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Author Topic: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18) v.0.2.1  (Read 10390 times)

Ladygolem

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Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18) v.0.2.1
« on: November 25, 2014, 03:52:28 pm »

BOUNTIFUL BEASTFOLK
(BETA)

This is a beta version of the mod, a work in progress! As such it may still have some unknown bugs. Back up your saves!
DOWNLOAD LINK

INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS: Just drag it all into data/raw/objects! Very simple, no complex rawjuggling here ;)
Tired of all those annoying thrips men and wren women wandering around your map aimlessly? Ever wish animal people were more than just beasts your dwarves won't butcher?

This mod aims to correct that.

FEATURES (VERY INCOMPLETE SO FAR):
  • 14 new civilizations, with every single animal man species having a chance to appear (and a few besides!)
  • Minor changes to some creatures, primarily beastfolk; marine animal men are now amphibious, several fanciful creatures are now fully intelligent.

The beastfolk, while living in elaborate towns or tree forts depending on biome, are without access to higher technology like metals or even stone (their entity files are largely based on the existent subterranean animalmen); they wield blowguns and wooden spears, and wear no armour. Not a huge threat to a prepared military, but when they attack, they attack very early on in your fort's life - so embark prepared. However, most of the time they will be at peace with your dwarves, bringing trade caravans every season - your broker will have plenty to do in this mod! They trade primarily in food, cloth and leather, and will sell you their blowguns (if you want to use them for some reason).

CHANGELOG:
v.0.1.0 - release
v.0.1.1 - marine civ biome changes
   - ethics changes
   - biome support value pared down to 7
v.0.2.0 - revamped civs - biomes consolidated, added hostile + friendly versions of each, only one of each allowed on map now (except for thieving), added thieving civ
   - new custom language
V.0.2.1 - increased civ cap to 2
   - fixed typo: REPRECUSSIONS to REPERCUSSIONS
   - changed thief ethics to facillitate theft
   

----

This mod is very much a work in progress, and while I've found no game-breaking bugs so far, there are some aspects of the mod i'm not entirely satisfied with.


TO DO LIST:
  • hostile beastfolk (both kobold and goblin analogs) Done!
  • fully custom language (atm I'm using DFLang's "Old English" preset; I'm working on a custom language generated mostly from animal noises, but it's difficult to find lists long enough) Done!
  • guards and soldiers should wear sets of bone armour, and bone spears; however I'm not too sure if this is even possible.
  • limit the amount of beastfolk civs to one or two of each; perhaps that should give the vanilla races some more breathing room, if that's desired. Done, though I may have 'balanced' them too far in the other direction...
  • figure out what to do with the 'marine' beastfolk civ; atm they're simply amphbious animal men with their biome set to NOT_FREEZING. Is there a way to make them, say, only build settlements along coastlines? Done! I think....
As I've mentioned, I'm still in the process of working on this, so if you have any feedback or suggestions they'd be greatly, greatly appreciated!
« Last Edit: November 27, 2014, 09:43:16 pm by Ladygolem »
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dwarf_reform

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #1 on: November 25, 2014, 06:24:39 pm »

Posting to watch :) Anything that gives poor beastmen more viability is A+ by me..

I've found that blowguns are pretty decent weapons to issue to your hammerer to dish out dwarven justice with ;)

And languages are tough business.. Well over 2000 individual words that need done and a limited amount of vowels.. I've slogged all the way through a whole dwarven language file (redoing it into a "dirty" language, bahaha!), and am about 40% through with another "serious" dorf-language.. but "serious" is hard.. It gets very difficult to avoid repeats or similarities in what is essentially cool-sounding gibberish :(

It'd be awesome if each beastman type could have 'colossal' or 'titan' versions (bobcat beastmen would show up accompanied by a couple colossal bobcats).. It'd be cool if they could use them as mounts and pack animals also.. Then again, inserting humans instead of beastmen it sounds a little odd ;) A group of regular (speaking/intelligent) humans and giant sub-humans show up riding colossal sub-humans (or making them haul goods).. :>
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Ladygolem

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2014, 07:22:35 pm »

Posting to watch :) Anything that gives poor beastmen more viability is A+ by me..

I've found that blowguns are pretty decent weapons to issue to your hammerer to dish out dwarven justice with ;)

And languages are tough business.. Well over 2000 individual words that need done and a limited amount of vowels.. I've slogged all the way through a whole dwarven language file (redoing it into a "dirty" language, bahaha!), and am about 40% through with another "serious" dorf-language.. but "serious" is hard.. It gets very difficult to avoid repeats or similarities in what is essentially cool-sounding gibberish :(

It'd be awesome if each beastman type could have 'colossal' or 'titan' versions (bobcat beastmen would show up accompanied by a couple colossal bobcats).. It'd be cool if they could use them as mounts and pack animals also.. Then again, inserting humans instead of beastmen it sounds a little odd ;) A group of regular (speaking/intelligent) humans and giant sub-humans show up riding colossal sub-humans (or making them haul goods).. :>

For the language, I'm using DFLang, but it seems to be rather out of date; it keeps adding rude words that show up in my errorlog, rather annoying! It uses 'root' words to generate a language file; problem is you need 100+ MINIMUM for it to work. Ah well.

