Topic: My first custom creature - what is my mistake? (Read 1629 times)

Pilvenuga · « **on:** August 27, 2020, 01:39:41 am »

So, this is my first attempt at creating a creature from scratch, i've done slight tweaks before this and felt like i got the basics of the raws with dependencies and modularity. The creature is going to be named Forgarn,a species my dwarves will "discover and adopt into dwarven culture" in a world im going to gen.

Rough backstory: in a time before the first age, a snapping turtle man tribe got carried away by a river leading into the caverns. There they evolved to survive the harsh, brutal cavern life (im going to gen the 3 cavern layers as a single layer). However, even uncountable generations of evolving to the climate were not enough to succeed against the creatures that prowl the depths and by the time dwarves breach the caverns and happen upon the nearly extinct species, the forgarn are all too happy to merge into dwarven culture in exchange for safety and perhaps a bit of revenge.

Rough description of the idea i had: bipedal humanoid reptilian - with shell plates on upper body instead of a solid shell they can retreat into. Long claws, might remove those and just make them short nails, depending on if arena testing proves them too strong. Snapping turtle-esque beak and 4 eyes for that scary look. Males have a single horn on their head, females dont. Oh and they're immune to fire, but not magma - that part is rather important, i want them to be able to walk through a forest fire but not be able to swim in magma.

My issue is that i cant get the creature to spawn in arena, nor in a genned world as adventurer. This is perhaps the 6th time ive reformated the creature, so i feel like running circles in a maze right now. Help me find a way out of here?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Strik3r · « **Reply #1 on:** August 27, 2020, 01:58:35 am »

I think i might know what the problem is... You put the creature into a raw file that you created yourself, rather than modifying creature_standard or w/e, right?

What's the name of the file? Copy and paste that into the first line of the file.
You'll also need [OBJECT:CREATURE] before any creature entries.

Do you have that? I'm just checking.

Pilvenuga · « **Reply #2 on:** August 27, 2020, 02:35:16 am »

yep, its in its own .txt file, from reading the modding page on the wiki i thought that was all it was needed - that the game read every .txt in the raws folder

but ive not added the [OBJECT:CREATURE] tags, true

okay, after adding the [OBJECT:CREATURE] tag to its standalone file, it didnt help but adding the creature into the creature_standard file absolutely did the trick!

Thanks for getting me out of this maze, now i can go sculpting and tweaking the creature further

Pilvenuga · « **Reply #3 on:** September 06, 2020, 03:18:52 pm »

After more testing, tweaking and problems - here's an update and a few questions for those who can help

1. I've removed the males having a horn on their head, it felt a cool idea at the time but it started to bug me aesthetically. Having a horn seemed silly when i pictured a snapping turtle. Also removed the eyebrows and eyelashes

2. The claws are normal size now, they bleed against naked skin quite well. Not so much vs scales/clothes/armor.

3. Added the FIREIMMUNE tag to the creature, this unfortunately means they take no damage in magma for a moment but at least they still die in it rather soonish (i had problems with the HEATDAM_POINT still killing them in forest fires) By the way, does FIREIMMUNE make the materials like creatures tanned leather also fire immune? I've got another creature/tweak in mind

4. However, testing the creature in adventure mode - i had a 360 degree vision arc, not the 270 i was hoping for. How do i fix this while keeping the 4 eyes?

Here's the creature as it sits in the creature_standard.txt

Spoiler: Forgarn (click to show/hide)

I've not yet tested them in fortress mode - probably going to retire a fort after breaching the caverns and then making a group of adventurers who i retire at the fort and DFHack them into becoming sexual again.
Would that be a good way to add them to my fort while making sure the creatures remain unique in the world?

Oh one more thing - would it be possible to change the CREATURE_TILE value for babies and children so they would be small f's instead of capital F's?

TomiTapio · « **Reply #4 on:** September 06, 2020, 08:13:21 pm »

FIREIMMUNE tells AI "you can calculate path trough fire".
Gotta separately make all the materials heat-resistant (just copy from Magma Crab).

