Bay 12 Games Forum

So, as per the thread "Changes to rocks, metal, gems, jewelry, and currency?", I'm working on a Masterwork mod. I've finished the gems, and am making good progress on metals, minerals, and reactions based on them, but trade ... I need some advice on trade. By which I mean trade via reactions in workshops, not at the Depot.

Humans, and also dwarves and orcs, have access to a lot of powerful trade reactions. Turn stuff into money, and money into stuff. I am changing the value of gold (and other coinage metals), and adding a number of Earth resources (and deleting a bunch of others), and all this means a whole bunch of revisions to trade reactions.

But I don't have a very good sense of trade in Masterwork. It's clear that humans trade the most, followed by orcs and dwarves. It is not clear to me how much profit traders should demand. Does this depend on the species? Does it depend on the value, the rarity, or bulk (difficulty of transport) of the goods being traded? What else should influence profit margin? I'm also not clear on how complete the trade reactions ought to be: should most things be freely tradeable, or only selected things?

Basically: I want to keep the trade gameplay dynamic as Meph (and Smakemupagus, etc.) intend it to be, or as they desire it to become. Yes, I'm planning big changes to currency, etc., but not to the power, the scope, or the design of trade itself. Doing this, however, requires me to know rather a lot more about Meph and Co.'s thinking than I do. Can you share your thoughts here?

DESCRIPTION:

This is the Wonderwork sub-mod for Masterwork V6.1. It rethinks minerals, gems, and DF geology, metals, metal smelting and alloying, and  currency and trade. The races that see substantial changes in how they play are Dwarves, Humans, and Orcs. Gnomes and Hermits see smaller changes. Succubi and Warlocks are least affected.

Its inspirations are the Minerals Mod by Sean Mirrsen, the Wonderment Mod by Fedor, and some very hard thinking about how Meph and collaborators' Masterwork Mod has re-imagined the DF cosmos and every race in it.

VERSION: 0.2 DOWNLOAD: DFFD page

Wonderwork is currently in BETA.


INSTALLATION:
1. Copy the enclosed object files into \MasterworkDF V6.1\Dwarf Fortress\raw\objects\; replace all files with the same names.
2. Double-click on \MasterworkDF V6.1.
2a. In the Civilizations tab, you may choose any playable race.
2b. In Workshops and Furnaces, turn everything on (should be the default settings).
2c. In Misc. Features, Simple Gems, Simple Stone, and Simple Minerals should now have no effect (they're effectively always ON).
3. Play Dwarf Fortress!

Please post issues in the forum, and I'll do my best to fix them!


CHANGES:
Minerals, gems, and Dwarf Fortress geology:
Something like a third of all DF minerals, and a larger fraction of the DF gems were removed. In their place has arrived a diverse assortment of metal ores, ornamental minerals, all of the inorganic gemstones of greatest importance in the ancient and medieval worlds, and a few missing rocks of particular geologic or economic importance. Every retained or new mineral or rock type is either economically important, decorative, or dangerous, or serves as an independent host presenting a unique variety of mineable substances that are are at least one of these things.

Metals, metal smithing, and alloying:
There were three major techniques employed in the pre-modern world to extract iron from its ores and turn that iron into steel: Bloomeries and hand-hammering, Crucibles, and Blast Furnaces and puddling. Each are now offered in the game within suitable workshops, using more correct reagents, and allocated to races according to level of metallurgical savvy. Several advanced alloys of iron exist, culminating in the superalloy Kordamakest. Whatever your choice, if you go with iron rather than bronze you can expect to burn down forests or mine deeply into vast coal seams to win the fuel and coke your thirsty forges need!

Gold has doubled in value. It is slightly rarer now, and you'll find it dangerous to extract more than a trickle from its ordinary ores, but its purchasing power is the highest of any metal used in trade.

Every boring metal in the game is gone. If it didn't have a unique part to play in Masterwork DF, it got the axe. In the place of the missing and unmourned are several new alloys, offering kobolds, iron-poor Dwarven sites, orcs, and the most luxurious palaces and mountainking's thronehalls new character and richness. Gnomes have gotten a few extra metallurgical goodies, as they're the only race with access to the electic-fired Arc Furnance.

Money and trade:
Currencies got rethought. Then they got rethought again. After about three rounds of edits, we have complete, named currencies for Humans, Dwarves (presently still using human names), Orcs, and Gnomes. The first three of these retain their large-scale Masterwork trade economies. Although Gnomes are not yet active traders, I propose to Meph that this race would logically be vigorous wheeler-dealers within the confines of their hidden communities.

For more details, see next post.

