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[D_E]

HFS being demons, of course.

To summarize what I know:

1. According to the wiki, underground depth 5:5 + FLIER makes a creature participate in the initial wave.  5:5 but no FLIER tag means the creature wanders around in Hell, essentially using animal AI.

2. If no UNIQUE_DEMONs are generated during worldgen, Dark Tower civilizations are disabled. (Dark Tower civs MUST be led by a demon, using another religion type crashes world gen.  Likewise, demon led civs MUST be Dark Tower civs, specifying no religion on a civ with another site type also crashes world gen)

3.  UNIQUE_DEMONs and regular DEMONs are generated in an annoying way: Approximately the first 1/4 of demon types will be DEMONs, the next 1/4 will be UNIQUE_DEMONs, and the final 1/2 are DEMONs again.  If 1 demon type is generated, it will be a DEMON, if two are generated, the first is a DEMON and the second is a UNIQUE_DEMON.  Four types leads to DEMON-UNIQUE-DEMON-DEMON.  22 types leads to 1-5 being DEMONs, 6-9 being UNIQUE_DEMONs, then 10-22 are DEMONs again (so it's not perfectly 1/4 1/4 1/2 ).

4.  It appears that UNIQUE_DEMONs may be unique in their entity type, but not in the world.  In my case, I have 2 Dark Tower entities: Moblins and evil Twili.  Having 3 types of UNIQUE_DEMON resulted in 3 moblin civs and 1 Twili civ (the max).  Having 1 type of UNIQUE_DEMON resulted in 1 moblin civ and 1 Twili civ, both led by instances of the single unique demon type.

Questions I have:

1) Is there really no way to specify our own UNIQUE_DEMONs through the raws?

2) If there are no DEMONs generated, but there are creatures in the raws with 5:5 depth and FLIER, does the initial wave upon opening Hell still happen, or is it disabled?

[Putnam]

UNIQUE_DEMON is not something you can really have, no.

I made Earthward Pick way back before UNIQUE_DEMONs were the things that started dark fortresses, so I could just have the leader of the civ be Ganon. For moblins, you could just pretend any UNIQUE_DEMON leader of them is an incarnation of Demise anyway, it's how I managed to put together Morgoth Bauglir in a Lord of the Rings mod I didn't really release.

[D_E]

Yeah, Zelda canon has no shortage of odd-looking demons running around (Demise, Vaati, Belum, etc).  I have two main problems with the current arrangement, though. 

One is that I'd ideally like them to have material vulnerabilities to the holy-sword-type materials. 

The other, more serious, problem is that I find the random unblockable syndrome attacks to be unfun (super!!FUN!!?).

I'd prefer to just shut off the random DEMONs and replace them with hardcoded stuff, but doing that (or even sharply limiting the variety generated) shuts off Dark Tower civs, for an overall -type of situation.

I could just live with that, replace all Dark Tower civs with other site types, and use rare castes for their demonic leaders (a solution I've used for the Ikana, it works ok [world-gen poofs rare caste-members into existence as needed to fill positions]), but based on the way night creatures work I bet that'd turn off the initial HFS wave after opening Hell, though I haven't tested that.

It all looked pretty intractable to me last time I looked at this, but my attention was drawn to it again recently and I thought I'd ask to see if anyone else had found work-arounds.


Incidentally, Forgotten Beasts can't even be turned off, right?

[AceSV]

Incidentally, Forgotten Beasts can't even be turned off, right?

I think you can only do that with Advanced World Gen rather than modding. 

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Advanced_world_generation
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:World_token

[D_E]

I think you can only do that with Advanced World Gen rather than modding.

What token specifically?  Because there are tokens for night creatures and curses and demons and so on, but as far as I can see no token for Forgotten Beasts.

[AceSV]

Huh, I had been under the impression that FBs shared the parameter with Titans and Megabeasts, but I guess they don't.  Sorry 'bout that.  That's a bummer. 

