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[AceSV]

It's crazy idea time again.  I want to try making a world like D&D's Dark Sun (Athas) setting where the planet has been completely destroyed and abandoned by the heavens.  Metal is gone.  Massive deserts and wastelands dominate the planet.  Savage monsters roam the land.  Quarreling city-states are ruled by immortal sorcerer-kings or terrifying monsters.  I have no desire to directly copy D&D's work, I want to come up with something new and native to Dwarf Fortress.  I am also inspired by Sega's Golden Axe, ERB's Barsoom and Ruby-Spear's Thundarr the Barbarian.  I want to finish my other project first, but I feel nearly finished.  This new project would involve completely rewriting a lot of the base creatures and materials, so it would be helpful if I can recruit some of you to add a few things here and there if you feel inspired to do so. 



Metal-less: 
The world's metal is gone, used up or tainted by the curse of the gods.  In Dark Sun, there is still some metal left over from the previous world, but all ores are depleted and the industry to process metal is extinct.  In dwarf fortress, I think I would rather just remove the metals from the raws to avoid any weird effects with caravans or the generated items in adventure mode.  I might leave the stone-age metals, copper, silver and gold, to make it feel more like ancient Maya, ancient Egypt, type of civilization, in which case I need to make a replacement anvil.  I would think stone anvil would work. 

With metal gone, there should be more reactions to make weapons and armor out of materials like bone, stone and wood.  I might try ways to knap stones in fortress mode.  In a desert world, wood should also be rare and probably more valuable than in vanilla DF.  I might require players to construct the shafts and hafts of weapons like spears and axes separately.  I have seen Chinese weapons made from jade and Maori weapons made from greenstone, so I want to try adding weapons grade gems as well.  I will replace some of the iron-age weapons with more suitable non-metal weapons. 

Removing metals will probably make caravans very confused, so advice on how to keep them useful would be appreciated. 

Savage Beasts: 
The old eco-systems have gone extinct.  The only animals that remain are the fiercest and wildest, and many bear strange mutations left over from the cataclysm that destroyed the world.  Basically, I want to make it like living in the caverns at all times.  Different animals will have different material properties, so for example, a rockadile hide could be extremely tough or a sabergoat's horns might be incredible sharp.  Thus you can obtain a valuable resource by hunting or domesticating a particular animal.  Savage biomes should have more dangerous creatures with more valuable products. 

Because bones would be more integral to industry in this world, I wonder if I can adjust the type of bones that can be gathered from butchering.  For example, a butchered humanoid would have a handful of long bones such as in the legs and arms that could be carved into weapons like daggers or clubs, whereas bones of the hands or spine would only be suitable for decoration or ammunition.  A large animal like a sauropod would have gigantic bones that could be turned into construction blocks or furniture.  I do not know how the game decides what volume of bones to create when butchering.  This plan may be impossible for all I know. 

Obviously, rewriting the entire creature collection would be an enormous undertaking, so if you would like this project to come to life, please help me out. 

Deserts and Wasteland:
I would like to know if it's possible to change the game's default world creation settings to something more arid and deserty so that I can get the right kind of biomes without opening up the advanced world generation screen. 

Sorcerer-Kings:
Ideally, I would want to make all king/queen positions be required to be filled by a necromancer-like role that lives forever and ideally has some kind of special power to prevent them from being accidentally murdered over dead cats or squashed by minecart mishaps.  It might be simpler to just make them some kind of alien race and use a creature-specific position, but I've heard that those are unreliable.  Advice and assistance would be appreciated. 

[Urlance Woolsbane]

I'll gladly contribute to this, if you don't mind!

Removing metals will probably make caravans very confused, so advice on how to keep them useful would be appreciated. 

Perhaps you could make a brittle pseudo-metal? Some sort of substance, that the game counts as metal, with properties more akin to clay? Just a thought.

EDIT: Ah, I misunderstood your question. You know, I'm not at all sure. WOOD_WEAPONS and WOOD_ARMOR should take care of a fraction of the problem, but trees won't be plentiful on a desert planet.

Deserts and Wasteland:
I would like to know if it's possible to change the game's default world creation settings to something more arid and deserty so that I can get the right kind of biomes without opening up the advanced world generation screen. 

Hmmm... I have a feeling that this isn't possible without messing around with the executable, or DFHack. Still, the latter options are not at all out of the question...