Every trade reaction is revised at least to the extent of using named currencies and to accomodate the following progression of coinage metal values:
Copper, rusty iron, lead (3); tin, brass (6); silver, aluminum (12); electrum (24); platinum (40); gold (48)

Here are the currency units for each race:
# Default names and metals (Humans): copper Deniers, tin Groats, silver Shillings, electrum Crowns, gold Sovereigns
# Dwarves: Use the standard coinage metals. Have no special names yet, but eventually should have a unique set.
# Dwarven Legion: copper Denarius/Denarii, brass Bravus/Bravi, silver Argenteus/Argenti, electrum Solidus/Solidi,
#       gold Imperus/Imperi.
# Gnomes: lead Bits, brass Glintings, aluminum Evershines, (possibly titanium-chromium Coronas).
#      The native value of aluminum for Gnomes is 6, half that of this metal for any other race. A purse of Evershines
#      is made with 2 bars, and therefore Evershines have the same value for gnomes as Shillings do for humans.
# Orcs: lead Gobs, rusty iron Gurushs (2x weight), silver Skillinga (singular skilling), platinum Hothwrai (singular
#      Hothwrain), gold Tyrans.
#      Skillinga and Tyrans are both loan-words, from trade with humans and the Dwarven Legion respectively.
# Goblins: The orcish currency, but perhaps not the Tyrans and/or the Hothwrai
# Kobolds: The human or orcish coinage, as they have no native currency. They might use their own names, or just use
#      barter internally.
# Succubi, Warlocks: Not sure (they're more about souls, anyway). For outside trade, they use the human coinage
#      metals and names for now.


There are a bunch of other alterations and tweaks, but I'll let you discover them! have fun! Or !!FUN!!, whichever.

Toady One and Baughn,

I've been modifying a tileset and am finding that the new SDL-based graphics system, while helpful in several ways, doesn't let me edit the way tiles look like as I would like to, or enforces unnecessary limitations and restrictions on my designs.  It imposes (or has inherited) many of the same restrictions and suffers from the same sort of special-casing that the old system did.

I want all game entities to be treated the same for graphics purposes, and as many as practicable to be user-editable.  I want a clear, consistent, unified set of rules for adding graphics, foreground/primary color, background/secondary color, and transparancy to all editable tiles.

What follows is a partial sketch of a system that, should you choose to implement it, will achieve this.


1.  Allow tiles to layer (not just overwrite, but layer with transparancy).  Establish at least three layers:
* Background (ground, air, water, floor, or the like); never more than one
* Objects (creature, item, construction, plant; several, cycling in succession (as is currently done)
* Effects (smoke, miasma, fire, mood, alert); several, cycling in succession (as is currently done, but now between effects only)
* (optionally) Alerts (moods, alerts, special); several, cycling in succession


2.  Allow three integer values for graphics for all entities: 
* Custom tile - Used to specify a graphic or icon.  Set up a text file that lists all graphics files, tilesets, etc., tells the game where to find them, and, for each, specifies the first and last index that will be drawn using information in that file.  This means that a designer can now make whatever number of tilesets with whatever number of pictures is deemed suitable.
* Foreground/Primary color - Specifies one of a user-editable set of colors, with available index values going up to at least 255.
* Background/Secondary color - Specifies another of the same set of colors.

Either make a separate file(s) containing all graphics information and move the graphics data out of the object files, or put all the information in the object files.  But avoid  doing a bit of both, as is done now.


3.  Tilesets have four channels of data:  red, blue, yellow, alpha.  The proposed rules for using this data are:
* If yellow value is non-zero, paint exactly the color given, ignoring foreground and background colors.  This allows for graphics.
* If red and blue are identical and non-zero, treat as transparent, with the level of transparency equal to the level of red/blue saturation. 
* Otherwise, use the alpha channel to determine transparency.  (we avoid relying primarily on the alpha channel because it's a nuisance or time-consuming to edit in many graphics software packages, while RGB is always simple).
* Otherwise, use both the blue and red values:  Blue values -  paint foreground color with that intensity.  Red values - paint background color with that intensity.


I hope that this, or an equivalent that offers superior functionality, is thought suitable for a future release.

Dear Toady,

Minerals appearing in more than one form:
When I mod the minerals in your excellent game, problems arise when I attempt to have the same mineral appear as more than one form.  I want minerals to appear as both layers and clusters to add variety to the underground.  I want minerals (and gems) to appear as both cluster and veins, or as small clusters and veins, or as singletons and small clusters to both better control overall abundance (for example of coal or of platinum and gold) and increase diversity, especially as I add more mineral types.

Forms in which minerals, etc. may appear
While veins look reasonably natural, clusters are fairly boring.  They're always more-or-less the same shape, always placed in a grid pattern on a level, and basically look artificial.  If a few types of placement could replace clusters, playing with and modding the underground would be lots more fun.  Consider the 2D version's approach of varied rock bands, but with more natural variation (say granite blending into diorite, or bands of alternating shale and limestone).

The generation of rare minerals and gems
Speaking of diversity...  When I request in the raws for a particular mineral or gem to appear rarely, the current map generation makes it appear on few maps, but when it does appear, it appears all over the place.  What I'm requesting is for such clusters (veins, etc.) to appear in more maps, but appear only a few times at most on that map.

Oddities
There are several other things about how the mineral, soil, gem, etc. are processed that trip up modding.  For example, soils cannot (correctly) contain rocks, minerals, or gems, so we can't mod in placer deposits.  This means that the highly promising "Soil is Fun" mod doesn't work as intended.

