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[TD1]

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.



The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine.

Memories....of GCSE chemistry...coming back with frightening force.
*Shudders*

[Knight Otu]

I really liked the idea of randomized vampires...I hoped we could have vampires with random strenghts and weakness, and some false ones too...so the vulnerability to some substance wouldn't be more than a gossip, and players would fill their fortress with that substance in the hope of catching vampires...to discover later that they aren't affected at all by it.

It will happen sooner or later, of course. In the meantime,  there are ways to mod different vampire and were types into the game. Not the misinformation, though.

As it is vampires and werebeasts don’t have weaknesses to any specific material for reasons not associated with the physics. However, they do have a weakness from lack of blood or alcohol and they slow down because of it.

Actually, if you ask around in adventure mode, they'll say that the werebeast has a weakness to some sort of metal. Not that it helps you any in fort mode since unless you got to know the werebeasts in the neghborhood before founding the fort, you're not going to know what the weakness is anyway.

Exactly. And the vanilla vampires get a blanket damage reduction.

[LordBaal]

I would like to have an option where you only have werewolves, classic vampires (if such definition can be agreed upon) and regular zombies that can be killed by smashing their heads/decapitation instead of dealing with reanimated hair and skin and such. I mean, "classical" monsters.

[wierd]

Spoiler: dyes (click to show/hide)

Carotenoids and anthrocyanins make poor quality dyes, because they break down on exposure to UV light sources, and or, react with changes in pH in the environment.

Plant pigments that hold up well usually have either an amine group bond, an aromatic ring structure, or have compound double bonds in the molecular structure.

Pigments that break down on exposure to UV are said to be non-lightfast (carotenoids are in this category), or they react strongly to changes in pH (anthrocyanins are in this category) and are said to not be wash-fast.

If you look at indigo dye, for instance, it is a dimeric molecule of two indigotin monomers that come together with a strong double bond and two hydrogen bonds, and each monomer is itself made with a strong aromatic ring structure.



The dimeric complex is remarkably stable, and requires a strong alkaline solvent to break it down into the monomers again in order for it to be absorbed into the matrix of plant fibers. Once in, the very stable molecules strongly resist UV degredation (ring structure harmonics), and strongly resist changes in pH (double bond, and hydrogen bond structure between monomers, nonpolar molecule with high weight.)

The production of complex molecules like that is very uncommon, which is why quality dyestuffs commanded high prices. Many dyes of antiquity were actually metallic salt complexes that used mordants to help the dyestuffs cling to the fiber, and used strong ionic bonds to resist chemical degradation.

The ancient egyptians are often given credit for independent discovery of mordanting with metallic salts to improve natural dyestuffs, and to create synthetic dyestuffs, but china also discovered this independently.

The limited selection of quality dyestuffs is one of the reasons why "Royal purple" was "royal"-- Purple was a very difficult color to produce, because quality blue was hard to produce in antiquity. (indigo is just about the ONLY plant based blue that is both wash and lightfast.) Royal purple was produced from the extractives of a special variety of shellfish, and required special processing. It wasnt until the industrial revolution that the color Mauve was produced from coaltar, (as are all other synthetic analine dyes) that purple was commercially available in great quantities.

I can give you a short list of classical dyestuffs and even some recipies, as antique dye chemistry is a bit of a hobby of mine.

You also have lichen based purple dyes. I remember reading that they were used with royal purple to cut down on cost. Can't say I had much interest before, but have since doing research for an unfinished dye expansion mod. I'd strongly suggest the Bechtold Handbook of Natural Colorants if you've not read it already.

Talk of light-fastness makes me wonder if we'll see sun-bleached clothing.

There are also some lichen based greens, yellows and browns that have good qualities, which if I recall correctly, were the primary dyes used to make traditional tartans. (in combination with indigo from woad)

Interestingly, a good quality true black is also a very difficult color to produce using only antique dyestuffs. Things like iron gall black will heavily damage plant fibers with time, because they remain caustic in their final forms. Most recipes I have seen for "black" does not actually produce black, but instead produce dark browns. (Tannin based for the most part.)

One shouldn't overlook tree based dyes though, given the context of this game.

Osage orange heartwood and root skin makes a very enduring and brilliant yellow. Logwood produces a blue-violet dye (of somewhat tempermental character; IIRC, it isnt all that lightfast) and exotic reds can be made from dragon's blood acacia sap.

(I expect elves to REALLY hate the color purple. Made either from boiling their beloved trees, or from boiling poor innocent little ocean snails. I expect them to really like indigo blue, tannin based browns (from leaves and acorn hulls), and lichen based yellows, because they are atrocity and cruelty free. I would laugh very hard if at some point in the game's development they can have compounding bad thoughts from the kinds of dyestuffs used-- say when presented with cochineal red (made from crushed up cochineal bugs, has a somewhat 'pink'/fuscia tone), Dragon's Blood red (made from tree sap), Tyrian purple (made from snails), Logwood violet (made from trees), osage orange yellow (made from trees), and Prussian blue (synthetic dyestuff, typically made in the late dark ages by burning bloodmeal in a hermetically sealed saggar with iron slag powder) on a tie-dyed shirt. Send them a whole shipment of the things as a tribute offering to start a war. Bonus points if undyed elven-sourced cloth was used.)