[Teneb]

You can disable FBs. Go to body_rcp.txt and delete one (and only one) of the bodyparts there. It will cause an error in the errorlog, but it will also disable the FBs.

[D_E]

You can disable FBs. Go to body_rcp.txt and delete one (and only one) of the bodyparts there. It will cause an error in the errorlog, but it will also disable the FBs.

Nice!

Um, wait, that disables only FBs, not all randomly generated creatures (which would include UNIQUE_DEMONs, which would disable Dark Tower civs as a side-effect)?

[Teneb]

You can disable FBs. Go to body_rcp.txt and delete one (and only one) of the bodyparts there. It will cause an error in the errorlog, but it will also disable the FBs.

Nice!

Um, wait, that disables only FBs, not all randomly generated creatures (which would include UNIQUE_DEMONs, which would disable Dark Tower civs as a side-effect)?

It probably disables all random creatures.

[milo christiansen]

You can disable FBs. Go to body_rcp.txt and delete one (and only one) of the bodyparts there. It will cause an error in the errorlog, but it will also disable the FBs.

You could also remove one of the required material templates or tissue templates, or body detail plans, etc. I personally use the FLAME_TEMPLATE material template.

And yes, this disables ALL random creatures. It is still possible to use one of the random creature generators that have been written by various modders over the years, but that adds an extra step to mod installation (and the creatures will be the same for all worlds until you run the tool again).

[D_E]

You could also remove one of the required material templates or tissue templates, or body detail plans, etc. I personally use the FLAME_TEMPLATE material template.

And yes, this disables ALL random creatures. It is still possible to use one of the random creature generators that have been written by various modders over the years, but that adds an extra step to mod installation (and the creatures will be the same for all worlds until you run the tool again).

Those random creature generators would also fail to enable Dark Tower civs, right?  Since modders can't make UNIQUE_DEMONs through the raws, and without those Dark Tower civs don't spawn.

Does anyone know if turning off DEMON generation also disables the initial wave of FLIERs after breaching Hell, even if there is a non-DEMON 5:5 FLIER defined in the raws?

[milo christiansen]

Those random creature generators would also fail to enable Dark Tower civs, right?  Since modders can't make UNIQUE_DEMONs through the raws, and without those Dark Tower civs don't spawn.

Ah, yes that would be a problem...

Maybe it would be possible to edit the save to inject your own creatures to replace the existing ones? FBs could be replaced with something thematically appropriate, and the same could  be done for both kinds of demons...You would need some kind of save editing tool (which is possible, but the last tool capable of editing instead of just dumping was for 34.11 I think), and users would need to run it after they generate a world (so probably not a good idea).

Maybe it would be possible to run a DFHack script as soon as worldgen starts to search and destroy all FBs? Last I knew it was possible to run stuff in worldgen, but it was tricky to get the timing right. If you could figure out a way to trigger at the right point it might even be possible to edit the raws in memory (to remove undesired syndromes for example).

Having special tags that only work in generated raws is just evil.

[D_E]

Maybe it would be possible to edit the save to inject your own creatures to replace the existing ones? FBs could be replaced with something thematically appropriate, and the same could  be done for both kinds of demons...You would need some kind of save editing tool (which is possible, but the last tool capable of editing instead of just dumping was for 34.11 I think), and users would need to run it after they generate a world (so probably not a good idea).

Maybe it would be possible to run a DFHack script as soon as worldgen starts to search and destroy all FBs? Last I knew it was possible to run stuff in worldgen, but it was tricky to get the timing right. If you could figure out a way to trigger at the right point it might even be possible to edit the raws in memory (to remove undesired syndromes for example).

Having special tags that only work in generated raws is just evil.

It is evil

Probably if I add a DFHack component to the mod, I'd have it watch for FBs and Demon spawns and sub them out on the fly.  I don't mind if the Tower civs are led by generated demons, since they would be one-off boss monsters.  Neither the FBs nor the common demons take part in world gen, so it wouldn't even lead to any major Legends mode weirdness.