor little netbook. I plan to upload a beta version of the next update for intrepid testers to have a look at, and would continue changing it according to their feedback.
Anyone interested in becoming a beta tester? If yes, reply here.
I will wait for some feedback to appear, then upload the raws in 1-2 days from now.
Thanks for the help
EDIT: Problem I currently face:
- Writing, Testing and Balancing the entire Magic System. I have written about 75% already.
- Can corpses be affected with syndromes?
- How can I keep special interactions (for example for saboteurs or possession or coverted sleeper agents) in a system that allows free caste-changing? Or, asked differently: How could I ensure that you can not simply cure them by transforming them into any Guilddwarf? The Guilddwarf would be a new creature, missing the hidden extras of the former migrants. Curses at worldgen are too rare.