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[Thundercraft]

Question:

In b_detail_plan_default.txt, under [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS], this 1 line was changed from (0.43.05 vanilla):
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:ARG3:5:ARG2:6:ARG1:50]
to (Taffer's Modest 0.43.05):
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:ARG3:50:ARG2:5:ARG1:1]

This seems new as I could not find such a modification in the official 0.42.06 Modest. I can only guess, but: Does the above change make it more difficult for vertibrates to easily die from a blow to the head?

Edit: Ah, I see that this came from DF Wanderer.

[Taffer]

Question:

In b_detail_plan_default.txt, under [BODY_DETAIL_PLAN:VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS], this 1 line was changed from (0.43.05 vanilla):
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:ARG3:5:ARG2:6:ARG1:50]
to (Taffer's Modest 0.43.05):
[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:ARG3:50:ARG2:5:ARG1:1]

This seems new as I could not find such a modification in the official 0.42.06 Modest. I can only guess, but: Does the above change make it more difficult for vertibrates to easily die from a blow to the head?

Edit: Ah, I see that this came from DF Wanderer.

Yes, exactly. I didn't document that change well enough, but I've always found head blows in vanilla to be odd. I'd forgotten if that particular fix came from DF Wanderer or Grimlocke's mod (or both), but between that, the unarmed attack velocity reduction, the removal of NAIL_SCRATCH_ATTACK, the tweaks to healing/tissues, and the modest bodies readability tweak, unarmed combat ought to be much more reasonable now.

I'm interested in hearing if testing supports this theory or not: it did in my testing, but I'm deferring a little to Deon and Grimlocke's expertise here. In my current game, a little dwarven girl still managed to punch a blind cave ogre in the throat so hard he threw up and ended up passing out, so there's definitely still interesting moments. At least she didn't kill him in one punch or something: odd even for an adult, let alone a child.

[Taffer]

I found a Modest Mod issue with the [REACTION_CLASS:NOT_MAGMA_SAFE] and [REACTION_CLASS:MAGMA_SAFE] additions to stones.

When I embark in vanilla DF with something like orthoclase, I can immediately build a mason workshop out of it and then proceed to build rock blocks. With Modest Mod installed, it won't recognize my orthoclase and complains that I need "non-economic stone". This forces me to build my mason workshop out of something else, then scroll to the bottom of the mason menu to use the new magma-safe and non-magma-safe menus. Worse, I'm unable to make rock mechanisms for the same reason. This occurs with the official Modest Mod in 0.42.06 as well as my cleaned versions until now.

I've fixed this issue in my Modest Mod and Modest Wanderer mods by ripping the magma-safe and non-magma-safe reactions out (deleted reaction_modest_magmasafety.txt, use vanilla inorganic_stone_layer.txt and inorganic_stone_mineral.txt, and remove new reactions from entity_default.txt), but I'd like to be able to restore them if possible.

Perhaps this is a known issue? Not being able to make mechanisms and use the generic masonry menu for some stones seems like a fairly serious problem though, and not worth the additional magma-
safe/non-magma-safe menus.

EDIT: I reorganized the bullet points in my changelist, added a "last updated" line to it and Modest Wanderer, and also added the following fix:

• Dwarves, elves, and goblins will no longer scratch or bite people in combat. This fix was inspired by Stal's Armoury Pack.

This is in line with my removal of NAIL_SCRATCH_ATTACK. While this is another one of my additions--and I'm wary of making too many of them--their inclusion in the base game is silly, and this should add to the growing pile of little tweaks to make combat more pleasant. Biting people in combat is rarely an effective tactic for humans, nor one employed by sane people.

I'll probably split this and Modest Wanderer into a new thread if I don't hear from Button and Deon within the next week or so. I haven't forgotten my creature descriptions, but I got really burnt out on writing them: I discovered that I'd made some wrong assumptions about the anatomy of some of the animal people and fixing things required yet another rewrite of many of the files, so I've sworn them off for now. When I have the energy to revisit them I will do so, and integrate them into my Modest and Modest Wanderer forks.