Sorcerer-Kings:
Ideally, I would want to make all king/queen positions be required to be filled by a necromancer-like role that lives forever and ideally has some kind of special power to prevent them from being accidentally murdered over dead cats or squashed by minecart mishaps.  It might be simpler to just make them some kind of alien race and use a creature-specific position, but I've heard that those are unreliable.  Advice and assistance would be appreciated.

The way I'd go about would be to give each civilized race two sorcerer-castes (one for each gender,) each with a POP_RATIO of 0 and a sorcerer-specific class, that its members can be transformed into via secrets.  Then I'd make a class-specific monarch position, restricted to the sorcerer class.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Because bones would be more integral to industry in this world, I wonder if I can adjust the type of bones that can be gathered from butchering.  For example, a butchered humanoid would have a handful of long bones such as in the legs and arms that could be carved into weapons like daggers or clubs, whereas bones of the hands or spine would only be suitable for decoration or ammunition.  A large animal like a sauropod would have gigantic bones that could be turned into construction blocks or furniture.  I do not know how the game decides what volume of bones to create when butchering.  This plan may be impossible for all I know.

Butchering collects a material as an item from a tissue
MATERIAL > TISSUE > BODY_PART > BUTCHER > OUTPUT

so if you wanted to have "Long Bones" be butchered from Arms and Legs you will need a long bone material, with a BONE2 tissue that uses said long bone mat, and is then used as the bone layer for the creature in the parts that will have this longer bone. and the rest of the bones BONE will be made into other stuff, However, vanilla workshops may take said long bones and use them for crafts, but you can add a reaction_class:item_bone_weapons so a custom workshop can make use of them and only them to make weapons

I've always wanted to make complete creature bodies with the correct placements for things, I came close to a full humanoid body with mid section instead of just upper and lower body. The final bit was sectioning it out via tissues and materials someone did it with animals for meats (sirloin, bacon, t-bones, etc) but to break it out to "leg bone, rib bone, finger/toe/digit bone" which might make for some better decorations where they seem fit, like "This is a -Iron Helmet- decorated with hanging rings of finger bone, and spikes of rib bone"

The way I'd go about would be to give each civilized race two sorcerer-castes (one for each gender,) each with a POP_RATIO of 0 and a sorcerer-specific class, that its members can be transformed into via secrets.  Then I'd make a class-specific monarch position, restricted to the sorcerer class.

You'd want [POP_RATIO:1] 0 defaults to 100, normal castes just need a [POP_RATIO:15000] the math is
Chance of caste being born naturally is
MY_RATIO/TOTAL_CASTE_RATIOS(MY_RATIO + OTHER_RATIO^n)

Also if you use CREATURE_CLASS you can have an entities position only allow it, and if it's a required noble position it will force an acceptable caste even if the RATIO is 1:5000000. I did this with my Undead faction for having a Lich as a leader

[AceSV]

I thought I'd look into stone-age tool-making for ideas. 

Here's an article about heat-treating silcrete to make it more suitable for tooling:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1206598/Stone-age-blacksmiths-used-make-tools-72-000-years-ago.html

Some giantic stone axe blades:  http://phys.org/news/2009-09-giant-stone-age-axes-african-lake.html 

The process of lithic reduction:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithic_reduction

Dude making a stone axe from a river rock:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuh_hAl_TGk

A more elaborate looking stone axe:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN-34JfUrHY

I had been under the impression that stone tools had to be made from a particular kind of stone, like flint, but the guys in the video seem to be making them out of any old rock.  That said, their stone axes are not really "sharp", they are just heavy wedges.  It could still be interesting to make toolstones like obsidian, chert, flint and silcrete produce sharper tools.  It would probably be helpful if a "tool stone" finder showed up on the embark screen. 

[Urlance Woolsbane]

You'd want [POP_RATIO:1] 0 defaults to 100,

This was true in older versions, but it isn't now. I made a genderless caste of human with a distinct name and POP_RATIO:0. I genned a world and none of the caste showed up in Legends. I changed POP_RATIO to 50, genned another world, and, voila! they appeared, complete with deities in their likeness.

if it's a required noble position it will force an acceptable caste even if the RATIO is 1:5000000. I did this with my Undead faction for having a Lich as a leader

Thanks! This should prove quite useful, not to mention !!FUN!!

