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Merging of all Raw Sets.

Cleanup and Naming schemes for Raws.

Playable Human Civ(s)

Warlock Additions

Manual Improvements

Online presentation

Overhaul of MDF races

Playable Insect Swarm Civ (Xelics)

Other (please post details/suggestions)

[Meph]

A bit of background info first: Last year I did a fundraiser in the MDF community. I offered to mod a month fulltime on a race of your choice, and the Warlocks are the result. 750$ had been collected and a few months later I made a poll to see if interest on a second project like this exists.

The poll was very favourable, and this year I will do my second Df modding fundraiser. I have been away from my PC for a total of three months, but I have read all reports and suggestions in the meantime. In one month from today I should be back in business, and regardless of any fundraising or not, will sink a lot of time in modding projects. I plan to buy a new PC as well, and I assume that I will finish 1-2 projects before the fundraiser finishes, and with it I will be able to put another month into this and finish 1-2 more projects. One way or another, I do have a long list of wanted features for MDF.

The rules of the fundraiser are simple: I will post all incoming donations periodically on Facebook/Reddit, and offer a poll with projects anyone can vote on. It has a starting and end date, will probably be open for 2-3 months (?), and will use Paypal to donate. The last time I also got one direct bank transfer and one bitcoin transaction, but please let me know by PM of such things.

I know that money is a touchy matter on this board. I will just use it to cover my living expenses, as I am a freelance worker and if I put a month into DF, I cant work otherwise. Toady One/Tarn Adams himself is ok with this idea, as long as I keep the actual process not on Bay12. Thats why all infos on the donations will appear on Facebook and Reddit.

For those that are still sceptical: I am honestly not making any profit from this. The last month I got 25$, the month before 10$ and the month before 20$. Minus the Paypal fee and the conversion into Euros. The goal of this is not to become rich, but allow a way faster modding process. It is quite unique in PC Gaming Modding and I want to thank you for the opportunity and  the support.
The links:
Donate on Paypal
The fundraiser:
Open from today, 5th May - 750$ Goal - till 5th July. (2 months were the time the goal was reached in the first fundraiser.)
The proposed projects:
 - Merging all Raw-sets into one.
 - The mod has 15 tilesets and raw sets. It makes it larger, the launcher slower and invites bugs, due to some sets being edited and the others not. Merging them will allow a smaller filesize, several hundret files less for the GUI to search through and less bug, as well as an easier way to install new tilesets.
 - Cleanup of Raws.
 - Urist McTeellox has a nice script that finds unused entries, and Splinterz altered the GUI in a way that allows more freedom in naming schemes and raw order. With more and more other modders, like Boltgun and IndigoFenix, modding plugins for MDF, it is almost a necessity to remove modding leftovers from the last 2,5 years and experiments, as well as sort and properly name the rest. It will reduce the chance for bugs, makes the game slightly faster, stockpile lists shorter and eases the way for other modders to contribute. (Putnam for example had to abandon  the playable Drow plugin, because of the chaos in the current raws.)
 - Multi-ethical playable Human Civ
 - A new playable race aimed at newer players. Warlocks and Gnomes are interesting, but so alien to normal DF that they are hard to learn and master. For the humans I plan an easier approach with well known features, lots of trading and a basis that lies in RL cultures. The forum discussion is ongoing about it, but my current idea are 4 sub-groups: Northerners (Celtic/Vikings), Easterners (Arabic/Ottoman Empire), Southerners (Greek/Roman Legion) and Westerners (Medieval Knights/Castles, Frech/Briton/German style). All four civs would use the same basis, and only one will be active by default, but people could play as whichever they like best. More details about this can be found in the other forum threads about the idea.
 - A large Warlock Update
 - Warlocks have seen the most player feedback of all races lately, and many suggestions have been collected. Dozens of new castes, features and possibly workshops are planned, as well as rebalancing existing features based on player feedback. Not as large as the other projects, but more complex.
 - Manual Improvements
 - Always high on the wanted-lists by the community, the current manual is yet again partly outdated and needs more love. While I personally see this more as a chore than anything else, if you think this warrants more attention than other points, vote for it and I will work on it. Community feedback is extremely important on this topic, as I often misjudge what should warrant an entry in the manual and which parts are obvious.
 - Online Presentation
 - Yes, this takes work as well. The sub-forum is quite full, the release post outdated, the content repository needs more links to fitting threads, there is no clear rule on Community forts (they are randimly posted in the MDF board and/or the CommunityFort board, and the Gnomes certainly should get more attention than they currently have. The same is true for the Succubi, which are awaiting the officisl transition into the mod... which requires new threads, logos, html-manual. All in all not as large a project as others, but several days of work for sure.
 - Overhaul of MDF races
 - Similar to the Fortress Defence races, I would like to add more MDF races. 6 groups with 3 civs each are planned. Civilized (Dwarves, Elves, Humans), Warmongers (Goblins, Orcs, Drow), Wild (Centauren, Naga, Werewolves), Evil (Automatons, Frost Giants, Succubi), Caverns (Xelics/Insectrace, Blind Troglodytes, Elementalmen), and Skulking (Kobolds, Shades, Nightcreatures). Gnomes and Warlocks stand outside these groups as they are inactive and only interact with other races by choice. For example Dwarves will never get a Gnome caravan, except if the specifically call for one.

