I'm designing a new mod based off of an earlier "bare-bones" version of Meph's Masterwork DF, and I thought I'd see about farming out as much of the work as possible to anybody who is interested. I like a lot of Meph's ideas but there is still too much content for my taste, plus a couple of fantasy staples I thought should be included.
I included a list of ideas I had for raw files I intend to add below, I'll pick out a couple to work on and if you want to contribute you just call dibs and let me know. If nobody wants to do them, I'll get to them eventually, and depending on how much momentum we pick up, we can improvise or scrap the project if we decide we want to go in a new direction.
There are a couple of things I want to exclude from this mod, including high mana settings, (no dwarven spellcasters, but runes, necromancers, and fantasy races are alright) high-tech settings, (no steam or combustion engines, no guns), and any extraneous, unescesary content. (like cataloguing the mating habits of african honey bees)
Here is what I have so far:
New Buildings
Stone Hut (Finished): A simple hut that allows you to make crude stone weapons, stone picks, and slings. Allows you to make picks very early on, which changes the pace of the game considerably. (I was hoping there was a [fragile] tag you could add to tools and weapons, but no such luck. Maybe somebody could change the material property values so that they might break when used?
Construction Yard (Finished): Another simple building that takes a large number of rocks and lumber and uses them to create an item called a "palette". The Construction Yard uses a supplemental building to unpack palettes called a "supply shed", which transforms the palette into 25 or 50 standardized blocks used for construction purposes. Great for mega-projects, I was hoping I could add dyes as pigment prior to the construction of the palette for multi-colored blocks.
Quickforge (also known as crudforge, sludgeforge, that ridiculously op'd thing that lazy newb invented) This is a forge that is limited to using bronze and iron to produce inferior quality armor sets and multiple basic weapons at the same time. Since there is no labor associated with the skill, the armor and weapons have no quality modifier. This building still needs a few tweaks to make it work, i'm thinking of reducing the output from 10 weapons to 5, having the reaction waste more metal or fuel, and possibly finding some way to make the weapons or equipment "fragile" as well.
Note: I was also thinking about having this forge use slag in some way to produce inferior goods.
Stone Lodge: A simple workshop that uses runes similiar to the ones that meph uses in his mod, only limited to copper, silver, and gold. Also works with coldstone, firestone, and earthstone, which are derived from volcanic weapons, bifrost weapons, and wolframite, except instead of metal they use raw stone to forge hammers and axes.
Ice Hut: A simple addition which produces drinkable water from ice.
Grindstone: A building which upgrades the sharpness of weapons.
Kingsforge: Produces multiple, high quality weapons with grindstone upgrades, as well as upper and lower body armor sets.
Ironwerks: Similiar to the blast furnace, but only works with pig iron and steel
Dungheap/Toilet: I want to combine potash making, wood burning, soap making, lye making, and a solid waste management system all into one or two buildings/ labors. The solid waste can be optional, perhaps causing the dwarf to get hungry or thirsty and producing waste which can be used to make fertilizer, fuel, ect.
Metals
Steel Grades
Heavy Steel: Lead + PIron, Heavier, Softer, properties similiar to platinum
Light Steel: Nickel + PIron, Lighter, harder, properties similiar to aluminum
Damascus Steel: Aluminum + PIron, sharper, lighter, harder, properties similiar to mithril
Special Metals
Greensteel/Goblinite: Rusty, Bloody metal that causes infections/ syndromes
Razorglass: Very sharp glass that can only be used in bolts
Darkmetal: A metal with properties similiar to deepbronze, but which melts in sunlight
Special Rocks
instead of using metal for things like volcanic and bifrost weapons, i thought it would be better to simply use rock (or maybe heavily modded gems) instead, which takes less refining and makes the hunt for natural resources more fun.
Firestone: Causes a fire effect when it hits.
Coldstone: Causes an ice effect when it hits.
U-32/ Earthstone: Is very, very heavy.
Traditional Metals
Mithril: I think this should be included in any game that has adamantium. (its a light/dark thing) was thinking of alchemist mod which allows quicksilver to be ground from cinnabar and combined with large quantities of silver to make small amounts of mithril.
Adamantium: I think adamantium should and always will remain the most badass of fantasy metals. I like the idea that it is scarce and hard to work with, and I don't think I would want to change a thing about it.
I think most of these are just minor little utility mods that accelerate the pace and change the tone of the game. I've always sort of liked the grim, dark atmosphere of DF and would want it to remain that way in any mod I'm working on. I know a lot of hard work and sacrifice went into this game and i think the doom and gloom theme conveys how difficult and frustrating programming can be.
I don't know if all this adds up to a whole mod, or if it will be "popular" in any way, i just thought it would be a fun way to get involved and cooperate if we posted our lists of things we want to do on our mod, and we can call, pick, and choose our own things to work on and contribute to, as well as working on our own projects.
I know if Meph had any sort of thing he was working on that I was able to help with, I totally would, I'm just kinda a newb and don't have a lot experiance other than modifying raw files and installing mod packs. I don't know what all the things mean and its hard navigating the tokens and tags in a way that makes sense to me. This has been my first experiance in REAL programming, and I enjoyed every minute of it, even the frustrating parts, cause they only make me want to try harder and do better. Its hard learning that there are just some things you can't do, but overall, i think dwarf fortress lets you do almost anything your imagination can come up with.
Author
Topic: Basix Mod (Read 677 times)