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[Tsuchigumo550]

I've got a lot of great stuff I want to throw into a mod I'm trying to build, but there's a lot I need to ask here about what's possible and what isn't.

1. I'm hoping to have a hostile race that are both weaker but much more frightening than goblins- at least to an early fort. They start seigeing early and have a syndrome attack that transforms nearly every race (there's one accessible through Adventure mode that's immune) into another of their kind. The weaknesses they carry are rather great, such as having no armor or weapons to speak of aside from what's on their bodies.

I know the syndrome is possible, but I need these guys to have gender weights to slow breeding, and other balancing measures. They shouldn't be able to trade for any reason, and while I could give them no [GRASP] hands, if possible I'd like them to keep hands. Lastly, is it possible to give them a sort of "hive mind?" What's the furthest I could take that?

Notes about these guys, called "Sphell": They have a head like the facehuggers from Half Life, no eyes, and a small humanoid body that's more goblin than human. They're very simple. Imagine a creature slightly smaller than a dwarf shambling it's way to you, it's only motivation to make you one of them.

2. I'd like a race of alraune, and while I'm happy with creating a plant body part (through naming layers, etc.) I'd like parts of their body to be brewable. I'd need to be able to restrict it to certain BPs as well. This isn't major, as Alraunes are on the chopping block as it is, but this might save them.

3. Is it possible to make a truly menacing wood-only weapon? I plan on having a miniminotaur-like race, only 8-9 feet tall and sheep related. Their main weapons are 2H for them, and they're pretty big. They're not far into technology though, using handles attached to tree trunks as a club and crude rocks and metals for "swords". They're more like clubs with an almost sharp edge. My question is, how does one make wood fearsome?

4. I'm not a complete noob to older weapon mods or syndrome mods but everything else is new to me, and anything post-vampires is also new to me. Any tips are super-appreciated.

5. This mod aims to replace the endless swarms of beast-men with four new civs and two new siegers. I have a general idea of the races, but I want everyone's opinion on this:

The four friendly, or, at least willing to trade civs are:
___The Kitsune. Technologically advanced, the Kitsune are very humanlike. They work metal, have new weaponry and armor, and will be valuable to trade with. They're also the only other "friendly" civ addition that can utilize bows.

I shouldn't have any problem with these. I might, but they're not -that-hard to forsee.

___The Ravi, which are small sheep-o-taurs. They tower over the other civs, and while they aren't advanced technologically, they're supposedly great farmers.

I might have a little trouble getting the Ravi to ACT like farmers, as in, be mostly agricultrual. They'd trade like elves, except with some crude metal goods and no animals, but I'm not entirely sure how to keep it that way.

___The El-Kir. These guys are like centuars, except their head and body are moose/elk-based. They have a human torso and arms, but the arms have some fur. They're between the Kitsune and Ravi, lacking in most technology except metalworking.

I'd like them to live in forest-retreats like areas. In fact, I'm going to need to do some learning on how to make things live where I want them to.

___The Illsapents. They're mostly human, except they're mostly syndrome-resistant and have a serpentine tail. Their bites and a tail attack cary potent venom. They're a little behind the Kitsune, and care little for weapons, though they do make some armor.

Hostile "civs" are as follows:
___The Sphell are described above. i want these guys to move about together, but otherwise, they're wild animals. Kinda like Kobolds.

___The Seraphim are a big challenge. Story wise they're a race that think they're descendants from the days when only gods roamed the earth and seek to destroy the impure. In other words, they're flying uppity bitch elves.
They are a big challenge though, because not only do I want them to hate everyone, they have access to bows. And they fly. And they have four wings, when they only need two (I want them to be able to take dehabilitating injuries to two and still be able to fly.).

In other words, they're the biggest challenge I could think up.

There's more to this mod and these won't make full appearances until 1.0, I'll do them one at a time.
Until then, i want your opinions. Throw them at me with the force of a !!Legendary Thrower!!, and I shall catch your !!Posts!! and try my best to engrave a !!Response!!.

Because everything's better with fire.

Spoiler: Color Coded What's Getting Done (click to show/hide)

No progress
Hiatus
Problematic/Buggy
Nearly complete/finishing
Implemented
Not Started
Barely started
CIVS
Kitsune
Ravi
El-Kir
Illsapent
Sphell
Seraphim

Weapons
Ideas

Sword Group
Club Group
Spear Group
Ranged Group
Axe Group
Other Group

Armors

Ideas

The rest of this list

Spoiler: List of ideas that don't go anywhere else. (click to show/hide)

Wild Animal: Alraune
Fun Beer
!!FUN!! Beer
Wild Animal: Beer
Custom Workshops

[SpecialCookies]

You have some pretty sweet ideas.

