Topic: Masterwork mod vivisection (Read 14149 times)

Tierre · « **on:** June 20, 2012, 08:57:58 am »

Hi all.

Recently i started breaking Masterwork mod in parts, so that i can implement some parts of it into my own mods. It has SO many features, and they are so interconnected, that it is hard to understand what is where. So i decided just to slice it layer by layer:) And here i will be putting the results of this work. Maybe some of this will come handy to Meph then he starts redoing the mod from scratch. This will be a very long thread as i have little time for that and do it at work:)

I may edit posts to add my opinion to the things in MW or my thoughts on how to change that. Also to repair my frequent typos and mistakes:)

Okay for starters - part with removing soil layers.

SSC

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now we go to Dust(yes i do it on a whim and without system - i just slice what is most wasy to slice off wothout damaging other things).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now Archeologist:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now that was a lot eh?

That's it for now. Next update on storage system.

PS couldn't fit vermins in a post - too much letters it seems:)

Tierre · « **Reply #1 on:** June 20, 2012, 09:02:17 am »

And a VERMIN part is just some vermins. Partly from Flora and Fauna mod. It seems that there's too many of them so i will make it into 2 parts (they are separate in MW - FF vermins will show only if they are ON and more vermins are ON. The FF creatures start with YESFF)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tierre · « **Reply #2 on:** June 20, 2012, 09:02:54 am »

And now the last part of vermns:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tierre · « **Reply #3 on:** June 20, 2012, 09:18:21 am »

Now let\s delve into STORAGE a bit. I never actually played Masterwork myself, so i may misinterpret something. It is more exciting to play with RAWS for me than in DF itself sometimes:) So as i see from the raws only - it is just a way to make different civs trade some things for you. Although there are some issues here i find strange.

There is for example some problems in entity for dwarfes (see spoiler for that)

Let's start:

First it's a building. Remember 1 very important thing - if you buy some crate and don't have that building - then you dwarfes can use that crates as..SOAP..... sad but true. Build this ASAP.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now entity changes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now the reactions for different things which make our civs to produce those crates - make note though that drow has their reaction for dark iron remade into this (which is pretty strange imho but alas nothing game or feature breaking). Also it is not in a unique building as it is for other civs. Might remake that to one unique building which will include all reactions of other civs and will be controlled by permitted reactions - less building in raws - minor boost to fps. Also dwarfs have no building their reaction is assigned to - dothey really produce that crates? They got some unique staff there so it is important. Need inpur from MW players.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now the opening AUTOMATIC reactions (that's why you need the building) - or it will be used as a soap.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

4000 symbols wall - next post:)

Tierre · « **Reply #4 on:** June 20, 2012, 09:24:30 am »

And the creatures used for it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It uses material template STEEL_CRATE_TEMPLATE which is also used in treant_seed, spitting_plant_seed and gargoyle statue creatures - i gueess for

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now i will do some more research on those parts i sliced off and will post my thoughs and thins worth mentioning later.

Hm material has REACTION_CLASS:SOAP disabled so this is soap but might not count as soap... or it will only stop it from turning into soap if you for whatever reason able to get this creatuer? Science in progress.

Interesting question is why did he do this in a so soapy way.... might have done tools with reaction to produce them from some CRATE material... Would really like Meph's insight on this:)

Marc Remillard · « **Reply #5 on:** June 20, 2012, 09:34:59 am »

Sounds like a plan. After my last fort, I've come to the feeling its all wrong in terms of balance and playability; either spend years getting a decent military skilled up with decent armour, or danger room. I think there's a reason a lot/most? go for the danger room. If you go the DR route, its quite boring. You dig down, find HFS if you want, but the game is over.

Its all horribly unbalanced atm, and not greatly fun. Military training (yes, tried all the forum wisdom), is woefully slow, given the kill rate if you actually face the foes (vs cage traps or turtling). As in, small squad training works fine; but with the frequency of attacks, you're bound to lose one (or ten) dwarves). Then another three years skilling up new ones.

The most enjoyable bit for me is the initial fort establishment, maybe dodging undead beasts etc, getting food sorted out. After that, its a very bland thing. With or without mods, its pretty much similar.

