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[Kagus]

As much as I'd like for thunderstorms to pop out of dwarven ears, that's not what I'm going on about here.  This is just an idea thread to put down a couple things, since I'm currently away from a computer that can handle Dwarf Fortress.

Right now, I've just got a couple things on my mind, things that I'm curious as to why no one has modded in already.

First, bread.  We've got custom workshops now, and defining plant material types in reactions has been fixed since the weirdness of last version, so why no bakeries?  The only difficulty would be finding some sort of item type for the finished product that works.  Plants could be used in a pinch, and it would make a certain amount of sense to have bread be stored in a plant stockpile (moreso than the other stockpile types that are currently allowed).  You could use syrup and sugar to make pastries, different types of flour for different types of bread, and I think it may even be possible to use a bucket of water in the reaction.

You could burn fuel to power the oven, and potentially even make a magma-powered alternative, although I'm not entirely sure how that works in the custom workshops, but come on...  What's a dwarven feast without a few fresh loaves from the magma bakery?


The second idea relates to the Warhammer universe, and the forces of Chaos specifically.  I was recently considering the possibility of making a single species with four different "castes" denoting faithfulness towards one of the four great powers of Chaos.  Khornate warriors would have very little tolerance for art or conversation, but would have increased aggression and physical stats, not to mention the ability to enter into a martial trance.

The faithful of Nurgle would receive the [NOPAIN] token, as well as excreting a potent fluid that would infect themselves with various poxes of Nurgle.  The main way I can think of handling their relationship with diseases would be to actually make them immune to all worldly diseases, but provide them with a custom ailment that is specifically suited for them and that they can spread to others.  You could include pain as a symptom, since the Nurglites are immune to pain and would thus be unaffected.  Nausea and fevers are also on the table, since those have corresponding immunity tags that could be applied to the Nurglites.

I've considered adding a mild necrosis into the mix for Nurglites, both to increase the potency of their offensive disease use and to also provide each Nurglite with a kind of "timer", thus reducing their overall usefulness in comparison with the other types (I mean, think about it...  A critter with [NOPAIN] that can infect enemies with a virulent disease?  You kinda need to tone that down), plus it just makes sense for a Nurglite to be partially rotten.  However, this raises issues with any sort of healthcare, as the Nurglites would constantly be scheduled for visits with the surgeon in order to remove the infected areas.

As for Tzeentch, I'm not really sure...  Adding in personality traits that vary wildly, or attaching a couple tentacles to their bodies, or maybe giving them some sort of innate ranged weapon...  I'm sure something can be thought up.

As for Slaanesh, I couldn't really think of anything that would work for Dwarf Fortress.  Personality traits are all well and fine, but they don't generally have all that huge of an effect on gameplay.  I'm sure something can be thought up.


One method of implementing Chaos would be to have the single species divided by castes, like I illustrated.  Another would be to add in separate entities for each devotion, with the castes being used for mutants, aspiring champions, princes, sorcerers and the like.  This would also allow for the creation of a distinct "undivided" entity to complement the other extremes, and would let the Tzeentchians have a little more variation in their forms and abilities.


So, yeah...  That's basically it for now; bread and berserkers.  Any comments?  Anyone care to try testing one of these things?  Like I said, I can't do much of it myself at the moment, due to the distance between me and a machine that could actually bear the strain.

[Shaostoul]

I only know of prepared food at the moment and I don't think you get to choose what it is... You COULD make a reaction to produce a ... meal? maybe? or a custom plant named bread that doesn't show up any where. You could then get into all kinds of crazy reagents for them...

But as it stands right now, the whole food aspect of the game seems extremely simplified.

The first two of you warhammer ideas, completely possible. Why don't you make them? I don't know what the other two are.

I'm not sure as to what affects whether a creature can berserk or not.

I think I've seen someone making a mod with a civ with a bunch of castes, you could try talking to him. There is also the guy making the bee mod, he might have quite a lot of info for ya.

[derigo]

Cheese.  You could make bread a kind of cheese. 

The big problem, as I see it, with custom reactions, is there no way to make quality items.  I don't want my dwarves eating bread,  I want a legendary baker making <<<**--OMG+++**Bread**+++GMO--**>> like encrusted with adamantine, and shit. 

