Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Pirate Bob]

So, inspired by the Many Fortresses, One World project http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103473.0, but wanting something that might be complete a bit sooner, I was considering trying to make a world where at least some of the shops sell armor, backpacks, etc, so that adventuring can be a bit more fun (and less !FUN!) for inexperienced players.  My plan was to create tiny forts (edit: I guess 2x2 is the smallest possible?) near major cities, use DFHack/cheating whatever to help me quickly create the needed items, and then move the goods to shops using adventurers, so that future adventurers will find things to buy in shops selling armor, bowyer, leather goods etc.

Is there an interest from other players in such a world?  If so, does anyone have any suggestions for how it should be done?  Will this not work because of some technical problem with DF that I don't know about?

As for details, I would create reasonable (not masterwork or anything) armor and other goods by creating a tiny human fort near most cities and having low skill smiths/craftsmen make stuff.  Then I would put this in appropriate shops by trading it to them with adventurers.  I might also have said adventurers take the free loot found in keeps and put it in shops/somewhere less easy so that future adventurers can't just take all kinds of free stuff.  I also would likely make maybe one location for each type of item where higher quality items (up to masterwork) are available.  I might also try to create some small dungeon forts, or just have sneak exploiting adventurers put nifty stuff inside of existing dugeons/dragon caves etc.

To make this happen fast, I would use DFHack to mod in veins of whatever minerals I need right near the surface, grow trees super fast, use fastdorf, and maybe even change the materials of created items (unless this is likely to cause crashing etc).  I would also turn off invasions and otherwise mod the raws to make fortressing as easy and fast as possible.  In other words, I would use any and all possible cheats/exploits.  Any suggestions of useful cheats or potential problems with hacking would be very much appreciated.

I was thinking of also turning on Dwarf/Elf/Gobbo towns and giving them some appropriate gear as well.  Alternately, I might just make small sized armor and trade it to the existing dwarf/elf armorsmiths that live in human cities.  Any thoughts about this?  The problem (that I know of) with turning on dwarf cities is that dorf adventurers will then start in them, up in the mountains, unable to fast travel.

If doing so will not provoke !RAGE! from the "Many Fortresses, One World" project, I might use their current save as a starting point, as they are much more knowledgeable than me about genning good worlds, and it also already has a few forts to explore.  It also already has been modded to allow human forts, so I don't have to worry about that.  Just to be clear, MFOW sounds amazing, and I can't wait for it to be complete, but since I can't wait, I'd like to create a cheap knock-off in the mean time.  I would participate in MFOW, but there's no way I could finish a good fort in two weeks...   

Any help, comments, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Maybe if other people are interested this could be a succession project? 

[Pirate Bob]

I did some initial testing, and it seems like my idea should work.  I used a world I had already genned with elf/dwarf towns turned on, and made a tiny dwarf fort next to an Elf town.  I quickly made some iron and wooden weapons and armor and some leather goods, and then abandoned the fort.  I then came back with an elf adventurer, collected the goods, and sold them to a merchant in the nearby elf town.  The elves would of course only buy the metal stuff, not wood or leather.  I then retired the first adventurer, and came back with another, and the shop still had the goods I had sold it for sale. 

My next step will be to see if the goods are persistent on fortress time-scales, by making another quick fort, abandoning it, and then un-retiring my original adventurer to check on the shop.

Given my experience with this trial, I think having elf and dorf towns is out.  The dorf towns are too annoying to get to, as they're up in the mountains, and the elf towns (1) are mostly deserted (probably because they get slaughtered by all the other races that use metal) and (2) won't buy the wooden goods that they should be selling anyway.  I think I'll just stick to human towns, and then sell any dwarf-sized equipment I make to dwarf traders within said human towns.  If I decide to waste the time making crappy elven goods (unlikely) I would have to sell them to human/dorf traders in shops that also have an elven trader.

I was also thinking that it should be relatively easy to use DFhack and find the upright !SPOILER! and make stairs down to it so that adventurers can access the circus if desired.  I might also make some limited adamantine gear and hide it in the circus  (by autodumping it) or other hard to reach areas (like maybe having a sneak exploiting adventurer hide it at the very bottom of a castle dungeon).

