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Author Topic: Transgender and Intersex Mod  (Read 36971 times)

smeeprocket

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Transgender and Intersex Mod
« on: December 06, 2014, 06:54:36 pm »

This now works and will add transpersons, intersex persons, but NOT genderfluid or genderneutral persons to your game. Please read the instructions for the download before unzipping.

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=10204

Other things that work well with this mod: Putnam's adoption script, which can be found in this thread.


The problem with pronouns currently is that the program that allows me to edit the pronouns is picky about the character length of the replacement. So it I try to replace it and its with they, them, and their, it shows those descriptions correctly, but truncates the female and male descriptions. I have no solution for this, but have posted asking for further control over pronouns. It would be really helpful if I could gender a caste as, say, male for the appropriate reproductive interactions, but then switch the pronouns used to refer to them to the feminine or neutral.

I've enabled beards on all dwarves (which is as it should be, anyway, dammit!) transfemale and intersex female and male humans and elves do not have beards. You can fix this easily in the raws though if you have different preferences.

All of these extra castes are sterile currently. The adoption script by Putnam located at the appropriate link -might- allow for a couple with a trans or intersex partner to adopt, but I haven't tested it. (it would be tricky to test.) AFAIK gay couples can adopt that way though, the kid just has to be an orphan.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2014, 04:33:24 pm by smeeprocket »
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Transpersons and intersex persons mod for Fortress mode of DF: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=10204

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Grimlocke

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2014, 07:15:49 pm »

Unless there were some changes in version .40 I am now aware of, DF genders can be male, female or neuter. Males always parter with females and vice versa, only female can bear children, neuter cannot reproduce and is referred to ingame as 'it'. Gender icons are tied to this system, meaning adding new ones is not an option.

If you want to add transgenders, this is what you got to work with. All I can think of is giving them separate creature descriptions and possibly caste names. There is no way to separate the he-she-it text from the reproductive bits so this will always be somewhat inconsistent.

I wouldn't expect this to be expanded upon either. Toady has so far made a policy of abstracting sexuality and reproduction to a high degree, in order to keep the uh... emerging possibilities and inevitable bad publicity at bay (and away from bay12, heheh).
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smeeprocket

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #2 on: December 06, 2014, 07:24:06 pm »

Unless there were some changes in version .40 I am now aware of, DF genders can be male, female or neuter. Males always parter with females and vice versa, only female can bear children, neuter cannot reproduce and is referred to ingame as 'it'. Gender icons are tied to this system, meaning adding new ones is not an option.

If you want to add transgenders, this is what you got to work with. All I can think of is giving them separate creature descriptions and possibly caste names. There is no way to separate the he-she-it text from the reproductive bits so this will always be somewhat inconsistent.

I wouldn't expect this to be expanded upon either. Toady has so far made a policy of abstracting sexuality and reproduction to a high degree, in order to keep the uh... emerging possibilities and inevitable bad publicity at bay (and away from bay12, heheh).

er males do not always partner with females, that was changed in the recent version. homosexuality etc is in the game.

bad publicity? You mean by being inclusive. I guess for the hate crowd that would be bad publicity, anyway that isn't something I wanted to discuss.
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Steam Name: Ratpocalypse
Transpersons and intersex persons mod for Fortress mode of DF: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=10204

Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/princessslaughter/

"I can't wait to throw your corpse on to a jump pad and watch it take to the air like a child's imagination."

smeeprocket

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #3 on: December 06, 2014, 07:32:50 pm »

what if I put both the female and male tag into the caste? Then maybe only put litter size in the appropriate castes? IS there anything that designates male reproduction or are the tags female and male tied to reproduction?
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Steam Name: Ratpocalypse
Transpersons and intersex persons mod for Fortress mode of DF: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=10204

Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/princessslaughter/

"I can't wait to throw your corpse on to a jump pad and watch it take to the air like a child's imagination."

ArKFallen

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #4 on: December 06, 2014, 08:45:27 pm »

what if I put both the female and male tag into the caste? Then maybe only put litter size in the appropriate castes?
The last gender/sex tag will override.

