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[Random_Dragon]

So, what do you think the next release will give to modders?

That's what I've been eagerly awaiting to hear, because I can't easily think of anything the impending update will give just yet.

Please try not to complain if you won't even put in the minimum of effort required to do any research.

From the first devlog you'll see on the website right now:

I've been working with the old entity animal code, but the next step is to update that to allow more control over entities and their animals. For vanilla DF now, that'll be so kobolds can focus on poisonous creatures, but hopefully it'll be a bit more flexible for everybody, probably focusing on creature classes and tokens.

Thing is that doesn't give me much in the way of details. Flexibility sounds good, but there's no telling what the end results will be. One realistically expects that maybe some of these features will be civ-usable and of use to fortress mode, but you'd also need changes to reactions for a playable fortress to make any adequate use of poisonous critters.

Likewise, none of this implies anything useful for adventure mode, outside of dying horribly in kobold caves or modded-in equivalents thereof.

Creature classes and tokens is very vague and could be useful for any number of TYPES of modding, but without details it's so general a hint as to be worthless. At best it implies the possibility that poisoned weapons might be changed to an entity token instead of a hardcoded association with blowgun ammo, which is way less useful to modders than it sounds compared to being able to poison weapons at will in fortress or adventure mode.

Nevermind the fact that my complaint was about the myth and magic arc, not the updates that are soon to come. Randomly-generated playable civs are absolutely going to fuck with mods that desire a specific creature to be playable, UNLESS modders have a way to forcibly disable this feature without simply trusting players to turn the slider down.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, modded stuff that depends on the slider settings to match in order to make sense do have such dependencies (High magic modding matched with a no magic slider setting?). Thus, mods will have to come with slider compatibility guides in addition to locking down desired features. Now, if a mod could somehow specify legal slider value ranges, that might work (and cause a headache when someone tries to combine two mods with incompatible settings).

[Random_Dragon]

Well, modded stuff that depends on the slider settings to match in order to make sense do have such dependencies (High magic modding matched with a no magic slider setting?). Thus, mods will have to come with slider compatibility guides in addition to locking down desired features. Now, if a mod could somehow specify legal slider value ranges, that might work (and cause a headache when someone tries to combine two mods with incompatible settings).

...yeah. That's what I'm worried about, to be honest. Demanding the player maintain specific world settings for the mod to work is bad mod practice, and it'll annoy me if Toady essentially makes said mod practice mandatory, because that's a regression in mod-friendliness.

Same reason I don't include anything in my mods that requires DFHack to work. The fewer things the user has to do for the mod to function, the better.

[iceball3]

The fact that mod support is being considered for new features at all should be considered giftful, to be honest.
Mods are nice, sure, but the game marches on, in essence. I'm personally elated that the myth arc is getting any support at all, in of itself.

[PatrikLundell]

I find it somewhat ironic to hear the complaint about DF being expanded along dimensions that make mods that cannot adapt to the new dimensions hard to manage. It's like complaining that a warfare game set in a time period gets expanded to let you play campaigns set at different times will make the mods for any particular era break/work poorly if used outside of the era they're designed for (which possibly was the original setting). It sure would be nice to have support to match the game parameters to the mods (or the selectable mods to the parameters), but the onus should primarily be on the mod makers.

[Random_Dragon]

The point being missed here is that eventually, the players using the mod will be the ones having to expend effort to make things work right.

I'll happily do whatever needs to be done to keep a mod in working order, but if there's nothing I can do except tell players "yeah no, don't do X" it's less an annoyance to me, and more an annoyance to people using said mods. I already have a few mod features that will do dumb things if the player does specific things, but "breaks when going outside normal usage" is a whole different beast compared to "breaks UNLESS you go outside normal usage."

[Putnam]

The point being missed here is that eventually, the players using the mod will be the ones having to expend effort to make things work right.

I'll happily do whatever needs to be done to keep a mod in working order, but if there's nothing I can do except tell players "yeah no, don't do X" it's less an annoyance to me, and more an annoyance to people using said mods. I already have a few mod features that will do dumb things if the player does specific things, but "breaks when going outside normal usage" is a whole different beast compared to "breaks UNLESS you go outside normal usage."

Yeah, no, devlog just now says that none of this is true and you were worrying over nothing.

The new entity animal framework is set up, though I've only used it for kobolds. It's pretty basic -- you can compel an entity to use creatures that either belong to a list of classes (classes can also be excluded), or by their token, and you can set them to either use matching animals from the environment or to get a free environment-independent starting population as with the current domestic creatures. You can optionally override the mount/wagon puller/etc. roles defined in the creature definition, setting them to always or never be used for those roles.

[Random_Dragon]

Yeah, no, devlog just now says that none of this is true and you were worrying over nothing.

The new entity animal framework is set up, though I've only used it for kobolds. It's pretty basic -- you can compel an entity to use creatures that either belong to a list of classes (classes can also be excluded), or by their token, and you can set them to either use matching animals from the environment or to get a free environment-independent starting population as with the current domestic creatures. You can optionally override the mount/wagon puller/etc. roles defined in the creature definition, setting them to always or never be used for those roles.

...read what I say properly before you gripe about it.

Nevermind the fact that my complaint was about the myth and magic arc, not the updates that are soon to come. Randomly-generated playable civs are absolutely going to fuck with mods that desire a specific creature to be playable, UNLESS modders have a way to forcibly disable this feature without simply trusting players to turn the slider down.

EDIT: Side note, this new dev post does answer a question I had about what you could do with the impending changes. Being able to give a civ a specific set of critters for domestic and caravan use far exceeds my expectations.

[Shonai_Dweller]

So there's a new poisonous class of animals. And scorpions are poisonous (especially really big ones) so...

[burned]

So there's a new poisonous class of animals. And scorpions are poisonous (especially really big ones) so...

Ha!

[Random_Dragon]

Oh hey, it's not like that's the second or third time that someone's hinted at something that I'd normally pestyer Toady about. And it's not like I've been busy having to explain to someone repeatedly that they're misreading my posts several times in a row.

But alright, if you insist.

[Insert Obligatory Scorpionpost Here]

[Shonai_Dweller]

Fine. Just thought you might want to ask yourself.
When you were working on the new poisonous animals class, did you put giant desert scorpions back in?

Because we all want to mod in desert kobold merchants with their giant scorpion lead wagons.

[Random_Dragon]

Oh yay, scorpionposts are contagious. Too be honest, I hadn't even thought about the GDS fuckery until you brought it up.

...thanks for that, I didn't want to be reminded about Toady handling the "eh, I'll add normal desert scorpions and scorpimen later" in the worst possible manner. ;w;

[Shonai_Dweller]

Will kobolds thieves bring their pets with them on raids?

[PatrikLundell]

It wouldn't make sense to bring the pets on their normal thieving raids, but a bunch of GCS' included in an ambush would be nasty.