Coal to Coke
A limiting factor in the game is that sites without magma are so terribly fuel-poor, which drastically constrains metal and glass production.  One way to help more sites be interesting is to remove the fuel requirement for turning coal into coke.

Metal usage
Metal is always limited.  This means that the amount of metal required to make something matters, in a way that the amount of, say, cloth doesn't.  Making metal furniture (thrones, tables, etc.) should not require so much metal for so little value.  Making metal goblets could stand to be made less lucrative.


Yours,
Fedor

Ability to place engravings.  I'd like to be able to make an engraved block out of an ordinary block, and have it be used for anything an ordinary block could be used for.  If it's used for certain things, floors and walls at minimum, it should look like an engraving.  The reason I want this is because any large room is going to be speckled with odd colors and I want to be able to design things to more nearly satisfy my sense of beauty.

More flexibility over colors and tiles.  The 16-color limit's kickin' my ass, and I don't mean that in a good way.  The 256-tile limit's doing the same.  "Overloading" single tiles, such as obliging the capital O character to serve as everything from the letter, a pillar, an engraved pillar, the end of a wall (in certain configurations), the end of an engraved wall (ditto), parts of the Depot, and Armok help me glass portals as well is gonna put me in a padded room with a nice hot lever one of these days!

Ability to paint both primary and highlight color in any tile.  This involves two steps:
1) Allowing all objects to show both primary and secondary colors (at present, most furniture doesn't allow the the display of the secondary color).
2) Using tileset information to show both colors.  There are really easy ways to make this possible.  One way is to set up a rule that, in the tileset files in the data\art directory (but not the artwork image files in the raw\graphics directory), any pixel with Red gets tinted with the primary color and any pixel with Blue gets tinted with the secondary color (we avoid green unless necessary for a third color because of red-green color-blindness).  If you have a tile pixel that's RGB (255,0,0) and the primary color is (127, 127, 127) (medium grey), than that pixel will be drawn as (127, 127, 127).  If you have a tile pixel that's RGB (160,0,160), the primary color is (127, 127, 127) (medium grey), and the secondary color is (0, 0, 255) (light blue), than that pixel will be drawn as (80, 80, 120), a bluish-grey hue suitable for slate.

It will be dirt simple to adjust the existing tilesets.  Just change all white to red and all magenta to either blue (if you want a highlight color), or black (if you don't).

Equation:  X-value on screen =
(((primary color X-value) * (tile pixel red-value) / (255)) +
((secondary color X-value) * (tile pixel blue-value) / (255)))
/ 2

Rebalanced and more editable material requirements for metal objects.  Metal is a scarce, mostly non-renewable resource; unbalances here get in my way in ways that unbalanced cloth requirements don't.  It should not be the case that 3 bars get you 1 anvil (base value 100), 9 goblets (base value 90), 6 boots (base value 60), 3 buckets (base value 30), or 1 throne (base value 10).  A given amount of metal, and a given amount of labor, should yield at least roughly the same value.  I'd like to see goblets have a base value of 6 (primarily a trade item), flasks 9 (trade item, now equal in value to goblets), boots 5 (not primarily a trade item), anvils 100, buckets 10, and most furniture other than statues to require only one bar and be worth 10.  Statues could require 1 stone/bar and lots of time to make, or 2 stone or 2 bars and only a little more time to make, and still be worth 25.

A rethink of craftmaking speed and workshop clutter.  At present, skilled dwarves work incredibly quickly.  Workshops rapidly become cluttered, and clutter requires a significant amount of micromanagement first to keep tabs on and then to sort out.  Either you have to maintain an efficient haulage cycle (no easy task if you have other tasks that need doing), or you have to keep replacing the workshops.  None of this makes gameplay sense.  I propose that the time required for a legendary dwarf to make anything be increased about four-fold, that required for dabbling dwarves to be unchanged, and the time required at other skill levels to be increased in linear progression.  I further propose that either workshops never become cluttered, or that craftdwarves themselves dump the product immediately outside the shop.

Running DF 40d.  Made various modifications to the minerals, but nothing that would logically explain an Adamantine cluster.  Asked this question in the general gameplay forum and apparently I DID break something.  But what?  Have any of you seen this happen?

Here are all the raw files I modified.  I made no changes whatsoever to adamantine.
http://www.leondaias.com/games/Dwarf_fortress/modded files.zip

Normally, I wouldn't dare post a new thread asking for an update to <<X external utility>> for the latest Dwarf Fortress version (0.28.181.39f as of the moment).  The fact that I have already read requests for an updated Dwarf Foreman config in three different threads (two on this site, one on Something Awful) doesn't change that.

What may make it worthwhile is this question:  How, in the name of shiny gold, does an ordinary user go about getting the information he needs to update the Dwarf Foreman config file without having to wait for someone else to provide the info?  My new fortress is getting to the point that I [edit] "be needin' me Foreman fix".

(delete me)

[ December 05, 2007: Message edited by: Fedor ]