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#1 No new tileset without the UI

#1 New tileset replaces on old one (Matrix)

#1 New tileset replaces the default (phoebus)

#2 Magic System could be released as beta, I dont care for bugs.

#2 Magic System should be completely finished first.

#2 Magic System should be completed, tested and balanced first.

[Meph]

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.

[FengYun]

Hello.

I've read the magic manual and here's some feedback.

Magic:
Mages guild and special reagents for creating Arcane dwarf are very difficult to get in comparison to Elemental/Black/White specialization, which would prevent players from testing new cool magic features. I believe, it would be more reasonable to make specializations harder and common mages guild easier to build. Platinum chairs requirement seems too specific and too big.

Besides, reducing the quantity of materials can be considered. It is usually not difficult to gain the necessary amount, when you have access to the material, but just increases the time for building, when you need to carry 10+10+10+4+2 items.

Fire magic can use iron grate or steel anvil.
Water can use bucket full of water, glass and silver something, let's say, floodgate.
Earth can use clay pots and slade picks.
Black can use glumprong wood coffin instead of just glumprong wood.
White can use mithril thing. Maybe a scepter. And maybe a nestbox.

Wand and shields adding new spells ideas are great.

Black magic seems not too attractive, because there are too many consequences of using it.

Perhaps fire mages and their sprites should not use big fireballs: there is always too much trouble with real fire that tends to spread everywhere and kill FPS for months, which often leads just to stop playing the fort. Can it be some magic 1-tile square fire that does not affect trees and everything? Melting down the equipment is fine.

Air mages could just buff themselves for speed for 1 second, which would result in teleporting a few tiles away. I don't like the idea of having flying dwarves. A spell can be 'wind gust' knocking the enemies away, 'air hammer' hitting the enemies at a distance. Air mages should be web-immune and not suffer from cave adaptation.

Earth mage's basilisk petrifying enemies can be imbalanced, if he can petrify semi-megabeast or a titan just with his ability. Slow effect can be applied instead, which affects attack and motion speed.

Graphics:
I think, it would be a good idea to replace the Matrix tileset before you get access to the code. I don't use it and it looks like ASCII to me.

I didn't like the totems instead of the fallen trees. Can't they remain wood piles like it was before?
And the totems look strange. Bigger eyes, maybe, like it was in the alpha tileset?

Ideas:
I like all of them.

[RickRollYou2]

My only worry is that Orc Fortress is going to be horribly underpowered after this. Why should the good guys win all the time? 

Nice work on the magic system though. For the Vampires, I'm not sure people would still want them out and about, with normal Vampires already being locked up and walled up in many fortresses... but your mileage may vary, of course. Like what FengYun said, the black magics seem to have too much danger to use.

Witch-hunters fighting undead really well are good, but also means if I'm not in an area with undead they're going to be useless.

[Dwarf_Eater]

hmmm... few questions
Can ammunition, instead of "wand" cause having additional spell?
If yes, relics and other archeology stuff could have stacks of scrolls, or magical jewels with forgotten (powerful) spells.
If not, and maybe it'll be better making magical scrolls, jewels etc. weapons and naming ammo "magical essense". I think it's better than magical missile, as nobody would go around with handful magic missiles in pocket x)

I am slightly taken aback because of whole "magic". I don't know how others perceive it, but for me only acceptable magic for dorfs is via runes. I mean, it's okay to have fire magic, wind, etc. it's just how it's casted. I definetely imagine with more pleasure dorf with big magical sceptre and rune in other hand, than with tiny wand x) btw. it's shame that lighting magic would be rly hard to do

hm... next point would be... EPIC DRAWBACKS OF MAGIC SCHOOLS. Damn straight. I want to have chance seeing demons crawling through magical vortex to my fort 8D and of course effects according to learning. eg.
for fire
failing learning lvl 1 - toooons of smoke suffocating dorfs
failing learning lvl 2 - fire blazing through fort/fire elementals summonde
failing learning lvl 3 - MAGMA FLOOD
This make me wonder if it's possible to dynamically change climate of embark? Water magic lvl 3 failing and making temperature drop down - eternal winter?

Next on the list is question if itemsyndrome, i mean inscribed runes could work on different castes (? i mean on normal dorfs and magical ones but i am not sure if it's only different caste) differently? Adding drawbacks and bonuses for using correctly runed gear. For example bonus for using copper rune for fire mage

Oh and about water mage lvl 3. Ability of freezing water works as aura? If it's not working instantly. and it's always on it's be possible for ice mage to be knocked back into river, which would freeze, locking mighty water mage in ice trap ^^

[Excaerious]

Forgive me if it exists, but if there is now a way to start with a specific number of dwarves, is there a way to stop migrants all together? If one doesn't exist it should be made. I know you can turn the popcap way down, but for me (especially in longer games) there has been instances of getting dwarves anyway. Other times with the cap at like 20, you'll be at 19 and the game will then give you like a migration wave of 50 ruining the point by bringing you all the way up to like 69.

