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[GreyGoldFish]

Taffer, you're a godsend! By far my favorite release of your mod until now, and I can finally play Dwarf Fortress again!

It's a shame about throats, though, hopefully one day Toady will take care of that, just like you said.

Thank you so much for including the expanded dictionary and woolly-limbed dwarves as optional addons, by the way, I really appreciate it.

Cheers!

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Great! As always, thank you for the hard work.

A question and a comment.

Is it still safe to overwrite revised with Sver's if we want his combat balance? (or more specifically my brand of Sver's balance )

RE: the joint resizing, IIRC and to my understanding making the joints larger primarily did two things:

1) Changed the dynamic of force transfer - I understand the mechanics here less, but as far as I understand relative size differences between parts affects how much force is transferred, making smaller joints much more easily damaged. Perhaps the material changes are enough to fix this.

2) Made joints significantly harder to sever. Smaller joints can be shot off by arrows, and are easier to tear off with bite attacks.

[Sver]

Is it still safe to overwrite revised with Sver's if we want his combat balance?

Should be safe. Some of the changes from the latest Revised will get overwritten, though.

I can't say for certain when I'll be able to return to active modding and incorporate the Revised update, but for now they should be working mostly fine together.

Changed the dynamic of force transfer - I understand the mechanics here less, but as far as I understand relative size differences between parts affects how much force is transferred, making smaller joints much more easily damaged. Perhaps the material changes are enough to fix this.

They are enough, technically, but that is much wonkier. To keep it short, larger joint size makes them much more resilient, because DF considers tiny bodyparts to be extremely fragile - in quadratic progression, I dare say. You need over the top material strengths to compensate for that with vanilla joint sizes; larger sizes, on the other hand, allow for some fine tuning to get the result I desire (so that certain weapons still could break joints without getting too much raw power yet).

Joints are also impossible to target manually, and they don't seem to come up in the combat logs that much more often (not that I would mind) from the size increase.

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Well that tracks with my memory at least, It's been at least a year since I dove into combat and body tweaks so I'm fairly rusty on some topics.

Also, thanks for all the hard work, what you and Grimlocke have done really laid the ground work out for better weapons and armor, without that I'd never have even gotten close to having a coherent pack built to my own tastes.

[Taffer]

Taffer 10 minutes ago: "I haven't been working on Revised that long, really.."

on: December 10, 2016, 12:44:23

"...well at least I started that fairly soon after I released my tilesets..."
know I

on: April 21, 2012, 22:43:59

Anyways. I'm thinking of revisiting the descriptions for the next release but I don't want to take forever again, and I spent years on the descriptions already.

I've also collected a motley little collection of to-do list items over the past year or whatever. I don't usually do this but I thought I'd share a few of them, make of them what you will. Posted as-written other than the bit about the elephants, which might have deserved a little context. (Actually let me know what you think of this, I often have ideas to improve the giant variations but I always convince myself to stick closely to vanilla. Maybe I'm wrong).

• aquatic egg layers (sea serpents) shouldn't lay eggs
• maybe give elves ambusher
• elf SKILL_LEARN_RATE skills
• elf beards?
• maybe take inspiration from kingdom rush origins..bearded, strong, horned elf castes?
• troll analog for elves, maybe with feathers?
• giant elephants could have 4 eyes, 4 tusks?
• test internal facial features
• mastodons?
• reconsider dried gut thread
• consider the bird vermin problem
• fix throats always getting attacked from behind somehow (no earthly clue how I intend to pull it off though)
• unnaturally thin bird people in generated descriptions

Of course like half the remaining list is just to look over some of the other mods I've had my eyes on.

Taffer, you're a godsend! By far my favorite release of your mod until now, and I can finally play Dwarf Fortress again!

It's a shame about throats, though, hopefully one day Toady will take care of that, just like you said.

Thank you so much for including the expanded dictionary and woolly-limbed dwarves as optional addons, by the way, I really appreciate it.

Cheers!

Glad you enjoy it! Let me know if any issues come up. I'm still pretty bad at actually playing Dwarf Fortress, so you might notice something I've missed.

