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[ccoolleeiiss]

I am very new to modding, but i think i understand the basics. one thing that really confuses me is the caste system. cloud someone give me an explanation of them in layman's terms? also are there any tags/codes that are required other than the basic body parts and tissues and materials etc. etc.

[Schizotek]

The caste system is a versatile tool for modders to, well, add castes to creatures. The default castes for dwarves are males and females, with the only difference really being biological gender and the ability to grow beards. However using the caste system you can make your dwarves (or other species) give birth to any number of horrifying monstrosities if you so wish. Nothing like modding it so that 1 in 10 pregnancies end with centipedes crawling out of the lovely lady and trying to kill everyone. Most modders, however, just alter stats and learning rates *SNORE*. The best way to learn how to create and alter castes is to look at someone elses castes (I learned how to alter castes by fiddling with the genesis mods castes for instance).

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Caste
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.31:Creature_token

[GreatWyrmGold]

As to "necessary" tags, you also need [NAME:whatever:whatevers:whatever], DESCRIPTION:whatever], and some other stuff if you want it to be kinda interesting. I usually copy another creature's raws, change the name, and go from there. It usually works well.

[Old Greg]

I've been using them to separate different evolutions of the same pokemon family in my mod. The only thing I'd caution you against is that there are some odd quirks when trying to define creatures with different body structures and materials. You'll need to define all the materials and tissues at the creature level, for one.

[NW_Kohaku]

With castes, you can basically define nearly as much as you want in specific castes of a creature, to the point where you can define almost entirely different kinds of creatures to be technically the same "species".

For example, I once did a mod where dwarves, minotaurs, spiderish humanoids, and serpent-people were all the same species.  They all had radically different bodies, but would share the same fortress.

Castes are normally used to define genders, and that's it, but you can also do things like mod in "birth defects" or "rare chosen ones" or the like by making different castes have different chances of appearing - giving weights of 999 to the "normal" male and female castes, and then having a "birth defect" or "chosen one" which is a different kind of creature with only a 1 weight for each version of the gender would leave you with a .1% chance of that particular kind of creature being born.

Unfortunate limitations are that you cannot set custom graphics for different castes, you cannot easily identify different castes unless you set them to having different caste tiles, and do not use graphics, you cannot differntiate types of clothing each caste wears (so your serpent people will wear shoes on their tails), and you have no control over what castes will be born to which castes (so a minotaur and a dwarf that get married could give birth to a serpent-person).  You also cannot set megabeasts to be a caste (it's creature-level), and there are a few other limitations, like having to define materials in the creature level.

[ccoolleeiiss]

thank you guys for answering. i just have two more questions. when is select a caste, and put in a new line such as  [BODY:HUMANOID_4ARMS:2EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH], will that cancel out the original race body and this caste will only have the new parameters i enter? also do the tokens and codes have to be in any specific order? other then when i am specifying on another token when i press tab twice. or can i just put them in order i want.

[Old Greg]

If you define body tokens both at the creature level and the caste level, weird shenanigans will happen. Body parts will be duplicated in a weird, pseudo-fractally way and your creature will be a horrifying, inscrutably malformed mutant.

I highly recommend it.

That said, if you want it to function "normally," then you'll either have to define all body tokens at the caste level or no body tokens at the caste level.

[3]

No, body parts defined at the caste level are added to the parts defined at the creature level. This is because things defined at the "creature level" (that is, before castes) are just automatically copied to all castes.

Doing it wrong:

Code: [Select]

[BODY:HUMANOID_4ARMS:2EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH]
[CASTE:CASTE]
[BODY:HUMANOID_4ARMS:2EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH:TAIL]   
(This will get you a caste and a caste with two of every body part)

Doing it right:

Code: [Select]

[BODY:HUMANOID_4ARMS:2EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH]
[CASTE:CASTE]
[BODY:TAIL]   
(This will get you a caste and an otherwise identical caste with a tail)

Also doing it right:

Code: [Select]

(everything else)
[CASTE:CASTE1]
[BODY:HUMANOID_4ARMS:2EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH]
[CASTE:CASTE2]
[BODY:HUMANOID_4ARMS:2EYES:HEART:GUTS:BRAIN:MOUTH:TAIL]
[USE_CASTE:CASTE1_BIG:CASTE1]
[USE_CASTE:CASTE2_BIG:CASTE2]
[SELECT_CASTE:CASTE1_BIG]
[SELECT_ADDITIONAL_CASTE:CASTE2_BIG]
[BODY_SIZE:1:0:30000]
[BODY_SIZE:12:0:120000]      
(This will get you a caste, an otherwise identical caste with a tail, and versions of each in a different body size)

[ccoolleeiiss]

thanks guys.