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Author Topic: Job Suggestion: "Extract from a dead animal" could also take corpses as input.  (Read 2274 times)

HmH

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In version .44.12, the only way to get extracts from large animals, such as snakes and giant cave spiders, is by buying a barrel from one of the caravans.
While that's a perfectly viable solution for most animals, it does not yield the most Fun of extracts: those possessed by forgotten beasts and other procedurally generated creatures.

Suggestion: the "Extract from a dead animal" job could be made to process not only caged live vermin, but corpses of extract-carrying animals and vermin as well.

This change will be reasonably small yet highly beneficial for the player's experience:
First, it will allow players to gather forgotten beast extracts, some of which are [SYN_CONTACT] and therefore could be easily weaponized with a properly constructed dwarven shotgun.
Secondly, it will make vermin corpses useful for something other than the production of miasma. This will, in turn, give cats unique utility: if penned in the right location, they would be far more effective at producing extractable corpses than trappers are at capturing live vermin.
Thirdly, it will allow players to make extracts from anything they manage to kill, including animals from savage biomes whose extracts are not available through trading.

These applications will enrich the players' already considerable capacity for mayhem, give players a reason to tolerate the presence of cats and deliberately hunt forgotten beasts for their venom, and make the Animal Dissection skill see far more use than it does right now.

Azerty

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These applications will enrich the players' already considerable capacity for mayhem, give players a reason to tolerate the presence of cats and deliberately hunt forgotten beasts for their venom, and make the Animal Dissection skill see far more use than it does right now.

Especially if new extracts are created.
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HmH

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These applications will enrich the players' already considerable capacity for mayhem, give players a reason to tolerate the presence of cats and deliberately hunt forgotten beasts for their venom, and make the Animal Dissection skill see far more use than it does right now.

Especially if new extracts are created.
Yeah, with that feature, mods will get a lot more use out of all those weird new creatures.

By the way, I'm wondering if any mods have already incorporated a reaction that allows one to produce extracts from corpses. Does anybody know?

Azerty

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These applications will enrich the players' already considerable capacity for mayhem, give players a reason to tolerate the presence of cats and deliberately hunt forgotten beasts for their venom, and make the Animal Dissection skill see far more use than it does right now.

Especially if new extracts are created.
Yeah, with that feature, mods will get a lot more use out of all those weird new creatures.

By the way, I'm wondering if any mods have already incorporated a reaction that allows one to produce extracts from corpses. Does anybody know?

I earlier asked how to do a reaction using corpses and skeletons to make someone exercise its medical skills.
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FantasticDorf

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Vermin can be targeted for selection sexually or asexually in reactions, and besides a case-edge in the use of eggs by determining its female product of origin, actual creatures can't be targeted because of how broad the criteria is to look for the reagent.

Nearly all butchery interactions involve taking what is already there, so if malleable use of extracts and poisons comes, it'll be with the rest of the creature all there besides what hardcode (/RAW-code?) Toady provides.

  • Or find a modding work-around to turn the creature into vermin temporarily & make the dwarf pick up and use it (with it expiring on reaction completion) in a reaction criteria.
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HmH

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Actually, I think I've found one mod that made a material template such as [BLOOD_TEMPLATE] or [CREATURE_EXTRACT_TEMPLATE] targetable by reactions, and applied it to extracting blood from corpses:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152734.msg6464648#msg6464648
[CREATURE_EXTRACT_TEMPLATE] appears to be used in all vanilla poisons, including iron man cough and other weird stuff.
I wonder if it would work on procedurally generated creatures, though. Will need some testing for that.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2019, 06:30:07 am by HmH »
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IndigoFenix

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There's a trick where you can make a creature with a body part that is composed out of an item, including a plant, and then extracts can be made from that item after butchering.

But just extracting a substance from the corpse makes more sense. Also, if a property could be added to the extract material that tells the game where and how to extract it, it could help cut down on useless or dangerous extracts in caravans.

HmH

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Just checked it in the arena, with some adventurer-enabled custom reactions.
There's seemingly no way to make a reaction that extracts poison directly from corpses, as corpses don't appear to have any particular material from material_templates_default. The game doesn't look for child materials in a complex item: for instance, trying to process a corpse for TAN_MAT does not yield the leather you were looking for. Only skin, which is made from SKIN_TEMPLATE, can be processed for TAN_MAT.

While unrelated, it's noteworthy that using REAGENT:CORPSE:... to narrow it down to corpses rather than corpses and bones and nervous tissue doesn't work as advertised. It gives really weird results, since the game appears to believe that axes and nest boxes are corpse-like enough for its purposes.

There is a way to mod, say, muscle or fat to be processed for the creature's local POISON material with something like MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:POISON_MAT:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:POISON, but that leaves out the NOT_BUTCHERABLE FBs' corpses.
And even when you mod it that way, the reaction processes any meat available despite the HAS_MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT specifying a local material that it doesn't have, yielding n\a material or grease when the source creature doesn't have any POISON material. It does yield venom when you process the meat of something poisonous, at least.

Dunno, maybe there is some way and I didn't see it: I don't mod much. Still, comments on the modding forum indicate that reactions with corpses are pretty... finicky.

FantasticDorf

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Id be mindful about the size of the creature you're trying to get a reaction product from by using corpses as when they get too small even prime condition ones don't yield anything. The poison isn't kept within the creature particularly either, since substances like milk are abstract and created on spot by interactions, but other things like yarn which are external have a presence with definable hair length progress.

It might be more worthwhile to circumnavigate it entirely and have a alternative like buying poisons from a 'merchant' workshop if you can think of a appropriate method of exchange you're happy with, like inputting your own minted coins.
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HmH

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I was using giant adders, giant bark scorpions(those two have VENOM local materials) and giant cave spiders(POISON instead) for testing. Smaller poisonous creatures didn't yield anything useful from butchery, and arena mode prevents you from crafting stuff with ingredients from sentient creatures. Which seems like a bug.

You can already order poisons from caravans, but poison shops in the adventurer mode are a great idea. In order to be useful, though, they would need a new adventurer action, something along the lines of "dip X into Y" to cover an object in a poison.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2019, 06:54:26 am by HmH »
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FantasticDorf

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Adventurer's have it easy, just spill it over the weapon on the ground (take care to wear gloves if the poison is necrotic like GDS) and it'll transfer, applying weapon poison isn't really a thing otherwise though its much requested.
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