[Hotaru]

The main problem I have with this is it's a lot of work and new versions may still be coming out fast. But I'm lazy 

Anyway, just to comment on your previous post: You can alter the starting biomes and biome support of races in the entity_default file, if you would like to have dwarves that settle outside mountains (maybe hills would be appropriate). I wonder if changing [ETHIC:KILL_PLANT] value wouldn't also make elves accept your goods. For an adventure mode game there's no other difference.

It may also be bugged, though. I've had an elf merchant give me the "once a beautiful tree" speech when I tried to sell him an elf-made bismuth bronze 2h sword in a world where elves used metals. Didn't think it's a bug that can be placed even 8 000 000th on the priority to fix list so didn't bother investigating.

[Pirate Bob]

Thanks for the suggestions Hotaru.  I guess I didn't state clearly, but I think my most important question is whether this whole endeavor is a stupid idea because Toady is likely to fix the currently empty shops faster than I could generate a decent world manually.  He seems to be more focusing on fortress mode features, but I didn't get to listen to DF Talk 18 yet, so maybe he plans to look into this soon? 

I am thinking of this as maybe a few weeks to month long project.  With all the cheats available using DFHack, getting dwarves to churn out massive amounts of loot in fortress mode is no problem.  I think the biggest challenge will be distributing all the goods.  I was thinking to make several forts spread out geographically across the world.  Then make a demigod adventurer, and maybe give him a full set of adamantine so he doesn't get killed easily, and just travel around distributing the goods.  Maybe to make this faster I should use a smaller world than MFOW?  Or maybe I should just be content to stock the towns of a couple of civilizations in a large world, and leave the rest as "wilderness"?

It would be cool if there was some way to make said adamantine-clad demigod adventurer as a kind of "final boss".  It would be easy enough to make him hated by all civs, by murdering some useless peasants.  Hopefully this would generate missions from said civs to kill him, but I'm not sure (I think this is likely, as I have gotten missions to avenge the death of my adventurers before).  I think the hard part would be finding a suitable place for him to retire, as I believe all the logical places (abandoned fortresses, dungeons, etc) will give the "give in to starvation" option rather than retiring.  Anyway, that's not really important to the main idea.

[Hotaru]

I can't comment on the first part, but as for the last part, I was some time ago able to retire a werelizard husk (this was in .34.05) adventurer in a kobold town, even though I was hated by... everything else that's alive. Maybe it has to do with their ethics. There's a save available if you search for "werelizard husk" for experimentation and such.

Actually, you know, that WOULD make for something cool. Maybe even more interesting than the shop idea.

Here's how I would do it:

Mod in nightwings, sasquatches, foul blendecs etc. monsters as city-building civilizations. I've done it, it's easy - just copy the goblin civ, and change the creature as well as site type. Note that for the above three you must mod them to have offspring for a civilization to flourish - or if you don't want it to, that's fine, just make sure they live forever and they will live in exactly one town with their starting population only till the end of time unless someone wipes them out. You can try copying the kobold civ's ethics if that was what caused it; it's definitely doable to retire in a place like that.

Then, make very evil, preferably undead adventurers and retire them in those places. Anyone going there will have to face the monsters and find the quest boss you've made.

For extra flavor, you could also make those monsters [INDIV_CONTROLLABLE], so you can play a terrible ogre for example, amass kills and skills all over the world then retire him in an ogre castle. They will even produce gear that will fit you if you make ogres able to work metals in entity_default (an easy way to do is is copying the dwarf permitted jobs and reactions).

And to make it complete... run an ogre fort, forge adamantine gear for the adventurer, now he is no longer any pushover when you face him even if you stealth-throw. You do get quests to kill him if he has infamy, there have been many reports of that.

[Pirate Bob]

That sounds like an excellent idea Hotaru!  I will definitely try to make the adventurer(s) I use for gear distribution evil, and retire them to appropriate evil castles/towns.  Thanks for the great suggestion! 

I assume that it would be best to start as an outsider of such an evil race, so that when I am distributing gear the other civilizations don't hate me yet?  Alternately I just just start as a human/dwarf and then become a vampire, husk etc. and kill a bunch of people, which is what you did I think?