Vision_arc looks good. Checked with wiki. https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Creature_token#V

Different ascii tile for kid? Not with ascii mode. Graphics mode you command the child tile.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Pilvenuga · « **Reply #5 on:** September 13, 2020, 05:02:47 am »

After some more tweaks i've come to this setup:

It's not immune to fire, but rather resistant to its damage. Basically the creature starts taking heat damage at boiling water temps. I had some trouble with the shell catching fire and just burning forever, killing it with heat damage so i made only the shell immune to magma heat. The vision's fine - i was just used to other roguelikes so the 360 degree adventure mode vision confused me at first.

Going to add a party in and do a "fix-ster fert all" command to fix their asexual state. Im unsure of how well an egglaying fortress citizen species is going to work but i guess i'll just have to turn off all labors for the married females and see from there.

Thanks to Strik3r and Tomi for the help in making this creature alive

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Pilvenuga · « **Reply #6 on:** September 18, 2020, 07:35:33 am »

I've now tested the creature in fortress mode and run up to a few more problems:

1. They dont eat fortress food, not when they were long term residents in my tavern which had ample food stored and not even after when they were accepted as citizens. They do hunt for vermin to survive though and they also didn't have any problem with drinking alcohol in the tavern. All the people in my fort who currently have the feeding labor enabled try to feed the starving forgarn but come up with a "No Food Available" cancellation spam. Bear in mind i've mad a ton of new meals since the unretiring of the fort. Do i have to specify what diet they have with a "home biome" token or some such? Would that make them spawn in the world also? Im trying to keep them unique and going for an "averted exctinction" kind of a playthrough.

2. The fort i'm playing has periodic Giant Kea problems, which often results in civilians having to fight the ~~bastards~~ free food. One of the forgarn took damage - minor cuts to scale and muscle tissue with some motor nerve damage, which were diagnosed and cleaned by my medical dwarves just fine. The medical screen now shows her as G~ (grasp impaired) and Mn (motor nerve) but she never needed sutures or dressing. The wounds show up as scars in her thoughts screen but also as wounds to scales and muscle in her wounds screen under health tab. Is this a testament to how tough scales can be against Giant Kea claws, with flesh and nerves being weaker than the skin?
Also an unrelated note - one of my dwarves has had her toe broken and smashed open, for more than 6 years now. Do toes not receive medical attention and thusly never heal their wounds, or is broken and smashed open another wording for a completely pulped toe?

3. Finally, ive noticed some issues after reclaiming the fort - when my beekeeper starting spamming job cancellation messages, i realized that the beehives needed to be dismantled and rebuilt. Same with doors and containers. I've read through the wiki page for reclaiming a fort http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Reclaim_fortress_mode and while it stated there that the dead/missing page would be reset upon unretiring, it did not for me. Butchered animals from when i started the fort still show up there. Could that create some issues down the line?

Eric Blank · « **Reply #7 on:** September 20, 2020, 05:12:22 pm »

I think the eating issue has to do with temperature, i.e. everything might be too cold for them to eat. Try loading them up in the arena, butcher something and try to eat it. I've experienced something similar on dragon men before.

The scars, iirc, do show up on the wounds screen even if they've technically healed.
As for your dwarf with the broken toe, it's probably the toe nail that is smashed open, and nail tissue never heals, like nerves, so their toe will never recover. If it's infected, they're a goner, but if you have also they might clean it every time they bathe.

Un-retire bugs are kinda inevitable. There will be issues down the line, but as long as you don't un-retire more than twice they probably won't make things unplayable.

Pilvenuga · « **Reply #8 on:** September 24, 2020, 08:49:17 pm »

i tried it out in arena, indeed the freshly butchered meat is too cold to eat!

i've tried removing the thermal resist tags and even made their homeotherm the same as dwarves but that didnt fix it, the foods still too cold

News:

Author Topic: My first custom creature - what is my mistake? (Read 1629 times)

Pilvenuga

My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

Strik3r

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

Pilvenuga

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

Pilvenuga

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

TomiTapio

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

Pilvenuga

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

Pilvenuga

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

Eric Blank

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?

Pilvenuga

Re: My first custom creature - what is my mistake?