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[mutonizer]

AGE OF MAN

UPDATE: 28/06/2012

Howdy,

I've finally started working on a mod and while I've modded DF before, this one is a nearly complete overhaul so there are things I haven't done before and things I have no clue how to do.
Hoping to improve and learn, while working on this, I'm creating this thread to centralize all my questions and hopefully some of the more knowledgeable people lurking around this place will be able to answer.
Thanks in advance.

For INFO about the mod
MAIN FEATURES:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Low fantasy: very limited mythical creatures apart from the ones that are hard-coded.
- Focus on races of men only. So far the goal is to have 6 races (Flat heads, Tall ones, Deepers, Long Teeth, Strong arms and Light skins), all human with small variations. No goblins, orcs, dwarves, elves, etc.
- Variation of mutli-race civilizations. For example CIV01 might include Flat heads, Tall ones and Light skins, CIV02 would include Tall ones, Long Teeth and Strong arms, etc). This allows for varied ethics and interactions, among the same races.
- Very low tech (think beginning of time hunter/gatherer type) with a research system that, though very hard, allows for new buildings and therefore improved techs while in Fortress mode. At the start however, think hide tunic, rock weapon/tools, and that's it.
- Heavy focus on above ground civilizations, though Deepers are underground only and all civs can of course evolve though fortress mode to do whatever they want.
- Savage lands. Wild animals with varied behaviors and sometimes via entity/civ so that they can act similar to kobolds in a way.
- Streamlined labels for items (limited types of leather, wood, threads, wool, etc). Unless from a specific creature, a leather armor might be a "animal leather armor" and not "rabbit leather armor", etc.
- Heavy focus on adventure mode !FUN! factor. This includes a lot of craft abilities, bandit/wild life availability, etc.

DEV LOG:
28/06/2012
- Finally getting closer to identifying why the freezes are happening. It has to do with my creatures files. No idea why it would always freeze in winter, even with temp/weather turned off, but at least I know it's somewhere in there.
- Other than that, finished streamlining nearly all animal products, including meat, wool, bones, etc.
- Put stone revamp on hold until I complete the animal pass.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

26/06/2012
- Civilizations, streamlined plants (threads/logs) and animals (leather) working properly, no freeze after couple years in a fortress.
- Now working on custom rocks & stones.
22/06/2012
- Could not isolate the issue with winter freezing precisely and consistently. I'll have to restart from the original raw files and test thoroughly after every single changes. For each change step, I'll do at least 2 2 years long fortresses to make sure it's stable.
- First changes currently being tested: playable races and entity files.
20/06/2012
- Still on a feature freeze and testing fortress & adventure mode.
- Nasty freeze problem on season change (winter and or spring), not sure why yet but can't move on before I've found it and solved it.
18/06/2012
- Putting a freeze on new things, to test everything on a long run fortress since I got all the basics working.
- Included the marvellous [CE:COUNTER_TRIGGER] mechanism to push toward outdoor construction. If you make too much indoor stuff, all your people will be so dizzy they'll just crawl. Still need testing, but so far so good.
- Generic mats are done and working. Will add more (crude edged stone, boiled leather, etc) once I get the "knowledge" research system up and running. So far I have things like soft wood, wood, hard wood, crude stone, crude leather, rough crude leather and crude cloth.
- Some early age buildings & reactions are done.
-- "Knapping corner" for all early age stone related work
-- "Leather stands" for all early age leather stuff and sewing
-- "Fire pit" for cremation and ashes
-- "Work area" for heavy duty stone/wood working and various other crafting.
-- "Camp fire" for some cooking
-- "Elder hut" for research & knowledge testing purposes
-- "Council of Elder", mainly social & skill stuff.
17/06/2012
- Streamlining for generic mats is done, first animal pass is done and working proper.
- Did a mix of various plant & tree forms available around, just a first pass. working proper.
- Stripped down all metal weapons/tools from worldgen. Nothing metallic seems to be generated from worldgen apparently.
- Started working on the next big part: buildings & reactions. Added the basics for rock crafting & wood crafting for now, works great but lots to do.
- Still doing extensive testing with civilization config in both fortress and adv. mode and a lot of worldgen. So far, with 4 multi-racial civilizations, it creates very interesting and dynamic stuff, like same races going to war and the like. Takes hours to test proper...
- Put into place the "kobold" as animals civilizations, using variants of wolves and pumas (multi racial here as well, same civ). Works great in world gen, but takes hours to test in fortress mode and still inconclusive. Will add tons of predator animal variants and see how it "feels" in game. So far so good on that concept, just need to be lucky (or unlucky) in my forts to see how they behave and validated proper.
16/06/2012
- The main "stripping down/streamlining" is done for items (leather/wood/etc).
- Stripped down all creatures and currently adding some back into the world. DOMESTIC & INSECTS are in for testing purposes.
- Stripped down all reactions/buildings.
- Flat heads, Tall ones and Deepers are currently available. Need to tweak their look and stats.
- Testing the multiple races per civ concept and how they interact with varied ETHICS tags and see if BABYSNATCHER/THIEF is needed to create variety and wars.