As for your idea... I'm not sure that's really what I'm going for, here. I suppose I could give them those as castes, but that could cause all sorts of problems. I'd rather just keep them as a low-level ally/enemy for your fortress :)

Grimlocke

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2014, 07:37:42 pm »

I'm somewhat curious about how they fare in worldgen, they don't all get wiped out in the first decades due to having only toothpicks for defence?
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I make Grimlocke's History & Realism Mods. Its got poleaxes, sturdy joints and bloomeries. Now compatible with DF Revised!

Ladygolem

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2014, 09:54:35 pm »

Strangely enough, no, at least not for the most part; here, this is a fairly typical population at ~100 years in:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And another, to get an idea of the patterns (this one is from a slightly older version but without changes that would affect worldgen significantly)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you can see, animal men seem to thrive, even overpowering the more advanced nations. My theory is that it's simply a matter of sheer numbers - the unlucky beastfolk that happen to be next to the single kingdom of dwarves or goblins get wiped out, but the rest are too far removed by this 'buffer zone'.

I admit, this may not be the experience for everyone. But it is rather fun seeing 5 caravans of differing species occupying your depot near constantly, more like a market or a bazaar than a formal transaction. Or, if that's not your cup of tea, seize said bazaar and then you'll have 5 different species of ambushes to keep you occupied ;)
« Last Edit: November 25, 2014, 10:12:03 pm by Ladygolem »
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Illogical_Blox

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2014, 10:32:38 pm »

Despite this really belonging in Mod Releases,  well done! It looks good.
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Ladygolem

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2014, 10:41:48 pm »

I put it here as I didn't really feel it was finished; I was hoping to get some feedback before I make a proper 'release', as it were.

StupidElves

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2014, 10:53:52 pm »

PTW
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Ladygolem

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #8 on: November 25, 2014, 11:04:32 pm »

PTW

I've seen this phrase before, what exactly does it mean? And yes, I do realise I  sound like somebody grandmother, haha.

StupidElves

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2014, 11:13:24 pm »

PTW

I've seen this phrase before, what exactly does it mean? And yes, I do realise I  sound like somebody grandmother, haha.

Posting to Watch
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Ladygolem

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #10 on: November 25, 2014, 11:30:53 pm »

That makes sense, cheers!

Malecus

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #11 on: November 26, 2014, 01:37:32 am »

Huh, I first saw it in the Community Games & Stories section and thought it was a rallying cry for the dwarves to Pwn The World.

I noticed you've got BIOME_SUPPORT at 10, which greatly increases the chance of the civ settling in that biome.  What if you toned it down?  With my own homebrew races, I've been working on the assumption that a few low numbers would mean less settlements in general and thus prevent them from taking over so much land, which in turn reduces their threat to the default races.

As for their friendly nature, perhaps making their ethics less dorfy to promote conflict?  Maybe beastfolk don't see eating sapient individuals as wrong?  Let them brake oaths more freely but think very ill of others trespassing on their marked territory.  Check the histories for reasons why the established races go to war and what they let get forgotten.

All-in-all, an excellent mod!
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Ladygolem

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #12 on: November 26, 2014, 09:45:36 am »

Huh, I first saw it in the Community Games & Stories section and thought it was a rallying cry for the dwarves to Pwn The World.

I noticed you've got BIOME_SUPPORT at 10, which greatly increases the chance of the civ settling in that biome.  What if you toned it down?  With my own homebrew races, I've been working on the assumption that a few low numbers would mean less settlements in general and thus prevent them from taking over so much land, which in turn reduces their threat to the default races.

As for their friendly nature, perhaps making their ethics less dorfy to promote conflict?  Maybe beastfolk don't see eating sapient individuals as wrong?  Let them brake oaths more freely but think very ill of others trespassing on their marked territory.  Check the histories for reasons why the established races go to war and what they let get forgotten.

All-in-all, an excellent mod!

Thank you very much! I'll play around with the biome support tokens; I had assumed that the number was relative, like in body part sizes. I'll try toning those down. Good ideas with the ethics as well, I had mostly copied the subterranean ones but filled out the NOT_APPLICABLE ones because I didn't know what they did - a kinda dumb idea, in retrospect. Thanks a bunch for the feedback!

Eric Blank

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #13 on: November 26, 2014, 01:30:37 pm »

You can get the aquatic races to favor coastlines by having them start in saltwater wetlands (putting them adjacent to an ocean) and then favoring making settlements on oceans/waterways above all others, or almost exclusively: they will construct their settlements right on the beach, basically, but not actually in the water. They'll still have at least that first settlement out in the marshes, and that could wind up being their capital, but it works nonetheless.
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Ladygolem

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Re: Bountiful Beastfolk BETA (40.18)
« Reply #14 on: November 26, 2014, 01:41:54 pm »

That's perfect, thank you! Version 0.1.2 should be out tonight, withe the aquatics changes, biome support nerf, and ethics revamp.
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