[Kagus]

I only know of prepared food at the moment and I don't think you get to choose what it is... You COULD make a reaction to produce a ... meal? maybe? or a custom plant named bread that doesn't show up any where. You could then get into all kinds of crazy reagents for them...

As illustrated in my post, I approach the issue of what kind of item type you'd make bread into, putting forth the plant option as the most likely candidate, with the only problem being that they would show up under "plants" in the stockpile menu.

The first two of you warhammer ideas, completely possible. Why don't you make them? I don't know what the other two are.

I'm not sure as to what affects whether a creature can berserk or not.

I'm not entirely sure where you draw the distinction between the different ideas, so I'm not entirely sure what my "first two" and "last two" are. 

However, everything I've posted is theoretically possible.  I already know that.  I'm posting it because I know it is possible, and I'm wondering why no one has capitalized on that fact yet.

The reason I'm not making it myself is because, as I said twice, I'm currently very far away from my DF computer.  The only machine at my disposal is a little laptop which has absolutely no chance of running DF, let alone the strain of the repeated testing that modding requires.

And a martial trance is not the same thing as berserking.  Dwarves can already enter into martial trances due to a tag they have in their creature profile.  A creature can only go berserk if they're unhappy for a long enough period to go insane, and then select "berserk" out of the three choices (berserk, melancholy, babbling).  There's no known way of controlling that.

Cheese.  You could make bread a kind of cheese. 

Hadn't thought of that...  However, you'd still need a plant (or worse, animal) to act as a base item in order to get cheese from it, due to the way the raws work.  And you'd have the same issues as with a plant-type bread, in that it would be stored in an odd stockpile.  This would just make it a different odd stockpile, with far fewer items already in it (although this could be a bit more appropriate as a choice, since it would allow you to fill out that stockpile area with various baked goods, and bread has more in common with cheese than it does with rat weed anyways...  Right?).

[Ratbert_CP]

Cheese.  You could make bread a kind of cheese. 

The big problem, as I see it, with custom reactions, is there no way to make quality items.  I don't want my dwarves eating bread,  I want a legendary baker making <<<**--OMG+++**Bread**+++GMO--**>> like encrusted with adamantine, and shit.

Montsiberbaysn Zet - A bagel of supreme craftsmanship.  It is made of cave wheat flour and horse milk.  It is encrusted with rock salt and prickle berry seeds.  It bristles with spikes of unicorn cheese.  On it is a sculpture of a dwarf in camel cheese.  The dwarf is wallowing in lust with a rather large corned beef on rye.

[Shaostoul]

Oh shiz I just got bashed. =-P

When I said the first two Warhammer ideas I was referring to... I'd like to apologize here, I don't know the Warhammer universe very well... but I assumed because being separated by paragraph that nurgles and nurglites are different. So they'd be the "first two" the second two being the Tzeentch and Slaanesh.

You don't need to have the game able to run to make the stuff. A lot of the work I've done I've written up in a txt file and then converted it over into DF. So I'd have all my ideas already and not forget.

I was just putting in my two cents for the ideas.

Keep in mind, you can't use items contained in something presently. So a liquid is out of the question. (just saw Ratbert's post)

For the bread, I just think at this point it's just a "you believe it is" bread. >.>

Anywho, I'll leave you too your business.

[Kagus]

Haha, sorry...  No ill will was intended.

Yeah, the entire second part of the original post is pulled straight out of Warhammer.  "Chaos" is used as a general term to describe the potent, tangible, and "alive" embodiment of evil, turmoil, and other various nastiness.  Inside this Chaos (sometimes described as a kind of alternate dimension known as "the Warp" are a number of powerful supernatural beings and forces have sprung up from the eldritch energies there.  The most powerful of these are the four primary chaos gods:  Slaanesh, lord of sensual stimulation and self-serving excess, Tzeentch, lord of change, mutation and magic, Nurgle, lord of plagues, decay and death, and Khorne, lord of war, blood, and slaughter.

The various terms I use ("Nurglite", "Khornate", "Tzeentchian") are just in reference to the followers of these four powers, who, through their worship, have been changed by their patron deity to better suit their interests.  Khorne bestows his followers with a consuming bloodlust, Nurgle infects his faithful with a number of "gifts" (his personally crafted diseases) but numbs them to the pain and discomfort of being afflicted, and Tzeentch grants boons of random mutations and sorcerous magic powers.