Great! As always, thank you for the hard work.

A question and a comment.

Is it still safe to overwrite revised with Sver's if we want his combat balance? (or more specifically my brand of Sver's balance )

RE: the joint resizing, IIRC and to my understanding making the joints larger primarily did two things:

1) Changed the dynamic of force transfer - I understand the mechanics here less, but as far as I understand relative size differences between parts affects how much force is transferred, making smaller joints much more easily damaged. Perhaps the material changes are enough to fix this.

2) Made joints significantly harder to sever. Smaller joints can be shot off by arrows, and are easier to tear off with bite attacks.

Thank you! It should be safe, yes, but then things will be inconsistent, especially in regards to unarmed combat. But I care far more about inconsistencies than sane people.

I'll happily bring back the larger joints for the next release. Thank you for helping to clarify. Sometimes I revert things because I don't understand them, and that was definitely the case here.

I can't say for certain when I'll be able to return to active modding and incorporate the Revised update, but for now they should be working mostly fine together.

I'm looking forward to your next update, whenever it comes!

They are enough, technically, but that is much wonkier. To keep it short, larger joint size makes them much more resilient, because DF considers tiny bodyparts to be extremely fragile - in quadratic progression, I dare say. You need over the top material strengths to compensate for that with vanilla joint sizes; larger sizes, on the other hand, allow for some fine tuning to get the result I desire (so that certain weapons still could break joints without getting too much raw power yet).

Joints are also impossible to target manually, and they don't seem to come up in the combat logs that much more often (not that I would mind) from the size increase.

Thank you for helping to clarify. I should have just messaged you. I'll bring back larger joints. As always, feel free to let me know your thoughts, it's great to have people pushing back sometimes.

[Crowbeard]

First, may I say this is a seriously excellent mod. It stays true to the vanilla design, but the collection of improvements gives a much better experience. Thank you very much Taffer for putting it together, and to everyone who contributed.

I have noticed one minor weird thing while testing in the arena, which is facial features being protected by mail shirts:

The flying {steel bolt} strikes Dwarf 5 in the mouth, bruising the left cheek's skin through the small steel mail shirt!

This seems like it might be similar to the vanilla issue with cloaks protecting toes. Please forgive me if this is actually a known problem-- I found references to it happening with UBSTEP:MAX, but I see that the mod specifically has it at 2 for the neck and shoulders.

The wiki has conflicting information. The graphical armor chart does have the face coloured in for chain mail, but the text says

The whole method is pretty nifty, even though faces can't be covered by head armor. This means that mouths, noses, eyes, and cheeks are as vulnerable as if you were not wearing anything at all, even if the name of an article of clothing would normally imply that it protects them.

I tried to reproduce without revised with a fresh install from the starter pack, but that does seem to work as expected:

The flying {steel bolt} strikes Dwarf 11 in the mouth and the left cheek is cloven asunder!
The {steel bolt} has lodged firmly in the wound!

Anyway, it doesn't affect my enjoyment at all-- actually I prefer it over all facial features being completely unprotected, since I just pretend it's being partially protected by the helm instead of the shirt-- but thought the report might be helpful.

Edit: I found a relevant bug report describing the vanilla behaviour with UBSTEP: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1821
I really don't understand the description of the algorithm, but sounds to me like this bug is probably causing the issue:

LBSTEP is working fine, its UBSTEP that's being buggy. If you make body armor with UBSTEP:MAX but LBSTEP:0, it will still cover the toes. The only difference is that the legs won't be covered (because LBSTEP is 0). Also, the UBSTEP needn't be MAX. It just needs to be high enough to reach the parts in question. You need a UBSTEP>=4 to reach fingers and toes, and a UBSTEP>=2 to reach facial features.

[Taffer]

First, may I say this is a seriously excellent mod. It stays true to the vanilla design, but the collection of improvements gives a much better experience. Thank you very much Taffer for putting it together, and to everyone who contributed.

I have noticed one minor weird thing while testing in the arena, which is facial features being protected by mail shirts:

...

