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[Enemy post]

I was making wyverns for a small collection of dragons I'm making. I gave them the usual material temperature regulations that normal dragons have to keep their blood and other internal parts warm. However, they also have scorpion tails. I had to lower their temperature when I discovered that their superheated internal fluids applied to the venom too. This let them vaporize anything in the game in one hit if they could inject their superheated venom. It was a lot of fun to feed them victims to incinerate in the arena, but really unbalanced. A giant elephant would melt the instant the stinger hit.

[Eric Blank]

You could also get around it by making the venom material a fixed temperature I think. But the idea of a dwarf spontaneously bursting into smoke is hilarious.

I created a deer made of plant materials. Also milkable for root beer, drinkable without further processing. Haven't done much testing yet, but got rid of the errorlog entries it was causing because I didn't add hooves and ribs to the body detail plan.

I now want to change how plant tissue layers are handled so I get an edible fruity layer between bark and wooden core. Have to wait till tomorrow night though, my laptop batteries are low.


[Edit]

So I made the fruity flesh their new muscle tissue and replaced all "core" with regular wood, and then decided more of their tissues should be consumables. So I made bark tannable into treated bark that acts like leather, which worked perfectly. But then I got greedy and wanted their wood to be logs. But it provides too many logs. Root deer would produce 23 full size logs every time they're butchered, which was ridiculous. It took a while but I managed to make a reaction to process ten plant_growth "wood" into one actual log.

I also wanted it to be processable like bone into other crafts, but that part didn't work yet. My experience if the reaction outputs a body part item made of a woody material that has the bone tags, it could make a craft. But you can carve the wood into crafts anyways. What I really wanted was for it to be usable like bone to make armor and stuff.

[brolol.404]

You could also get around it by making the venom material a fixed temperature I think. But the idea of a dwarf spontaneously bursting into smoke is hilarious.

I created a deer made of plant materials. Also milkable for root beer, drinkable without further processing. Haven't done much testing yet, but got rid of the errorlog entries it was causing because I didn't add hooves and ribs to the body detail plan.

I now want to change how plant tissue layers are handled so I get an edible fruity layer between bark and wooden core. Have to wait till tomorrow night though, my laptop batteries are low.


[Edit]

So I made the fruity flesh their new muscle tissue and replaced all "core" with regular wood, and then decided more of their tissues should be consumables. So I made bark tannable into treated bark that acts like leather, which worked perfectly. But then I got greedy and wanted their wood to be logs. But it provides too many logs. Root deer would produce 23 full size logs every time they're butchered, which was ridiculous. It took a while but I managed to make a reaction to process ten plant_growth "wood" into one actual log.

I also wanted it to be processable like bone into other crafts, but that part didn't work yet. My experience if the reaction outputs a body part item made of a woody material that has the bone tags, it could make a craft. But you can carve the wood into crafts anyways. What I really wanted was for it to be usable like bone to make armor and stuff.

This is pretty cool. You should use this general body template for a humanoid plant druid race

[TomiTapio]

So I made bark tannable into treated bark that acts like leather, which worked perfectly. But then I got greedy and wanted their wood to be logs. But it provides too many logs. Root deer would produce 23 full size logs every time they're butchered, which was ridiculous. It took a while but I managed to make a reaction to process ten plant_growth "wood" into one actual log.

One wood haulful is 18 to 40 kilos, I guess a deer-sized one would be 2.7 x 22 kg of wood.

[Eric Blank]

@brolol
I made Komeng already, and while they're not culturally "druids" or particularly nature focused, they are made of wood and stone. Could still make a druid race of a sort though.

@tomitapio
I'll double check and make sure their "butcher" to "final" weight ratio makes sense, I guess. Theyre normal deer sized, so 140,000cc fully grown, and butcher to produce 1 bark/skin, 10-11 fruit, and some quantity of pith, plus the 20 or so bits of wood.

[Enemy post]

I released my small dragon pack. Won't be able to mod for a while, but I still need to fix those hamburgers.

[ZM5]

Progressing slowly on another 7 deadly sins thing. Got the gluttony, envy, pride and greed afflicted done this week (with wrath done earlier) - will probably be able to finish sloth and lust in the next few days. Still got the weapon/armor sets and unique pets left for them though - then the sin elemental civs too.

