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[IndigoFenix]

A game about mining and gems...and no Steven Universe mod?  Surprising...

For those of you who don't know Steven Universe, it's a cute-but-surprisingly-deep cartoon (fans of Adventure Time will probably enjoy it) about a kid being raised by a trio of magical women who are technically sapient alien gemstones that project hard-light bodies.  Gems have all kinds of interesting powers, most notably shapeshifting, regeneration, and fusion, and reproduce using a process that involves drilling into planets and planting some kind of seed which grows the fully-grown Gem out of the rock.

I was fooling around with "soul fusion" using DFHack and I thought this might be a fun medium to try out more DFHack experiments.  Other features will likely involve utilizing gems for reproduction, regeneration from certain kinds of death, personality-based weapon spawning, and corruption (possibly instead of or alongside insanity).  I'll try to make parts of it portable, so that other modders could import stuff like fusion and personality weapons into their own mods.

Anyway, I was wondering if there is any interest in this, and any ideas people might have.

[Putnam]

i only didn't make this because i feel like we don't know enough about gems

soul fusion is most definitely a thing, it's part of the fusion process in sparking, yeah

Spoiler: not actually revealed info from a book released early in australia (click to show/hide)

corruption is battle damage apparently, so that's something

[Manivald]

This idea is bloody amazing. It would be awesome to see a gem based civ, and how it would work in DF. Imagine playing as a Gem in adventure mode, with shapeshifting and all the other powers.

[Omniao]

Aren't gems supposed to have no gender or something?

[Omniao]

Here what you should consider  modding in  for the damage handling and biology or something:
Blunt objects won't work against any body parts on gems, except directly on their gem. (Hammers and rocks won't do anything, except if they hit the actual gem)
Gem placement has to/should be random, gems could be on feet, fingers and maybe noses.
Gems do not need to eat, sleep, drink, or breath. They have no skeleton, organs, blood, skin, any kind of tissue or nerves, or muscle.
Any damaged/cutoffed part of a gem except the actual gem evaporates immediately
Limbs can get cut off, but if torso or head are pierced, the whole body dissipates.
The only type damage any body part of a gem except the actual gem is getting cut off or pierced.
Every body part on a gem can regenerate except the crystal/gem (you need to make the regeneration all at once if you can. You could do this by making regeneration a natural ability, and when used, regenerates very body part but the gem)
Gems also can spawn a weapon as part of their natural ability, and when thrown (after it hits) or dropped, it evaporates.
The weapon you spawn corresponds with your starting skill choice.
The body should be made out of a material that is ultra hard to smash, but less difficult to cut. The actual gem itself should be the opposite, easy to smash, but nigh impossible to cut.
The only [nervous] or permanent damage a gem could get is on their gem, which might limit how much they can regenerate.
Gems can jump extremely high, and have enormous physical strength compared to humans. They are about on the same level as a bronze collosus in terms of strength. Due to their immense hardness, they can take falls from cliffs, explosions, and being thrown at ludicrous speeds as long as the don't land on their gem.
If the actual gem is chipped or smashed, it may cause unconsciousness, blindness, loss of ability to regenerate, loss of ability to stand, loss of motor ability, etc.
You die when your gem is shattered.
Also, fusions and stuff. Basically you combine your abilities and skills, and gain another set of arms and eyes. If any gem in a fusion is chipped or shattered, de-fusion occurs.
Also shape shifting, they can turn into anything they want, however whatever hey turn in to is still made of the same material and abides by the same rules as the gem's original form.

[Omniao]

This idea is bloody amazing. It would be awesome to see a gem based civ, and how it would work in DF. Imagine playing as a Gem in adventure mode, with shapeshifting and all the other powers.

Then getting one-shotted in the gem and immediately dying.
But yeah, awesome idea.

[Putnam]

yo there's an edit button

but yeah, the whole exposed gem thing might be a problem

I mean, DF doesn't actually understand the concept of materials that aren't isotropic, so there could be some funniness with that

[Nico2167]

I once pondered the idea but gave it up due to my lack of modding knowledge.
Maybe they could use some kind of caste system to determine which gem the individual has and when when trading, if offered gems/cut gems/gem engraved items react similarily to elves with wood.

[Putnam]

woodloving is a hardcoded part of the hardcoded ethics, so no dice there

[Omniao]

I still would want to see how you could handle the whole "body is a projection" thing. I guess when an arm  or something 'sails off in an arc' in the next tick it says "the arm immediately dissolves in the air" and it would delete body parts like that.

[Putnam]

can't really do that...

i mean, yeah, sorta, you can have items vanish i think? definitely can have units vanish and leave a "corpse" gem

[Omniao]

yo there's an edit button

but yeah, the whole exposed gem thing might be a problem

I mean, DF doesn't actually understand the concept of materials that aren't isotropic, so there could be some funniness with that

You could probably "embed" the gem in whatever part it is located on. Like how the eyelid sometimes blocks you from hitting the eye in the game, you would target the gem and if you don't put enough strength into your attack, it would "miss" or hit the part of the body the gem is located on.
Maybe it would be fine to have the gem exposed as long as they have a high natural agility/dodging.

[darkflagrance]

I would allow the body to be naturally broken into the pieces and dismembered (with no bleeding), and have a were-creature-like transformation trigger on year-end or after a workshop reaction, after which the gem would be fully healed.

Couldn't the gem be modded to be like a sponge, where it is an invulnerable body part unless specifically crushed?

[IndigoFenix]

My idea for the regeneration would basically be to use a large gem as an itemcorpse, then use a dfhack script to periodically check all dead units to see if they left an itemcorpse.  If the itemcorpse comes from a Gem (a creature with a particular class) then it checks the related creature and its injuries.  If it has a fatal injury on its gem, then it doesn't revive, otherwise it does.  In most other senses a Gem's biology would be fairly normal, with blood (possibly a gas?) but no vital organs, with the gem being an embedded organ with two layers so that a superficial scratch causes disorientation and stunning, and a strong hit will kill the target.

Alternatively, a script could run when a Gem is killed, and if it had an injury on its gem part, it would place wear on the itemcorpse, and itemcorpses with wear would not revive.  This would probably be quicker to check.  A workshop could exist that lets you repair broken gems if you have healing fluids.

Making removed limbs vanish should be doable.  There's a way of running a script when an item is created so it should be simple to check if the item is a Gem body part.

Exploring the possibilities of AI using fusion when in combat and unfusing outside of it.  Basically the idea is that, upon fusing, the two Gems "die" and the fusion Gem is spawned, with the two Gems set as its "parents".  When unfusing, the fusion dies and its "parents" are revived.

Creating "rules" for fusion, as well as naming conventions, could be tricky.  Also, given the large variation on body types for regular Gems, let alone fusions, making all of the castes could also be problematic.  (Arm number, eye number, gem number, gem placement, gem colors...)  As Putnam pointed out, we don't really know enough about Gems to say how that works.  Do all Gems of a particular material have the same body shape?  Do they represent different castes?  Are there any rules to the system or is it just whatever?  (Probably...)

Maybe married Gems could fuse permanently.

[Omniao]

I was thinking that the "regeneration" could be a natural ability, and when activated, it runs a "heal" script, except it doesn't heal your gem, only your body parts.