And as for items in containers, that's correct to an extent.  The reason I brought up the use of water is because I believe there is a specific tag that can be applied to container reagents in a reaction that makes the reaction seek out only containers that contain water.  Tarn includes specific tags for the individual things he needs them for, and I think he may have needed water for something (I know there's a tag for containers with lye in them, but that wouldn't make for a very good pastry now would it?).

Although I could type up some first-draft raws as a kind of proof of concept, it wouldn't do a whole heck of a lot of good without testing capabilities.  I already know how to type up most everything I've illustrated here, I just don't know how well it would work (but most importantly, I'm wondering why other people haven't done this already), so it's really just a difference of time between the original post and a set of drawn-up raw profiles.

I was mostly just bringing these subjects up as a kind of inspiration for someone else, in case there's a modder out there who would be interested in this sort of idea, but just hadn't thought of it for some reason.


EDIT:  Another concept...  Napalm, A.K.A. "Sticky Flame" for those who play Dungeon Crawl.

Theoretically speaking, a liquid material with a lower ignite point than heatdam point should burn for a respectably long amount of time, instead of just evaporating or consuming itself instantaneously.  Now, the real question is...  Do contaminants burn?

If they do, then this paves the way for providing a creature with some sort of breath attack that uses this material.  It would get blasted out in a cloud, and would coat everything within that cloud in this substance.  The goo, now at rest as a contaminant on some item or creature, would then ignite and heat up the surrounding area.

This would result in having a burning victim who can't get rid of the fire by just taking his clothes off.  The contaminant would be stuck to the body itself, and would continue to burn so long as it existed, even if the person had no innately flammable items on them.  Interestingly enough, jumping into water would still help people out in this predicament, as hopping into water will override any current contaminants with a water covering on all bodyparts and items.  If you're in dry country, however...  You're buggered.

Of course, this all rests on the assumption that contaminants can burn, which I suspect they can't.  Still though, it would be interesting enough to try out.  Add your very own mottled dragons into Dwarf Fortress!

[derigo]

Cheese.  You could make bread a kind of cheese. 

Hadn't thought of that...  However, you'd still need a plant (or worse, animal) to act as a base item in order to get cheese from it, due to the way the raws work.  And you'd have the same issues as with a plant-type bread, in that it would be stored in an odd stockpile.  This would just make it a different odd stockpile, with far fewer items already in it (although this could be a bit more appropriate as a choice, since it would allow you to fill out that stockpile area with various baked goods, and bread has more in common with cheese than it does with rat weed anyways...  Right?).
[/quote]

I'm not 100% certian, but I'm do believe you should be able to just create custom inorganic_metals for different types of bread that reference a custom material_template bread_template and then use and then use a reaction like

:CHEESE:NONE:INORGANIC:RYE_BREAD]
:CHEESE:NONE:INORGANIC:WHITE_BREAD]
etc

It's kind of a hack... bread is most certainly organic.  But it should work. 

And yea, bread is more like cheese than rat weed. ;p     I always use the cheese subcategory for any custom foodstuff I make like eggs, so in my head the cheese subcategory is more of a 'edible solid thing that's not meat or a plant' category.  But that's just me.

[Kagus]

Wouldn't that screw with the edibility though?  Or are dwarves perfectly fine with chowing down on iron cheese so long as it's the right shape?

Heck, it might be possible to stick an entry into one of the other material template files, so it's at least not in the same area as gold and platinum.  It's an interesting thought, I'll have to take a look at the various tags and whatnot in the template files when I get back.


There are however still a couple worrying points brought up by Shaostoul.  Both flour and syrup are stored inside containers.  I seem to remember that reactions had been cleaned up a bit since last version and could actually handle stuff like this, but that might just be a fabricated memory.  I remember something about the plaster reaction that's been put in, but I can't recall if that was an actual item inside a container or if it was just yet another shortcut with a content-specific tag tacked onto the container reagent.

If it's not possible to point to contained items, then bread is pretty much out of the picture.  I mean, really, dare we dwell upon what kind of bread is made without flour?  Especially when dwarves are involved?

[derigo]

Edibility is defined in the material_templates.  use [EDIBLE_RAW] to make them eat the bread as bread, and add [EDIBLE_COOKED] if you want them to cook it into roasts. 

I don't think anyone's figured out how to take ingredients out of bags/barrels yet, or if its possible.  Surely it will become possible in the near future tho.