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[DrTank09]

Hey guys, I love MWDF, but there are some high fantasy elements I'm not interested in.  I love learning about the processes and materials of old but a lot of the game isn't very realistic in how resources were made.  I began to study up on the iron and stell manufacturing processes of the early and late medieval period only to find out that there is already a mod for that in Grim's History and Realism Mods.  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146737.0

Before I go any further, I was wondering if people wouldn't mind posting up mods that are custom tailored to have historical and educational value?

One thing I intend to do is create a mod that uses materials for their real life purposes, such as microcline powder for the porcelain industry and amazonite, a mineral of microcline for jewelry.  Oak and other High tannin woods for kegs and even using acid stains for wood to change their colors.  I also want to learn about the mythos of our world and enjoy the tails of my game in an epic way.

I worked at home depot for a long time, and always enjoyed learning about how chemicals can be used to create something new and amazing and this sort of learning can be inspirational and useful on its own.  I'd love to learn more about all of the medieval industries as well as fantastic industries, such as alchemy, ancient medicines, golem forging, mage craft, and so many other industries that have never come across my sad nook of the world.

Anything from expanded food entries, gem cutting industry, to alchemical formulas for making poisons or philosophers stones and maybe even their sources would be wonderful.
Also, because of the nature fantasy, many fantastic industries have very poor explanations for what they work.  If you come across or know of a system that seems very exquisite in its craftsmanship, please leave a note here.

Grimlocke's weapon and realism mod has true to period metallurgy components, which I use it my games

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146737.0

And Evaris' orichalcum fortress has loads of material uses for many many underutilized resources ingame

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139059.0

Since the beginning of this undertaking, I have been reading and watching documentaries of different periods throughout Europe, mainly Britain, and have come to a conclusion on the time-line that should be placed for this.

The Renaissance is perfect for our dwarves, as it is " regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history" and our dwarves, the fanciful beings they are, hold technological prowess far beyond that of the Middle Ages but lack the will to give up their craftsmanship and allow for mills and other cheaper cookie cutter variety of production to replace their hard-learned experience.

Current goals of this mod
-Make all industries more historically accurate and require accurate tools for the work being done
-Make all materials and their uses historically accurate
-Make crafting more detailed and find a way to implement proper apprenticeships
-Make a working economy system that is player controlled
-Expand nobility to create a functioning and immersive social hierarchy for better player management

[burrito25man]

I am 100% behind the idea. Grimlocke's weapon and realism mod has true to period metallurgy components, which I use it my games

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146737.0

And Evaris' orichalcum fortress has loads of material uses for many many underutilized resources ingame

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=139059.0

Both of these should give you a nice Jumpstart. I'm excited to see where it goes!

[StagnantSoul]

If I can find it in my folder of discarded ideas, I have a mod I made that added in giant bees as well as gave a better bee industry, with mead being made a more expensive alcohol, honeyed wine a thing, wax crafts being as expensive as billon, and candles which were used in my church building to make gold, copper, or silver coins, which could then be melted down if you so wished. I got distracted by my gnomish factory work after I finished the church, so I haven't gotten anything further in it.

[DrTank09]

I'm going to keep updating this list to add onto stuff.  Thanks guys.

[Grimlocke]

I somewhat unsurprisingly approve of this 

If someone wants to make a modpack out of these, I could be tempted to do some compatibility work.

As for suggestions, Taffer's Dwarf Fortress Revised is a pretty good set of fixes and tweaks that make the game a bit less wonky. It should be compatible with most things (though with some parts being safely overwritten), and makes the game feel a bit less gamey (less exploding heads from scratching peasants).

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161832.0

Of course, there are limits to how realistic we can get with the game both due to modding limitations and just for retaining any kind of playability, but for me even a general sense of realness and coherence has always done a lot more for immersions than any amount of tired old fantasy cliches. And if these mods can encourage players to read up on history then all the better!

[DrTank09]

I was thinking that the best method to go about this is to begin by laying out what additions should be included in the pack and create an industry layout so that the processes can be reviewed before any actual modding work needs to be done.  I really wanted to implement a system where weapons were unique in themselves by allowing for multiple materials to exist within the weapon but I know now that the source code limits us from doing this.

Before any tweaks to the game mechanics for balance, I want to tweak the game for aesthetic and learning.

I would love for people to learn how port wine is made, rather than just the simple put ingredients here and out comes the wine.  I don't intend for this to be a quick modding experience either, I'll be working on it here and there when I have time but since most of it is studying the processes of medieval industries, it will be time consuming and work/school are going to have to come first.  Don't get to large of hopes up for a year or so.

[StagnantSoul]

Probably the best way to do this is to give standards, limits, and areas you'd like expanded on and we all start from scratch, tossing our knowledge and skills in.

[DrTank09]

Yeah, I like this approach, maybe we should organize it using a separate wiki or GitHub?  We need to figure out what industries, creatures, plants, materials, etc. should be worked on in the overhaul.  Having one person working on each specific material group could be very useful.  I started out learning about the ferro-metallurgy industry because I was looking into creating more realistic minerals and happened to get hung up there.


