Current Status
Update June 17, 2015So, due to some RL unpleasantness, this got put aside for a couple of years, with enough research completed to come up with some preliminary numbers. I'm sort of eyeing it again. At bare minimum, I'm going to link the research notes and spreadsheet in a Google spreadsheet here in the OP for others to use. More ideally, I'd like to realize this and get it usable, but I need to get up to speed and see how things have changed since 40.xx.
Overall, the project is still in mid-WIP stage. I have done quite a bit of research, and came up with workable material templates for almost all relevant materials back in the days of 34.11.
Project Goals
LINK: Materials Spreadsheet (Google spreadsheet -- open to commenting)LINK: Notes and References on Material Physical Characteristics (Google doc -- open to commenting)The purpose of this project is to create a mod that achieves the following:
- Introduces meaningful difference between the skins and hides of different animals, such that rhino hide or dragonskin are substantially more protective than, say, deer leather or elfskin.
- Does the same for bones, teeth, claws, nails, and horns.
- Where appropriate, makes it possible to choose to make either leather or fur.
- Sets up a unified and elegant system of tiered gradations of creature skins* and hard body parts** that:
- eliminates many redundant, less interesting, or inappropriate leathers;
- makes special leathers stand out more, whether because they are more protective or because they are unique or creepy;
- presents itself tightly in-game, with no immersion-breaking workaroundiness;
- and is content-neutral and vanilla-flavored, with as few subjective design decisions as possible, so as to be broadly useful and easily-integrated (relatively, anyway) into other more comprehensive mods.
- Introduces reworked biomechanical physics stats (density, torsion, impact, shear, etc. values) based on researched real-world data for all affected materials, adjusting as necessary for playability and for the game's own quirks (e.g., accurate specific heat values won't work right in DF).
What this first part means, essentially, is we should not see "cow leather" or "one-humped camel leather," and certainly not "blue jay leather" or "worm leather," because those just aren't that interesting (and in the latter cases don't make sense).
But we will still see specific names for almost everything that is more interesting for one reason or another: "elf skin," "cat skin," "tiger leather," "elephant hide," "beaver fur," "sharkskin," "dragonskin" and so on. Likewise, carapace will be renderable into chitin, properly renamed in its body-part form, and only the more fantastical insects/athropods/crustaceans (think larger than man-sized) should have carapaces that can be turned into armorable chitin.
* Skins, hides, scales, and chitins, and their associated tanning products, including the possibility to make either fur and leather from any specific furred skin.
** Bones, teeth, claws, nails, horns and hooves.My work here has drawn on Deon's Genesis, Meph's Masterwork DF, Veok's Standardized Leather Mod, Lofn's tanning mods, and a few other mods, but also relies to a great deal on some rather tedious research of my own into engineering, scientific and medical sources available online.
Concerns and Wrinkles to ConsiderThe proposed system departs from vanilla in a few important ways:
1) Physics values for organic materials are pretty radically changed, albeit in the same spirit as vanilla DF -- using real-world physics data as much as possible. I've done quite a bit of research (mostly medical and engineering sources you can find on the internets), and, along with the grateful use of Arkhometha's research, I've been able to find some respectable values for skin, bone, leather, chitin etc. to use as a basis for the corresponding game materials.
It's hard to find good data on how these numbers are reflected in actual gameplay, so they may be considered experimental. Nonetheless, I think it's about time to put some more accurate real-world numbers into those fields, and if it works well, it should be that much more awesome. I'll definitely need the help of !!SCIENTISTS!! with testing this part, and there should be some pretty entertaining results as they're fine-tuned.
This means that the tougher beasties may be a bit more Fun than they were before. But it also means that the leather from those special beasties can make some considerably decent armor.
2) Body part and creature raws have to be changed to conform to the system (mainly because of the reason in (3) below). Quite a bit of tedious work. And, to be compatible, any creatures added will have to be adjusted accordingly.
3) There are quite a few categories ("body parts") of skin, bone, etc. now, making for a extra complexity at the level of designing creatures , but it should be easily manageable with reference to the spreadsheet.
Development Plan and Progressnot updated since 2013 -- will updated once I've refamiliarized- Research physical data on skin and leather; come up with plausible physics values and scheme for quality gradation to try out: Done. But refiguring some things now that we have a more sensible understanding of the physics values (particularly strain at yield). Going a bit slow because redoing documentation extensively.
- Material templates for all grades of skin, tanned leather, scale and carapace materials: Done.
- Material templates for all grades of bone, tooth, nail/claw, and horn materials: 70% done, in progress. (Refiguring some things since I got a better handle on what the different physics values mean, both real-world and in-game.)
- Tanning/cleaning reactions: Done.
- Body detail plans: Done.
- Tissue templates: Halted until material templates finished; then I'll get back to trying to determine differentiating features between selected body space and hole in ground.
- Misc. supporting stuff -- false creature entry, civ permissions list: Not started yet.
- Updating all vanilla creatures to use appropriate skin, bone and tooth types: Not started yet.
- Documentation and instructions for making animals compliant: Not started yet.
- Test and refine physics values: Not started yet. Maybe you can help!
A preview of the overall scheme can be seen in the first 'reply' post below.
Whatever I produce is intended to be freely available for any use whatsoever without permission or credit.
Comments, criticism and advice toward meeting that goal are all very welcome.[/list]
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Topic: [WIP] Unified Skin, Leather and Bone Mod (Read 3246 times)