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[TheLastVegan]

Wonderful!

[kiiranaux]

Version 1.4.00r, Under the Spawning Sun, is live!

Anyone who loves their current 1.2.02-1.3.00 worlds is good to keep playing those. Almost all bugs addressed in 1.3.00 and 1.4.00 can be fixed via reaction changes already posted in this thread. Message me if you have concerns and happy playing!

This update balances spawning and other systems even further throughout the mod, devoting significant time to far flung play systems to encourage maximum cohesion. The OP post 3 has been updated with a wealth of new how-to information.

The current development version has been replaced with a file containing "updated reactions" which provide bugfixes for save files from 1.3.00. These reaction files can be dropped into your save folder at any time without generating a new world.

The full feature list is too long to post, but is included in the full Highfantasy Readme. It covers the prior 17 development versions.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

v1.4.00r; "Under the Spawning Sun"
Additions: adds a few more dinosaur types
Additions: adds SPL's waterlogged creatures
Additions: adds support for Squamous/Kruggsmash autumn kingdom creatures (light version)
Additions: adds support for ZM5's Mythological Creatures minimod: 1 megabeast, 1 semimega, 1 feature_beast, 1 demon, 2 savage predators, 2 humanoids, 2 evil, 1 good creature
Additions: adds a forest plant "glowing nettle" that creates an extract called goblinbane.
Additions: adds 3 new prehistoric trees and the "dinosaur food chains" system
Additions: adds some flavor variation to cooking (thanks Splint for inspiration)
Additions: adds Ley Feeders, a new creature
Spawning: balances creature spawning in evil and savage biomes, and for dinosaurs which are now rarer. (Extinct, intelligent, and elemental creatures, and mundane biomes, were covered in 1.3.0.)
Spawning: balances plant spawning to reflect vanilla
Spawning: a couple beasts now spawn as a FEATURE_BEAST (caverns) rather than a megabeast (surface) including: Balor, Marilith, Kampe, Spider Queen, Hollow/Amalgated/Dessicated One
Spawning: fixes spawning for some interesting creatures that were previously bugged - firenewts, tentacle demons, aberrations/aboleth, and visitors
Creatures: Human, Hobgoblins, Halflings, and Half-Angels are now TRAPAVOID, making each one quite a bit more challenging during invasions
Creatures: revisits spawning, naming, symbols, and more for demons across the mod
Interactions: adds an Adrenaline system for most humanoids
Interactions: the abilities of three more mythological creatures - Cait Sidhe, Furies/Erinys, Sirens - were rolled into Strangelings, Nightwings, Sirens, making each one more deadly.
Names/Descriptions: at great personal cost X_X, cleans up and standardizes descriptions of all animals, animal men, and giants. Now only animal men have gender dimorphic descriptions.
Reactions: cleans up the reaction shortcuts at the crafting workshop
Entities: adds difficulties to growing plants outdoors, to make the system non-trivial
Entities: removed a feature where Modest Mod allowed large fish to be pets, which created various problems
Adventure Mode: adds standardized DIFFICULTYs (adventure mode exp) for all relevant creatures across the whole mod
WorldGen: reviews creatures for whether they are NATURAL, SUPERNATURAL, and so on, mostly under the hood.
Debug: bugfix to the long-broken creation of bayonetted weapons
Debug: finishes the implementation of FEATURE_BEASTs
Debug: imports Ramiel.'s fixes to stone and soil tiles, finally restoring them to vanilla!@@

[kiiranaux]

Apologies to anyone who attempted to download last night; I had not clicked *submit* on the file. The version 1.4.00 is now live for real!

[Enemy post]

I'm curious about the dinosaur food chains. What does that mean, and should I steal it for Primal?

