Topic: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon (Read 2244 times)

newtyrol · « **on:** August 04, 2022, 10:23:25 pm »

Link to download: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=16033

(New Content Coming Soon: See 2nd post for details.)

I have been working on trying to get an Ant-Man Civ working mostly for my own personal play.
The Entity I have below makes them playable and adds a little in terms of features. But, The current version is on DFFD at the link above.
I am hoping to have a dual playstyle planned for it. First is an underground playstyle. the other is manly focused on gathering/hunting and staying in soil.
They are a little more tanky due to natural chitin armor. damage is prettygood due to buffed strength. But that is sort of balanced through smaller weapon sizes and penalties to smithing. Although, having a lot of arms does allow them some options with having multiple shields.

I buffed:
Herbalism,
Mining,
Strength
I nerfed:
Size, metalworking, most crafting(To a lesser extent than metal stuff)

Short term feature Checklist:(Pretty much all complete or mostly complete now.)
1. refining the civ positions a it further and integrating that with the castes better.(Mostly done. I have refinement ideas)
2. Adding in skill mods so they learn relevant skills faster.(Complete, There are also differences in learn speed between castes.)
3. Adjusting the animals they have a bit better. (Partially complete. I made a custom pet list. But I think making some custom animals or maybe incorporating some from mods with permission could make that aspect better.)
4. Adjust personalities of ants to be more flavorful and fitting. With castes differences. (Complete.)

I am currently giving them a subset of the cave creatures that is a bit better balanced than the full set. There are also a couple other minor mods I saw that have highly relevant creatures I plan to reach out to. To ask if they would be okay with me using their mod as dependency for the civ. I plan to maintain a no-dependancy version seperate from that in case something goes wrong. And to allow a more modular experience with other mods.

One of my more ambitious ideas was to try to make Antmen act as a mod-mod for Masterwork. But, I am not sure how feasible that would be. I think I could probably make an interesting gameplay with a lower tech digging focused civ that uses scavenging to learn tech rather than get materials. Another longer term route would be to have them use DFHack to spawn in the caverns. And then build them specifically around the somewhat harder enviroment of the caverns.
Regardless, using the breeding warrens from the kobolds as a base would let me have a system of reproduction that fits reality somewhat well. Currently the proportions will be completely random. With Queens being extremely rare. So your bet hope would be to wait for them to emmigrate.(I use DFHack to convert 1 starting ant to a queen and one to a drone. But, that isn't a super practical option independently. I haven't played long enough to verify how many kids that approach will result in. For my own person use I might be able to hack it a bit by spawning in some kids with DFHack at sensible times.
I would prefer to sort of systamatize it. Although, if I learn enough about DFHack .init files I might be able to automate and somewhat hide that. Ideally, they would be able to see which one. Although, transforming the ones with the highest social skills might be a decent option.

If I wanted to be really harsh/realistic I could have you start with a single fertilized queen. And a small number of items. then if I had population growth tied to a building. I could allow you to use resources and time to directly allow buying each caste of Ant.

A simpler approach I might be able to manage by making a DFHack script might be to just add a certain number of children every certain ammount of time if you have a queen and are under the pop cap. So, in that case getting high pops would be common. But giving them a shorter lifespan might result in more turnover. So it is harder to get skills higher.

I noticed an existing Insect people mod in beta focused more on totally converting the world to insect scale. Although, maybe I might be able to do some modding working that might help both projects I am unsure.

But, I came back to the forums due to having started work on this. I haven't been on here for like 5-6 years. And I completely forgot the password and email I used for the old account back then So, I am pretty much starting fresh here.

Spoiler: "AntManCiv" (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: "tools" (click to show/hide)

newtyrol · « **Reply #1 on:** August 08, 2022, 10:21:33 pm »

The Hatchet and shovel are needed for normal worker units to be able to dig and chop wood. soliders can use normal sized one though. Since the pick doesn't work. Ideally I might add some sort of natural digging ability without tools. But that isn't the highest priority. It is basically just a renamed pick with a smaller size and stats.
I took the actual implementation from https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=15711 And have included it with the permission of EuchreJack who created the shovel and Hatchet.
If you want to have any animals then you can replace the creature_subterranean file with the one I was going to provide. Or if another mod you are running also changes that file. You can add the following tag to any animal there that you think might be cool to be able to start with. I mostly grabbed any omnivorous/herbivore creatures from that file. + naked mole dogs.
Tag to add:
[Creature_Class:ANT_PETS]t
(Addendum) A small progress report/bit of news:
I got permission from Solitarion to integrate and adapt stuff from their antman sieger civ they made in 2015.
So, I am going to be integrating a portion of the changes from there that fit with the direction I am heading.
Notably:
1. replacing mouths with mandibles.
2. stronger chitin.(since ant chitin can be broken by kobold punches on the limbs.
3. Some more unique ant specific equipment.
4. An evil ant variant that isn't playable but will siege you with giant hordes of lightly armed but heavily armored ants.