IS there anything that designates male reproduction or are the tags female and male tied to reproduction?
MALE and FEMALE are tags purely for reproduction and creatures are referred to by their reproductive sex, this is unchangeable without DFHack wizardry(unsure of possibility even then) or EXE alterations. Additionally in vanilla there are no physical features that distinguish male and female castes aside from facial hair(reproductive organs are abstracted away).

While the trans<x> castes are not really viable because of a lack of differentiation between gender/sex, genderfluid and hermaphrodite are somewhat. Using 2 castes (a MALE and FEMALE) you could make each one transform into the other for a timeframe, effectively allowing the beings to reproduce through either male or female methods. Unfortunately transforming into a new creature/caste gives a new appearance (hair might change color, nose change, etc), though I am unsure if doing so to the same one repeatedly will give consistent appearances.

Also, I'd like to, if possible, add the ability for any orphaned child or baby to be adopted by any childless couple in the fort (or a couple without a baby currently.)
This entirely beyond modding.


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Ladygolem

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #5 on: December 06, 2014, 09:18:04 pm »

Just a note: "hermaphrodite" is considered an outdated, inaccurate term, and by some even a slur. A better term is 'intersex'.

That said, I do appreciate the effort; it might be a good idea however to do some research. Trans people (like myself as it happens) generally don't appreciate having their genitals referred to as the 'opposite sex'. I'm not gonna bore everyone here with current gender politics, esp. as the chance of it going smoothly on a video-game forum is slim to none.

One way to do it, imo, is that there'd be simply two categories for each dwarf instead of one: you'd have a M/F/? column, and a cis/trans/? column, with categories that aren't cis having a chance to have either type of reproductive system. This is very confusing; that is because we are trying to approximate a very complex system, with biological and societal basis, into a simplistic binary system.

A better system in fact would be to not disclose trans status and just give any couple a chance to be able to bear children or not, combined with giving dwarves the ability to occasionally switch their gender markers. That would be the most respectful and realistic way to portray gender diversity.

A third option would be to simply make up a completely new gender system because hey, they're dwarves, they live underground and run on alcohol, they're already far beyond the scope of a human-modelled society! I mean up to now they reproduced by bloody spores!

Of course, I doubt that's possible within the code. Not to mention I'm kinda unenthused about having to hear the average stereotypical gamer dude's thoughts and opinions on transgender people in their video games. (I'd love to be proven wrong though!) If you're interested in having a polite, respectful discussion about gender, do hit me up by private message - I'm perfectly willing to educate.

Putnam

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2014, 09:22:30 pm »

Changing soul sex (which I guess you could call gender, but it isn't really due to how it doesn't recognize anything like that) just changes some lines in the description.

Actually, it may allow (for example) homosexual females to be attracted to a male-unitwise female-soulwise unit, but that's difficult to test.

Meph

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #7 on: December 06, 2014, 10:26:30 pm »

Quote
Some people will think this is stupid and unnecessary, but if you do, please don't comment because this isn't a topic I want to debate whether it fits, I want to talk about how best to do it.
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bad publicity? You mean by being inclusive. I guess for the hate crowd that would be bad publicity, anyway that isn't something I wanted to discuss.
Quote
Not to mention I'm kinda unenthused about having to hear the average stereotypical gamer dude's thoughts and opinions on transgender people in their video games. (I'd love to be proven wrong though!)
These were a bit unnecessary, as people here will most likely discuss the limitations of modding, without being distracted by such discussions, except for you. :P

Here how it can be done, in a "fake" way.

Get a program that can write glyphs, which is what single letters/icons are called in fonts. Open the included ttf font and replace the Venus/Female and Mars/Male symbol with something you like, for example the female/male/trans symbol you posted. Now each ingame creature, regardless of gender, has this icon. Ignore that it can be male or female, just make both the same, and you now have a "gender" symbol.

Make a lot of castes, assign MALE and FEMALE tags in a 50/50 ratio.

Use insolors string dump replacer (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108721.0) to replace all mentions of "male" and "female", either be deleting them or adding something gender neutral. Replace all his and hes and hers and shes with he/she and him/her, to keep them gender neutral. Edit: Download link for string dump 40.19 ready to be used. :)

Now make a new bodypart, call it "gender". Or sex. Or whatever word you like to use for it.

