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[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

I've re-written this OP, as I figured I'd go in a different direction.


Mainly I will be slowly redesigning vanilla DF, a sort of overhaul. I think dwarves will be the last to touch in the 1st pass. As mainly I want to rework elves, and goblins.

Current / Done / Not Started / In Scope:

• Phase 1
     
  • Elven Rework
         
    • Elf bodysize returned to 70k
    • Elf Immortality removed (except for a very rare caste), 3 castes (normal ~500 years, uncommon ~1000 years, rare immortal)
    • New 'Good' tree called Ironbark that is used in 'silverlight' and 'silverweave' metal alloys (magic + silver + ironbark wood = silverX alloy)
    • Elven Weapons and Armor
    • Elven Noble/Position Upgrade (Will probably leave most but there are new castes+creature_class for real elf nobles)
       
  • Goblin Rework
         
    • Remove Goblin Immortality
    • Move Goblins to the woods, mountains, and deserts (as variants)
               
      • Forest Goblins, Use copper and bronze, with minimum gear (more tribal)
      • Mountain Goblins, Use Iron and heavier weapons and armor
      • Desert Goblins, Use Iron and Bronze, with medium and some Arabian gear (so far just vanilla weapons and armor/clothes)
           
       
  • Misc* Changes
         
    • New Weapons, Glaive and Long Bow
               
      • Staff Weapon, PIKE fast two handed blunt weapon
      • Bow, Blowgun and Long Bow now default to having a "dagger" with them for combat
      • Bow and Long Bow also have a "short sword" version as well
      • Ranged Weapon values upped
           
    • More creature attacks. Backhand, Grasp(weak can latch blunt attack), Elbow Strike, Thrust Kick, Knee Strike, and Head Butt
               
      • Forearm bash, and shoulder tackle
           
    • Streamlining some Trees, making fruit/food bearing trees more rare.
    • New Evil monster Ghoul moved to another project
    • Brain is now left and right sides, so a simple bruise isn't death right away
    • Dwarves given Halberds, Great Axes, and Mauls (all resized to allow them to be used)
       

2nd Phase:
Planned race to fill in the gap of the missing Dark Fortress civ (since goblins will be moved), it will either be orcs or fiends (lesser demons, closer to imps and gremlins)

Troll rework, currently they are some sort of horned, tusked, underground Sasquatch. To stone like creatures (Rough stone skin, flexible crystal muscle, powdery ether core) which will have different variants that look, fight, and perform differently.

3rd Phase:
Specialized Pets for races, Rock Hounds for dwarves (not made of rock, and also not a dog. Think of a mix between a Croc and a German Shepard), Purring Maggots will be made cat-sized and be a grazing and milkable creature for dwarves. And Mountain Goats (wagon pullers, yarn, pack animals) the pet list of dwarves will shrink considerably. Elves will probably just use whatever they can like they do now. Humans will still use COMMON_DOMESTIC, goblins will prefer wolves (wolf riders).

Special Workforce pets/creatures that can pad your fortress's workforce

[ZM5]

I like these, but don't know if some of them would work flawlessly - for example blindness and most other impairment spells seem to not fade away properly (as in, if you get blinded by a spell that'll be the case until you get damaged, even if the duration of the spell is long over).

I tried doing some tests with "channeling" spells before the user could actually cast them, but it seems to be a tad of a crapshoot - my main goal with it was to make spell usage more complex than handing out debuffs to a bunch of opponents, and also to make spellcasting preventable with "silence" type spells. If you want to I could help with testing and so on, I'd just have to make a fresh install folder so my own stuff doesn't interfere.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Hmm good to know there are some "glitches" with the IMPAIR_FUNCTION effect, but shall see. Since the blind/impairment will happen during combat, there is a good chance the deal breaker of getting hit is there.

I guess your channeling was a bounce method (caster tosses stage 1 at target giving target key to use stage 2, target uses new key to toss the key to stage 2 to caster, etc, etc) Those are kinda funky and never liked them, the concept was planned around the time the pokemon mod wanted to do evolutions but through combat rather than time based.

Yeah any interaction that is VERBAL requires the user to have CAN_SPEAK, and this tag can be removed through syndromes (so 1st thing is 1st all INTELLIGENT tags are going to be replaced with CAN_LEARN and CAN_SPEAK) thus what SILENCE will do is just remove the ability to speak, which is also, silencing someone haha.

My plan for chance based interactions was the spell would have "sister" interactions that apply a harmless syndrome, so the main spell can't be cast because "Target cannot have SNY_CLASS" and the sister blocker interactions will have their syndromes PROB be 100 - main spells chance. So fireball it might be 15% chance so the blocker has a 85% chance to be applied before the spell/interaction can be used. No spell will be free-action only blockers, with a very small cooldown (1 tick) and last for 10-20 ticks. Also to prevent AI from spamming the blocker if more than 1 mage sees the same target they can't apply if syn_class they use are already on that target.

Same with the range limiter, can't cast my spell if my blocker says I can't.

EDIT:
Sure more testing for these things clears up time for me to work on the other nitty gritty details, and SCIENCE I must perform

[ZM5]

Actually, for the channeling thing I used the same thing I use for self-buffs. They only target themselves, after several tics they should gain the interaction and lose it after another few tics (the cooldown would have been longer than secondary tics, so they'd only be able to use it once per channel).