I want to note that this will be less work than it might seem, as the proposed races are non-playable. Only graphics, creatures and entity file needs to be done, similar to how Fortress Defense works. (Evil twins, Chaos dwarves, Ashlander elves, deep drow and human bandits would be removed. We wouldnt need cheap copies if we replace them with more unique civs.

A bit more info on the new races:
- Naga are early-level siegers Snakemen, with natural scale-armor and poisonous bite.
- Centaures are grazing mid-level siegers, fast but only use wooden weapons.
- Werewolves are late-level ambushers/siegers, with natural claws and healing through transformation. They are weak against silver.
- Blind Trogs are early-level cavern ambushers, with rusty metal gear. With no eyesight they allow dwarves to sneak by.
- Elementalmen are mid-level cavern siegers with natural armor and a few combat interactions. :-
- Xelics are a late-level cavern sieger with natural chitin armor and many different insect types as castes. Essentially an upgrade to Antmen, that allows more different insects in one civ.
- Shades are late-level thieves like kobolds (only arrive one at a time), but either insta-kill units and disappear, or possess units. The friendly possessed unit would summon a larger shade army inside your fort at a later time, if not stopped. (for example by high-priests or shamans)
- Nightcreatures are mid-level thieves like kobolds (only arrive one at a time), but would be strong fighters and represent all kinds of monsters. The current fort mode never shows any Nightcreatures, so I would use this way to get them into fort mode. Night hags and Shade trolls could finally arrive at the fort and steal, kill or kidnap children.

Feedback on these are more than welcome, as these have not been discussed by the community. Many races use natural weapons and armor as you might have noticed, to keep the overall item amount low, to help FPS.
 - Playable Xelix Race
 - Personal pipedream of me: A complex mixed insect swarm race. Antmen plus Tyranids plus Zerg Swarm plus Anything creepy crawley. Not much thought spend on it so far. Just putting it out there.
 - Other
 - Obviously everyone will have specific things he would like to see more than other things, so if you have something very specific, please post it. It might as well find its way into my to-do list.

[zach123b]

xelix as playable: can they have metamorphosis buildings? like have a unit try to build a building and have a dfhack script see it and transform the unit into an immobile turret or something
can you force pregnancy through dfhack? would be awesome for a queen ant or a hatchery
what about a tech tree of some sort for exoskeleton and endoskeleton?

the raws getting fixed would be more important imo, easier on other modders

[Remuthra]

Those Xelix sound like the Shedim from LFR, which are really fun as a concept. I shall watch.

[GunnerX]

Some tweaks to bone usage following up the stack fix might be nice.  My current orc fort is just drowning in them.  It can take a month to atom smash the excess after a siege, and that's just so I can go raid again.  It isn't so bad with dwarves, but between normal sieges and livestock controll it's still a fulltime job offering them to armok.

[Isngrim]

- Playable Xelix Race
 - Personal pipedream of me: A complex mixed insect swarm race. Antmen plus Tyranids plus Zerg Swarm plus Anything creepy crawley. Not much thought spend on it so far. Just putting it out there.

ive been thinking of doing this one for a while.is there a working multispecies civ plugin for dfhack?