You and I are pretty much in the same boat, I have a few extensive modding ideas that I'd like to materialise but I'm so much more familiar with modding the ancient 40d raws. I'm finding it pretty daunting looking at the entities and wondering if I should even bother trying to create the creatures/races I have in mind.

As your ideas are beyond my knowledge, I can't really help you, though I am very interested to see how you progress and I wish you luck.

PS: You can make badass wooden clubs using a super-dense tree as the construction material. For badass wooden slashing weapons, it might be possible to add a MAX_EDGE tag into the material - not 100% sure on that.

[Tsuchigumo550]

The edge for the wooden material isn't exactly suppoed to be badass- it's basically "Hey, your club looks kinda like an obelisk, why dosen't it have bark?"

"Edges hurt more."

And I'd like to avoid doing anything that any other race, including human-controlled dwarves, could get their hands on. Meaning, I might have to skew the values to an insane level or something, but that's ok.

It's not like another civ is going to be lifting those things around.

[BFEL]

Well as for the transformy face hugger things, as long as you dont put specify them as trade capable they shouldn't be able to, and in fact from my understanding you could specify them anyway and not assign any items to them and that would work too...although it would be a bit ridiculous to make them trade-able but not give them anything, also if you dont put [EQUIPS] in their creature tag they wont even pick up weapons or armor that you drop so no reason not to give em hands. So exactly what are you intending with the wooden clubamajig? On the one hand you want it to be edged, and be a decent wood weapon but you dont want it to be "badass" so you want it to be average at everything? Or is it just intended to be mostly blunt but have a edge attack for versatility? As in, "ok so I'm fighting something that blunt isn't good against so lets give the club a bit of an edge so I can use it as back up"

Personally I'm working on adding in two civs, one is a giant race like your Ravi, but with no armor and stone weapons. Which by stone weapon I mean this:

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_THOHT_MAUL]
[NAME:maul:mauls]
[SIZE:1400]
[SKILL:HAMMER]
[TWO_HANDED:77500]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:62500]
[CAN_STONE]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:5]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:100:6000:bash:bashes:NO_SUB:2000]
[ATTACK:EDGE:5:2000:stab:stabs:pommel:1000]]
Its basically a big ass superhammer with a machete stuck to the pommel for when you need more stabby-stabby then smashy-smashy. The Thoht have no other weapons, but have INSANE regenerative powers (always max Recuperation, plus making all their tissue layers healing rate 5. Lower is better, and normal is 200) and nice agility, but are intended to be slightly squishier because of lack of armor and cartilage for structure instead of bone. Oh and they live in glaciers and trade in winter, no race in vanilla trades in winter so I like the Thoht....also they can raise the dead. Thats a lot of "also's" come to think of it...

But anyway the second race is basically the opposite, they are intended to be based off the Giant Desert Scorpion, but with extra natural armor....and they use STEEL armor on top of that. However they NEVER heal...from anything, ever. Also low birth rate and such. They dont need to eat or drink, and see those that have to as terrible demons for requiring nourishment from the death of living beings (think elves but with a stick up their ass about plants AND animals) they are a "civilized" race, but NEVER trade and yet they send diplomats to try and make you stop killing trees and animals. So basically !FUN!
Oh and their weapon? THIS:

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_BLADEBOW]
[NAME:bladebow:bladebows]
[SIZE:450]
[SKILL:AXE]
[RANGED:CROSSBOW:BOLT]
[SHOOT_FORCE:900]
[SHOOT_MAXVEL:1000]
[TWO_HANDED:70000]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:25000]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]
[ATTACK:EDGE:20000:4000:hack:hacks:NO_SUB:1250]
[ATTACK:EDGE:3:3500:stab:stabs:bayonet:1000]
[ATTACK:BLUNT:300:3000:slap:slaps:flat:1000]Its basically what happens when a crossbow and an axe are fused together and given a bayonet on the front for good measure.

EDIT: Actually on Re-reading your post the "Justiciars" are pretty much like your seraphim, but are less fly-y and more I NO TAKE DAMAGE FROM BEING SHOT IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY....

