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[BysTaXx]

So, i have no idea what i'm doing, but i want to make the beast-men viable races. I understand that i'll need to make a cive for each one which will take a while, and that many of them are too small to even use a pick to mine, or an ax to chop wood. Also, their descriptors are sorely lacking, and i wish to fix prety much all this.

So, i have looked into the wiki, but the tokens are all spread out, and it's hard to understand what's going on in the raws, where the important tokens are stored, where to modify what, so i'm rather lost.

So, what specificaly i want to do is as folows:
1) change the beast-man varient such that the creature's size is 80% human size plus 20% creature base size with the human (or modified) growth rate
2) make specific species able to mine without tools (even if it's only dirt)
3) add some races and foodstuffs for arctic and desert regions (because veriety)
4) add aquatic races and structures

So, what i want to do is first validate the beast-men races, as in make them able to actually do stuff and use stuff in adventure mode and fortress mode (currently only really large creatures are viable, so foxes and squirels can't do much of anything) then i want to give some the ability to mine naturally, then get some civs in, etc, etc

If anyone has any tips/tricks/suggestions, that'd be aawesom

[mcbucko]

The tokens are actually rather neatly sorted on the wiki into the structure that is used in the game. For example, most of what you'll need for this task can be found in creature tokens, which is alphabetized and has in depth explanations as to what the tags do and how they effect gameplay. It also has the attack tokens at the bottom if you'd like to make custom attacks.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature_token

As for the specifics of what you want to accomplish, I would start off by removing all of what's currently in the animal person raws which can be found under the animals they are based on in the various creature_x raws and pasting the dwarf raws and editing them. the creature variation tokens aren't easy to parse and you're working with humanoids anyways so you won't have to change the dwarf raws too much.

from your list:
1. You would want to set [BODY_SIZE] tokens to an amount like 60000 (dwarf size) or 70000 (human size) or larger when the creature is fully grown.
2. Can't do that at all yet without custom written dfhack scripts, sorry
3. You can do that either by using biome related creature tokens or setting up the new civilization entities to spawn in those biomass, ie [BIOME]
4. You can technically do that by making races with [AQUATIC]  or [AMPHIBIOUS] but keep in mind pathfinder currently doesn't take into account a creatures swimming skills or ability to not drown into account when it comes to citizens.

For giving them unique civilizations you'll need to look into entity files and tokens, which are a different kettle of fish and can similarly be found in entity_x raw files.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Entity_token

[BysTaXx]

So far, thanks for all the input!

Also, I've figured out how to make them all closer to human sized but still based off of the original creature size by stacking the [GRAVITATE_BODY_SIZE] token in the creature variant section. I've also made all the beastmen omnivores (I think, given I can't find any tokens for herbivore behavior).

I feel that my next step is learning how the tokens work for the civilizations, as I'm currently literally copying the humans for now. sooo.... I think that working on say a group of species at a time would be best. I would also like to expand the descriptions for the beastmen as well.

[KittyTac]

Hah, civs for every animal man is one of those megaprojects that I like to take sometimes. Note that you'll pretty much get only beastmen if you make one for each, due to how civs are selected. Maybe mountain goat men should have dorf entity files?

[BysTaXx]

Actually, what i was thinking was grouping similar beastmen together into the same civ, die to how civs work with multiple races in a single civ, so, say forets birds would all live in trees, wolves, foxes, etc would live in burrowes, bears would live in caves, things like that. So each civ would randomly pick a race.

[BysTaXx]

Question: is there a way to customize site types? As in, can i make my own, or are those hard coded?

[KittyTac]

Question: is there a way to customize site types? As in, can i make my own, or are those hard coded?

Hardcoded, but will change in a few years with mythgen.

[BysTaXx]

Allright, so the fact that structures are hardcoded actually makes things a little easier, less awesome, but easier.

If anyone has suggestions on how higherarchies should be, or groupings, or what have you, feel free to voice them.

I was also thinking of ways to make playing beastmen more unique in how they work and the things they can do, like being able to make tools and weapons from bone, being able to perrify bone and wood to make them harder, new ways of preserving foods (smoking meat, pickling fruits and vegies)

[KittyTac]

Imagine what could you do when mythgen comes around. Fox-people living in little burrows in the wilderness, eagle-people building nests in trees like Elvis, etc.

DYAC: Elves, not Elvis.

[BysTaXx]

Imagine what could you do when mythgen comes around. Fox-people living in little burrows in the wilderness, eagle-people building nests in trees like Elvis, etc.

DYAC: Elves, not Elvis.

That was prety much exactly the kind of thing i was going for, however, as it is now i kinda need to group a bunch of races together for now. Anything that burrows and lives in the forest in a single civ, and so on.

[BysTaXx]

question: can I make a creature with only one gender? as in, can a creature with only one caste with both male and female tokens actually work? (I would test this out myself, but I'm really bad at making sure a fortress survives long enough to actually find out)

[KittyTac]

question: can I make a creature with only one gender? as in, can a creature with only one caste with both male and female tokens actually work? (I would test this out myself, but I'm really bad at making sure a fortress survives long enough to actually find out)

Pretty sure you can, they'll spawn in the wild, but I'm not sure about civs.

[BysTaXx]

so, so far, mono gendered creatures seem to work, however, I'm not so sure if carnivores can eat eggs (because plenty of carnivores in real life eat eggs... like all of them) so I'm not sure if I can force eggs to be eatable by carns or if I even have too, any input

EDIT: after some quick testing, it seems that the way I've done the mono gender doesn't actually work. it might be because there is only one caste and the way DF works is that breading requires two castes I think. anybody know a work around?

[KittyTac]

Hmmm.. What if you make another dummy caste that is exactly the same?

[BysTaXx]

Hmmm.. What if you make another dummy caste that is exactly the same?

if that is the case, then I'd still need to make sure that I have one of each caste in order to breed, which would in essence defeat the whole purpose of having a mono gendered creature. (and yes, they do exist like snails and slugs, and there's an animal in like the deep sea with over 100 or something ridiculous like that)