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[paulonthebrave]

I am currently working on a mod that adds a new playable race but I am new to the game, and by extension modding it, so I have a few questions. Though will keep posting here with future questions I have over the same mod.

Though first I should clarify I have actually already made decent progress but need help with key traits of my main custom race but need help with particular aspects of it.
The main race I currently have is handled as a human variation, but its civilization (entity) is based on the Dwarven entity.

Here are my actual questions:

1.What's a clean way of testing the materials of my creature?
A trait of the main race of my mod one is it has metallic bones (currently steel) but I am having issues confirming if my modification works or not. Also here is the method that I am trying to replace the bones for additional info in case I made a mistake)

Code: [Select]

[TISSUE:METAL_BONES]
[TISSUE_NAME:metallic_bone:NP] Whether it has a plural depends on exact part
[STRUCTURAL]
[CONNECTIVE_TISSUE_ANCHOR]
[TISSUE_MATERIAL:INORGANIC:STEEL]
[RELATIVE_THICKNESS:2]
[HEALING_RATE:1000]
[VASCULAR:3]
[PAIN_RECEPTORS:50]
[CONNECTS]
[TISSUE_SHAPE:LAYER]
[SETTABLE]
[SPLINTABLE]
[SELECT_TISSUE_LAYER:BONE:BY_CATEGORY:BONE]
[SET_LAYER_TISSUE:METAL_BONES]
2.Is there a way to attach a tool/weapon to a creature and have it handled as a body part?
A trait of the main race of the mod is that they have a metallic bony tail with a spear head on the end but unsure if its even possible. Though do Know it is possible to weaponize a tail by its self but also want it being useable as both an axe and a pick. Though am willing to abandon this aspect though if its impossible or just to complicated to be worth while. Should clarify I already gave my creature a tail though.

3.Is it possible to have a (female) single sex race that reproduces with other creatures?
I already seen posts saying it currently isn't possible to have mortal single sex races, but figure I might as well ask or see if their is a elegant way of doing this without resorting to a very rare male caste of the species (beyond a way to make other races temporarily belong to this species that is). Not to attached to this concept though sense its for a secondary race I am also thinking of doing with this mod but will scrap if this doesn't work out.

4.Is their a cleaner and a more efficient way to reuse another creatures graphics for a similar modded one?
I currently am using a direct copypaste of the human CREATURE_GRAPHICS but such graphic definitions are very large for convent use in case I want to create another custom race that's a variation of an existing creature, so I am wondering if there is shortcut for doing this.

[Drakonis]

Hi there

As for 1. I have no clue. People used to test that sort of stuff in arena. Maybe download .47 and test it there?

2. No you can't, pleople used to create "claw equips" to make mole people dig, so... can't have a body part as a tool.

3. Not really sure but you could handle that through work shops and custom reactions I think (pretty sure there's a kobold mod that handles children that way).
But no, they won't "breed" in the more classical sense with other species

4. No clue, sorry

4.

[paulonthebrave]

Ah I see, I suppose I will wait on doing futher tests then and just stick to the tail being a weapon then.

Though tI'll wait for futher responses before I attempt trying anything with the single sex race since it still sounds possible to do some trick with them.

[Kingofturves]

For 1) I had to use the Arena. I was having trouble getting some old raws for My Little Ponies to work on Steam.
Being an absolute novice, I asked around some else who had made some custom crustaceans on the Steam workshop and they said they used the latest old version of Dwarf Fortress and they used: The Arena to check if the entity loaded in correctly with skeleton. An immediate crash will occur if the skeleton is missing. I had an early failure on steam with my ponies acting weird, since world gen and fortress are separate, the world generated, but the ponies couldn't move or perform tasks in fortress mode. A tale tell sign was all of them had 'vision lost' and the fisherpony cancelled their fishing lots of times. Upon using the old free version of Dwarf Fortress, I loaded up the arena and tried spawning in the entities' and it crashed.
There is a utility program bundled with the lazy newb pack, called Dwarf Portrait. This utility will load up raws for creatures of saved games, etc.
When I looked at a vanilla creature, the skeleton/body plan will load up. However for these 'vision lost' entities, no skeleton loaded up. So they were entities without a body plan.
I then created detailed body plan files for these creatures and that seemed to work. fine.

2) I have asked about body parts as digging tools, but I don't know if its possible, I think the digging implement token requires an actual tool object unfortunately.

3) Not sure, I currently assume that entities need to be of the same entity, but can have different castes which interbreed. Not sure if Elves can breed with Dwarves, etc.
It might not matter for world generation, since entities apparently don't need physical bodies to colonize the world since they are different game modes.
But you might be stuck with no new children once in fortress mode.

4) For Graphics, I have used single creature graphics for Adult/Child/Animated Dead Adult/Dead Child. Renaming files and txt references are important for making sure that your custom intelligent Deer species isn't just using the Deer from the vanilla creatures, for example.
These placeholders don't show armour, weapons, etc. Just the one image representing all Ponies, etc.

[paulonthebrave]

Small update, I abandoned the tool concept and fixed the issue I have had with materials using the Arena. Still interested in the single sex race concept but ill shelf it while I get my main race the way I want them.

[paulonthebrave]

Though one area I questions about is if I can make my custom race hunger faster and able to consume non food items?  As a trait of my custom race in lore is that a downside of the natural high durability and natural combat ablites is that they are extremely omnivores with fast metabolisms.