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Author Topic: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)  (Read 2815 times)

Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« on: December 23, 2014, 09:23:15 pm »

 Greetings fellow overlord.
 Recently, I've had a few ideas for mods, however I am unable to code and it will be a long time before I'll be able to code, so here are some ideas in case someone wanted to make a mod but doesn't have any ideas.

-Harpoon firing ballistas
-Steampunk weapons (flamethrowers and Gatling guns would go well with the FUCK EVERYTHING! dwarven mindset)
-Chainswords BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
-Molotov cocktail barrels
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Or you could just let the children roam free and natural selection will take care of them.
I'm now picturing an elf wrestler trying to suplex my battlements.

Ladygolem

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2014, 09:28:13 pm »

- How does a harpoon differ from a ballista bolt? Anyway, I'm 99% sure siege weapons are completely hardcoded.
-A gatling gun could easily be simply "very fast firing crossbow that uses small lead projectiles". Flamethrower I'm not sure is feasible, breath attacks like flamejets are usually bound to creatures, not tools/weapons.
- Easily made, as the exact mechanics of the weapons aren't considered in the raws. Just a sharp, jagged blade.
- Setting down barrels of flammable liquid is easy, it's setting them alight when you want that's the hard part!
Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2014, 01:35:04 am »

A harpoon (in the way I use it, I'm not sure it's the right word) is attached to a rope, so it would block and possibly behead passing people/creatures until a sufficient force is applied to it, causing it to break. Also dwarven tightropers.
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Or you could just let the children roam free and natural selection will take care of them.
I'm now picturing an elf wrestler trying to suplex my battlements.
Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2014, 01:42:30 am »

As for the Gatling, I thought it would make more sense to have it as a wheeled carriage type thing, that you would attach to an animal or something and carry around the battlefield. Actually that for ballistae would be a good update suggestion. I'm gonna go post it.
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Or you could just let the children roam free and natural selection will take care of them.
I'm now picturing an elf wrestler trying to suplex my battlements.

Reelya

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2014, 01:44:46 am »

You can't mod in ballistas that fire projectiles with ropes attached. There is no support or modding tools to make that. There is no support for an item that spans multiple tiles at all, really, and that's what a "rope attached" would require. 100% not supported in the game engine.

you can't make a machine gun or similar, Projectiles need to come from a quiver, you could name a quiver "magazine" if you want but you can't do anything to indicate the concept of a loaded weapon. You'd just have a dwarf with a "gun" bow and a "magazine" quiver full of "bullet" arrows. There's definite limits on modeling sufficiently bullet-like projectiles. If you make them bullet-weight they're not going to have the penetration power: there is no real override for projectile speed that can give a light projectile bullet momentum.

There's no way to attach a gatling gun or any other weapon to a carriage or platform. The best you can do is have a "gattling gun" animal which is self-propelling and self-firing, and you use breath attacks for the damage. The same with flamethrowers, there is no way to make a breath-attack weapon, but you can mod animals / races / or maybe castes to have a breath attack (like a dwarven "flamethrower" sub-race, but they'd have to be born as one or morphed into one)

Molotovs isn't doable either. There's no simple way to tell something to explode. Maybe possible with DFHack, but it'd be a nightmare trying to use scripting to determine whether a projectile had just been fired (it'd have to scan every single item on the map constantly every frame), what type it was and whether it should explode.

Chainswords would just be a regular sword called "chainsword" as there are no particular ways to mod it different to a normal sword really.

So, in other words most non-fantasy weapon mods are only going to amount to flavor text not actual ingame differences.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2014, 01:57:17 am by Reelya »
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smakemupagus

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2014, 04:34:39 am »

High contact area, high velocity multiplier, but normal/low penetration depth might give unique enough properties for a chain sword or axe. 