I'm looking forward to when future changes look to the actual advancement bit of the game. I'm guessing Toad has a lot in mind, but atm (once you climb the curve) there's not much there - the learning curve was the most enjoyable bit of the game for me. I've said before I think its a great game in infancy, so the only thing I want to add is that the feature implementation could use some prioritization - minecarts do nothing for me (respect that others may love and use them), I think a game balance update wouldn't kill i.e. sensible military, more content etc. Making it more mod friendly would be my first vote though - its a great game hampered by a bottleneck of one developer (one with great ideas and a right to do with it as he will, of course).

I've worked in a lot of development roles, and the worst thing you'll ever find is a UI designed by a developer - similar syndrome, but ballooned out to balance and gameplay. The things a hardcore nerd enjoys coding and adding aren't necessarily the things the mass are hanging out for.

Marc Remillard · « **Reply #6 on:** June 20, 2012, 09:44:41 am »

Quote from: Tierre on June 20, 2012, 09:24:30 am

And the creatures used for it:
Interesting question is why did he do this in a so soapy way.... might have done tools with reaction to produce them from some CRATE material... Would really like Meph's insight on this:)

If you get an irresistible urge to look at the bone studs reaction, in terms of making an intermediary item between bone stack <-> bone studs, I'll give you two internets. Making lamellar leather atm is a pain.

The rest of the things I can think about are outside of what tweaking or adding text files can do (some may call tweaking text files "coding" - its not).

Tierre · « **Reply #7 on:** June 20, 2012, 09:54:23 am »

Marc... Not quite sure how are your posts related to my thread:) This thread is to get parts of masterwork mod out so that people can use them. How come bone studs come in when i ask about SOAP bars for crates used in this? There is no bone here at all...

PS: Well i am going home now and will continue this tomorrow.

travellersside · « **Reply #8 on:** June 20, 2012, 12:38:27 pm »

I've dug around pretty thoroughly in Masterwork to pick out some things for my own homebrew mod, so this is actually pretty interesting for me. To answer a couple of your questions:

Why aren't some reactions available to the player, and does this mean that the products won't work for them?
What a fortress can do and what a civ can do are actually very different things. A civ will have access to the results of any reaction permitted to it in the entity files, regardless of whether it's able to provide the reagents.
For example: I can remove Furnace Operator (and the list of permitted reactions) as a valid skill for, say, humans. This will immediately prevent them from being able to get the products of smelting any ores. In fact, they won't be able to make use of metals at all. But if I give them back the bronze-making reaction, even though they will never have copper or tin, they'll now have access to bronze.
So, by allowing the dwarves to have a reaction that makes crates, but not allowing the player access to it, the crates can be bought at embark and from traders but not produced on-site. It's nice, and it works pretty well.

Why are crates made of soap?
Good question. I can only hypothesise that it's because soap appears in the misc section at the end, and thus it's a lot easier to find than if they were tools, say, and buried in the middle of the list amongst all the different flavours of tool and the materials that they're made of. Tools would certainly work, but it's a bit neater as soap. Incidentally, you can also use crates as building materials, which would be an interesting way to keep an emergency store of certain supplies. That wouldn't be possible with tools.

Tierre · « **Reply #9 on:** June 20, 2012, 01:51:28 pm »

Thanks for your help Travellersside:) As i understand having a reaction is enough - even if you have no building for it in entity? Then the question..... why does entities have buildings at all?

travellersside · « **Reply #10 on:** June 20, 2012, 03:49:58 pm »

