Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kat]

I've also seen this happening, though I'm not using this particular drow mod.

I'm wondering if it has something to do with their ethics or values. As well as there not being many children, there's also not many marriages - as far as I can tell, the only married couples in my fortress are migrants who arrived married. 

[ManuG]

This seems to be the major problem - Drow as a race in their typical characteristics wouldn't be survivable in the long run. Another factor could be their underground start in the caverns. Many towns have frequently been "visited" by forgotten beasts. At least that's what my legend viewer says. I guess it's a combination of both: Less children and many dangers to deal with (including themselves xD).

Edit: I bet it's the "detests romance" trait...

[Amostubal]

Ptw

How is the work coming along... I'm interested in this since it was a part of MDF years ago.

[FrownTown]

Is this still being worked on? Tried using the mod, enjoyable when it works, but found that the Drow die out early on in worldgen every time. Is there a solution to this?

[Kat]

Playing again with my own modifications, and have noticed something using the latest dwarf therapist.

The Social-alt tab on dwarf therapist, shows something that might be important.

Now, as standard, the drow culture in Rhenaya's original entity files values Merriment at 30.

However, in the creature file, drow's cheer propensity is valued at 0/30/50, which tends to make serious drows.

This seems to be causing a personality conflict in the drows, which might be part of why they don't seem to survive worldgen often.

Maybe tweaking these values might help.

Also could try putting in a boost to romance in the creature personality file, see if that helps them get married more often.

[burrito25man]

Hello there, I'm glad someone has decided to try and update Rhen's drows for the latest version of DF.
I was trying to update things myself at the weekend, using elements from the elf profile to fill in the blanks that were needed, and had some success, after reading some of your posts.
I couldn't get the drow outcasts entity to work though, it crashed for some reason, so I had to cut them from the modded raws that I am using, to regain familiarity with DF after not playing it for a couple years.
Something that I've noticed, but which I've read seems to be an issue with the latest version of DF in general, was that I can't butcher goblins, or other sapient creatures? That was a bit of a surprise - in previous versions of Rhen's drow mod, I had a tendency to build quite the goblin leather industry and goblin bone craft industry.
Still getting used to things, but will keep an eye on this, to see how it develops.


by the way, you haven't included your latest link to your work, this one: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=12819

I think version 0.40 accidentally broke butchering intelligent creatures in fortress mode. Toady knows of the problem, but doesn't even know how he caused it and since it's not something you can do in vanilla he hasn't put much effort into figuring out how to fix it.

I know this mod is established to be used without the use of dfhack, but if anyone is interested I wrote a script to get around the butchering issue. Link in my sig

Thanks guys! I love seeing this mod come back!

[Mediterraneo]

Ptw

How is the work coming along... I'm interested in this since it was a part of MDF years ago.

I went on a hiatus: DF is very immersive when I deal with it.
This begun as a "translation" of an old mod to the new versions, not a developing project. We will see if more things will come, if they don't don't get mad at me, but write them yourself, I will probably play them!!

Is this still being worked on? Tried using the mod, enjoyable when it works, but found that the Drow die out early on in worldgen every time. Is there a solution to this?

and:

Playing again with my own modifications, and have noticed something using the latest dwarf therapist.

The Social-alt tab on dwarf therapist, shows something that might be important.

Now, as standard, the drow culture in Rhenaya's original entity files values Merriment at 30.

However, in the creature file, drow's cheer propensity is valued at 0/30/50, which tends to make serious drows.

This seems to be causing a personality conflict in the drows, which might be part of why they don't seem to survive worldgen often.

Maybe tweaking these values might help.

Also could try putting in a boost to romance in the creature personality file, see if that helps them get married more often.

I like the way in which the forum found a problem and a possible solution too. Thank you Kat!
If I will be able to put a new version out, for 0.44, I will try to change something there - but I don't really know what I am doing, I'm a wannabe, a part time Dwarf Fortress player and less than that as a modder.

This also means also that if somebody else is going to push the work forward - both in a minimalist, "vanilla feel" way like I prefer, or in any direction they want - I will put a link to their threads on this one, to make it easier to find the versions we can, want and like to play.
Or go ahead an link it yourself here if you do have a file ready!


Cheers everybody.

[Mediterraneo]

Beta 0.4 is up!
You can find it here: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=13511

It is mostly just a translation, but I made some changes to the clothing - the drow should be more willing to dress and to produce clothes now - and to start address the small numbers the drow had after some years of worldgen, touching both the personality-values system as was suggested here and the settlement biomes pattern, which looked more relevant in my testing.
Let's see if this is an improvement.

[ManuG]

Started a new World and it seems to work so far Drow civs rise again. I still got only a few married couples though. But at least they seem to get children pretty quick.
On the other hand the trolls don't get offspring now (until yet that means - i am still only a couple of years around in that new fort)

But i have to report a mistake in the noble description: It says, that the house overseer would handle the diplomats, but these only meet and talk with my Priestess.
So either the description is wrong, or the game doesn't recognise the nobles correctly.