It would make for interesting embarks.

[Meph]

The first two waves are hardcoded, but otherwise you can stop immigration by setting a pop-cap of 0.

[Repseki]

I am slightly taken aback because of whole "magic". I don't know how others perceive it, but for me only acceptable magic for dorfs is via runes. I mean, it's okay to have fire magic, wind, etc. it's just how it's casted. I definetely imagine with more pleasure dorf with big magical sceptre and rune in other hand, than with tiny wand x) btw. it's shame that lighting magic would be rly hard to do

I'm sure those issues could be addressed simply by renaming the wands to runes, or having runes instead of shields (and making them as bad at blocking as possible?). I like the idea of magic system as well, but every time I read "wand" I like of Harry Potter...

Other than that these ideas are great, I look forward to watching them evolve and all that FUN stuff that shows up as more people chime in.

[Meph]

Ok, replace wand with "Mage Staff", its a melee blunt weapon anyway. It can also shoot steel-grade ammo, and add this extra spell. Btw, the spell gets better the better the mage is, so lvl1 and lvl3 makes a big difference. The actual spells use interactions, so the "sorcery" and "arcane weapon user" skills dont matter, but for melee/ranged combat of the wand, it does use "arcane weapon user". "Sorcery" I want to use for the reactions in the buildings.

I plan more reactions for them once the rest is set up. Reactions come easy to me, so more pet-transformation (bone golems, elementalmen, demons, stuff like that) as well as healing/resurrection, that kind of stuff.

People that say that black magic seems to have too heavy penalties, remember this: Making a good fire mage costs 1 year. Making an even better black mage costs 6 months and way less resources.

I did not have time to do any work on it the last days, but maybe today.

EDIT: FengYun, you misunderstood me about the wood/trees. Only the trees growing in cavern lvl3 look like these new totems. Totems still look like the normal totems you know, wood logs still look like wood logs... I just thought it would make sense for the third cavern, because it should be a dungeon of sorts... so dwarves walk on floor tiles, collect weird plants (I even thought about making the plants have a potion-look) and cut down old totems they find to gather the magical wood from them.

[Godlysockpuppet]

2 notes;
1) update your signature. It says version 3a when 3b is the latest.
2) make the angel of decay demon! Causes your flesh to rot merely in their presence I'll make it if you don't have the time, but I'm sure you'd prefer to make it yourself.

[kamikazi1231]

The magic system sounds good.  I like the idea of a chance of it going horribly wrong as well.  Possibly transforming the dwarf into some horrible monster or setting things on fire.  Even if mistakes don't happen magic still sounds like a good way to have Fun.  I'm looking forward to my master mage throwing a tantrum.  Speaking of powerful dwarves throwing tantrums, have you considered implementing building destroyer at all.  I, like most people, just lock a failed strange mood away in the workshop or lock a tantruming dwarf away in his room.  I've always been amazing that my legendary +5 dwarf wielding a steel hammer can't bash through his door.  I really don't know if it would be possible with the differences between creatures and dwarves, but it would be a whole new level of Fun to have a master fire mage tantrum, blast through his door, and start rampaging.

The tileset looks amazing.  I'd be fine with it taking the place of a tileset for now.  It looks good enough that I'll probably switch over to it when it's released.

Thanks again for all the work you do.  Without Masterwork my computer couldn't even handle a 75 dwarf fort without lag death and I was becoming bored with the limitation of vanilla.  But with Masterwork I can handle 200 dwarf volcano/river embarks and have barely scratched the surface of all the things to build and Fun to be had.

[Putnam]

Huh. I like the idea of two races having two completely different magic systems...

[xeranes]

Hey there Meph, I'd love to be a Beta tester!

I am especially interested in how you plan to make invaders dig and deconstruct... If you can work that out (and have decent pathfinding) it will really change the game!

[Meph]

I dont have to figure that out, expwnent already has. It works. Digging invaders are possible.

Today I managed to finish the tileset and the raws for the tileset, and added it into the "Matrix" option of the settings, for those that want to test it. I couldnt find the time to do anything on the magic system, the Airmages and the White mages and the Auras/Shields are still missing. I hope to do those tonight.

Once I have some bugfixes, the tileset and the magic system in a representable state, I make another release, with the magic system being entirely optionial for the beta testers.

[Putnam]

Hey there Meph, I'd love to be a Beta tester!

I am especially interested in how you plan to make invaders dig and deconstruct... If you can work that out (and have decent pathfinding) it will really change the game!

Meph doesn't DFHack (AFAIK); that's for me and the actual DFHack crew.

[Meph]

Correct. But rather: "For the dfhack crew and me."

Btw, putnam, since you are here already and talk about dfhack... any idea for a script fixing my "mortician/undertaker cant add syndromes to corpses" problem?