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[slay_mithos]

While we are on the water things, is it possible to force buildings to build with water higher than 1?
If not, it might make the whole water thing gets a bit of a hit, because any place where you will want to build anything can't be under water.

Would be sad, because the use of water makes it way harder to plan your base (or you'll have fun with flooding).
If the water actually provides a bonus while they are in it (like giving good thoughts?), it would make it challenging to have as much 3 water deep as possible without flooding or making your base into a maze.

[Meph]

I think you can build a building, then flood it to 1-3 levels of water while still be able to do reactions. But no, you cant build while the water is there. Still you can make buildings that give the worker an interaction with IN_WATER hint, which would mean that it only works if you set the building under water, then run the reaction.

I know you say now "wow, thats too much effort/complicated to do", but I think people will quickly adapt to that type of design/thinking.

For the IN_WATER, I actually thought that they should get faster and get some form of interaction-based attack. Maybe 1 ranged, 1 melee. It could simulate how Naga are natural swimmers and fight/move better in water than on land.

Ah, I love that entire concept way too much. ^^

[Eko]

I am exceedingly happy to announce that I have found the memory locations of both the check for water when placing a building, but also just last night, the block on building one.

I am working currently on bugfixing.  I did it in a rather ham-fisted way, changing a jne instruction to a je.  This could cause several unforseen bugs, so I'm working on playing a few games with different races to see if I can spot any other bugs before releasing memory locations.

There's also the other issue that I don't know how to correctly format the .diff file created by IDA for use by dfhack.  I'm reading the various lua and dll code to see if I can make one like that, but if not, I'll be at the mercy of someone else's help to get my diff added with binpatch. 

Work continues slowly on the buildings.  I've changed the alignment on some of the temples, so that they can either all circle a midpoint, or all radiate out.  I added another temple, one to Lamia, which will control Ice and Lightning.  I am thinking about the library system with the warlocks that all kinda fits together.  I want to make that a possibility without requiring it.  After all, the temples are 7x7, which makes for a massive complex dedicated to them (which is also kinda the way I feel it should be.  I see the Naga being very temple focused.  Perhaps not in gameplay, but in my vision of their society).

Once this is done, I've designed 23 buildings.  I think I'll start fleshing out reactions and material raws next, to have a goal of an alpha soon™.

[Samarkand]

I know you say now "wow, thats too much effort/complicated to do", but I think people will quickly adapt to that type of design/thinking.

For my part, I think buildings which required being in water to function would offer a unique design challenge that would be enjoyable. I'm sure there'd be lots of creative solutions that would be interesting to implement and improve upon.

[dukea42]

I'm waiting to test your Alpha. This all sounds very cool and I am already designing canal cities in my head.

Are they an underground race or some balance in between?

[Eko]

Update -

Let me start off by saying that the machina lua file by IndigoFenix (?, at least that's who I think did it...) is brilliant.  I have learned more from that one script than I have anything else I've studied.  As a result, I'm re-writing a number of my scripts to be more efficient.  I still think my habitation module is going to be a pain in the FPS, but we'll see in the alpha. 
I have a severe problem with feature creep.  When creating reactions the other day, I had an idea, and stopped doing everything else, just so I could spitball and proof of concept the code.  I need to stop doing that and just focus on getting this out the door, and then refining from there.  In unrelated news, the tiles in workshops will hopefully change depending on what is attached to them...
I've created some new materials.  I had a hard decision to make here, and I'm still not sure I chose the right one.  I kinda want every metal to have a "boosted" version.  That said, I'm going almost fully towards being as straightforward and uncomplicated as possible.  That is to say, I want to extend the functionality of DF, but not add any more reasonable complexity.  I want it to be intuitive what does what, and I don't want anyone to have to study material charts to divine a best course of action.  What I've come up with is a series of materials. 
Basically, you drop metal bars into a coral bed.  This starts a reaction that initially does nothing.  After about a season, maybe less, another reaction is queued at the coral bed, and out comes a bar with encrusted coral on it.  This can then be worked in the steel forge for a metal+ item.  So a sword that is encrusted before it is worked will have a bleed syndrome attached to the blade, and armor forged with the encrusted bars will have a spray attack that damages enemies attacking the user.  I was planning on initially only giving the same metal back as dropped in, but then I started to think more about tiers. 
So copper, bronze, brass bars will all come out as an iron grade type. 
I can't decide what to do with Iron, but I was thinking that was kinda in between tiers... 
Steel, mithril, wolfram and orichalcum (they will be trading with orcs... maybe...) will come out as that tier+ grade metals. 