[Button]

/pokes her head around the corner

Oh hi everybody.

I'm glad you picked this up, Taffer - I kept telling myself that I'd get back to the Modest Mod when I got back to Dwarf Fortress, and I'd get back to Dwarf Fortress when Therapist was ready for 64-bit. Then there were staff changes at work, I had to juggle vacation hours around to accommodate the new boss's priorities, WoW:Legion came out and I was in a new guild with a new raid and had to prove myself in order to get to tank as opposed to my old guild where I was in charge so of course I got the role I wanted, yada yada point is I dropped the ball.

It's looking from the Therapist thread like it's finally nearing the point of usability, which is exciting!


Regarding "This was added by the Modest Mod" comments, yeah, at first I kept up with them because Igfig had made a point of that in earlier versions; but I didn't find them super useful either, which is why I didn't always remember to add them in as I changed things further. Mea culpa.

Regarding MAXAGE for giant creatures, I was very careful with these and considered it one of the most important changes in the entire mod, so I'm sad to hear that it was removed. The reason I consider it so important is that incubation/pregnancy length is fixed across all species, which makes [MAXAGE:1:1] giant creatures literally impossible to tame - which sucks when you embark in a savage jungle and happen to roll all your giants as giant vermin, especially since War Giant Mantises are so friggin sweet you guys; and War Giant Brown Recluse Spiders? They'll wipe the floor with anything organic. I'm sorry it had to be all over the place, instead of in the creature variation, but you know why that was necessary so whatevs.

Removing [GRAZER] from animal people was to support animal people in Fortress mode, because the AI doesn't know how to handle it. If you tend towards playing a Deep Dwarf fortress, you'll get animal people starving because they can't eat real food, and don't know they need to go stand on grass to eat.

Economic stones can be designated for use as "normal" stones by going to the Stone menu up top. As that's not super noob-friendly, I think removing the magma-safe and not-magma-safe reaction classes was completely reasonable of you.


So, so, so.

First off, do I owe anybody anything? That's not a rhetorical question where the answer is intended to be "Of course not Button you don't owe nobody nothin'!", that's an actual question of "have I forgotten any commitments in the many months I was away?"

Secondly, Taffer, is this something you're enjoying being in charge of, or was your reaction to me poking my head back in "OH MY GOD YES TAKE THIS BACK FROM ME PLEASE"? Disregard this, DF Revised is a thing.

Thirdly... Hi. I'm a Button.


EDIT: I see that Taffer has taken their version to Dwarf Fortress Revised. Is there interest in the community for a separate Modest Mod to continue, or is DF Revised filling that niche?

If everyone's happy with DF Revised then I'll gladly branch off into something a little more... Vanilla Swiss Almond, along the lines of my old "Button's Raws" mod. I'll be honest, keeping up with a bunch of modules gets really tiring really fast, especially for the modules you don't even use personally.

[ldog]

WB Button!
I was wondering why this thread went dark. Didn't know about Taffer's new project.
I've only just started playing again fairly recently too, been seeing what was what with new stuff before worrying about modding.
The new workshop profiles and orders does alleviate some of the pain at least.  I've even been too lazy to add my custom booze reactions back in, but them and the milling orders would still be useful.
A quick look at DF Revised and it's probably more changes than I want, so if you started maintaining modestmod again I could see myself using it again.

[Taffer]

...

Thank you kindly for the feedback! I'll merge I've merged the MAXAGE and animal people GRAZER changes back into DF Revised. Thank you for better explaining why they were necessary! If there's anything else I culled that deserves a place back in Revised, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks to Thundercraft I changed my mind about the comments for DF Revised, and went the other direction: everything is well commented (to the best of my abilities) in Revised. If you do decide to maintain the Modest Mod again, you might consider starting from Revised and working back towards the Modest Mod to keep those comments.