Awesome work so far I'm really glad to have this mod updated to the latest version! I am looking forward to some Drow-Raids on all those other slave races :p

[Mediterraneo]

Beta 0.5, the "Less is more edition" is out.


I am starting taking more and more 'artistic' decisions about this, so it is less of a simple translation and more of an interpretation of Rhenaya's work.
I still include the files needed to have it 'pure', but that's not anymore the only criterion. The other direction is the inmediate compatibility with other mods. I don't want to add to the "arms race" of metals (and bones) "almost as good" or "slightly better than" steel.
In this version I still have the "filological" translation added as a standalone alternative: copy either one of my two folders in your Dwarf Fortress folder.

Changes for Med's Less is More:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Titanium and its colleagues are cool but not really drow, nor really needed in Dwarf Fortress; I left them out. This also helps compatibility with other mods   introducing exotic metals - too much can be too much.
- Darklight Iron is out too, for the same reasons.
- I left out mithralsteel and mithril too.
  This will get some people mad, but to start with it, mithril is a Lord of the Rings thing. Mithral is its Forgotten Realms' version. They are a duplicate.
  Both are silvery metals, stronger and lighter than steel, that don't exist in our world. Both are made from a deep ore mined mostly by dwarves in concrete places, risking to dig too much to get it.
  In Dwarf Fortress the silvery metal, lighter and stronger than steel, that is mined mainly by dwarves and only in well defined very dangerous places - with the     risk of digging too much... already exists: it is called adamantine, and is already in-game. Even if the word for it in Sindarin is mithril, and in the Forgotten Realms it is mithral. Even if in the Forgotten Realms it does exist a different metal (a dark one) called adamantine.


Changes for both versions:
- I'm trying to start using the animal tokens to limit the access to drow's animals (spiders most of all) to other entities, even if you play this guys in a mod     with other playable evil civs. In this iteration I will try to have the drow use ONLY their animals as created by Rhenaya, while instead making it more difficult for other entities to get access to the same animals - even without a spidery to make good use of them, the giant spiders are double the size of the vanilla cave ones, are tameable and produce silk. It is a work in progress, and more elegant ways of writing the same things are surely available - I'll try to get it improving.
- I tweaked again the personality/values axis, far less then the last time,   to stress the drows' hedonism: it was to be faithful to the source material, but it     could help in improving socializing and baby output, I hope.
- Some tweakback in biome organization. I'm already stressing Rhenaya's work    in other directions now, and I didn't really know what I was doing there,
  neither mechanically nor from a lor point of view.
- I had to edit the entity file to specify that the "female only" positions only allow dark skinned female drows. For how the Quaggoth are written right now, they are citizens and would have been elegible for the positions, which they shouldn't. It may be wiser to put them in an hybrid situation, like the Troll in the Goblin entities: half pets, half usable pawns, to be more faithful to the lore's spirit. Time and test will tell.
- A last minute change was to the caste numbers composition for the drow creature: we had almost three times as many chances of having females than males, not an ideal situation for how Dwarf Fortress works. It can explain in part why the drow had so little babies too: let's see how it plays now.

Cheers!

PS: looking at the creature files, I started wondering if the Quaggoth being shearable was or wasn't aleftover from them having been created starting from the Troll from standard_creature file. They still had "T" as their identifying letter in last Rhenaya's version and it could have been an oversight. Do anyone have a recorded instance, in any lore-original material, of Quaggoths sheared for wool? Either in novels or game manuals. I don't.

[Mediterraneo]

Started a new World and it seems to work so far Drow civs rise again. I still got only a few married couples though. But at least they seem to get children pretty quick.
On the other hand the trolls don't get offspring now (until yet that means - i am still only a couple of years around in that new fort)

But i have to report a mistake in the noble description: It says, that the house overseer would handle the diplomats, but these only meet and talk with my Priestess.
So either the description is wrong, or the game doesn't recognise the nobles correctly.

Awesome work so far I'm really glad to have this mod updated to the latest version! I am looking forward to some Drow-Raids on all those other slave races :p

Thanks for the love and the feedback ManuG, I will try to give it a look.

On the raids, we all have a lot of expectations!