CURRENT QUESTIONS:
- Apart from the noble TAG to make peace, anyone tested if PERSONALITY traits in creature raws play a role in how fast/slow WARS are resolved by peace agreements in world_gen?
- Any experience on what could cause a game freeze (not crash, just perma freeze that forces you to end task)? Seems to be happening on winter only, even with TEMP and WEATHER turned OFF, and it related to creature_x files.

ANSWERED QUESTIONS:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- You can remove the FURNACE_OPERATOR from the job list to remove METAL_BARS from showing up in embark.
- For wooden shields but not armor, just remove the ITEM_ARMOR token in wood def.
- CAVE tag (SITE): They just live in it, don't transform it.
- UTTERANCE tag: might use that to create wars.
- Using animal variant to replicate the "kobold" civ behavior seems to work, need further testing.

Thanks again.

[Corai]

This seems interesting.





Will there be any mythical creatures in this, like dragons? Or will this be free of anything not [MUNDANE].


Awnser to two of your questions.


- Has anyone tested extensively the impact of ETHICS? Which ones create the most wars over time.-[UTTERANCES] makes craploads of war, at the cost of "Jreengus occured" "Fleshiganrut occured" stuff.


-Has anyone tested extensively the CAVE site tag for entity/civ? Do civ in CAVE sites carve into it or just live in it? (I'm still testing this) -No, they dont. They simply sit around in the caverns + cave itself.

[mutonizer]

Dragons per se, no. And no mythical creatures planned so far.
However, I do plan on having dinosaur like creatures and some, being gigantic, might behave like dragons/semi mega-beasts. Also maybe some that I might manage like kobolds civs so that they don't just get wiped out early, bit like a pack of snatching raptors, etc. Will need testing.


UTTERANCES might be useful for the beast civs I plan on doing but usually just removing the intelligent TAG solves this. For other civs, I'm trying to keep them all intelligent (and playable) so that won't work I think.

For CAVES, if you put LIKE_SITE for bot CAVE_DETAILED and CAVE, they can therefore spread to both right? Some into CAVES, some into CAVE_DETAILED?

[Intrinsic]

GL with this project, it sounds like a great idea. Have you considered working with a certain time span in history, ie like the bronze/iron age etc. Or maybe start before that and work your way through the ages(tech levels?) which enables you to craft better and better weapons as you advance.

[mutonizer]

Hello

The goal is to start with wood and rock stuff only, then allow development through a research/knowledge system.

Typical game play in Fortress mode would go as such:

1) At the start, there is no metal whatsoever, at least that's the idea (can't get rid of the metal bars in embark for some reason yet, everything else is gone proper). It's also impossible to make anything metal related, since there's no anvil whatsoever.
2) You then use clay, leather, bone, wood and rock to make basic tools, constructions, weapons and armor. These allow your fortress to develop but inefficient.
3) Via a specific buildings (some kind of elder's hut, etc), you research "knowledge", which are required (and not consumed) for various items and buildings, the biggest change of which is the anvil, which opens a lot of new options and metal crafting but can also be things like "knowledge:crude rock technique" and "knowledge: advanced rock technique" or "knowledge:crude leather working" and "knowledge:boiled leather". "knowledge: wood working" for example allows to get wood block per logs, which facilitate construction.
4) The goal is also to have a "Tech tree", that requires previous "knowledge" as regents. That way you can choose to specialize into a specific knowledge tree if you want.

I want to have "ages", but the biggest limitation I've found so far is that there are default items, buildings and reactions, hard-coded, and it's hard going around them.

For example, to make some kind of "knowledge:above ground farming" system, I'd need to remove seeds on naturally spawning plants, then try to use specific stuff on non world_gen spawning plants (guessing no frequency/cluster), which would then allow to get the seeds for these (just requiring the raw plant from gathering, and the knowledge), which could be then planted and would produce the custom plant, which, since it produces seeds, would then allow normal farming.
Same for ore, for "metal ages". Only way I can think about this is to keep the "mineral stones" so that they appear in world_gen but remove their METAL_ORE. Then make reactions for each requiring knowledge to get that ore via a specific building. Without that, players would simply be able to make a smelter right from the get go and get metal stuff.

I haven't tested this yet, but that's on the list, some time in the long future. It's very early stage though and I'm still learning. For everything I do I'm just hoping that all this won't crumble into oblivion because of something I cannot change

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

- Any idea how to remove metal bars from showing into the embark? What is it related to if anything?

take FURNACE_OPERATOR out of the entity aslo remove all alloy making reactions, If there is a reaction that makes a BAR they have instant access to it no matter what.
Or removing STONE_PREF prevents them from gettting METAL_ORE stones to smelt

- Has anyone tested extensively the impact of ETHICS? Which ones create the most wars over time?

if you can get about 2-3 opposite ethics you can have war be waged. so one race thinks killing plants, animals, and tourture is ok, or fun and the other race thinks these thinks are appalling.

