This is a very simple mod that makes some cosmetic changes to standard creatures. It incorporates the effects of the v0.40 mods "Pointy Ears" and "Bearded Ladies." The mod is intended for Dwarf Fortress v0.43.01 or later, but it will run under 0.42.* without errors.
The
first change is to describe blizzard men, elves, fairies, goblins, kobolds, pixies and satyrs as having "pointy ears." Large ears are also described as being "long" instead of "tall" (which would be the norm for other races).
Pointy ears can also be applied to animal man races by placing the code [GO_TO_END][SELECT_CASTE:ALL][APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION:TWEAKAPP_POINTY_EARS] as the last line of the creature definition.
The
second change is to add caste-specific child and baby names to the races in
creature_standard. Young ones will now be labeled as "dwarven baby boy" or "pixie girl". For creatures that already have caste-specific names, these are extended to the children as in "ogress child" rather than "ogre girl".
The
third change is optional, which further decreases the gender dimorphism among dwarves. The dwarven genders in vanilla Dwarf Fortress have identical statistics and opportunities, although there are two differences.
1. Dwarven childcare is the exclusive responsibility of the child's mother, and coincidentally all mothers are female.
2. Dwarven males have facial hair but females do not.
Point 1 is hardcoded into the game, but point 2 can be corrected with this mod.
The myths upon which dwarves are based are fairly vague about the creatures' appearance (it is not at all clear that they were even short), but the image of a stocky bearded humanoid about four feet tall was established by the time J. R. R. Tolkien wrote that Hobbits were "smaller than dwarves." Mythical tales of female dwarves are virtually non-existent, and Tolkien continued this tradition by scarcely mentioning them. In his writings, female dwarves have beards and are rarely seen by outsiders.
Many of the modern depictions of dwarves are based on Tolkien's, including role-playing games. The written descriptions of dwarves tend to indicate that the females have facial hair, but the visuals that accompany these works don't always paint them that way. Terry Pratchett's dwarves have males and females that are indistinguishable from one another, and it is considered impolite to ask. This is done for comedic effect rather than any deep statement about dwarf biology (even dwarves can't tell the genders apart, which leads to some uncomfortable dating situations).
Another modern source is C. S. Lewis's
Narnia series in which the dwarves are all male. Gimli's line in the movie version of
The Two Towers "...And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground! Which is, of course, ridiculous." is a condensed version of a passage from the book version of
Return of the King "It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart. This has given rise to the foolish opinion among Men that there are no dwarf-women, and that the dwarves 'grow out of stone'." This was Tolkien poking fun at Lewis.
Installation:
Method 1 is a "direct" install. Unzip
TWEAKAPP.zip on top of your Dwarf Fortress folder. You should be informed of a single overwrite. If you do
not want female dwarves to have beards, delete
creature_standard.txt and rename
creature_standard.alternate to
creature_standard.txt.
Method 2 uses the Starter Pack's mod merging tool. Unzip
TWEAKAPP.zip into an empty folder inside the Starter Pack's
LNP/Mods folder, such as
TWEAKAPP. Double-click "Appearance Tweaks" to move it from Available to Merged, where it will be highlighted in yellow due to overwriting a vanilla file. Mix with other mods if desired, then click Install Mods.
Files included:
manifest.json
readme_TWEAKAPP.txt
raw/objects/c_variation_TWEAKAPP.txt
raw/objects/creature_standard.txt
raw/objects/creature_standard.alternate
raw/objects/descriptor_pattern_TWEAKAPP.txt
Version History:
1.03: Changed fairy/pixie wings so that both genders have the same color options (DF genetics for gender-linked traits is bugged); removed unused pattern descriptors
1.02: Added coloration for fairy and pixie wings, including several new color pattern descriptors
1.01: Turned bearded females into an option; no longer using creature variation for standard creatures; fixed fairy and pixie wings
1.00: Initial release