[Eric Blank]

Mildly frustrated. Although root beer, being milked from root deer, is ready to go out of the bucket, dwarves wont drink it because they leave it in the bucket. Not sure if there's a trick to convince dwarves to put bucketed items into barrels without a reaction specifically for that, which I really didnt want to add.

Maybe I'll have them milkable for inedible sap (they already have sap for blood, is it too weird to have blood-sap and milk-sap? Or that only females can actually be milked if theyre being milked for blood that is shared between the sexes anyway?), and then the player can process that into barrels of beer or syrup, sugar, whatever.

Ive also been unable to change the ratio of fruit to wood reliably. tried changing tissue ratios in the b_detail_plan for them, but they're pretty consistent regardless. The wood buts are working as bones, and thorns can be used like ivory (since Ive been using the thorn tissue for hooves, claws, teeth, horns etc) so the material usages are working as expected.

The wood weighs 50 urists a piece as corpse pieces, oddly.

[SQman]

I'm still working on LCM V E R Y slowly. The good news is that I'm almost done with Hito:







Pets, weapons and catgirls are done. Aqua plastics is a material that only T'lethians will have access to, though it's actually just renamed and recolored refined diamondium from Seiggrain's Farming and stuff mod. Back to hito; I was going to give them special armor such as kabuto helmets, dō-maru, etc. but then I remembered I haven't given morions to high men or galeae to high elves. That would only give me more work with gem and glass reactions. I will make custom clothing though.



On the ADP front, I've been revisiting previously created creatures, but also very slowly. I'm halfway through deer, and I can tell you it's not fun to come up with descriptions for so many giant- and animal man variants of creatures that are all essentially the same.

I've also been removing extinct animals that don't really fit the theme of the mod. Paraceratherium is not a variant of the rhino despite quite literally being a rhino for example. It's not even a case of popularity; Poebrotherium is staying while Basilosaurus and Chalicotherium get scrapped; I just want to stay true to the initial vision.

Speaking of extinct animals, I've been changing biomes around so that similar extinct animals don't end up in the same biomes - Megacamelus and Titanotylopus are almost the same, but one is exclusive to temperate grasslands while the other one to temperate shrublands, and then there's Camelops living in temperate savannas.

[ZM5]

Finished up the Slothful. Only Lust left, then the pets for the sin-afflicted humans - then I can do the sin elementals, which tbh I'm looking forward to.

[Sver]

Apparently having nothing better to do, I've decided to bring some sense into the whole TWO_HANDED and MINIMUM_SIZE thing for weapons. Going down the curious hole of square-cube law, I've found out a couple of interesting little facts about humanoid creatures of DF:

- Bronze colossus, being the largest humanoid monster, is only about 12 m (39') tall. That's about a five story building, if being generous. Not the Colossus of Rhodes I've been picturing, merely a third of that. It's still a ~140 ton bronze dude though.

- Giants, assuming they have a mostly human build and are not the squat and sturdy type, are about 9 m (29-30') tall. Roughly three and a half stories. Not like in the famous "The Giant and The Wall" strip, probably, but if one stood right by my apartment, I still wouldn't be able to look it into the eyes. Cyclops and ettins are a wee bit shorter, so their eyes could be about right.

- Ogres would be almost 8 m. Seems a lot closer to giants than I thought, at least, in giant terms. Blind cave ogres are slightly more voluminous, although, I pircture them to be shorter and broader instead.

- The largest animal person cabable of breathing on land is elephant man, standing at about 6 m (19-20'), if it is more human than elephant in build. Else, it's probably more squat. For a walking and talking fella it's still notoriously terrifying, you'd have to shout for it to hear you from up there. The largest, heaviest spear a human can wield is barely a pointy stick for an elephant man. Two-handed sword handles are easily one-handed to them.

- Sasquatch and yeti are barely 3 m (9') tall. Meanwhile, trolls and are ~1.5 times taller than humans, so, a little less than 9'. Resent portrayal of bigfoot in games is somewhere at this spot. Minotaurs are only slightly shorter than that.

- A giant rat standing up would still be looking down on an average human. Same could be said about any upstanding giant vermin.