[AceSV]

Thanks for the suggestions so far, I'll have to see how they work once I get past the ideas phase. 

I want to start thinking of new creatures

Animals:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Rockodile - A crocodilian with a stony hide.  A very tough armor can be made by tanning its hide. 

Bugorse - A large bug used to replace the now extinct horse. 

Labor Lizard - A large lizard used as a pack animal. 

Siege Tortoise - A horse sized tortoise that destroys buildings and tries to steal food.  It might have a tougher than usual shell or skin, I want it to be challenging. 

Blood Bat - An eagle sized bat that drinks blood.  If possible, I want to hunt dwarves for blood.  I've noticed that giant mosquitoes don't really do that. 

Kelenken - A real but thankfully extinct animal.  A chocobo-like bird with a skull the size of a human torso and a giant hooked beak.  According to some estimates, the Kelenken and its relatives, the Terror Birds, could run as fast as lions and cheetahs, possibly faster, and as birds, they would not get tired as easily.  Other terror birds might join the Kelenken if I need more biodiversity.  Butchering a Kelenken allows you to use its beak to make special weapons. 

Sebecus - A real but thankfully extinct animal.  A crocodilian adapted for life on land.  Their legs are long for running, and their heads and teeth are shaped differently.  A modern crocodile has a flat head and peg like teeth, designed to grab animals and hold on, so that the crocodile can pull them into the water and drown them.  The Sebecus' head is very tall and narrow and its teeth have serrations like a shark, designed to give its bites the ability to crush bone and tear flesh in one shot.  The Sebecus is still a mostly unknown fossil so its speed is unknown, but modern alligators can run on land at about 10 mph and the Australian perentie can run 25 mph.  Both crocodilians and monitor lizards are known for their ability to accelerate very quickly. 

Hellion Hog - A real but thankfully extinct animal.  Known more frequently as terminator-pigs or Entelodonts.  A massive pig-like creature with long legs adapted for running and an enormous jaw for devouring prey.  The largest are as large as horses, and can be trained as mounts. 

Thunder Beast - A real but thankfully extinct animal.  An entire class of extinct creatures known as Brontotheres, which means Thunder Beasts.  They are like rhinos, but with bony paddles instead of horns, and some are much bigger. 

Gravel Beast - A real but thankfully extinct animal.  The head of a horse, the body of a gorilla and giant claws on the hands.  That really happened.  I might use the specific species Moropus instead of the family name Chalicothere (Gravel Beast) as it sounds a little nicer, however the moropus is more normal looking than other Chalicotheres. 

Oliphaunt - Those giant elephants from LotR. 

Land Squid - A squid that lives on land.  8 feet, 2 arms, a beak and ink spray.  It would be cool to give them the ability to jump by blowing air out of their jet organ, but I don't think DF is equipped for that kind of locomotion.  There might be specific kinds like a Tree Squid, Rock Squid, Sand Squid or River Squid. 

Spit Viper - A poisonous snake that spits its venom. 

Blitztang - A wild relative of the horse.  They are fast, tireless and belch flames when threatened.  It would be interesting to have them give some kind of a flame-organ when butchered, but I'm not sure what you would do with it.  Maybe it turns into coke, but that seems like to small of a reward.  Maybe they have a gut full of coke or fire pearls or something. 

Owlbear - You know the one.

Sabear - A bear with saber teeth and saber claws.  Sabers can be used for weapons after butchering. 

Spear-Tongue Toad - A toad with a piercing tongue attack.  Touching the skin causes intoxication effects, including items made from Spear-Tongue Toad leather. 

Killeroo - A killer kangaroo.  Maybe with saberteeth.  Maybe with more killery foot claws. 

Killer Ape - I'd like to make something like a super gorilla or barsoomian White Ape, but I'm not sure about the details yet. 

Sharkasaur - A shark-therapod hybrid, like the pokemon garchomp or Disgaea's sea demons. 

Scaled Wolf - A wolf-sized lizard that hunts in packs.  Maybe tamable into a Scaled Dog. 

Marrow Walker - A thin creature with an exoskeleton that looks like bone.  Not sure yet if it should be biped, quadruped, predator, grazer or what. 

Wolf Spider - A giant spider with the face of a wolf. 

Mountain Climber - An 8 legged beaked reptilian that lives in mountains and is great at climbing. 

Ramblejaw - A dog sized bipedal reptilian creature with a head that is as large as its body. 

