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[Eric Blank]

So i was thinking, as i have things now dwarves have to eat the spell essences to learn magic, so the player has to tightly control food distribution to make sure the right dwarves learn the right spells. But this morning i had a thought; maybe if it was a live vermin the reaction produced with a 100% chance to bite, delivering the spell syndrome. It would allow high transmission rates, quickly, with less micromanagement (only have to keep cats out of the magic station.)

However, i also wanted to implement essence copying, and although having vermin all over the place biting people would technically allow other candidates to wander in and get bit, but the vermin would wander off and get eaten eventually anyway. So it wouldnt reliably allow one to save the essence for later education.

What if, the first "research" reactions produce a tool or something related to the essence, and then another "learning" reaction consumes that and creates the vermin? Is that too many steps for a new player? You also have to create aether residue to "fuel" essence production in the first place.

[Teneb]

Yeah, the material stuff that makes the creature actually immune to heat damage would prevent the corpse from burning up.

I misunderstood. I thought you wanted to prevent that.


EDIT:

So i was thinking, as i have things now dwarves have to eat the spell essences to learn magic, so the player has to tightly control food distribution to make sure the right dwarves learn the right spells. But this morning i had a thought; maybe if it was a live vermin the reaction produced with a 100% chance to bite, delivering the spell syndrome. It would allow high transmission rates, quickly, with less micromanagement (only have to keep cats out of the magic station.)

However, i also wanted to implement essence copying, and although having vermin all over the place biting people would technically allow other candidates to wander in and get bit, but the vermin would wander off and get eaten eventually anyway. So it wouldnt reliably allow one to save the essence for later education.

What if, the first "research" reactions produce a tool or something related to the essence, and then another "learning" reaction consumes that and creates the vermin? Is that too many steps for a new player? You also have to create aether residue to "fuel" essence production in the first place.

Why not just rely on evaporating rocks instead of hoping for a vermin bite? Sure, there is a chance the dwarf won't breathe in the spell-teaching gas but you can handwave that away as "failure to learn".

[Eric Blank]

That was actually the 2.0 version, and it was working so poorly that a lot of players complained, hence why ive been looking for a better alternative. Its really a nightmare in general without a way to just read a book and learn like its a secret, and secrets are hard to come by.

Als9 you quoted that post twice :v

[Teneb]

That was actually the 2.0 version, and it was working so poorly that a lot of players complained, hence why ive been looking for a better alternative. Its really a nightmare in general without a way to just read a book and learn like its a secret, and secrets are hard to come by.

Als9 you quoted that post twice :v

Thanks for pointing that out.

In that case, yeah, you are kind of out of luck. Food is probably the most reliable form, since there's no guarantee the vermin's AI will go for an attack.

[thefriendlyhacker]

That was actually the 2.0 version, and it was working so poorly that a lot of players complained, hence why ive been looking for a better alternative. Its really a nightmare in general without a way to just read a book and learn like its a secret, and secrets are hard to come by.

Als9 you quoted that post twice :v

Serious question. How committed are you to not using DFHack?

Because implementing this using DFHack is very straight forward. Create the syndrome that gives your creature the interaction (which you presumably already have), add a reaction with the items you want your magic learning to need as reagents ([PRESERVE_REAGENT] if they are reusable), and then stick a 1 line script call in onLoad.init which would look something like this:

Code: [Select]

modtools/reaction-trigger -reactionName ARBITRARY_CUSTOM_REACTION -resetPolicy ResetDuration -syndrome "Syndrome that grants Magic Interactions"

[Eric Blank]

Pretty much 100% no dfhack or other 3rd party dependencies. Ive been trying very hard to make sure this  is something that works out of the box with as little setup as possible. And thats where i end up beating my head against the wall that stands between currently implemented features and future possibilities, and all these weird workarounds.

Ill probably try the vermin method and see how reliable that is. The food thing totally works, but its still pretty awkward.

[that_eye]

I have been playing with a very sparsely modded game... a secret of telepathic powers, some more creatures that [DOES_NOT_EXIST], and that's it. Until I got a truly !!FUN!! idea to make bronze colossi reproduce via asexual budding

he he he

[Dunmeris]

Hey, you and Deon's Genesis mod is pretty good. What's you guys' policy on credited borrowing?
Because my mod does borrow some things from Genesis (and other mods), but it does give credit (to all mods that I "borrowed" from). Both in the raws themselves and in a separate credits file.