If an entity has access to a reaction, the traders (and embark screen) can have the products without having to satisfy the prerequisites, including having the building. It's abstracted away with some handwaving and there's a pretty good chance that in the far future that will change. But for now it's simply assumed that somewhere out there the entity has crafters and workshops in use. I don't think that it matters at the moment (although I may be wrong) whether not-in-play entities have permissions for the workshops in their file - as I said, it's all handwaved away.
Your fortress is a different matter though - If you want to use a reaction, you'll need to build the relevant workshop and provide the necessary reagents. This limits you so that you can't make everything right at the start and means that you have to build up a productive fortress, which does make things more interesting than just spawning everything you want on the spot.
Since there are two different sets of rules in play - one for the player and another for the traders/embark screen/invaders/etc. - there's the opportunity for some constructive meddling. It's quite possible to create a workshop based entirely around processing some good that's only available from 'home' and as such, your supply is limited purely to what the traders bring. That kind of limiting factor can have quite an interesting effect, as the supply is infinite, but only available in a trickle. In a way, this is what's happening with the crates, but since they (usually) process into goods that you could get hold of yourself, they're more of a useful bump than a desperately needed supply.
So, the dwarven entity needs workshop permissions in order for the player to be able to actually use them. I hypothesise that the other entities have them for the sake of completeness and so that is anyone wants to tweak things so that they're playing another race, most of the work has been done already.

What will you be untangling next? There's such a lot of it, after all.

Tierre · « **Reply #11 on:** June 21, 2012, 04:10:13 am »

I want to go in depth of what i already taken out - like PET_HEALING class and other things. Then i am sure i dissected everything in this parts i will go farther. I have a lot of time anyway - at least 2-3 months before Meph starts working on mod again:)

Tierre · « **Reply #12 on:** June 21, 2012, 09:49:38 am »

Checkng what i have taken out:
In Archeology - note to Meph to make reaction EXCAVATE_STONE give 4 times more products or use only 1 boulder. Rebalancing issues. Ruins don't need anything in rebalancing with less stone - small clusters should give full yield like usual and ruins boil away after excavation anyway. Fossil great axe should be added to alchemy CRAZY reaction. Large daggers might be too common to be used in such a thing? Maybe change to something more exotic - like Kukri or like that... Why No-Dachi (2 handed Katana), Chain Axes and Tomahawks with Claws can only be obtained through this ways and never used by other civs? Same goes for a lot of other weapons. Maybe put some more diversity and flawor to different civs? Like give katanas to Fortress Defence white tigerman - they are japanese based anyway. Claws to Nightwings. Claws to Fiend Spiders:) As for armor - razorplate is broken (it is called Evil3 and comes from drow). Either make a new Razorplate armor, or rename it. But i think it was intended to be different and then Meph just forgot:) Other armor are unique to religion and craziness too:( I think for flavor and slight difficulty boost those items should be given to enemy races:)
For ammo - it is only on with alchemy. So you need also add tag for turning off ammo fossils then alchemy is off. Or it will not work and give you strange things.

Meph · « **Reply #13 on:** June 21, 2012, 10:25:42 am »

Quote

Why are crates made of soap?
Good question. I can only hypothesise that it's because soap appears in the misc section at the end, and thus it's a lot easier to find than if they were tools, say, and buried in the middle of the list amongst all the different flavours of tool and the materials that they're made of. Tools would certainly work, but it's a bit neater as soap. Incidentally, you can also use crates as building materials, which would be an interesting way to keep an emergency store of certain supplies. That wouldn't be possible with tools.

This is correct. Custom bars show up in the misc section, and I have never seen a dwarf use a crate as soap, since I disabled the soap-mat. I got no reports that crates were wasted, so I guess it works as intended.

It will be nice to read the feedback you can come up with, after you went through the mod one time. Many things will make you go: wtf, but that is because I started as a noob and fixed it along the way. Might be good to offer the cut out things as zip downloads or something, for people who want to test out a feature or another.

Good work

Tierre · « **Reply #14 on:** June 21, 2012, 12:41:15 pm »

I will also try to find a lot of mistakes here (then you are up for bugfixing i hope it will help a little) and some of my proposals in making those things better. Like my post above for flavors of weapons. And a new proposal - maybe change trap (or add another type) so that it will make a dinosaur or old golem spawn with CRAZED tag - it will be more logical than just spawn traps in simple stone:) But actually being able to find dinosaur eggs in sedimentary lair and make a new pet race (war trainable but require some expensive reagents to rejuvenate old egg)- i thing can be a good thing too:) What do you think about flavoring different unique weapons to different races?

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Author Topic: Masterwork mod vivisection (Read 14149 times)

Tierre

Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Marc Remillard

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Marc Remillard

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

travellersside

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

travellersside

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Meph

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection

Tierre

Re: Masterwork mod vivisection