Bladebug - Something like the pokemon Scyther or D&D's swordwing.  Butchering a bladebug will allow you to use its bugblades to make special weapons. 

Cryptids - I might use a few "real-life" cryptids too, like Burrunjor, Nessie, Jackalope, etc.  Name your favorite cryptids. 

Pseudodragon - Cat sized or dog sized dragon-like creatures.  I will probably use a different name to avoid the D&D creature. 

Dune Worm - You know the one.  Various sizes, the largest ones would be the rarest, and possibly megabeasts.  You might get something spicy for butchering them. 

Macetail - Some kind of glyptodon/ankylosaurid animal.  The mace-like tail can be turned into a weapon. 

Scorpileo - A lion-like animal with a scorpion's tail.  It is not poisonous, but can impale its victims with terrible ease.  The tail can be used to make weapons after butchering the Scorpileo. 

Hoofbird - An ostrich like bird with hooves and antlers.  They have beautiful tail feathers that can be acquired for decoration.  Shearing or Butchering. 

Asambosam - An african vampire/ogre.  Sasambosam have hooks for feet and iron teeth, so they hide in tree branches and either drop down on victims or grab them and pull them up, depending on the story.  They sound to me like a sloth, but are said to look like people.  Butchering one (if it's not person-like enough) would allow you to use its iron teeth and hooks to make weapons.  I think that these would not actually be made of iron, just an iron-like tooth/claw material, so that you cannot melt them down.  They might have iron-like bones as well.  Something should have iron bones. 

Puck - A mischievous spirit.  I would love to make them like the Brownies in Aterlier Iris games, little fairy/dwarves with enormous hammers, or at least like Terry Pratchet's Nac Mac Feegel being very small but insanely strong.  They might get civilization status, but it would also be interesting to be able to catch them and raise them as pets or something. 

Tentacles - Add tentacles to things. 

New Megabeasts - Something more Cthulu- or Godzilla-like instead of the classic mythology fair that we get now.  These should also be the source of especially powerful or valuable butcherable items, bones of steel, scales of gold, teeth of diamonds, claws of adamantine, etc.  Different species of Chimera would be cool. 

Siegers:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Barbarians - The last remnants of the human race.  They are filled with savagery, possessing inhuman strength, animal-like acute senses and are prone to rage. 

Trow - A race of elves that fled the surface during the cataclysm, and now reside in the vast caverns below.  Trow is an alternate spelling of the same fairy creature that inspired Gygax's Drow, but I don't want my cave elves to be exactly the same as D&D's Drow.  Trow is actually cognate with Troll, so maybe the Trow are a race of half-troll half-elves. 

Powrie - Powries are dwarves that have given into their darker natures.  Powries drink blood instead of alcohol and hunt down man and beast for food.  Powries possess an undwarfly speed that few can outrun.  (Powries are also known as redcaps) 

Wyverns - Giant lizard-bats.  They may get some kind of innate projectile/syndrome attack like fire breath, acid globs, venomous fangs, poisoned blood or super sonic screech.  Ideally, I would like for Wyverns to be intelligent but lack hands, so they kidnap people as slaves and force them to produce weapons and armor or to build castles or dig caves for the wyverns to live in.  I need to see how the upcoming visitor mechanic works.  Akin to ERB's Mahar for the Pellucidar books, but not as nerdy. 

Dractaurs - Reptilian centaurs. 

Leotaurs - Pantheran centaurs. 

Bugtaurs - Insectoid centaurs. 

Lobstaur - Lobster centaurs. 

Centaurs - Actual centaurs. 

Vanara - Ape men from the Ramayana.  Super strong and agile, but don't care much for finer things. 

Rakshasa - Demon tribe from the Ramayana.  They are capable of flying, have venomous nails/claws and eat people. 

Naga - Snake people.  According to legend, there are two types, undersea naga and underground naga.  Usually the naga are depicted as upper body human, lower body snake, some being quite beautiful, but some naga are depicted as monstrous serpents, thus I might do a caste that is normal and a caste that is monster serpent, or give them some kind of special minion or pet. 

Bug People - Four armed, chitin bodied people, maybe like D&D's Thri-Kreen.  Maybe there are castes with wings, castes with stingers, castes with blade-arms, etc. 