- Kobolds are probably conventional halfling height, not smaller, as sometimes assumed. Gnomes are shorter, but the difference is very subtle, not like with garden gnomes. Fire imps are a head shorter and probably more lithe; for them, a dagger is as big as a longsword is for humans.

- Fairies, at the most generous assumption, are 18 cm, but probably shorter, accounting for wings. Pixies, on the other hand, are insect size.

[LargeSnail]

I'm doing an Elven Mod, motivated by the fact that no other elven mods are actually well-designed to improve the gameplay or are very boring indeed.

This is the Feature List (most of it is actually planned and not done yet):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

               ~~Elven Mod~~
*Play as the elves
*Control immortal, proud magical elves who must protect the nature (specifically the trees) at any cost
*Manage the environment with spellsongs and drudism
*Betrayal the wildlife and summon war spirits from killed beasts
*Brew magical potions from local plants
*Eat your enemies!

Pros of the elves:
   They can't die from old age
   They don't need alcohol to work
   They get high quantities of wood every year
   The wildlife will not hurt you... unless you attack first
   They can call titans to their side
   !!!MAGIC!!!

Contras of the elves:
   Elves dislike commerce; no caravans nor trade depot are allowed in the forest
   Weak, fragile citizens
   Weak weapons and armor
   They can't mine
   Cave adaptation can drive them crazy
   Being in war against almost any civilized race is very common
   You will get a limited amount of grown wood every spring

Quickstart Guide:
   *Embarking
      Playing in a rocky wasteland or a glacier will be highly hard, as you'll be likely to relly on hunting to survive (thus losing your druidic score until you can live just from farming and herbalism)
      Starting in a volcano will allow you to petrify any wooden item, thus giving a better buildmat for your fort and allowing you to upgrade your weak weapons and armor
      Starting in a sand desert could be looked as something hard, but will give you both soil and glass (a good choise for sharp weapons)
      If you wish, you can embark with almost nothing and invert your points into a glorious procedurally generated titan
      Since fuel is something hard to obtain, you could carry some seeds of oil-producing plants with you in order to start a glass/clay industry
   *Military
      If your embark doesn't have access to magma, and you're in a map without sand, the best way to obtain good materials for weapons is from animals (bones) and from invaders.
         (If you're lucky enough to embark in a good biome with Amber Trees, you will be able to produce amber-based weapons and armor)
      Since the best you can do is tame and train large creatures in order to protect your weak warriors from being mauled, a high druidic score is very recommended
      The best weapon that your elves are capable of build is the bow

I'm thinking in a better way to obtain amber, but an amber-producing tree doesn't look bad for the moment. Any ideas are welcome.

[Eric Blank]

Utterly failed to accomplish a goal tonight. Wanted to make "woven bone" material for a civ to wear. Gotta attach it to a critter to be available and show up on people as clothing, so I made a frog critter, gave it this woven bone material as a hair tissue, and tried to shear it and spin it into yarn.
That doesn't work, apparently, and I've spent the last five hours trying to do it this way and that, even tried taking normal hair, calling it woven bone and just changing it's material properties to make it tougher, but it won't let me spin that either. I wonder if theres a cap on how tough a material can be in order to be weaveable? Since it was by that point just hair like a sheep produces with modified yield properties I can't imagine what the actual issue is.

I ended up making bone and reinforced bone metals for the civ to use as armor and weapons, since they won't wear animal bone gear in-game. But that's all I managed to accomplish.

Brolols suggestion of a woody druid race got me thinking about that earlier while at work, though I didn't even try it tonight. I totally overthought it and decided on a three part species, with plant like lower limbs, mushroom material upper limbs and extras and a fleshy torso, and three castes; one humanlike, one with goat legs like a satyr, and one like a centaur but with a deer's body. Thinking about that now, it's probably best to simplify it... Maybe wooden limbs and fleshy core only? Or just a plain wooden plant race. Or woody limbs and mushroomy torso!

I just hadn't done anything with mushrooms yet and was thinking about what can be done with them. Gonna see if I can make a creature variation template that can successfully convert normal animals into plant or mushroom variants and fill evil regions with freaks.

[TomiTapio]

I'm doing an Elven Mod, motivated by the fact that no other elven mods are actually well-designed to improve the gameplay or are very boring indeed.