I also realized chitin repairs go under the bone doctor skills so I will include content fix with the next update in a couple days. that removes the nerf there since antmen actually need the bone doctor skill. (I thought being boneless would make it only useful for healing non-ants.) If the next update takes too long I might just release the content-fix on it's own.

newtyrol · « **Reply #2 on:** August 08, 2022, 10:21:56 pm »

RESERVED

newtyrol · « **Reply #3 on:** August 08, 2022, 10:22:14 pm »

RESERVED

ThothTheScribe · « **Reply #4 on:** August 14, 2022, 08:54:02 pm »

I'm real excited to see how this turns out. I've toyed with making an antman civ before but never got it quite right due to my inability to figure out how to mod with DFHack. Mine were inspired by the Leafcutter Ant and the xenomorph and had a wood digesting workshop where logs get pulped and could be turned into resin boulders for building hives or other tools. I was trying to figure out how to make citizens able to be milked or sheared to collect chitin for making armor, but never got it working.

Eagerly watching your progress. Keep it up.

newtyrol · « **Reply #5 on:** August 15, 2022, 10:20:54 am »

Quote from: ThothTheScribe on August 14, 2022, 08:54:02 pm

I'm real excited to see how this turns out. I've toyed with making an antman civ before but never got it quite right due to my inability to figure out how to mod with DFHack. Mine were inspired by the Leafcutter Ant and the xenomorph and had a wood digesting workshop where logs get pulped and could be turned into resin boulders for building hives or other tools. I was trying to figure out how to make citizens able to be milked or sheared to collect chitin for making armor, but never got it working.

Eagerly watching your progress. Keep it up.

I am glad to see other people interested in it. Looking back at the myrmydian ant-man mod it looks a bit more developed than mine. Although, it also kind of buffs the ants combat power a lot more than my approach took. I might buff their chitin a little. since kobolds being able to punch through it is pretty thin. (I thought you had made an ant-man civ and looked through your posts. But the only one I found was that one.) That one seemed more oriented arround making them work as an enemy faction rather than as a playable one. I also have then reproduce in a mammalian style to avoid any bugs and inconveniences related to egg laying. Making an egglaying civ playable has been done before. But you basically have to lock the mother in a room with a nest box, food, and their mate to have it actually work. And they can only manage one egg at once. I have thought about really cranking down the time in egg if I do go for eggs. And trying to make egg-laying work. Although, I would rather get a workshop based approach using DFHack if I can figure it out. I will probably still keep the no-DFHack version up seperately from the DFHack one since once you integrate DFHack it tends to make a mod less modular.

Currently, I am awaiting communications from meph and a couple other before going much further to improve that core issue.
And I was considering working on another animal-man overhaul. While I waited. But, I am considering doing some further combat testing in ADV mode and Arena mode and seeing if perhaps I can find a balanced place for them combat wise. They might already be strong enough. Since I buffed their strength and toughness stat. But if their chitin still proves to be a little weak I might buff it. Since I want it to at least be strong enough to stop most unarmed attack.

Integrating some more realistic ant biology could be cool too. I plan to send a DM to Solitarian now too. As I might be able to save some work by integrating part of the work they did on their myrmidian ants mod.

I might not take the organ system changes though. It does mimic real ants closer. But giant real ants wouldn't be able to breathe. So, having lungs like a larger creature uses to get air makes sense.

The greek-flair also caught my interest. So perhaps I could enhance that by removing iron but giving them a buffed version of bronze. Which would be steel tier at some things but worse at others. Maybe by making it stronger but heavier? However, since ants have high strength the weight would be less of an issue. But that would make it a worse metal for most other races?

If you still have any of that incompleted mods stuff I might be interested in looking at it. resin boulders are cool. It seems like it would be particularly useful if you wanted some sort of wasp colony. A wasp colony might end up with issues due to flying being somewhat buggy. I think DFHack has fixes for some of the flying bugs. I won't touch a wasp mod till I get queen based reproduction working for AntMen. Unless I maybe went for a type where any wasp could lay eggs?

My next one after this is planned to be Rattlesnake Men who primarily focus on living in the desert and such. I would build them to be primitive scavengers who can dig a little but not much. And mostly use crude stone tools and hunting. As well as their own teeth and venom. I also plan to make some sort of playable dinosaur or lizardmen at some point too. As well as a farming focused vegetarian species.

ThothTheScribe · « **Reply #6 on:** August 15, 2022, 04:56:20 pm »

Sadly there's nothing left from that attempt other than my memory of it. I don't have any surviving copy of it and I never uploaded so I don't have much to offer other than enthusiasm and support. It was... oh god like 6 or 8 years ago that I tried that, and then an equally failed wasp mod about 4 years ago.