Stone, Gems, and Soil and Ore - May need to be subdivided for support of related industries.
Animals (probably needs subdivided and will need to work with the farming industry)
Mythical beasts (probably needs subdivided)
plants (works with medical, farming, and food industry)
trees (works heavily with wood industry)


Metal Industry
Combat mechanics and Arms
Wood Industry
Farming Industry
Fish and Fishing Indusry
Leather Industry
Alcohol Industry
Ceramic Industry
Interior Design Industry (ie decorations, bedding, etc.  Will work very heavely with other branches)
Financial and administrative Industry (This person's soul responsibility is to work on developing a good system of economy as well as giving us a better government system, anyone who has done work with the guilds would be very helpful)
Food Preparation and preservation.  (I would like for the food to decay if not preserved)
Glass Industry
Gem Industry
Health Industry  (the old masterwork introduced sickness and medicine, This could be interesting if we added in medicinal plants to combat specific syndromes)
Textile Industry
Scholarly industry
Bee Industry
Village craftworking (bone, shell, etc.)


I'd say that the important thing is to work on the materials first, then go to the industries, and return back to the materials in a cycle until we get what we are looking for.

[Grimlocke]

I vaguely recall seeing mods for added ceramics and glazes, for various interior decorations like carpets and fancy beds, and one rather old mod for glassworks. I still have the file somewhere, will look it up when I get home.

For my own mod I want to eventually add in late-medieval clothing and dyes along with gilt stitching, fur, fur lining, etc. That's for the far future though, hopefully by that time clothing and decorations will have a few more options to work with.

Some of the industries you list though are mostly hardcoded into the game and rather difficult to change in any meaningful way. Food spoilage for instance isn't really something you can influence with raw modding and only maybe with fancy DF hack work.

Guilds are a listed feature for DF's development, I think they existed way back in 40d too. I wouldn't expect that anytime soon but eventually...

[DrTank09]

There is a ready to use script or plugin for spoiling food, unfortunately it also spoils non-perishables...  Was planning to look into it later on.

I also know that even though the caste system is no longer implemented, it is readily accessible and I was under the impression that a lot of people use it for various mods.  I know for a fact that DFMW does.

So Grimlocke, I was looking into your raws for the buildings for your mod, I was trying to figure out the name of the trip hammer for awhile now and wanted to thank you for giving me that info. 

I also wanted to ask the people that I'm going to draw from and are going to help with this right now if its cool if we remove magma from our fuel sources where it wouldn't apply though.  Even modern day geothermal magma chambers only reach a temp of 900 Celsius max while others barely make 500.  These temperatures are not hot enough for everything and I feel like they are a bit cheaty because it allows for players to give up wood production.  following this guide http://www.blksmth.com/heat_colors.htm the finishing and regular forges could use the geothermal heat for preparing metals for work as well as melting borax and silver, but it wouldn't be enough to smelt with otherwise and it seems like a bad design as the air over magma is not necessarily the correct chemical composition.  There is a power module in dfhack that we could use magma for the trip hammer, but I'm kind of just throwing ideas around and was wanting some feedback?

[Grimlocke]

The fuel requirements pretty much already work that way. The magma blast furnace and bloomery only require one unit of fuel less than the regular ones, the idea being that the magma is used to pre-heat the furnace air without being in direct contact with it. Somehow.

Crucible steel making and case hardening also always require charcoal.

There are lots of reasons why using magma in metallurgy is not a good idea at all. Magma is noxious, turns into rock when cooled and is too viscous and hot to be pumped around effectively. Dipping an unfinished product into magma to heat it would be especially stupid since that would just coat the thing in a layer of rock. In short, there is nothing realistic about any kind of magma forge or furnace but I didn't want to throw them out entirely due to DF lore and gameplay reasons. Requiring charcoal to be used for everyone would get tedious pretty quickly and makes tree-less maps impossible to work with since wood can't really be imported in significant amounts.

Temperature-wise, keep in mind that not all smelting techniques require you to actually melt the metal. Smelting iron is not about melting ore, but about creating a highly reductive environment and that can be done below the melting point of iron. Bloomeries even had to be kept below melting point, else they would produce garbage.

Having never played DF masterwork, I don't know much about how it uses the old guild system but I do remember the one in 28a and 40d was pretty bare-bones. Still if it can be used to at least make an approximation of a medieval guild system then that would be pretty cool. If guilds can be spawned in worldgen spanning multiple cities and entities then we could even make Hanseatic League-like confederations.

[DrTank09]

The way that the guilds worked in DFMW was that non-guild members had reduced experience rate gains and guild members had normal or increased rate gains.  It also included other things if I recall right, in that only guild members for the miners guild could learn secrets for "Earth Strikes Back" mod.

I would like to use guilds for more than just their in-game mechanics though, as I have another thread regarding how an economy should work using a modded currency I created.