I was planning to give said adventurers very high level of observer and then powerlevel stealth, so that they can escape from any ambushes (I don't want to kill any of the local fauna).  Given that they'll have adamantine gear, they can travel alone and do more leveling on any bogeymen that show up.  Do you think high observer level might further thwart the usual sneaky exploits?  Will an adventurer boss who has legendary ambusher be hidden when an adventurer shows up?  It would be great if the boss would shoot at the adventurer with a crossbow while hidden, and then when found start wailing on them with an adamantine axe .

I also like your idea of making forts using evil races so that I can equip my evil adventurers, and also perhaps make some extra dungeons out of said forts.  I could also maybe have the evil boss adventurer(s) recruit a bunch of followers, or create other lower-level adventurers to be their patsies.  Also, if I have a say nightwing adventurer and then retire him and create a nightwing fort nearby, is there a decent chance of him immigrating to the fort so that he could be the leader of a whole nightwing army?  Or are all forts friendly to adventurers, making this useless anyway?

Ideally, I would like to create a world where you start off in a relatively safe area, and have access to fairly decent supplies of mediocre equipment.  Then, as your adventurer gets stronger, you can venture out into the wilderness and face progressively tougher monsters and find better equipment.  For example, to get to the shop that sells mastercrafted iron armor you have to journey though a pretty nasty evil biome, for steel maybe you have to search inside a dungeon or go to an even more remote place, and the only way to get adamantine will be to face one of the adventurer bosses or go into the circus. 

It sounds like a major challenge (at least for me) will be genning a world that has the evil civilizations I want (not so bad), and getting all civs I want to be alive and in appropriate places.  In particular, it would be nice to have some human or dorf towns in nasty biomes, where the higher level equipment would be sold.

In any case, I really like this idea, and I think it calls for much !SCIENCE! 

[Hotaru]

snip

Now you're pondering things that are too advanced for my level of knowledge

But yes, at least in 34.05 you could retire even a husk in a kobold town, and this was not because the kobolds liked him. In fact if you went there later, the husk would be slaughtering kobolds all over the place. However, since the slaughter only begins when you walk into town, that doesn't really matter for this idea.

I would assume high levels of observer DO counteract stealth, since I've faced a demon masquerading as a god who it was impossible to sneak on even with legendary +5 ambusher. I don't know how high a level you need, though.

I would suggest if you want to create a particular shape of world you either use world painter or perfectworld utility (if the latter is possible in this version). Just regenerating can take a very long time to find one you want if you have a specific kind of arrangement in mind.

Definitely experiment on the retiring thing first before making a grand adventurer tho. I only have one experience from an old version.

[Pirate Bob]

I quickly genned a world with a goblin hamlet (no town, but this is just for testing...) and the game allowed me to retire my human-murdering adventurer there even though the hamlet seemed to be part of a human civilization and no one there would talk to me.  I entered the town in stealth mode, so even though the residents hated me they weren't actually attacking me, and it let me retire.  This leads me to wonder if I could have just retired to a human town which hates me by sneaking in using stealth mode.  I'll have to try that later.  If that works, it would be cool to have some medium-level human vampires and such scattered around.  Another thing I need to look into is whether an adventurer retired in a keep stays put, or just ends up at some random point in the town.

I also genned another world this morning that produced gobbo and nightwing towns.  As you noted, modding in more evil civilizations using existing creatures is quite straightforward, so I will put in as many as seems reasonable without making the world too crowded.  I was also considering having some of the evil adventurers be megabeasts, which could then retire to the evil civilizations.  I think this would mean that future players would also have access to megabeast adventurers (unless modding them out after world gen is possible) but that's kind of fun anyway. 

I think my ideal situation would be for the evil adventurers to either become part of an evil civilization, and retire there as a member, or get recruited to an evil fort and become its leader.  I'll test this first one on the world I made this morning when I get a chance.  It seems like all you should have to do is complete a mission for the gobbos and then they would like you?  It would be awesome if the gobbos gave out missions to kill humans .