This seems like it might be similar to the vanilla issue with cloaks protecting toes. Please forgive me if this is actually a known problem-- I found references to it happening with UBSTEP:MAX, but I see that the mod specifically has it at 2 for the neck and shoulders.

The wiki has conflicting information. The graphical armor chart does have the face coloured in for chain mail, but the text says ...

I tried to reproduce without revised with a fresh install from the starter pack, but that does seem to work as expected:

...

Anyway, it doesn't affect my enjoyment at all-- actually I prefer it over all facial features being completely unprotected, since I just pretend it's being partially protected by the helm instead of the shirt-- but thought the report might be helpful.

Edit: I found a relevant bug report describing the vanilla behaviour with UBSTEP: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=1821
I really don't understand the description of the algorithm, but sounds to me like this bug is probably causing the issue:

Thank you for the compliment and thank you for the report. This is expected behaviour and there's not much I can do about it, unfortunately. Revised works around that bug already by capping UBSTEP so that toes are never protected by upper body armor. It also sets shoulders and hips as "internal limbs" to separate limbs from the body by one extra step. This lets me protect necks, tails, and (if added) "anatomically correct bodyparts" by default. I bumped UBSTEP and LBSTEP everywhere to compensate. One of the side effects is that more tops protect facial features now.

It isn't perfect, which is why I'd also planned on including Sver's internal facial features. I didn't want to delay this release further so that todo item is on the agenda for the next release. If it works out as well as I hope it will solve this issue, for the most part, with (I hope) a minimal amount of weirdness. (Weirdness in combat logs, setting mouths, noses, etc as internal will be intrisincially weird either way).

Related but IMO cool, I added several such internal limbs for bird people specifically so that their winged arms would never be protected by armor. It makes sense to me that armored wings can't flap particularly well and can be seen as a balancing nerf against flying humanoids (not that they tend to wear anything anyways).

[Matrim_Cauthon]

IRRC with the body plan used in Revised any torso armor that covers the upper arms also covers the 'face' parts. Sver's has similar behavior but is made less noticeable by the internalizing of facial features.

It's better than vanilla behavior by far, but DF is gonna be weird

[wickys]

Does this mod nerf the strenght of dwarves in combat somehow? I seem to recall a single squad could easily take on 100 goblins or so, but now it seems all soldiers die shortly after engaging in combat with multiple goblins. Or was that always the case and I just had super trained soldiers? Hmm

[Iä! RIAKTOR!]

Read you myths? Minotaur wasn't hooved, he had only head of bull and tail of bull, but human legs.

[ZM5]

Read you myths? Minotaur wasn't hooved, he had only head of bull and tail of bull, but human legs.

What does it matter? There's different interpretations and versions too.

[Taffer]

I put together a new version to fix the most egregious things. Joints are large again, facial features are internal, and elves have some skills they're naturally good at learning.

I expect the big new release to make or break me, I'll probably either start a new graphics overhaul and get excited or I'll give up on DF. Revised already does pretty much everything I set out to do as it is. If nothing else it'll perhaps be useful for modders as a starting point when the next release comes and DF has users flooding in.

[Taffer]

Does this mod nerf the strenght of dwarves in combat somehow? I seem to recall a single squad could easily take on 100 goblins or so, but now it seems all soldiers die shortly after engaging in combat with multiple goblins. Or was that always the case and I just had super trained soldiers? Hmm

Not really. Almost all combat changes in Revised apply equally to many creatures. Dwarves don't bite and scratch anymore and goblins do, but I doubt that's what's killing your dwarves quickly.

[McOrigin]

Hi! I just learned about your mod as I was brwosing through my raws. I guess it comes as an optional addition with Meph's Pack and I never activated it before.
I just wnated to say thank you for this great mod! I always modded in tameable GCS myself and .. wow did you add and change a lot of stuff. Good job, thank you!

[ANickel]

Been having a bit of an issue, finding that I can't turn fur into anything.  I was hoping to use it for "fur" leather armor but it doesn't seem to validate as a leather item.

Edit: Not sure what the issue was, but I started a new fortress at some point and I'm not having this issue anymore.  So I guess false alarm.