The itemsyndrome script for DFhack lets you make sort-of flamethrowers and molotovs, or at least weapon items that enable the wielder to cast firebreath, fireball, etc.
Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #6 on: December 24, 2014, 10:45:13 am »

On top of what smakemupagus said, the chain weapons would spray blood and body parts all across the battlefield, although i don't understand why it would have low penetration or a jagged edge, as Ladygolem said, as regardless of the features of the blade itself, it's be the 50 high velocity metal claws are tearing at your flesh every second aspect that makes it dangerous, so in my mind it would be a messy, high penetration sharp blade (seems contradictory but the "death zone" created by the teeth essentially amount to an extremely sharp blade) (that should damage you if you as much as touch it, but that never happens in combat so it doesn't matter).
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Or you could just let the children roam free and natural selection will take care of them.
I'm now picturing an elf wrestler trying to suplex my battlements.

smakemupagus

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2014, 03:35:29 pm »

well, if it has high penetration and moderate contact area then it's just like any other "magic" overpowered sword, which is fine, it's just nothing particularly unique.  The parameters I mentioned will give you lots of severed limbs and flying digits, but still not be excellent for one-hit kills or armor penetration.  I'm not just theorycrafting, I do have a chainaxe in Orc Fortress :)  It's pretty handy if your crafters need access to piles of teeth.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2014, 03:47:44 pm by smakemupagus »
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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2014, 07:05:49 pm »

You can't mod in ballistas that fire projectiles with ropes attached. There is no support or modding tools to make that. There is no support for an item that spans multiple tiles at all, really, and that's what a "rope attached" would require. 100% not supported in the game engine.

I understand that Well buildings, if you look beneath actually have a rope and bucket moving, when they are being used.
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smakemupagus

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #9 on: December 26, 2014, 07:40:22 pm »

I understand that Well buildings, if you look beneath actually have a rope and bucket moving, when they are being used.

there's no way to mod it, or to achieve anything like that on a custom building.

Furtuka

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #10 on: December 26, 2014, 09:01:20 pm »

The majority of DF modding doesn't involve actualy coding except for some plugin stuff which is limited in scope. Most of it is playing around with pre-existing parameters in the raws to add in more objects with different properties.
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milo christiansen

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #11 on: December 28, 2014, 07:25:06 am »

which is limited in scope

That "limited scope" covers a HUGE base of possibilities!
But yes, in practice you can only do things that are mutations of existing functionality (and yes, this really sucks).

This sounds really bad, but the best thing that could happen to the DF modding community would be for toady to die (because according to some sources his will has open-sourcing DF and giving it to the community).
...I think I can forgo better modding for a long while yet at that cost...  ;)
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After all, coke is for furnaces, not for snorting.
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Reelya

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2014, 09:23:34 am »

But without Toady the road map will decay and people will proliferate sub-par versions of DF with incompatible additions. So it might spawn a quick burst of new stuff, but the grand visions and redesigns Toady has planned would probably never get made then.

milo christiansen

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Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #13 on: December 28, 2014, 09:39:58 am »

Hence my comment about cost...
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Rubble 8 - The most powerful modding suite in existence!
After all, coke is for furnaces, not for snorting.
You're not true dwarven royalty unless you own the complete 'Signature Collection' baby-bone bedroom set from NOKEAS
Re: Some ideas I had (not a mod request thread)
« Reply #14 on: December 28, 2014, 08:02:37 pm »

which is limited in scope

That "limited scope" covers a HUGE base of possibilities!
But yes, in practice you can only do things that are mutations of existing functionality (and yes, this really sucks).

This sounds really bad, but the best thing that could happen to the DF modding community would be for toady to die (because according to some sources his will has open-sourcing DF and giving it to the community).
...I think I can forgo better modding for a long while yet at that cost...  ;)

But who would join Threetoe at Bay 12? We would need a programmer (maybe a few to speed things up). And the feel of DF would likely be lost with a coming and going of programmers. Although open sourcing the game would be awesome and the possibilities of a community coded game would be endless. Maybe on day they'll run out of ides or something and decide to take in actual coded game features from the community, which would result in good effects on modding, as it would be impossible to code stuff for a game without knowing the basic works and engine stuff of a game.
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Or you could just let the children roam free and natural selection will take care of them.
I'm now picturing an elf wrestler trying to suplex my battlements.
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