[i2amroy]

You and I are pretty much in the same boat, I have a few extensive modding ideas that I'd like to materialise but I'm so much more familiar with modding the ancient 40d raws. I'm finding it pretty daunting looking at the entities and wondering if I should even bother trying to create the creatures/races I have in mind.

I used to be like this myself up until a month or two ago. It looks daunting, but it's actually fairly easy to pick up since ~80% of the new things are used on every single object of a type (for example all birds use pretty much the same basic materials and tissues) so you can just copy+paste a large amount of stuff.

[Tsuchigumo550]

The giant club and the giant crude sword are two different weapons. The club is larger and club-only, where the "obelisk" is somewhat smaller and has an added crappy edge attack (it's like hitting something with a 90 degree angle.) The club should be deadly, the "sword" less so simply because of the way the attack is handled.

The obelisks might switch to a one-handed weapon, but the Ravi won't be using shields, so it dosen't matter too much.

The original weapon design was a massive dwarven warhammer with a dagger on the other end, but the Ravi can't make that, so I gave them two weapons instead of one.

[Di]

Why do I have feeling like I've seen those seraph and those kawai races before?
For giant wooden weapons try increasing their weight (size or material size, though the latter may be useless).
And finally, why aren't you satisfied with current gobbo hivemind and how do you envision the one you need? If you give them [no_fear] they'll rush your trapped corridors till the last soldier dies without breaking squads, well except for those who would lose a leg and would crawl in their own pace.

[i2amroy]

Why do I have feeling like I've seen those seraph and those kawai races before?

Back in 40d (and I believe 2010) there was a seraph mod that then spawned a host of others that were inspired or based on the original after the author stopped updating. As you would expect it was a bunch of angels (I believe the original guy actually went through and created a latin language, note that this was before most easy DF translator and language utilities had been written).

For #2 You could probably swing something with using [EXTRA_BUTCHER_OBJECT:XXX:XX] to cause those certain parts of their bodies to drop brewable plants when they were butchered (you could call them "alarune essence" or something like that) that could be made into alcohol.

[BFEL]

The Alraune, new mermaid farm?

[Tsuchigumo550]

Yeah, alarunes might be a creature instead of a civ, but that's fine.

I had planned on using [nofear] and the likewise tags (these guys probably don't even have a frontal lobe, reference hint hint) but I wanted to know if there was anything new.

The seraph mod wasn't inspired by anything here (I usually stick to vanilla, I did have masterwork) but I'd heard of the idea before and it was just something that seemed to fill the "intelligent smart flyer" that wasn't another evolved beast-man.

Working on the list of new items, armors, and weapons to add in.
I also came up with an antivampire solution that can actually be used in beer... i think. It's a complicated syndrome chain but if you can get everyone to drink the stuff it'll prevent vampires... I need some science though.

Basically, a syndrome is added to an expensive beer that adds tags to dwarves that changes their blood to a suitable substitute extract that vampires think of as blood but contains a virus that selects anyone drinking blood and causing brain rot.

I haven't checked over the tag-switch for the original though, so I may just have the option to change dorf blood to this. IDK. It might also be linked to the alarune.

If anyone wants to do some science, I need to know what the best possible condition for syndromes to turn on for vampires are. There's two timers, one about ho long it's been since they've drank and ho long they've been drinking. The numbers are abstract at best.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

I'd suggest rather than having those 'infectors' being a race, making them a pack animal like wolves or Rhesus Maques. They can have hands, and won't be able to trade or anything civ-like, since it seems you're going for a civ-thats-not-a-civ with them.  Although the downside of this would be not being able to see if they're your neighbours or not on embark, but that might also be a good thing given their terrifying nature.

As far as the wooden weapons go, if you're trying to do a tree trunk, you could have different sorts of attacks, from what I understand swords and what not have different types, like pommel hits and back of the blade, stabbing, and general slashing.
You could do something similar, like being hit with the brunt of the tree, or being stabbed by a branch thats on the side of it while being swung at, or having the top of it being thrusted into you like a Tauren from Wc3.

I'm not -certain- but perhaps if you make it for the serpent people, so that they do not have access to the reactions to make weapons, or something along those lines, they will be able to still make armor? I honestly haven't a clue but it is a very interesting concept.
Short of that you could do something similar to what was discussed in the 'space' threads, and make metal layers on top of their regular bodies in the shape of armor, but having them 'infused onto the outer layer of their scales' similar to Arbiter from the Halo series. (It was burnt on if I remember right? I can't remember.)