I do intend to keep maintaining Revised, but for personal reasons I haven't found the time to do everything that I'd like to (the description updates, mostly). It's reasonably clear to me that there's interest in an even more minimal patchset than DF Revised, so I'm willing to maintain such a branch if you don't want to. I'm happy to be labelled the new maintainer, but one concern I have is that the scope of what I consider to be a bug extends to fixing up DF's poorly balanced, crazy combat system. If I'm officially labeled the official new "Modest Mod" maintainer there's bound to be more users like Idog that disagree with this direction, and I'd rather do my own thing.

Thank you again for your post!

WB Button!
I was wondering why this thread went dark. Didn't know about Taffer's new project.
I've only just started playing again fairly recently too, been seeing what was what with new stuff before worrying about modding.
The new workshop profiles and orders does alleviate some of the pain at least.  I've even been too lazy to add my custom booze reactions back in, but them and the milling orders would still be useful.
A quick look at DF Revised and it's probably more changes than I want, so if you started maintaining modestmod again I could see myself using it again.

Revised does includes some quality of life changes and some rebalancing, and I'll be adding more of that in the next version. It's worth noting IMO that there's no easy line between "that's a bug" and "that's rebalancing", but I understand if you disagree. If you watch the Dwarfmoot video, for exaple, Toady seems proud of one bug that involved a Hammerer deciding to bite his own arm off and carry it around in his teeth as a weapon. As far as I'm concerned, that's three bugs: bite attacks from ordinary humanoids shouldn't be powerful enough to bite cleanly through limbs, arms are too heavy to carry in jaws (let alone for several seasons), and nobody should just decide that their own limb is a good weapon. From the context of the video, though, it seems clear to me that Toady only considered the last one a bug, not the first two. (I need to rewatch the video though, so perhaps I'm misremembering everything).

There's other combat oddities that I try to fix, all of which are things I personally consider bugs. Grimlocke has some new metal changes I want to look into, for example, that fix what I consider the "iron armor is almost paper compared to adamantine" bug. No doubt some players disagree that's a bug. Personally, I don't care what fantasy metal you've invented, iron armor should never be "almost paper". I try to justify things better in this comment.

I'm willing to offer a stripped down version that only features uncontroversial bugfixes if there's more interest, but as mentioned my time is limited at the moment.

[ldog]

WB Button!
I was wondering why this thread went dark. Didn't know about Taffer's new project.
I've only just started playing again fairly recently too, been seeing what was what with new stuff before worrying about modding.
The new workshop profiles and orders does alleviate some of the pain at least.  I've even been too lazy to add my custom booze reactions back in, but them and the milling orders would still be useful.
A quick look at DF Revised and it's probably more changes than I want, so if you started maintaining modestmod again I could see myself using it again.

Revised does includes some quality of life changes and some rebalancing, and I'll be adding more of that in the next version. It's worth noting IMO that there's no easy line between "that's a bug" and "that's rebalancing", but I understand if you disagree. If you watch the Dwarfmoot video, for exaple, Toady seems proud of one bug that involved a Hammerer deciding to bite his own arm off and carry it around in his teeth as a weapon. As far as I'm concerned, that's three bugs: bite attacks from ordinary humanoids shouldn't be powerful enough to bite cleanly through limbs, arms are too heavy to carry in jaws (let alone for several seasons), and nobody should just decide that their own limb is a good weapon. From the context of the video, though, it seems clear to me that Toady only considered the last one a bug, not the first two. (I need to rewatch the video though, so perhaps I'm misremembering everything).

There's other combat oddities that I try to fix, all of which are things I personally consider bugs. Grimlocke has some new metal changes I want to look into, for example, that fix what I consider the "iron armor is almost paper compared to adamantine" bug. No doubt some players disagree that's a bug. Personally, I don't care what fantasy metal you've invented, iron armor should never be "almost paper". I try to justify things better in this comment.

I'm willing to offer a stripped down version that only features uncontroversial bugfixes if there's more interest, but as mentioned my time is limited at the moment.

