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[afrosquirrel]

After recently discovering and promptly overdosing on the world of Ar Tonelico, I've decided to get my hands dirty with my first real mod.

Goals:
Add a 'Reyvateil' civilization
Add a 'Hymnos' language
Towers and MIASMA. Lots of Miasma, and outdoors Miasma.

For the civ, I was planning on creating a dual-species civ: Humans (of both genders), and a human-like female-only Reyvateil species.
- Can different species of the same Civ breed? What are the 'rules' for breeding?
- Can jobs be limited to a specific species within a Civ? Namely, 'Singing' will be Reyvateil-only (and instruments will finally be useful!)
- Building on the 'Singing' job, how is magic implemented in DF? Is there anything more than dragonbreath? Could I make an action of 'Singing' that forces a Martial Trance?

Adding a language should be long but straightforward.

Is it possible to fiddle with the mechanics of Miasma, and if so, how?

I'll probably come up with a lot more, but this is what I can think of off the bat.

[Lancensis]

Well, you're pretty much going to have to wait until next version to do any of this, and even then, you'll have to compromise. You can add the new language easily enough and create more towers by making all civs create Dark Fortresses instead of cities or mountainhomes, or whatever. Miasma is still hardcoded but you can either create a lot of it via unscrupulous methods, or create a custom gas and have something widespread and common emit it.

In the next version, you can create a species with a human male, human female and magic song monster females or whatever they're called. They'll act basically the same as human females in terms of marriage and breeding, but you can customise them in largely any way you want. They'll occaisionally be born to regular human parents as well.

As for their powers and stuff, you can't limit certain jobs to certain castes, I'm afraid. You could make weapons named after musical instruments (a million points if you set them up so that they fire musical notes at enemies) but anyone in the military will pick them up. If you want them to do special attacks, you can play around with the poison system to do some interesting things. You could have them emit invisible gas that causes anyone in range to bleed from their ears, for instance.

Miasma is only produced by rotting items in subterreanean tiles, although the gas itself will spill out into the fresh air. If you want a cave full of the stuff, you could always create a creature that dies on spawning and sits there and rots, although you'd have to do something clever if you wanted to keep a constant supply of it. I think a better idea would be to make a widespread creature (or maybe tree - I'm not sure if that'll work) that belches out a custom gas that you can name whatever you like and choose from a range of effects.

[afrosquirrel]

Thanks for the help. A couple more questions now, though.

I'm not sure how imp fireballs work, but could I replicate a fire attack or ice attack by making a projectile that is very hot/very cold?

Do you know if the two species could still interbreed if I added another body part to the singing species? What differences are acceptable before breeding is a no-go?

Once again, thank you. This is my first time trying to build something new, rather than just tweaking existing things.

[Lancensis]

Well, next version, you can get creatures to spit pretty much anything, apart from the hardcoded substances (including, but not limited to water, magma and miasma), so you can create a substance that will evaporate at an incredibly low temperature (it's possible to get something vastly colder than absolute zero) and have a creature spit it. Now, it's unclear how far poison can be spat, but it's probably just a single square, like most attacks. Still, you can mess up your opponent in some fun ways. Also, you could play around with the delivery system, if you wanted a touch of cold type deal.
The firebreath, and firebreath:extreme seem to be hardcoded too, but they're still a good option if you want fire attacks. Be careful about tantrums though..
Within a species (that is to say a Creature Entry) any caste with [MALE] can breed with any caste with [FEMALE] and the offspring will be entirely random. Body parts will not factor into it. Feel free to use your imagination, just uh...keep it to your self.
Anyway, good luck

[Naes Draw]

(Correct me I'm wrong, please.)

As for their powers and stuff, you can't limit certain jobs to certain castes, I'm afraid.

Are you sure? I thought that was one of the sets of tags that could go into the caste level.

You could make weapons named after musical instruments (a million points if you set them up so that they fire musical notes at enemies) but anyone in the military will pick them up.

And if military uniforms are being added this round, can't you get different squads with different specific weapons?

[darkflagrance]

I know that entity positions can be limited; it stands to reason that jobs can be limited as well but I'm not entirely certain.

But military uniforms will include weapons; you should be able to exclude normal soldiers that way. However, nothing other than uniform restrictions will prevent a normal soldier from wielding an instrument weapon.

[Lancensis]

(Correct me I'm wrong, please.)

As for their powers and stuff, you can't limit certain jobs to certain castes, I'm afraid.

Are you sure? I thought that was one of the sets of tags that could go into the caste level.

No. Permitted jobs aren't even in the creature entry - they're in the entity thing. There's a fair bit of clamouring for the option to permit/deny castes doing certain jobs (which is rather depressing really), so it'll probably get added eventually, but not next release.

You could make weapons named after musical instruments (a million points if you set them up so that they fire musical notes at enemies) but anyone in the military will pick them up.

And if military uniforms are being added this round, can't you get different squads with different specific weapons?

Yeah you're right, I don't know what the hell I was even talking about here. Just don't assign your regular soldiers those weapons. This can be done in the current version too. The trick is, your fortress creatures will only use weapons that use the basic skills (axe, sword, mace) so you'll have to pick a skill, remove the other weapons that use that skill from the entity entry, and create instrument-themed weapons that use those skills. Then just only assign the squads you want to use the instruments to use that skill.
Again, I think this will be more streamlined in the next version, but I haven't heard a whole lot of information on it, so I'm loath to say anything concrete.

[darkflagrance]

At least, from what I know about the implementation of the reyvateil abilities you wish to mod in, you won't need to limit other castes from Singing, because breath weapons will be genetic (i.e. not governed by enabled labors) and you'll have to rely on your own regulation to prevent non-reyvateil soldiers from using instruments.