Well, I have my modded creatures working in v40.03. The first thing they did after spawning was climb up a tree in fear. In short, they are acting like every other wild animal in the game
Parts of the mod will rely on DFHack to minimize reliance on boil-away stones, but I have a question about best practices when the mod is ready to share.
The mod will include its own building_, creature_, inorganic_, interaction_ and reaction_ raw files; a tiny graphics pack; a DFHack script; and a blurb of permitted buildings and reactions to be inserted into entity_default. There are two bits that tell me just a ZIP file won't cut it.
First, I'd rather not overwrite the player's entity_default file. It's unlikely that mine is the
only mod running on that machine.
Second, the inorganic_ file and graphics pack should be adjusted to match the player's settings. I think I can expect an ASCII purist using Vanilla to delete the creature graphics, but the inorganic_ file is more complicated. Several minerals are "hidden" and are supposed to blend in with the surrounding layer stone... but some graphics packs change the stone raws.
My current solution is to have the player use search-and-replace to pick the appropriate camouflage. For example:
[INORGANIC:HIDDEN CHERRY OPAL] Mimics rock salt.
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STONE_TEMPLATE]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:40]
[IS_GEM:hidden cherry opal:STP:OVERWRITE_SOLID]
(CLA)TILE_COLOR:7:7:1]
(CLA)TILE:'#']
(debug)TILE_COLOR:2:2:1]
(debug)TILE:42]
(Ironhand)TILE_COLOR:7:7:0]
(Ironhand)TILE:131]
(Mayday)TILE_COLOR:7:7:1]
(Mayday)TILE:28]
(Phoebus)[TILE_COLOR:7:4:1]
(Phoebus)[TILE:133]
(Spacefox)TILE_COLOR:7:4:1]
(Spacefox)TILE:133]
(Vanilla)TILE_COLOR:7:7:1]
(Vanilla)TILE:'#']
[BUILD_COLOR:4:7:1]
[BASIC_COLOR:4:1]
[ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:ROCK_SALT:CLUSTER_SMALL:100]
[SOLID_DENSITY:2115]
[STATE_COLOR:ALL_SOLID:CHESTNUT]
This will look like a rock salt tile until it is mined out, at least if you pick the right graphics set (the "debug" pack makes the tile stick out like a sore thumb). Under normal conditions it would be very hard to locate the hidden minerals even with DFHack's
prospect and
reveal commands, though the game will helpfully announce if you've struck hidden gems (valuable) or living stone (dangerous).
I think one cut-and-paste and a couple search-and-replaces are within the technical capabilities of anyone who'd download a small mod from the forum, but it just feels unfinished. Is anyone familiar with doing
sed-like file processing in DFHack? That would let me use one script to insert the entity tokens and adapt the inorganic_ file to any graphics set, even those not popular enough to be in the Starter Pack.
Edit: grammar
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Topic: [MODDING] 0.40.x QUESTIONS THREAD (Read 334929 times)