[Tsuchigumo550]

I was going to give the Illsapent a weapon, but like, one. Knife-class.
Maybe give them spears, but they'll just trade for them, not make any.

I want the infectors to siege, and I'm not entirely sure of you can do that with a regular creature.

Started with the Kitsune today. I've already hit a snag, but so far nothing's major.
I haven't changed a thing with body_detail_standards, but I might need to add fur in places (tail, ears). I don't know what to do here.
I added :TAIL: into [BODY:HUMANOID:...] as the first thing, like in the dog raws.
Body appearance numbers, can someone run me by what these mean? I assume I could do everything off a multiplier (such as the Ravi being 1.6x human sizes, the Kitsune being 0.9) but I'd like to know everything about that possible. I didn't dig up anything on the wiki for specific raw edits, and everything here (what can I add, is there a set table for appearance changing tags..?)

MAXAGE is in years, I assume. Which is to say with 60:120 humans don't start dying of age until 60 and don't live longer than 120.
Combat tags should be ok...
TL groups are confusing, all I can remember to do is how to weight options comparitevly to others. Is adding other colors an option?

This is the first time I'm doing any kind of creature modding. I'm going to work on weapons soon as well, questions should be a lot less sparse afterwards.

Feel completely free to just throw a tutorial at my face, but please make sure it's somewhat direct/complete.

[smakemupagus]

%Body appearance numbers,
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Creature_token
cf. BODY_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER

% what can I add, is there a set table for appearance changing tags
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Creature_token
cf. BP_APPEARANCE_MODIFIER

% Is adding other colors an option?
yes, the list on http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Color under Color Tokens heading

[Tsuchigumo550]

You've done quite a bit to further this. I may have a full civ done within the weekend, even with how busy I'll be.

Armor/weapons testing might become a bitch real soon though. I'm going to try and explain this as best as I can...
On average, new weapons will outclass vanilla weapons. Some weapons are plainly better, but most are on par with better vanilla fare.

Armors should, and will, match this. I don't know much about what KINDS of armor I'll have, but I might do a lot of changing on the stuff that's already around.

Either way, the "classing" of weapons will bring about their own problems. If your first siege comes in before you can make the good stuff (custom workshops hint) and it has Kitsune tech, you'd better get some artillery up. In the same light, if you get all this stuff and no other siege does, it becomes more of a chore. Restock the beer barrel, attend party, kill the goblins, drink, create -bone mug-, attend party.

So then. Natural order says:
Goblins: Will not trade (already don't?) and will not be able to utilize Kitsune tech.
Infected: Scary enough little bastards on their own. They're not until a little later (guaranteed one gob siege before these)
Seraph: Not afraid to maul your shit with the best stuff around. They're pretty far in, I guess.

Kitsune tech's the most advanced stuff, but dwarves can match it as well, tech-wise. However, if the Ravi and Kitsune have a working relationship with trade and you piss the Ravi off, you're going to be fighting tanks in damn fine armor bashing brains out with trees.

Maybe if you got them mad at the elves...

*ahem*
It's time I make an official "what's done, what's being done, what's planned" list. See the first post if you aren't about to ninja it.

[Tsuchigumo550]

TL_GROUP is now a problem. I want "hair" to be refrenced as "fur" and a thin layer of "fur" to be above skin layer. I could trial-and-error my way though this but there's too much in the works now to test it as a single variable now, so that's a problem.

[TL_COLOR_MODIFIER:BLACK:1:GREY:1:SILVER:1:WHITE:1:CHESTNUT:1:RUSSET:1:BURNT_UMBER:1:TAUPE_MEDIUM:1:DARK_CHESTNUT:1:RUST:1:AUBURN:1:MAHOGANY:1:CHOCOLATE:1:TAUPE_PALE:1:TAUPE_DARK:1:DARK_PEACH:1:COPPER:1:PALE_BROWN:1:DARK_BROWN:1:SEPIA:1:BROWN:1:CINNAMON:1:RAW_UMBER:1:TAUPE_SANDY:1:GOLDENROD:1:AMBER:1:SAFFRON:1:GOLD:1:FLAX:1:GOLDEN_YELLOW:1:CREAM:1:IVORY:1]

That's the supposed fur colors available, but I've found multiple sections other than eyes asking for colors. Replace them all, or..?