Feel free to copy my new trees and barkstrips-leather from OldGenesis. And the wooden and rock weapons.
We got cheap wood, furniture and broomhandle-class wood, and finest wood for best carving. Even a lightweight-wood reaction class.
Elves need tea and honey drinks methinks.

[FantasticDorf]

I'm doing an Elven Mod, motivated by the fact that no other elven mods are actually well-designed to improve the gameplay or are very boring indeed.

This is the Feature List (most of it is actually planned and not done yet):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

               ~~Elven Mod~~
*Play as the elves
*Control immortal, proud magical elves who must protect the nature (specifically the trees) at any cost
*Manage the environment with spellsongs and drudism
*Betrayal the wildlife and summon war spirits from killed beasts
*Brew magical potions from local plants
*Eat your enemies!

Pros of the elves:
   They can't die from old age
   They don't need alcohol to work
   They get high quantities of wood every year
   The wildlife will not hurt you... unless you attack first
   They can call titans to their side
   !!!MAGIC!!!

Contras of the elves:
   Elves dislike commerce; no caravans nor trade depot are allowed in the forest
   Weak, fragile citizens
   Weak weapons and armor
   They can't mine
   Cave adaptation can drive them crazy
   Being in war against almost any civilized race is very common
   You will get a limited amount of grown wood every spring

Quickstart Guide:
   *Embarking
      Playing in a rocky wasteland or a glacier will be highly hard, as you'll be likely to relly on hunting to survive (thus losing your druidic score until you can live just from farming and herbalism)
      Starting in a volcano will allow you to petrify any wooden item, thus giving a better buildmat for your fort and allowing you to upgrade your weak weapons and armor
      Starting in a sand desert could be looked as something hard, but will give you both soil and glass (a good choise for sharp weapons)
      If you wish, you can embark with almost nothing and invert your points into a glorious procedurally generated titan
      Since fuel is something hard to obtain, you could carry some seeds of oil-producing plants with you in order to start a glass/clay industry
   *Military
      If your embark doesn't have access to magma, and you're in a map without sand, the best way to obtain good materials for weapons is from animals (bones) and from invaders.
         (If you're lucky enough to embark in a good biome with Amber Trees, you will be able to produce amber-based weapons and armor)
      Since the best you can do is tame and train large creatures in order to protect your weak warriors from being mauled, a high druidic score is very recommended
      The best weapon that your elves are capable of build is the bow

I'm thinking in a better way to obtain amber, but an amber-producing tree doesn't look bad for the moment. Any ideas are welcome.

The All Races Playable mod does have a basic form of elves i've took on board to try and improve, but i admire you for the challenge you're taking on as even my own stuff exhausted me totally. How much DFhack integration are you planning if any? A.R.P uses mainly Alchemy and planting to juggle things around more than gathering from trees.

If you want some ideas, some things i learnt while doing my own home-made modifications are that obsidian tools are elf-friendly for picks and axes as long as they are a unique type of weapon, and that elves can cut wood with woodcutting skill but it traumatizes them in doing so with memories. So to play off this, certain activities deliberately require logs, such as from the caravan, emergency cutting trees or ethically grown later by converting seeds into logs.

Here's the example i used,

Spoiler: "elf tool weapon tokens" (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_CRUDE_AXE_BATTLE]
[NAME:battle axe:battle axes]
[ADJECTIVE:crude]
[SIZE:800]
[SKILL:AXE]
[TWO_HANDED:47500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:42500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:4]
[TRAINING]
[ATTACK:EDGE:40000:6000:hack:hacks:NO_SUB:1250]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:40000:6000:slap:slaps:flat:1250]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:100:1000:strike:strikes:pommel:1000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[CAN_STONE]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_CRUDE_PICK]
[NAME:pick:picks]
[ADJECTIVE:crude]
[SIZE:500]
[SKILL:MINING]
[TWO_HANDED:47500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:42500]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:4]
[ATTACK:EDGE:100:4000:strike:strikes:NO_SUB:2000]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[CAN_STONE]
[TRAINING]

I would put [HARD_MAT] onto that also in retrospect, it wasn't really much but it worked to my purposes. The obsidian was sharp enough to cut down unnatural monsters if i needed to, wood axes also can't cut trees since significant changes post 40.