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Author Topic: Mounts for your Dwarves in Fortress Mode?  (Read 1678 times)

Angel71090

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Mounts for your Dwarves in Fortress Mode?
« on: December 07, 2021, 01:09:48 pm »

If you didn't guess, this thread is about exactly what it says on the tin.

Now I'm no expert in modding DF. At best, I'm a novice that has learned a few things via the wiki, looking at other modder's work and getting an understanding of the code base, and generally just doing minor edits here and there. I have no ambition or real hopes of making something big or even a small mod beyond maybe a creature or two if I get bored/go crazy/enter a strange mood at some point in the future. As such, I don't know much about how hard this particular subject is.

Thus the question and the point of the thread. As of 47, we can now have mounts in Adventure mode, which raised the question of just how hard it is to get your Fortress Mode Dorfs to get on top of their beasts and ride to war. I'm curious about this. Is it really hard, requiring a lot of work? Is it something no one has touched as Toady is probably working on it? I'm just indulging my curiosity at this point as I want to know the takes and opinions of my elders, for my beard is short and my skills are still lacking.

What say you, oh mighty Greybeards of the Modding community? How hard is this?
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IndigoFenix

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Re: Mounts for your Dwarves in Fortress Mode?
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2021, 10:38:56 am »

Standard modding cannot do this. DFHack could, if someone made a script for it.

Angel71090

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Re: Mounts for your Dwarves in Fortress Mode?
« Reply #2 on: December 08, 2021, 11:42:54 am »

Standard modding cannot do this. DFHack could, if someone made a script for it.

Damn, I ask for an experienced modder and I get the amazing mad dwarf behind the Mushroom Kingdom mod! Badass. Also, I see. I take it, because it's a functionality that's not directly implemented yet is why you would have to use Dwarf Hack? I'm just curious as to why this is really. Also, in your opinion, how hard would it be to make such a script, and would it be worth it?
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Dylan Ail Don

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Re: Mounts for your Dwarves in Fortress Mode?
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2021, 09:37:59 pm »

Hi! I was working right now in a mod that allows mounts on Fortress Mode.

Truth is that you can make a dwarf mount any creature, and it will work just like the vanilla riders that appear during invasions...

...and that's a big problem. In an invasion, any creature ridding another one will not control where it's going (i.e. the game employs only the pathfinding of the mount, and not the one of the rider). That's the reason behind a famous bug where amphibian mounts kills their riders via traveling through moats and rivers without caring if the rider is able to breath underwater or not.

So, shortly, it's easy to make a dwarf ride a creature. It's hard to make it worthy tho, since you will basically lose the control of your dwarf.

If you find some way to alter the mount's pathfinding, just like the diggingInvaders plugin alters the pathfinding of invaders to make them dig through walls, mounts in Fortress Mode can be enjoyable. Otherwise, they're rather useless.
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