Ogres/Etc - In FuFo2, I made goblin-like civilizations out of DF creatures like ogres, gabbro men and satyrs.  I would like to do this again, at least with ogres. 

Gillmen - Amphibious people.  Maybe more of an animal-people type race, this is getting to be a lot. 

EDIT:  I'm adding in more as I think of them. 

[BlackBronze]

Now this sounds interesting! I will most definitely follow the progress. The concept is great and I love all the extinct animals.

[Deon]

You'd want [POP_RATIO:1] 0 defaults to 100,

This was true in older versions, but it isn't now. I made a genderless caste of human with a distinct name and POP_RATIO:0. I genned a world and none of the caste showed up in Legends. I changed POP_RATIO to 50, genned another world, and, voila! they appeared, complete with deities in their likeness.

That's good to know. I always get confused about "silent alterations" to the values of some tokens between updates. Since we don't have access to the code, the only way to learn about it is practice .

[AceSV]

I've been experimenting with some worldgen settings while testing Furry Fortress, and I'm getting close to a final product.  I don't want to completely get rid of plant life, so i've been using a rainfall of 0-15, which allows grasslands, savanna and broadleaf forests to appear, though not as often as deserts and wastelands.  I had increased the volcanism hoping for more obsidian, but it looks like I only succeeded in removing sedimentary rocks. 

I'm still deciding how I want to handle tool stones.  It looks like obsidian, chert, quartzite, rhyolite, jade and silcrete were used to make stone tools.  Silcrete needs to be heated before it can be used as a tool, but I think I would omit this step, since it should only need cooking temperature instead of smelting temperature and we can just assume that it gets heated before being worked.  Jade is a funny one, there are jade axes and such from the stone age, but archeologists assume these were decorative.  I can't tell if this is simply because they were rare and difficult to work (the hardest material known to the stone age) or because jade would be too brittle or something to be a good weapon/tool.  But it's Dwarf Fortress, I can make jade a weapon anyways, since it's cooler.  I think I will include native copper, native silver and native gold as stones, though not smeltable, so you can still make items out of them.  Native copper would be a tool stone like those above. 

Matweb does not have material properties for stone.  If anyone can contribute material values for the tool stones, that would be helpful.  (EDIT:  For example, Jadeite has a Mohs hardness up to 7.5, on par with hardened steel and tungsten, and a high toughness among minerals, so it might be crazy good in DF if I can find the numbers.) 

I'm also having difficulty wrapping my head around the idea to make weapons out of special creature parts.  If I want to make a glaive out of a Kelenken's beak but not a peakcock's beak, how do I specify Kelenken beak as a reagent? 

[Urist Mc Dwarf]

I'm not certain, but maybe if you make it a different material than normal beaks, it should work

[AceSV]

So I decided to fire up a game without metal just to see how it would derp up and I got a message I wasn't expecting:  Stonecrafter cancels Make rock battle axe: Needs plant logs. 

Very interesting.  The description for the weapon doesn't describe any wood as part of it, but I have definitely run out of the logs I brought at embark.  That could get dicey if wood is more expensive. 

Also, rock weapons won't be available at embark or appear in caravans, but this was expected.  You can't technically make digging implements out of rock, even if they have [CAN_STONE], but I got around this by adding both
   [DIGGER:ITEM_WEAPON_PICK]
   [WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_PICK]

EDIT:  And update, merchant bodyguards don't bring weapons or bone/shell armor either.  I haven't gotten a siege yet, but I'm assuming it'll be the same way.  I gave all civs reactions to make weapons out of wood, stone and bone, and took away METAL_PREF, but it looks like they're not playing along.  If this isn't something I can fix, it's game over for metal-less world right now. 

[kiwiphoenix]

Jade is a funny one, there are jade axes and such from the stone age, but archeologists assume these were decorative.  I can't tell if this is simply because they were rare and difficult to work (the hardest material known to the stone age) or because jade would be too brittle or something to be a good weapon/tool.  But it's Dwarf Fortress, I can make jade a weapon anyways, since it's cooler. 

Just wanted to chip in, as a Maori, I can vouch for the utility of jade weapons and tools. In NZ, it's called pounamu or greenstone, but it's just nephrite jade.
It used to be made into chisels, adzes, fishhooks, and other things - mostly used for tourist jewellery nowadays. Doesn't hold the best edge, but as you said, it's very strong and hard, so you can work wood pretty intricately with effort.
It was shaped via grinding with sand/sandstone, which it sounds like your setting has in abundance. It's total bitch to do, though, which is why we switched to steel so fast, especially for axes.