Thanks for the suggestion about world painter/perfectworld.  I was going to ask if there was some way to make sure that all parts of the world were connected by land, as I don't want adventurers to have to swim across an ocean to to reach the !FUN! evil civilizations.  If I can get this to work (I use Linux and don't really have access to Windoze, so Perfect World may not run, and using World Painter looks nontrivial), I think I will try to make a large world with many different evil civs, and then in the first iteration of this project only stock a portion of the world with shops/bosses and leave the rest as wilderness that can be filled in later (maybe by other people if there's interest). 

[Pirate Bob]

I just thought of a rather obvious problem to making lots of evil adventurers and hiding them in dungeons/keeps across the map:  won't all said adventurers be available as playable characters when someone goes to create a new adventurer?  Is there any way to disable this?  I guess I could just strongly suggest that people not do this, but probably many will not be able to resist the urge to see where they are hiding if it's so easily available...

On the other hand, there are innumerable ways to cheat at DF if you want to do that, so maybe I shouldn't care.  Still, it would be nice to disable them from the list of available characters while keeping them active in the game.  I wonder what happens if they immigrate to a fort (assuming this is possible)?

[Pirate Bob]

So it seems that fortresses from evil civs (at least goblins) will be hostile towards non-evil adventurers, as expected.  (On a side note, I also found that if you leave fastdwarf on when abandoning the fortress, then you get attacked by speed=1 gobbos, which could be !FUN!...)  Therefore, if I could get my evil adventurers to immigrate to one, I could build a terrible dungeon with a historical boss, and future adventurers should receive missions to kill him from the civs he has attacked.  Toady said adventurer immigrants was possible in the FoTF on Nov 16, 2011, so I think I should be able to do this, but I have no idea how hard it will be.  I think I'll just have most of the adventurers hiding out in towns, but maybe I will make one "entrance to hell" type fort with an especially nasty boss guarding the upright !SPOILER!.  If it proves too hard to get an adventurer immigrant I could alternately just use various exploits to create an army of super-soldiers within the fort, but then future adventurers probably won't get missions to go there.  Hopefully if I make the fort from one of the smaller evil civs (say nightwings) there won't be that many historical figures so the probability of getting the desired adventurer to immigrate should go up.

Unfortunately, I also found that adventurers retired to keeps within towns just end up in random places, so future players would have to search around the entire town to find them.  I still have to try making an evil vampire, and then having him sneak into a human town to retire, and see if the villagers will give me missions to kill him and then give me directions to his location as they would for a normal vampire.  I am not optimistic about this working.  More likely they'll tell you he's in town, and you'll have to search around for the guy who's in a pitched battle with the entire rest of the town...

I think I am going to wait until after the next release before working starting on this for real.  There are just too many ways that minecarts would be fun to have (I plan to have most of the local forts that produce stuff be decorated as "mines").  In the meantime, I just found out about "Wanderer's Friend", and I must try it.  This mod might render my original idea pointless, if it already provides a way for the adventurer to get reasonable (bot not overpowered) equipment.  I might also want to incorporate some or all of this mod into the world I generate.

[Pirate Bob]

Today I had an idea for a much easier way to distribute my "bosses" to nasty places:  I use DFHack to permanently switch to one of my followers, then I can have him "give in to starvation" or whatever, leaving my actual adventurer (and any other followers) alive at whatever location I want.  So far I guess I only tried this for a night creature lair, but I assume it should work for any kind of site.  This should make it much easier to get whatever specific nasty characters I generate to the fort I want.  It also means that I can do things like make a dragon or other megabeast adventurer and then retire them to a cave/lair. 

It just occurred to me that I could use any historical figure as the pasty who dies, so I could swap with some random goblin boss, or a werecreature, or whatever and then take over their lair.  This could be quite useful, as my adventurers could have trouble recruiting followers once they kill a whole bunch of people...

I also have been playing around with Perfect World (got it running on Ubuntu , and I have a map that I like pretty well.  I am still working on tweaking the entity tags to get civs that I like.  I think I will add [BUILDS_OUTDOOR_FORTIFICATIONS] to at least some of the evil civs so they build castles, and I don't think I got the nightwings to breed yet (I think there need to be male and female castes).  I couldn't resist making a Mordor inspired region in the northwest, complete with a pass that I plan to eventually block with a "gate" fortress that adventurers will have to fight through to gain entrance to the region (unless I also put in a back door...)