Now make new color descriptors, calling them "male", "female", "trans", "male sex-changed female", "cis" "whatever".

Assign these new bodyparts. Doesnt have to be something like an arm or a head, but more like a throat or gizzard or hair. Something that cant be hit by weapons and doesnt rot, etc, so it never shows up in any screens beside the description. It should work exactly like "his hair is brown.". "Her skin is tan." ... just that yours will read "His/Her gender is cis-male." "His/Her gender is female transgender male."

Now make assign these bodyparts with the fitting descriptor to each caste. Once for the officially MALE and once for the officially FEMALE castes. For realisms sake I'd leave out male-descriptions for officially FEMALE tagged castes, because otherwise they might give birth after marriage. Otherwise you can go wild, and make the wildest gender/sex combos. You also get lesbian, homo, hetero and all other combinations of marriages, although depending on how you set it up, the lesbians might still give birth.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2014, 10:40:44 pm by Meph »
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ArKFallen

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Putnam

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #9 on: December 06, 2014, 10:48:14 pm »

Not really, that's pretty much how everyone adds any completely superfluous traits. See: cutie marks in pony mods. Actually, I would say that's probably one of the best examples around, since it's an insane amount of descriptors.

Also, I don't think it's very satisfying. It really doesn't... mean anything. Of course, this is primarily because gender isn't a thing in DF yet at all.

Ladygolem

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2014, 11:07:48 pm »

That sounds like a good way to do things! Quick tip: singular "they" or "their" is much less clunky than "him/her" or "his/hers".

Ps. I won't belabor the point, but trust me, I've been in many a professional, reasonable seeming forum in my day that went sour very very quickly. Don't blame me for having low expectations! Though I must admit so far I am pleasantly surprised.

Meph

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2014, 11:22:45 pm »

The DF forum is weird. You could start a trolling thread about bashing cis-gendered femaleotastic daiquiri people and it would quickly evolve into some form of productive discussion. There is so little nonsense going on, that Toady as the sole moderator of the forum can handle the 40k+ members.

And yes, they/their fits better if it would only be about "their gender is X", but it will replace all instances of his and her in the description. Not sure if its out of place in some, the easiest way would be to test it.

When it comes to things not included in DF by choice its really only sex and pooping, both because the US public might disagree and cause negative publicity. There is code for yellow/brown filth and white substance in the raws though. But Toady One will probably ban anything that takes it that far, because of his moral code, the forum rules and the freedom that adv-mode offers when it comes to these things. Obok Meatgod would be the name, in case you want to google it.

Personally I'd be more interested in building a functioning sewer system for a fortress. After all there are sewers in Adv-mode, but seemingly no filth to go into them... building proper plumbing would be a challenge for a fort.
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Orange Wizard

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #12 on: December 06, 2014, 11:36:36 pm »

There is so little nonsense going on, that Toady as the sole moderator of the forum can handle the 40k+ members.
To be fair, most of those members are kitchenbots :P.

...

Another (clunky) option might be to make four dwarf castes, two male, two female. Basically, copy the castes we have now, but switch around the MALE/FEMALE on the copies.

Although that might just make it look like some dwarves shave their beards.

I also don't know how CHILD tags work with the MALE sex.

...

In any case, a certain quote springs to mind: "It would be incredibly difficult and it probably wouldn't work...In other words, its absolutely dwarven!"
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Meph

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #13 on: December 06, 2014, 11:39:44 pm »

That wouldnt work, because the tags are what defines their gender. You'd get two male castes and two females castes, just with half of them having beards, the other half without beards. The articles (he/she) and marriage/child birth behaviour would stay the same.

MALE creatures wont give birth, regardless of any child tags.
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Ladygolem

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Re: Modding transgender sentients into the game
« Reply #14 on: December 06, 2014, 11:43:09 pm »

Singular they is surprisingly versatile! I don't think anything would be lost by just dropping the gendered pronouns, honestly. Most important text refers to the dwarf by name or to their specific part ("Kadol Nozemgulam has claimed a Craftsdwarf's Wroshop!" "The *iron mace* hits Urist Zakulburom's left ear! The injured part explodes into gore!" etc.)
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