If toady ever implements that kind of political chain reaction from traded commodities -vs- racial ethics, I will totally make "extra elven un-friendly" textile exports a high priority.



LordBaal:

Come on now, and miss out on craziness like "asian vampires"?!

[smjjames]

Only werewolves? Come on, as silly as wererabbits and weresheep are, you can't deny how awesome a were-elephant or were-rhino would be.

I suppose you'd want werewolves to be vulnerable to silver every single time?

[wierd]

Personally, I want for the were, vamp, and zombie curses to not be mutually exclusive.

Can you imagine a vampire were giant zombie sponge?

[LordBaal]

Only werewolves? Come on, as silly as wererabbits and weresheep are, you can't deny how awesome a were-elephant or were-rhino would be.
I suppose you'd want werewolves to be vulnerable to silver every single time?

Yeah, perhaps, I don't know. Maybe I'm just too "old school" or whatever it could be called. Of course I would only like it as an option (a easy one as I'm lazy, like the one for moods or invasions), I can't deny the awesomeness of other werecreatures and the tastes of my fellow players...

[verdigriss]

I'm with LordBaal on this.  It's neither funny nor cool to have a naked man stagger into your fortress with an announcement, only to have him morph into a sheep.

[smjjames]

I'm with LordBaal on this.  It's neither funny nor cool to have a naked man stagger into your fortress with an announcement, only to have him morph into a sheep.

I do mean silly in both the silly ridiculous (all the way to facepalm ridiculous) and silly hilarious ways. And yeah, I agree that a were-sheep looks pretty ridiculous. Were-Bighorn Sheep though, would at least not look ridiculous.

[SmileyMan]

What if it were sufficient that were-creatures were guaranteed to be vulnerable to some metal that is in the materials list for weapons, but only trial and error would find out?

[Putnam]

They already are and trial-and-error is bull where character permadeath is involved.

[smjjames]

The rumor thing in the next version might accomplish that as they could easily be false rumors.

They already are and trial-and-error is bull where character permadeath is involved.

Maybe firing bolts or arrows of different materials at the werebeast and run away if neccesary? Though given how OP those are already, you might get a kill with a copper bolt anyway if the thing wasn't vulnerable to copper. Also, equipping some cannon fodder peasant with some weapon and sending them at the werebeast would work. Still the possibility of a lucky crit though.

[LordBaal]

Well I think weresheep would look a lot more like beastmen from warhammer than a cute cotton animal.

[Dirst]

The rumor thing in the next version might accomplish that as they could easily be false rumors.

They already are and trial-and-error is bull where character permadeath is involved.

Maybe firing bolts or arrows of different materials at the werebeast and run away if neccesary? Though given how OP those are already, you might get a kill with a copper bolt anyway if the thing wasn't vulnerable to copper. Also, equipping some cannon fodder peasant with some weapon and sending them at the werebeast would work. Still the possibility of a lucky crit though.

It depends on how vulnerabilities show up in combat logs.

"The copper bolt pierces the right upper arm and lodges into the wound.  The wound immediately festers with infection!"

Will it be possible for the player to direct the manufacture of special-material weapons based on known vulnerabilities?  For example, if weredonkeys are vulnerable to zinc, are there any plans to insert zinc into the possibilities for weapon/bolt forging?  An adventurer might even discover the zinc secret by asking a shopkeeper why in Armok's name does he have zinc bolts for sale.

I'm fine with a few familiar faces among the fantasy creatures alongside procedurally created ones so long as there is a way for the player to get information about them.  Less-than-perfectly-reliable info is fine, but crawling through Legends mode with a fine-toothed comb is not.  As mentioned above for plants, all of this stuff comes from (procedurally generated) raws, so parsing it is doable and sounds like it's on the to-do list.  I mean, more specifically on the to-do list than just "everything" is on the to-do list.

Eventually, DF players will build an in-game Large Hardon Collider that beats the real one to finding new physics.

[smjjames]

Will it be possible for the player to direct the manufacture of special-material weapons based on known vulnerabilities?  For example, if weredonkeys are vulnerable to zinc, are there any plans to insert zinc into the possibilities for weapon/bolt forging?  An adventurer might even discover the zinc secret by asking a shopkeeper why in Armok's name does he have zinc bolts for sale.

In adventure mode? I seriously doubt it. In fort mode, you can either manipulate a mood to use that material (and hope you at least get an edged weapon) or edit the raws so that you can make weapons out of metals that are normally unuseable for weapons.

Of course though, each individual werebeast is vulnerable to a different metal, I don't think the same metal vulnerability applies for the whole werebeast species in DF.