Makes an excellent club, too. We seriously loved our clubs, and you could tell a lot about a warrior by his weapons...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The mere (greenstone club) is about as good as it got in terms of warrior cred; you'd see something like this in the hands of a chief or hero. Whalebone was very high-status as well, and evidently effective enough since leaders were expected to kill with the best of their warriors.
Not the best for other weapons, though. People sometimes took the aforementioned adzes or chisels into fights, but never as a weapon of war - more like how most knights would carry a dagger.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sometimes you get people selling stuff like this 'spear', but it's all a load of crap. I think a couple ceremonial examples do exist, but this is actually a type of staff, and that wickedly hard-to-shape head would probably dislodge if you really nailed somebody with it. Bad use of such an expensive and tricky material.

So I decided to fire up a game without metal just to see how it would derp up and I got a message I wasn't expecting:  Stonecrafter cancels Make rock battle axe: Needs plant logs. 
...
And update, merchant bodyguards don't bring weapons or bone/shell armor either.  I haven't gotten a siege yet, but I'm assuming it'll be the same way.  I gave all civs reactions to make weapons out of wood, stone and bone, and took away METAL_PREF, but it looks like they're not playing along.  If this isn't something I can fix, it's game over for metal-less world right now. 

All stone weapons at the Craftsman's Workshop are hardcoded to require one log and one stone boulder of MAX_EDGE 10k+ (automatically defined as being 'sharp' and therefore economic).

Yeah, civ-level reactions only work for metals right now, I'm afraid. There's no way of making the game play along unless you put in pseudometals, or stick the metal tags onto the wood/bone/shell material templates. In both cases, they'll appear at the forge, and you'll be able to melt them down at the smelter - you could ignore these as a house rule, but the options would be hardcoded in.
Sorry.

[AceSV]

Actually, the Maori have been a big inspiration for this project, but I've been trying to avoid referencing them specifically lest I cause offense by associating real modern people with fantasy creatures.  I've also been looking at Maori wooden weapons.  I would love to know what sorts of wood are preferred in Maori weapons, most of my research so far has just called them "hard woods".  Right now, the game uses a sweeping generalization for all woods, but I know some woods, especially jungle woods, can be quite hard and would make brutal melee weapons. 

Yeah, civ-level reactions only work for metals right now, I'm afraid. There's no way of making the game play along unless you put in pseudometals, or stick the metal tags onto the wood/bone/shell material templates. In both cases, they'll appear at the forge, and you'll be able to melt them down at the smelter - you could ignore these as a house rule, but the options would be hardcoded in.

Actually, that gives me an idea.  Someone mentioned to me that there is a DFhack script that prevents certain workshops from appearing, so if I disable the forge and smelter, and create custom reactions to work them, it should work out fine for the player.  At that point, the question is whether having access to the animal would give the entity access to the metal, and whether caravans or the embark screen would have bars made of the substance (which would be useless). 

If I wanted to go a little more sci-fi, I could explain that the Sandscape is an alien world where all metals have been absorbed into the biosphere and exist as creature tissues.  A sci-fi flavor could also give me an excuse to build that electro-forge workshop I've always wanted.  (anvil, fuel, copper dynamo, power)  I wouldn't want to abandon a savage wilderness theme though. 

[milo christiansen]

If you are willing to use DFHack it is possible to remove the vanilla smelter and forge (or any other hardcoded workshop), neatly sidestepping the "can melt pseudo-metals" problem.

Rubble comes with the required scripts to not only remove (or for that matter, add) arbitrary workshops to arbitrary pages of the build menu, but it also has a flexible alternative to the hardcoded item melting (but you would need to customize that to disallow pseudo-metals). Neither script needs Rubble, but they may require some hand editing to get them to work without it.

[kiwiphoenix]

Actually, the Maori have been a big inspiration for this project, but I've been trying to avoid referencing them specifically lest I cause offense by associating real modern people with fantasy creatures.  I've also been looking at Maori wooden weapons.  I would love to know what sorts of wood are preferred in Maori weapons, most of my research so far has just called them "hard woods".  Right now, the game uses a sweeping generalization for all woods, but I know some woods, especially jungle woods, can be quite hard and would make brutal melee weapons. 