[kiiranaux]

Hey Enemy post! We all sure do love your work. I suspect you'll have already reverse engineered this by the time you get to my comment, but just in case, here you go!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's the tag SPECIFIC_FOOD. I've never seen anyone do this before, but it's actually so much bigger than pandas and grazing.
For any given creature, you can list a plant or animal, and then it will never spawn that creature unless the other plant or animal is actually spawning. Just don't define any grasses (like bamboo); stick to using trees and shrubs as your plants base.
Here's the crazy part - it actually works with multiple chained creatures. You'd think for sure it would get messed up but nope, it works exactly as you intend. Check out the file creature_dep_marquisdinocopy_hf .
So, for example, I can define the tree GINKGO, then i can define the creatures TRICERATOPS and BRONTOSAURUS and list that they will only ever spawn in a biome with Ginkgos, then i can define T_REX and list that t-rex will only ever spawn in a biome with triceratops or brontosaur (its an OR function not an AND, luckily), which in means that i only ever get T-rex in biomes with Ginkgos. So this is where it gets crazy. I can assign one (or more) plants per unit of time, then map some prey to those plants, then map some predators to those prey, and voila! You now have Units of Time (Permian, Upper Permian, whatever) linked to trees which subdivide a single biome token (defined on the tree), and which correctly populate the fauna of that period. So if you have permian gingkos and cambrian ginkgos, and both have the biome TAIGA, you can now have Permian Taigas, Cambrian Taigas, and Permian + Cambrian Taigas (you cannot forbid this).

I was very unambitious with this - I defined just 3 trees, spawned each tree in ALL_TROPICAL biomes, then mapped huge periods of time to each tree. I think it was a tree each for Triassic+Early Jurassic, Middle+Late Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Add in some specific food creatures and voila. But you could go really all out with this.

The best part is, as long as you arent using grasses, the animals don't actually EAT each other, so you can map, say, Pterodactyl to Triceratops without the player having to see Pterodactyls trying to eat Triceratops, or Ginkgos, no with the risk of the creatures starving.

Last point: this is a triangle effect. Because the code works correctly, there is a tradeoff of frequency. Let's say you have Gingko, Trike, and Trex all set to frequency 50; and let's further assume that your spawns are balanced such that 50 is otherwise the "true" frequency of them considering all other creatures. Well, If the gingko is in 50% of Taigas, and the trike is in 50% of Gingko-bearing taigas, then the Trike is in 25% of Taigas. And the Trex is in 12.5% of Taigas. I get around this by having the frequencies INCREASE up the food chain - something like 60% for the plants, 80% for the prey, 100% for the predators.

Truly an under-utilized tag!

Feel free to incorporate this work in Primal either by taking the code directly or by building out the system - in your case, a single note in a relevant text file is more than enough credit to Highfantasy. Of course, I only had to set this up for ~30 dinybois; yours would be a little more comprehensive!

[SQman]

That is interesting. I had no idea this token actually influenced population spawning. I've dismissed it as something just for pandas. It will be useful for my mods too. Thank you for bringing that up!

[kiiranaux]

Thanks for the vote of confidence SQ - enjoy! I'm curious to see what everyone does with it.
Also, I spent dozens of hours testing the tag FEATURE_BEAST for this release. All my findings are out on the Wiki now. Definitely encourage folks check that out.

[Splint]

Hey Enemy post! We all sure do love your work. I suspect you'll have already reverse engineered this by the time you get to my comment, but just in case, here you go!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's the tag SPECIFIC_FOOD. I've never seen anyone do this before, but it's actually so much bigger than pandas and grazing.
For any given creature, you can list a plant or animal, and then it will never spawn that creature unless the other plant or animal is actually spawning. Just don't define any grasses (like bamboo); stick to using trees and shrubs as your plants base.
Here's the crazy part - it actually works with multiple chained creatures. You'd think for sure it would get messed up but nope, it works exactly as you intend. Check out the file creature_dep_marquisdinocopy_hf .
So, for example, I can define the tree GINKGO, then i can define the creatures TRICERATOPS and BRONTOSAURUS and list that they will only ever spawn in a biome with Ginkgos, then i can define T_REX and list that t-rex will only ever spawn in a biome with triceratops or brontosaur (its an OR function not an AND, luckily), which in means that i only ever get T-rex in biomes with Ginkgos. So this is where it gets crazy. I can assign one (or more) plants per unit of time, then map some prey to those plants, then map some predators to those prey, and voila! You now have Units of Time (Permian, Upper Permian, whatever) linked to trees which subdivide a single biome token (defined on the tree), and which correctly populate the fauna of that period. So if you have permian gingkos and cambrian ginkgos, and both have the biome TAIGA, you can now have Permian Taigas, Cambrian Taigas, and Permian + Cambrian Taigas (you cannot forbid this).