Borrow away, Deon and I give permission to everyone. OldGenesis mod has only 110-230 users.
I think I'm most proud of the leather tiers and wood tiers. Deon made most of the dwarf castes, I added learns-military and learning-disability and posh-noble castes.

Thanks!

[Ulfarr]

A creature from my custom civ was turned into a werebeast in 124 and died in 181 of.. old age??? Not sure were I messed up but I thought werebeasts don't age, do they?

[pikachu17]

Ones that were directly cursed by a god don't age, but those bitten can still die of old age.

[Ulfarr]

That explains it! Thanks

[Eric Blank]

So the vermin thing definitely works, but only really reliably in confined spaces. I dont think ill go with that as a primary means of acquiring spells, but maybe an option?

Ive decided to move nosferatu off the caverns list, but i might make other changes instead. They appear on almost 100% of embarks, despite being frequency:1 and having all these other cavern critters available. And theyre dangerous and annoying enough on their own to warrant sealing off the caves.

I think its just time to give dwarves the magic they need to keep cavern critters from overwhelming a fortress without having to wall off the map edges. For that i had various idea like spells for killing particular species or cavern critters in general. But i also thought about "ensnare" spells that paralyze (and add nobreathe to) cave critters that attack your dwarves for a day or two.
And then i wanted to give dwarves other powers like supertough skin when underground or spreading euphoria when drunk, if they learned those abilities. Or adding nonausea/nobreathe when appropriate

But theres a bigger question; i wanted to allow innate, natural abilities or curses again. I thought about using castes but i dont want to go and edit every single race to add castes and everything be dependent on that framework. But i could use a syndrome to have a similar effect, without any further edits to the race itself.
So i thought, how can i reliably get a syndrome into everybody? But i can do that with booze and recurring interactions. One guy takes a swig, gets a greeting interaction he uses on everybody he meets for a couple weeks, who also get the greeting interaction and cast it on everyone they meet. At the same time theyre plied for their racial profile by the interaction, and get a random chance-based selection of abilities or, potentially, curses. Since this is all part of the same interaction set, and the abilities are permanent, a simple cannot_target_if_already_affected string is all thats necessary to prevent it going on indefinitely. Yet at the same time, i want some individuals to get none of these powers and not be eligible for round 2+, so a flat 100% chance or something of getting something totally worthless, like flipping off people they dont like, should prevent further propogation.

Does that all make sense? Do i have to worry about a memetic, ever-spreading interaction bogging the game down?
I know this wont work in adventure mode, either. Theres always that old trick of dissolving/liquifying materials like making an inorganic cloth thats available to almost everybody for clothesmaking and promptly turns to liquid, infecting them with a contact syndrome that carries a self-clean interaction for a brief while, triggering the racial interaction.

[SQman]

Aww, look at this delightful flock of sheep gathered around a pond, aren't they just wonderful?



Wait a minute, is that... a stem? Those are not real sheep!

Barometz, more commonly known as the vegetable lamb of Tartary, is a legendary plant said to grow sheep as fruit. The sheep would graze on grass around its mother plant, and once all grass within its reach was eaten, both plant and sheep would die.

My barometz is a plant, alright. If I understand correctly, I can create a fake 'barometz' creature, and make a reaction that turns barometz lamb fruit into barometz meat, yarn and leather.
Those plants bear no seeds, and can be only foraged in good mountains, tundras and taigas.

That's the plan for now. I was supposed to be working on entities for the modpack for my next story fort, but strange moods hit out of nowhere.

Edit:



Great success! The lamb gets butchered for 8 meat, 1 leather and 7 thread, just like planned!

[Teneb]

Just finished the first megabeast in my D&D pack: the Demilich. Balancing it was tough, because its size is a measly 300 (it's a floating skull), meaning that it could very, very easily be struck down since in DF size is so important. To counteract that it has some ludicrously dangerous interactions (including one "save or die"), rank 10 in dodging, only takes 1/10th of all damage through usage of material force multiplier, and the damn thing flies.

I'm moving on to Demons now, and I think I'll handle them by having each individiual demon be a lone wandering creature, and also creating a Tanar'ri civ as late-game invaders.

EDIT: After reading a bit about size on the wiki, and how tiny creatures are actually hard to hit, I nerfed a bit the natural dodging skill and general resistance to damage on the demilich.

[SQman]

First time dipping my toes in body plan raws. Looked scary at first, but now the only scary thing is the power in my hands. Reality can be whatever I want now.



Oh, and I made a three-legged bird. Am I a real modder now?