As for physical buffs I want to say that I made them bigger than normal antmen and made the chitin thicker. I think I made them slightly smaller than dwarf sized and the idea was to figure out the chitin shearing/shedding mechanic to make a second wearable "armor" on top of the existing natural armor.

The egg laying thing is hard. I never got past the concept stage of it but I was trying to figure out how to make the queen and other slightly modified giant ants into pets that the antmen could workshop transform into working members of society similar to the succubus mod's corruption system or alternatively DFHack summon new colony members from ant queen eggs. Again, I could not for the life of me figure out how to get the DFHack coding to work so it never panned out. The idea was to have them be technologically stunted (few weapons or armors worth a damn, no alloys, etc.) but allow them to breed large numbers of basic units or expensive special castes that had venoms or other specializations that made them more efficient versus specific races.

The resin boulder thing wasn't a hard one, pretty basic reaction using logs to make boulders of a custom resin material on a 1 for 1 basis. I wanted the ants to be an "anti-elf" race that was wood based but completely destructive to the forests they turned into colonies, so an inefficient resin production made for many cleared forests. On the plus side, the resin was fire-proof and could be fashioned into decent early tools.

As for the fleeting attempt at a wasp colony I just made them flightless with vestigial wings but really good natural climbing. Reasoned they'd be too big to fly. Similar resin reaction for them but it was highly flammable and easier to produce large quantities of so they could live up in the trees in giant paper nests.

newtyrol · « **Reply #7 on:** August 15, 2022, 06:06:38 pm »

That sounds cool. Making more specialist subcastes via DFHack reaction is a pretty cool direction. If I can get DFHack coding to work for me then. I might try doing something like that.

My current weakest area when it comes to modding is tissues and materials though. I did find someone else who made a thicker chitin they are willing to let me use. Being able to shed it is cool. I didn't know ants could shed chitin.

After a bit of thought I realized reducing ant food consumption might be an interesting thing to try too. Since they are smaller. Not by too much though. Not sure how I would do that though.

Flightless wasps/bees could be interesting. I think bees might be a bit more interesting as then you could have honey mechanics. But wasps could be cool too.

mohyanto97 · « **Reply #8 on:** August 19, 2022, 12:19:06 am »

Keep it goin bro, love this great mod.

newtyrol · « **Reply #9 on:** August 20, 2022, 03:37:15 pm »

Quote from: mohyanto97 on August 19, 2022, 12:19:06 am

Keep it goin bro, love this great mod.

I glad you like it. What sort of embark did you go with for your game? I am kind of curious?

voliol · « **Reply #10 on:** August 21, 2022, 06:36:02 pm »

PTW, and to ask a minor question: why is this in the modding-general board instead of the mod releases sub-board?

newtyrol · « **Reply #11 on:** August 21, 2022, 09:33:16 pm »

Quote from: voliol on August 21, 2022, 06:36:02 pm

PTW, and to ask a minor question: why is this in the modding-general board instead of the mod releases sub-board?

Mainly because I don't know how to move a thread. And It started as an in-progress not working thread looking for feedback and advice. I thought about making a new thread for the release though. But didn't end up doing it. But If I could get an admin or advice on how to move it that would be cool.

I hope you have had a chance to play with the mod and enjoyed using it so far!

mohyanto97 · « **Reply #12 on:** September 10, 2022, 12:57:26 am »

Quote from: newtyrol on August 20, 2022, 03:37:15 pm

Quote from: mohyanto97 on August 19, 2022, 12:19:06 am
Keep it goin bro, love this great mod.

I glad you like it. What sort of embark did you go with for your game? I am kind of curious?

Just start playing on fotress mode, it good place to embark, but i dont now is it feature or bug, just have one only noble(champion) an a year, i just wonder when i got another noble to run fotress smoothly, like have manager, doctor, or broker? other thing is good and it little bit OP on strength.(dont have siege yet, we will see about toughness unit later. great job and success on your mod.

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Author Topic: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon (Read 2244 times)

newtyrol

Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon

newtyrol

Re: In Progress Ant-Man Civilization RAW (operational Version 0.2)

newtyrol

Re: In Progress Ant-Man Civilization RAW (operational Version 0.2)

newtyrol

Re: In Progress Ant-Man Civilization RAW (operational Version 0.2)

ThothTheScribe

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) Still being improved

newtyrol

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) Still being improved

ThothTheScribe

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon

newtyrol

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon

mohyanto97

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon

newtyrol

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon

voliol

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon

newtyrol

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon

mohyanto97

Re: Ant-Man Civilization RAW (1.0) New Content Coming Soon