[Meph]

If by multispecies you mean several creatures in one civ, than no. I would use castes,.transformations and intelligent pets.

[Isngrim]

yea thats what i meant,i was hopeing there was,so you could have a Forager antman creature,and a Army antman creature living in the same fort.how does different castes,each with its own required food type,so your Army caste needs meat,your forager can live off meat or fungi,a herder cast might heat honeydew from Giant Aphids.and each would have its own role in the hive.hmmm,since i havent played warhammer or starcraft im not sure how to work in Tyranids or Zerg

[Meph]

I personally would cram it full of zerg stuff, because calling me a Starcraft fan wouldnt be wrong. I brainstormed features for a full Starcraft mod once, but decided it would be too much work.

[MDFification]

Those Xelix sound like the Shedim from LFR, which are really fun as a concept. I shall watch.

I think it's cool that the Xelics, a species made up by a Bay12 modder and not ripped from generic fantasy, could become featured in multiple mods. That for me would be the coolest thing ever.
Assuming that Meph means Xelics as in the Xelics from civilization forge, and didn't just misspell a suspiciously similar name in the poll.

[Alexander86]

Donated $25 Meph, wish i could give more. Masterwork is my favorite mod literally of all time and I've been modding since the 90s, thanks for all your hard work

[sjohne]

Halleluja! The King is back! 

Come on guys he's not asking for much and the work put in the mod so far clearly deserves at least some mugs of coffee.

I personally would vote for more dwarf stuff. I enjoyed playing the other races but seem to come back to the little fellows... and as deep and complex as they are already - it would be amazing if they were even more mind-boggling and FUN!

Thanks Meph and welcome back from your bike trip.

[Meph]

Halleluja! The King is back! 

Come on guys he's not asking for much and the work put in the mod so far clearly deserves at least some mugs of coffee.

I personally would vote for more dwarf stuff. I enjoyed playing the other races but seem to come back to the little fellows... and as deep and complex as they are already - it would be amazing if they were even more mind-boggling and FUN!

Thanks Meph and welcome back from your bike trip.

*cough spain *cough madrid *cough not yet back.

I am just preparing for my return. Europe has so much more internet than Africa that I come here more often and start doing all these suggestion and idea collections. But in a month I should be back, and in two months when this fundraiser stops I will be back for sure. Its less than 3000km from here.

Xelics: Yes, CivForge Xelics, the invading race would be similar to them. But obviously a playable race would start to differ, because CivForge has no playable Xelics.

I am surprised by the leading items on the poll.

Dwarven Content: Minor updates for all races will be done anyway, I did not put that on the list. The new invaders would surely affect dwarves. But tell me, what would you suggest for dwarves? There have been no new ideas posted for them in a while.

Alexander: Thank you.

GunnerX: You are saying that butchering sentient will result in too many stacks of bones? The amount is the same as before... But I can see how stockpiling and hauling can be a lot more work.

[IndigoFenix]

How about this: make the Xelic race specialize in biological engineering, like the formics/buggers from the Ender series.  Let them alter their own strength and intelligence based on the food they produce.  Instead of weapons and armor, they can develop metallic claws and exoskeletons.  Instead of poison coated arrows, let them produce poison spit.  This can be done through workshops that produce syndrome causing food.  Or, to make it more interesting, have them develop syndromes naturally based on their conditions (presence of enemies, overcrowding, parties can indicate overall colony well-being, etc.)

Also, they should probably be small in size, so they can use strength in numbers.

[Meph]

How about this: make the Xelic race specialize in biological engineering, like the formics/buggers from the Ender series.  Let them alter their own strength and intelligence based on the food they produce.  Instead of weapons and armor, they can develop metallic claws and exoskeletons.  Instead of poison coated arrows, let them produce poison spit.  This can be done through workshops that produce syndrome causing food.  Or, to make it more interesting, have them develop syndromes naturally based on their conditions (presence of enemies, overcrowding, parties can indicate overall colony well-being, etc.)

Also, they should probably be small in size, so they can use strength in numbers.

That all sounds amazing and at the sane time shows why I said that they would be the most complex project.

[Isngrim]

maybe make them like the geth,so the larger the population,the faster the Xelic race learn skills?
also would the tyranids you mentioned be a rare/genetically engineered caste or a pet of some type?