• Steel will be an all-around metal but good for most things
• mithril will come out as a good light and edged metal for blades and armor
• wolfram will be the heavier mace and strong fighter armor (more protection than mithril)
• orichalcum will be great for arrows  (not expecting much more use out of this, it will be difficult to obtain [you can't smelt it yourself, so you have to trade for it]). 

That's still several more materials than I really wanted to make, so my question to people is - is it worth it?

Should I instead just allow for the encrusting of coral onto a finished metal item and giving it the syndrome?  Is that enough?  Seems to be much more simple, which is what I want, but is it "different" enough?
One of the biggest things I need done before alpha is sorting out my diff patch to enable water building.  If anyone has experience creating dif files from IDA, I'd really love some help.  Details in spoiler - 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Two things need to be changed -

Code: [Select]

F7 C1 00 00 20 00 75 1C F6 C1
A9 00 00 20 00 75 19 A8 01Changed to:

Code: [Select]

F7 C1 00 00 20 00 74 1C F6 C1
A9 00 00 20 00 74 19 A8 01Basically just escaping the loop for checking water height, and instead of returning if not zero, return if zero.  I have tested, and this has no ill effects that I have seen, other than voiding all the water in any tile of a building when its built, which can be a problem with water flowing over the building as soon as its built. 

Still, I created this in IDA:

Code: [Select]

Dwarf Fortress.exe
00E4454E: 75 74
00E73033: 75 74which was the offset that IDA gave those two AoBs, but the patcher won't accept that dif file, so I don't know what I did wrong.

Last, I've done some more thinking on the workshops and designs.  I've created two "pipe" tiles for the addons, and I plan on adding those to a larger override file for TwbT, once I get further along.  I've also decided to implement a more robust upgrade plan, and have an idea to have very few initial buildings, and do most of the diversity through upgrades.  So you'll build a temple, and upgrade it to the various specialized ones.  Similar for forges and what I'm calling quality of life buildings.  I haven't decided on a good name for the base, but that will upgrade to the kelp pond, the grotto, and maybe another building for replacing exterior jobs. 

To answer dukea42, this is definitely an underground race.  I think it would be very challenging to do an aboveground fort.  I plan on using DFhack to its fullest extent to make aboveground living difficult.  But that is an "extra", not something that I'll be doing for the alpha.

[Meph]

This sounds amazing. You just came out of nowhere and started writing complex dfhack stuff and came up with a beautiful design for a race, which wasnt even in the talks of being a playable module. Respect.

IndigoFenix is indeed the author of machina.

I kinda want every metal to have a "boosted" version.

Please dont. It would make stockpile lists and forge menues twice as long, even for other races that dont have access to it. Go with itemsyndromes or addspatter. It might be harder to micromanage for Naga players (or you write a better script, I think you should ask omniclasm about his unfinished poison cover script), but it wouldnt clutter other game modes. That being said, 1 or 2 new metals are ok, so if you want a special coral metal, go for it.

If you have a list of raw-only features, I am sure people can take some of the workload of you, for example I can write these things in my sleep by now.

[Eko]

Excellent point on the stockpiles.  I didn't even think about that.  I'm not a big custom stockpile person anyway, so I doubt even if I had tested it I would have noticed it as an issue.

Ok, syndrome/poison for all then.  I looked up omniclasm's poison cover idea, and I like it, but I have to do some thinking on how I want to implement that.  I have a few ideas, but I'll work on that later (much later, once I get a good foundation done).  I might have a better solution than adding a new metal, so I'll work with that, but it means adding in several new inorganics for triggering hack scripts.  Just a tradeoff I think, but I'll investigate other ways of doing it later.

Raw only features?  Well, I think one of the things I don't have much ambition/intention of fine-tuning is weapons.  I think there are too many already, but at the same time, a naga without a trident is...  not a naga.  Tridents and Naganitas (get it?  Naga-nita?  Yeah, I know, it was horrible) I think of as being quintessential naga-ish weapons.  Basically any polearm I think, but those two are prime in my mind.  Adding others wouldn't be very practical.  I plan on having a focus for magic users, something like a coral harp-like shield item as well.  This is something I want to be able to be any material though, so a wood harp would work just as well. 