Yeah, civ-level reactions only work for metals right now, I'm afraid. There's no way of making the game play along unless you put in pseudometals, or stick the metal tags onto the wood/bone/shell material templates. In both cases, they'll appear at the forge, and you'll be able to melt them down at the smelter - you could ignore these as a house rule, but the options would be hardcoded in.

Actually, that gives me an idea.  Someone mentioned to me that there is a DFhack script that prevents certain workshops from appearing, so if I disable the forge and smelter, and create custom reactions to work them, it should work out fine for the player.  At that point, the question is whether having access to the animal would give the entity access to the metal, and whether caravans or the embark screen would have bars made of the substance (which would be useless). 

If I wanted to go a little more sci-fi, I could explain that the Sandscape is an alien world where all metals have been absorbed into the biosphere and exist as creature tissues.  A sci-fi flavor could also give me an excuse to build that electro-forge workshop I've always wanted.  (anvil, fuel, copper dynamo, power)  I wouldn't want to abandon a savage wilderness theme though.

Regarding the woods... it's a bit hard to say. Resource distribution was always patchy, and people tended to use whatever was best in their locality, which could shift due to wars.
That said, there are a handful that are universally recognised as high-grade tool woods. Disclaimer: my botany is weak, so all Latin names are off Wikipedia, and most densities from timber retailers.

-King of the native hardwoods is Akeake (Dodonaea viscosa), a tropical soapberry. Name means 'forever' in Maori. Density ~1100-1200 kg/m³, roughly on a level with Glumprong.
-Runner up is Southern Rata (Metrosideros umbellata). Pretty when flowering, and still relatively widespread. Avg density ~1140 kg/m³, also comparable to Glumprong. Heard that it's second only to Lignum Vitae in raw durability.
-Maire, esp. Black Maire (Nestegis cunninghamii). Once widespread on the N. Island, now fairly rare. Avg density ~990-1000 kg/m³ - higher than Mangrove, the densest real-world wood included in DF.
-Puriri (Vitex lucens), an evergreen broadleaf. Boiled leaves used in traditional medicine. Avg density ~900 kg/m³, a little higher than Mangrove.
-Northern Rata (Metrosideros robusta). Once ubiquitous, now uncommon. Avg density ~880 kg/m³, still slightly above Mangrove.
-Manuka (Leptospermum scoparium). Useful stuff. Aromatic, popular firewood. Used in traditional medicine. Makes good honey, though we needed the European honeybee for that. Called 'teatree', but actually tastes pretty crap. Avg density ~750 kg/m³, between Oak and Mangrove. Not as durable as the others listed, but definitely used - probably rank-and-file weapons?
Kanuka (Kunzea ericoides). Very similar to Manuka. Also a 'tea tree', also used for firewood and tools/weapons, also ~750 kg/m³.

May be missing something - not as into the old traditions as many would like/expect, and been living outside NZ for over half my life - but those are the main hardwoods that I know of.
All weapons would be fire-hardened before before seeing active use, especially along the striking edges.
Hope some of that helps.



As for material access, once something is a pseudometal, you should be able to guarantee access via civ-level reactions.
Dunno if creature-specific metallic materials would show up, though. I think you might be blazing new territory there!

But... shite, yeah, you'd likely end up with bars in the caravans. Good catch.
I suppose you could use that handy localisation patcher utility that's floating around here somewhere to rename 'bar' to something more appropriate. 'Stack' or 'pile' or something? It'd have to thematically fit with ash, charcoal, potash, and soap as well. You could use [WAFERS], but that comes with tripled consumption rates, and possibly other effects I don't know about.
Although... that could actually be a way to represent initial processing. Bone/Shell/Horn -> {Bar Equivalent} -> Lames -> Lamellar, for instance? It would certainly make things more time-consuming to produce, which is a staple of Crapsack World mods.

Come to think of it, perhaps wood/shells/horns/bones could be processable into either bars (durability) or logs (plasticity)? Just a thought.


If you do go ahead with the powered forge, keep us posted on how you go about it, eh? Been working on a Metro 2033/STALKER/General-Slavic-Post-Apoc setting for a while, and finding electricity to be a hell of a thing to represent and quantify.
Don't think it would compromise your theme at all - the important part is that resources are scarce and that letting people outside is a life-or-death gamble.