- Has anyone played around with aggressive plants/trees? They idea is to make patches of grass that can grasp and eat you slowly, trees that spit darts when you come close, etc. Think some mods out there had some but can't find them anymore.

I have heard of this too, I think it was a crafty clone that once picked boiled into gas. But if you wanted something like that you need creatures. Plant creatures

[mutonizer]

Hey

Hmm, nice catch on FURNACE_OPERATOR, I checked it out and it works perfectly, no more metal bars, thanks!
I'll use that for now but since I'd like to keep all jobs in there, I'll keep testing later on.

On Ethics, I've spent hours upon hours doing world_gens then checking legends. I'm now now down to 4 CIVs settings, each including multiple races, and they all potentially can go to war with each others (though they make peace really fast. CIV03 and CIV04 will always be against CIV01 and CIV02 since I'm using ITEM_THIEF on one and BABYSNATCHER on the other (which makes CIV03 and CIV04 also hostile to each other). I've also go my BEASTY_CIV with tons of duplicated (so they are still in normal adventure mode) and modified creatures (WOLF, PUMAS, LYNX, RACOONS, etc), which simulates KOBOLDS, and my DEEPERS civ, which is underground only, cannibalistic, nasty angry humans, for variety in fortress mode.

Since I have many races per core civilizations and each races are in multiple civilizations as well, it creates a lot of nice stuff in legends (but a clusterpoop of !FUN! in adventure mode, since I can't seem to be able to tell what's what before I go into a village/town). Tall ones going to war with Tall ones, making peace, then attacking Flat heads or Deepers, tons of it. On embark, you'll see all your neighbors and can get some tall ones at war with, some hostile and some friendly, etc.

My question was more related to exactly which ethics settings trigger wars. I've figured out the most obvious, but I'd like to expand at some point.

I'm doing FORTRESS mode only for a couple of days, no more changes, to iron what's in so far and see if it's working and interesting.

For monster plants/trees, well, IMMOBILE tag, some new body layout/materials, same tile as some tree/plants. Should work eventually but didn't have time to even think about putting it into raws. I checked MASTERWORK quickly and it had some I believe.

Thanks again.

[IndigoFenix]

Well, concerning 'war control':

There are 3 major 'factions' in DF that will always be in conflict with each other but will often be allied with members of the same 'faction': Regular, babysnatchers, and item thieves.  Creatures who are both babysnatchers and item thieves might make a fourth faction, I haven't tested this though.

Entities composed of creatures that cannot speak in a normal language - either by having [UTTERANCES] or no speech tag at all - will start wars with every other civilization in the area, including other non-speaker or utterance civilizations.  This seems to be independent of ethics, non-speakers just hate everyone.  These wars will never end, because they will be unable to create a peace treaty.  These civs will never be allies with anyone.

For speaking civs in the same 'faction', wars are generally started by conflicts in the ethic tags.  Basically, the ethic of one race is compared to that same ethic of another race, and a 'hatred level' is determined based on how much these ethics conflict (there are some 'points' gained if the races have similar values in a particular ethic, but hatred from conflict is much stronger than love from agreement).  If two races' values conflict too much, they will have a very high 'hate score' and will regularly go to war as a result.  If you want two races to be at constant war with each other, just give one race 'acceptable' where the other race has 'unthinkable' in a number of different ethics.

As far as I know there is no difference between one ethic and another as far as this particular calculation is determined, although there might be differences as far as actually starting wars is concerned.  I'm not certain of the exact details, but I've yet to see a war started by a civ that considers killing enemies to only be justified in self-defense.  Creatures with [BUTCHER_SAPIENT_OTHER] set to ACCEPTABLE may also start wars by killing members of another civ because they happened to be hungry at the time.  I haven't actually tested this bit !!scientifically!! though, just based on what I've seen.

As for killer plants: You cannot create actual plants that move or attack on their own, but you can create immobile tree-shaped creatures made out of wood that leave logs in place of corpses, if you want, and then you can give them whatever creature abilities you want.  Or, if you prefer, you can make 'trap' plants that 'attack you from the inside' by giving their structural material a nasty syndrome when they are eaten.

[mutonizer]

Thanks IndigoFenix, that's pretty much what I've figured out so far doing tons of wold_gen and checking the legends & wars after.

From what I've seen civs with both BABY_SNATCHER and ITEM_THIEF will be hostile to both the ones with only BABY_SNATCHER or the ones with just ITEM_THIEF.

I'm trying to stay away from UTTERANCES since I want all races to be proper sentients.

Been having some issues though, testing since the feature freeze couple days ago. DF seems to freeze (can only end task afterwards) on some season changes, mainly winter or spring it seems. Thought it was a bug in one of the entity def and related to trading, which I fixed (typos, damn you to hell!!), but it's still happening and I'm gonna have to scrap down everything one after the other to try find this problem.