I was very unambitious with this - I defined just 3 trees, spawned each tree in ALL_TROPICAL biomes, then mapped huge periods of time to each tree. I think it was a tree each for Triassic+Early Jurassic, Middle+Late Jurassic, and Cretaceous. Add in some specific food creatures and voila. But you could go really all out with this.

The best part is, as long as you arent using grasses, the animals don't actually EAT each other, so you can map, say, Pterodactyl to Triceratops without the player having to see Pterodactyls trying to eat Triceratops, or Ginkgos, no with the risk of the creatures starving.

Last point: this is a triangle effect. Because the code works correctly, there is a tradeoff of frequency. Let's say you have Gingko, Trike, and Trex all set to frequency 50; and let's further assume that your spawns are balanced such that 50 is otherwise the "true" frequency of them considering all other creatures. Well, If the gingko is in 50% of Taigas, and the trike is in 50% of Gingko-bearing taigas, then the Trike is in 25% of Taigas. And the Trex is in 12.5% of Taigas. I get around this by having the frequencies INCREASE up the food chain - something like 60% for the plants, 80% for the prey, 100% for the predators.

Truly an under-utilized tag!

Feel free to incorporate this work in Primal either by taking the code directly or by building out the system - in your case, a single note in a relevant text file is more than enough credit to Highfantasy. Of course, I only had to set this up for ~30 dinybois; yours would be a little more comprehensive!

Now this is some interesting stuff right here.

[Sytel]

My dark gnomes are getting upset that they don't have shoes...
I don't think I can make shoes for them. I don't think they can wear them, either. But they really wish they could.

[kiiranaux]

Hey Sytel,

They can wear shoes and there is one reaction to conjure boots made out of aether, available at the conjuring circle, but it's decidly midgame. I've added normal shoe crafting for them for a future version.
In the meantime, if you aren't playing around with magic yet, you can use this reaction to make some boots without starting a new save file.
Just go into Data -> Save -> [your save file] -> objects -> reaction_modest_generic and replace these lines:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

find the line
[REACTION:GENERIC_1]

and add these lines below it:
   [BUILDING:CRAFTSMAN:NONE]
   [NAME:exchange stone for boots]
   [REAGENT:stone:1:BOULDER:NO_SUBTYPE:NONE:NONE][WORTHLESS_STONE_ONLY]
-SI-   [PRODUCT:85:4:SHOES:ITEM_SHOES_BOOTS:METAL:AETHER_METALLIC]
-SI-   [SKILL:TRAPPING] was ALCHEMY

[FantasticDorf]

PTW very glad the subterreanean beasts got in. Dinosaur tidbit is also very interesting.

Only thing i will say is that pumping up the frequency does affect the mathmatics behind the chance that they'll be used in wg, T-rexes with a 100 frequency attributed to making the realistic foodlink network will quite likely be chosen for their size (food) and multiple traits if the civ's allowed to utilize them hence why horses have the same rates as every other animal (default 50 and common_domestic to get carried around) but appear nearly 4 times as regularly for filling nearly every animal job role outside of war.

[ANIMAL] entity tokens are overrides though, so shouldn't affect the core in-game experience if carefully managed with additional steps like making their meat unpalatable.

[kiiranaux]

Well that finally explains to me why Troodontids were so unbelievable common before the spawning changes began in 1.3.00... (easily domesticated, forest spawning with elves, food, not threatening, big...)

[Urist the CaveBear]

I just want to say this is my favorite DF mod and I'm so tremendously pleased by the Highfantasy project's existing length, depth, and breadth of quality; as well as your terrific continued work. You're great, and so's your mod, thanks a heap.

[kiiranaux]

Urist!! Thank you so much! This means so much. I know I say I'm just doing this because it's the way I want to play DF myself, but man comments like this - what a joy
Thanks to all the partnering mod authors (many good conversations!) and patient bug testers for helping us get this far!
I'm just buried in a hole doing language file stuff for the next month or so, so... always forward progress

[Enemy post]

Oops, sorry I forgot to thank you for the information regarding food chains. That’s extremely interesting, I could finally have time-biomes without the animals being in the wrong environments. I’ll probably do that if I have free time at some point. Thanks!