EDIT: ManuG: I took a look at it, the priestess is clearly indicated in the raw as the responsible to talk with diplomats, but the outpost leader was identifyed as the responsible in the first presentation of the first version of this mod.
I think it is Working As Designed and Working as Intended too.
In Rhenaya's intentions I mean: the files were evolutioning after the writing of the first post, and I didn't touch the positions barring adding the caste provision to the already present gender ones - Quaggoth females appeared in stranges places in my games, a no-no for a drow society.
Rhenaya used to add to that post, without modyfying old text, leaving even small keyboard mishaps in place.
There are other changes to the positions too, in respect to that descritpion - mostly cosmetic.
THis is still for most part Rhenaya's mod, and I don't want to change things when I'm not 200% sure of what I am doing. In this case, to change the thing she had to remove the [RESPONSIBILITY:RECEIVE_DIPLOMATS] tags from all of the layers of the expedition leader's successor - not something that happens by mistake.
To change "back" to match the description in that post you should open the entity_rhenaya_drow file (entity_rhenaya_drow_med5 in my last folder) in any basic text editor (not office word) and cut and past the line: [RESPONSIBILITY:RECEIVE_DIPLOMATS] getting it out of the Priestess space where it is and putting it in all of three other nobles: the Expedition Leader and its two successors, the Outpost Overseer and the House Overseer.
You could end the job doing the same with the two occupied site nobles too, the War Priest and the Forced Administrator.
The more I look at it, the more she did that on purpose, leaving that description obsolete but having a unique and flavory job organization between nobles.
I actually like this - and maybe I could provide a more recent description in the future for the first time player. But I am not likely to change it in the files to match that description.

[Mediterraneo]

0.6 is out!

You can get it here: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=13511

Silence for a year, then three versions in a month!

This time, focus on the Quaggoth: I revamped them, far from Rhenaya's version but nearer to the lore in my opinion.
Smaller, fiercer, faster and more aggressive. They learn less quickly than dwarves (and elves) but faster than troll now - I'm thinking on giving them normal learning speed in some areas (hunting, fighting) to push them even more in those roles but not for now.
But the important part of their change is that "smaller". They were really too big.

The other creatures got some love too, they are now more strictly drow-friends. It should be more difficult for other evil civs to encounter and domesticate. The spiders in particular, but all of the animals too. The Riding Lizard is not Common Domestic anymore.
On the general creature side, I messed with the costs.
The petvalues of the creature was vary low, allowing very rich embarks. There is now the need to balance needs and choose.
Quaggoth are almost additional citizens; the drowspider's analogue in vanilla would cost 1250 points at embark and it is smaller and with less to offer; the Rothe costs as a cow and offers more too; the Riding Lizards more than double in size the Cave Toads-Monitor Lizards kind of beasts and were valued less than a Large Rat - I'm not talking of the Giant ones.
Drow animals, as everything drow, are very good.
They should cost as such, forcing the player to chose with true drow cunning what they seek at embark.

I hope you enjoy this!

[Mediterraneo]

New update, 0.7

"Just some balancing stuff" they said. But the 0.7 version is out, "Reclaiming the metal" version.

Drows are back in Dark Fortresses, have their Mithril, Mithralsteel and Darklight Iron back by default (they were there as options before, with some problem to smelt Darklight Iron).

The dark elves have been tweaked again in their creatures - take a look at the readme.

The Quaggoth recieved a social nerf and a military boost - remember that you can equip them with animal-men sized stuff (Lion, Grizzly bear, Tapir, Python, Harp Seal men stuff will work)

More news in the readme!
Cheers everybody!

[Hellzs]

so im new to DF only been playing for a couple of months now.

Ive been using ☼Meph Tileset☼ and has became dependent only it for ease of play. i really want to drow but ive kind of hit a brick wall when trying to integrate it in to the set up. i was hoping someone could posable give pointer on how to make these to files/mods interact or if need be find a difrent tile set that it is more compatible with Rhenaya's Drow.

[Mediterraneo]

Hello Hellzs, welcome!

I am using Meph's tileset a lot lately, too. It is beautiful and easy to use.
I used a lot Peridexis Extant's launcher before.
I like launchers, launchers are good.

What problem do you have installing the mod in Meph's? I use that for playing 'my' (really Rhenaya's) drow.

To install in Meph's tileset (are we talking about this beauty, isn't it?: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161047.0)
Simply get a fresh copy of it and unzip it where you want it.
Open it's folder: you will see the launcher and some folders, one of which is "Dwarf Fortress". Open this Dwarf Fortress folder too and leave it open.
Now unzip your "med's rhendrow 0.7 for 44.12" in a concenient spot. Open the resulting folder, and open the Rhenayas_Drow_Mod folder inside it too.
You will see two folders: "raw" and "data" copy both of them and paste them into the "Dwarf Fortress" folder of Meph's tileset.

That's it, you have the basic drow mod installed.
The drow won't appear in Meph's launcher descriptions, but you will be able to use them ingame, generate a new world for that as usual.
You could also add the contents of the other folder of the mod, Rhenayas_Titanium_Addon in the same way, to the same "Dwarf Fortress" folder.

To actually play with drow you have to select them at the embark.
The creature type of your civilization is seen at the embark screen, pressing Tab around until you get to the "Neibours" screen. The first neighbour creature is the creature type of the embark. You can change that (if it says "dwarves" for example) by going to the "Your Civilization" screen (always there at the embark, always pressing Tab). In this screen you can select (with + and -) the civilization you prefer to play. If the names of the civs are not conclusive to undestand what is what, you can use Tab to go back to the "Neighbours" screen to be sure you are chosing a drow civilization.

I hope that this helps you, feel free to ask if you have any other problem.