I think you may be falling in the trap you trying to avoid, too many leather types.
Not necessarily. After all, these would be 3 or 4 additional types of standard generic leather that account for a number of creatures that might otherwise either be (a) folded into plain generic or (b) each kept as a specifically-named sort of leather. They would do it without that list bloat, while still allowing for gradations of value among generic leathers. Really, just a different name scheme for the the generic "rare" and "exotic" leather types seen in other mods.
Because, as someone noted, having all, value-2 leathers (elk, bobcat, black bear, etc.) folded into generic leather abandons that whole layer of distinction represented by MULTIPLY_VALUE:2, which is not really the goal so much as eliminating redundant overdistinction.
That's the idea behind it, anyway.
Of course, the SKIN_TOUGH/SKIN_DISTINCTIVE route -- in other words, just picking the most distinctive animals and making them GMFR leathers -- is definitely a pretty natural solution. I can see the mountain leather/deep leather/etc. route being meh-unappealing, but I don't see it proliferating where it should be cleaning up. It still seems to retain both simplicity (3 additional types of leather instead of 20) and value-granularity (allowing value 2 and 3 generic leathers). (Although I'm fuzzy-headed at the moment, so I might not be thinking it through...)
Having mountain leather, savanna ect seems like you fell back into the too specific for leather. Think of if a peasant saw this leather at a market... How would he know its mountain leather?
I see what you're saying. That argument cuts quite a bit further than that, though, and favors even broader genericization, though, because the other side of that coin is... how would
any but the most visually-distinctive leathers be distinguishable to your average peasant? As you say, special visually-obvious ones (ostrich, alligator, crundle, etc.) would, but deer, bear, wolf, etc. probably wouldn't. Even lion/tiger leather, since the fur would be removed and the leather made to look like other types (unless there's some visual distinction I'm unaware of).
So... that criterion would essentially dismiss the bulk of the value 2-3 leathers as indistinguishable from generic, and eliminate their reason to be specifically-named at all.
If I'm not mistaken, wouldn't creating differing ANIMAL, ANIMAL_VAL2, ANIMAL_VAL3 creatures with multipliers just do the same without visually-noticeable name change? It's either populating the stocks list with additional leathers at the material template level, or secondarily at the creature variation level, but either way it's more leather types on the stocks list, if I am understanding correctly.
This method, though, I'm kind of wanting to avoid. If at all possible, I want to create only one spoof [CREATURE:ANIMAL] on the creatures list because I really hate seeing false entries on dwarves' preferences -- just me, really, but that spoils it for me. So I want to keep it stastically extremely unlikely that Urist is going to "like for its ". (Or "like tough for its .")
For dragons, snakes, pond grabbers, they possibly could so it could justify them having a special leather. To make it more valuable just add the material multiplier tag in their definition. That should be fine.
Right. Ones that don't use the generic leather material reaction products would be fine, since the value multiplier would do everything we need done. Again, if I'm understanding everything correctly.
As far as special fur you could have 3 tiers:
skin_fur_special_template: tier 1, animal-specific. This would be used by wolves, cheeta, rabbit ect.
skin_fur_tough_template: tier 2, animal-specific. Thick, matted or tough fur (could be named: 'pelts'). This would be used by trolls, cavern critters, or more monstrous (not-necessarily mundane) above ground creatures.
skin_fur_beast_template: tier 3, animal-specific. Another thing that could be named 'pelt' to differentiate it from normal furs. This I would apply to things like griffins, FBs, Titans, or other mythical furred creatures.
The third category seems a little messy, but the other two are close to what I have in mind.
With my research I found that studded leather actually didn't exist as far as armor. Mostly they would layer scales or pieces of metal and produces scalemail instead.
Huh. I had no idea. I always thought it seemed weird. To hell with studded leather then! But maybe brigandine... anyway, that's another matter.
The way I produced boiled (or cured leather) is to take a blob of wax or oil at a kitchen, an unit of any leather and produce a unit of boiled leather. It doesn't have a name or other reaction it just produces a unit of leather with the BOILED_LEATHER_TEMPLATE. . . .
Cool! Sounds interesting. Yeah, I think perhaps just generic boiled leather might be the best way of it.
Incidentally, my quick searching fit your thing about studded leather inspired took me to some links that suggested that even boiled wax-leather might not have been how they did it, although it does make wax useful.
One guy seems to suggest that it might have been, literally, just water-boiled leather (done at certain temperature), and that wax-boiled leather might have made it
less resistant to shearing damage. The water-boiled leather would be more resistant, but more brittle, requiring fairly frequent replacement of lamellae.
You could do that but for things like cavern critters with shells and such I would have that tough_carapace template. With the above materials it keeps the caverns dangerous to explore [ . . . ]
I like it better that way, myself. I'm currently working on tweaking physical characteristic values for the different materials, so I'll have a much better idea of how to distribute them once I get that done.
(I'm currently going through Arkhometha's material properties research, implementing them, and also doing some of my own tweaks. Which was on the drawing board, not mission creep, in this case. :p)
The only other thing I could think of after all the skins and bones would be fangs. 3 versions normal, tough, and mythical for beasts and such should be sufficient.
That does make sense. They should definitely be more competitive.
I could provide you with the boiled leather reactions and materials if you wish to use in your mod. Good luck!
Sure... I'd like to see them. Thanks again for the in-depth feedback! I should have something to show pretty soon.
EDIT: Argh, I hate accidentally clicking save.