Oh, zero disrespect intended towards your work Taffer. I only gave a quick skim and a quick response. I tend to not use anything "as is" , so even my installation of modest mod has my own tweaks to it. I also haven't ran into or just looked deep into certain issues myself either, so there are some things I may need but be unaware of; like I agree with you about the bite thing, regardless of what Toady says. The iron issue I haven't noticed I guess, but I'd be inclined to agree with you. I'm no purist really either, the pedestal mod isn't vanilla, but I certainly found it useful. Pretty sure I was using bodies too (which sounds like Toady made or is making vanilla?) and a highly tweaked accelerated.

[Taffer]

Do not use Accelerated! It's bugged, I'm working on it.

What specifically is broken about Accelerated? I've been working on Revised lately, and I'm having second thoughts on whether I want to integrate it or not. I'm curious enough to at least toy with the idea.

[ldog]

Do not use Accelerated! It's bugged, I'm working on it.

What specifically is broken about Accelerated? I've been working on Revised lately, and I'm having second thoughts on whether I want to integrate it or not. I'm curious enough to at least toy with the idea.

Was it THAT long ago? Time does fly. Last time I was using this was for 40.24 or so probably, I've had a very long on again off again relationship with DF lol.
I somehow even missed your release a few pages back, and your change notes (either I had a fit of mark all forums read or maybe I read it so long ago I forgot).
Extra leather was a big thing to me, even though it was a horrible kludge to make it work, although I can understand your reasons for removing it. I ride the fence back and forth on a lot of things myself. I want to see the 64bit version stabilize a bit before I bother mucking about in the raws again though (especially since I have to relearn it all).

By the way, do you still have to start a fresh game to add custom reactions?

[Ziusudra]

What specifically is broken about Accelerated?

From the github issue:

Accelerated is crashing DF on butchering historical figures. Meph had some thoughts on what was causing the problem.
From Meph: Edit4: About the "Do not use Accelerated! It's bugged, I'm working on it." message: Restore the bone tissues to normal, and there are no crashes anymore

[Taffer]

By the way, do you still have to start a fresh game to add custom reactions?

I have been. I don't know if I've needed to.

[gchristopher]

Hi Button! Nice to see you!!

For me, Modest Mod fills a need that Dwarf Fortress Revised does not. (Though DF Revised really is close...)

For example, the "microreduce" changes go beyond the "only fixes that any sane person would want and have no possible counterargument" mandate that Modest Mod fills so well. I certainly don't want some of those, especially with the new work orders.

I don't know how that fits into everyone else's view, but I see Modest Mod as the only mod that should absolutely always be installed, because everything in it is good, and there's no reason to not include all of its changes.

[Button]

Thanks for the wibbies everybody

So what I'm hearing between here and the DF Revised thread is that people still want a French Vanilla Modest Mod, and that DF Revised is intended to be more Cookie Dough? That's cool.

It sounds like what I owe people first is a working Accelerated module, since apparently I've left it derelict for a friggin year.

I think I'll also likely pull out a number of realism changes into a realism module, since while things like realistic fields of vision interest me, they are actively unhelpful for people who want to use the Modest Mod as a baseline for other mods.

By the way, do you still have to start a fresh game to add custom reactions?

I have been. I don't know if I've needed to.

Modest Mod includes 3 empty reactions that you can edit after worldgen if you want to "add" a custom reaction. They're in reaction_modest_generic.txt .

[FortunaDraken]

Ahh, I was wondering where this thread was. Sad to see there isn't a 43.03 release (LNP player), I miss having my animals be fully tameable and the giants not living longer, but looking forward to it possibly coming back. I don't really want to use Dwarf Fortress Revised because I heavily dislike the idea of Microreduce (I'd rather organise production through DFhack) and I really don't like all the non-Modest combat changes in it.

[HellishINC]

It sounds like what I owe people first is a working Accelerated module, since apparently I've left it derelict for a friggin year.

That's fantastic news to hear! My pc isn't getting any newer and I've come to depend on it if I want my forts to last more then a couple years before fps death kicks in.

WB Button!