If those three things sound like something you could do in your sleep, it would help out a lot.  If I can think of any easy to explain other items before I post my next update (probably next week), I'll mention them then.

Thanks for the kind words.  I've been a lurker for a while, and I've been playing masterwork since kobolds were added, so I've been here, just never posting until now.  Glad you're enjoying the process!

[Meph]

Trident, Naginatas, and a Harp-Shield with itemsyndrome. I can do that.

Btw, its Naginata, not Naganita, not sure if that was intended for the pun or not.

Would a Sai fit as well, and a Wakisashi? Wakisashi could be their dagger, katana their short sword, and dai-katana the long sword. Sai could be "left sai", a weapon and "right sai", a shield. Could have a interaction that adds a second melee attack now and then to stagger the enemy, to make it more different from a normal shield.

Samurai armor as well? I just looked it up, the japanese names are pretty cryptic. I think people understand katanas, but kabuto, kote,  menpo or suneate and sode... thats a lot to memorize for the different armor parts. I am not even sure how your Naga handle pants and shoes, or if a upper-body armor is enough. I would need the creature file for that, but if they dont wear pants they might not wear lower-body armor, which might be a big drawback in combat.

There were also paper armors used by them, which is an interesting idea.

Not sure if I am going too far into japanese style here, let me know what you think. If its ok, I can do these items for you.

[slay_mithos]

For the trident, is it feasible to make it do the three pierces?

As for armours, I remember reading a long time ago about the ability to make it protect specific body parts (like a breastplate that protects the legs).
If it was a thing, it might be possible to make a special type of breastplate that also covers the snake-like part of the body, right?

[dukea42]

Need a starting workshop (like human's block cutter) that makes wooden supplies for mechanisms, pumps and pipes, and floodgates - all at a good volume per log. Call it a "canal works" maybe?  Water engineering sounds like it's extremely important.

[snowhusky5]

This sounds pretty cool. If you want coral-encrusted items, you could also try doing something similar to dwarven rune engraving system. And yes, I do agree that Naga should move fast underwater, and considerably slower on dry land. In fact, pretty much all of the ideas in this thread sound unique and great XD

One thing you might want to think about is both a waterproof door, even when opened, and a water-permeable door, for bedrooms and such. For forts with staircases, the waterproof door would be essential to not getting the staircases and lower levels flooded with 7/7 water. Not as essential on 'flat' forts, however, if those even exist. Waterproof staircases would also work, or something that would get rid of 4/7 or above levels of water.

The idea of fire(and magma?)-proof salamanders is certainly a good one as well. This race could become very versatile, what with aquatic, venomous, and/or fiery variants ;P

It's a pity that embarking on an ocean beach causes so much lag.

Where can I see the 'machina' script being talked about above, or some other DFHack scripts? I kind of have an idea that would require DFHack, but have no idea how to make scripts and stuff that would interface with it, although I could figure out the actual Lua.

[slay_mithos]

To encrust with coral, you only need to make corals "gems", the gem cut and gem decoration will work like a charm.

As for stairs, you could very well, separate your stairway from your actual flooded spaces by having those spaces 1 z-level lower than their stair access, and connect it via a ramp.
By alternating the "ramp" sides (up-down and left-right), you can keep things nearly as compact as with a normal dwarven fort.

I am pretty sure that there are other tricks like that too.

Machina script is in your v6 (and 6.1) install, under "Dwarf Fortress\hack\scripts", calles machina.lua. open it with any raw text editor (notepad, or any other you installed, just not word and other programs that handle presentation)

[Meph]

Coral is actually a hardcoded material, like glass. I think you could already use it in the gemcutter, but there is not way of getting coral atm.

Slay_mithos, I think he meant encrusting it with coral to give it different stats/abilities. Using the jeweler wont affect this, it would only raise the value.

One thing you might want to think about is both a waterproof door, even when opened, and a water-permeable door, for bedrooms and such.

This is impossible. Not even dfhack added new furniture so far.

I embarked on an ocean with my human testforts, played 4 years, never dropped below 150FPS. Are you sure oceans cause lag? They should work like a magma-lake, not like a river.

[Baffler]

It's actually beaches that cause lag, because of the waves. They cut my FPS almost in half right off the bat.

Anyway, this sounds really awesome. It's a shame it doesn't work underwater though. Actually, if these buildings have to be built in the water, how will we access them? Do civ members no longer refuse to path through water?