Keyword "should", it wouldn't always work for some reason. Had difficulty using it for combat as well due to how interaction usage tokens work.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

So assembling the Vampire creatures is taking a bit, mainly due to the fact that I'm easily distracted + busy. Once I get their main "details" sorted (long teeth, paler skin, red eyes?, Phys Stats) not sure if I'll tweak PERSONALITY values but I have the primary Castes planned out
Pure Blood (in code it's Grand) 2.5% or a total of 5% of the population
Vampire (normal) 10% or a total of 10% of the population
Fledgling (weak but numerous, also pop out a lot of babies, which can also be pure bloods, it's weird I know but I can't say CASTE A can only birth CASTE A and B) 37.5 or the remaining 75% of the population

Once I finish with Human and Goblin vampires (not full details but at least to a working point) I'm going to do a Test with an ENTITY that has more than one CREATURE, by test isn't (they spread out civs with a creature reigning there, but to test will a Multi Creature Civ have migrations of the related CREATUREs populate the SITES. This is to make it seem a vampire castle will be filled with all types of vampires)

after that it's generalizing their materials (I don't want Elf skin, and Vampire Elf skin. I will have vampires use the same skin material as their non vampire selves)
Then their "undead/unholy bonuses" such as Stance climber, legendary climber, natural swimming, no breathe, and the like (will be ripping quite a bit out of the example vampire syndrome, minus a few like STERILE and NO_AGING as I already removed the MAX_AGE tags) and then the MATERIAL_FORCE_MULTIPLIER tags to make them beefier to normal mundane things, but weaker to Silver and Mithril (once I make Mithril)

After that I will hop back to their Entity file and flesh out their positions and most likely only allow them access to Iron, being as they are warlike they won't be having a majority of the professions just what's needed to make a 90% soldier based civ. As they will be a mid to late game invader

I plan on making "Feral" vampires which is the same deal only they are as strong as Fledglings and live in caves like kobolds, and more like wild animals (no gear) just a bunch of naked feral vampires seeking to kill and feed on anything they can. I might make them just like Animal People and just something that can ambush you at night in an EVIL biome to make Adv. Mode have something from this mod.

Once I have all the Vamps to a point I think is polished enough It's off to changing the elves

[IndigoFenix]

From my experience, IMPAIR_FUNCTION does work, but if a creature is impaired for too long or from a syndrome that is too strong, the damage can be permanent.

I have made a functional temporary blind spell, but the intensity must be carefully adjusted; too strong and it becomes permanent, too weak and it has no effect.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Does IMPAIR_FUNCTION have the same issue with PARALYSIS where if done via interaction it's density is really low (A interaction that is SEV 100 is not the same to a Cave Spider venom injection of SEV 100)

If it was some magic number that would work for all sizes and not say blind a kobold for life, but only makes a giant's vision a bit blurry and he needs glasses for a few days.
But this might work for some food that might cause blindness if eaten too much (follow how vanilla booze works now)

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

So full on Civs make weird stuff, so Vampires will just be Feral Animal people that live in EVIL biomes (or the closest I can get to roaming hoards of blood thirsty silver hating monsters)

Since apparently I can't stop normal folk moving into Vampire forts to study (are you crazy they EAT you, but that's not true they accept them with open arms) and having them live in caves sounds closer for the Feral versions. So will be slightly reworking the 3 Vamp cvis I have now. I'm not going to do A goblin version as they are going to be redone as orcs. Where a goblin is more of a horrid crossbreed of Dwarf and Orc (evil elf) so I imagine they'll still look preeeety ugly.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Vampire rework has been completed, Altho without real world testing, hard to see if they are what I envision them as, I feel I'll be tweaking them here and there to get them to that

"They are hard to kill without silver, but not OP that silver is the only thing that works. Gotta have that 'it is easier if you stab it with the fancy fork my dear' but also you can take it on with mundane weapons too"

Now i'm going to be split between Syndrome Testing, Reactions (again), and some "spawner" critters for disposable workforce. And see how far the Broken interaction usage hint jazz goes Teneb and Enemy Post gave some insight to some things they have noticed so it's off to the lab

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Decided to kick this up again, Updated the OP to show a minor roadmap, this is still going to be used for ideas. I do at somepoint want to kick in some fixed Were-curses, Vampires, Boogeymen and also interactions and material weaknesses.

May want to redo Animal-men aka Demi-Humans as well.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

Currently started the Elf changes, so far just to the creature. There will be 3 castes (6 cause Male and Female) normal, high, and divine(immortal) ranging from common, uncommon, rare/leader.

After that I will add in the new tree and metals (silverlight and silverweave) then I can focus on Goblins. I might switch it so dwarves worship a force and elves are pantheon but I'll leave that alone for now.

I've also integrated an unreleased DF Streamlined that I've helped a few other modders with (so not just my work) once I get something released they will be in the credits

[TomiTapio]

I split OldGenesis goblins into three races, to have more goblin wars in the world. (already have forest elf / swamp elf / desert elf / nord humans / knight humans / orc samurais)
Goblins - regular
Groblins - cruder weapons, more belligerent, stronger
Goblines - more civilized, reading and writing, but still goblins

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

That's pretty interesting. I think I'll just have one version of elves for now. But maybe split the goblins similar to your elves (mountain goblins, forest goblins, desert goblins) I know I may do the same for humans (ocean, desert, tundra, plains/forest) things like nords, Asians, African, European. Only gripe is they wouldn't interbreed. But may see diversity via immigration. Just no interracial relationships  


I like your suggestions.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

updated op roadmap, also was thinking of broadening attacks that creatures can do (headbutt, backhand, knee smash, elbow smash, {split kicks to Front Kick, Thrust Kick(push kick/boot)}) Debating if biting and scratching would really be needed for non-wild creatures (humans, dwarves, elves) Goblins could potentially still bite and scratch. Also attack modifiers for things like prepare and recoverys, and velocity boosts. Like a Thrust kick might have a longer recovery but it has more velocity and smaller contact. But a Front kick would be balanced, and only a slight boost to velocity (but punching and the like won't leave you as open as kicks)

Weapons I will probably overhaul attacks too, example like a spear has stab, and a sort of slash attack (as most spears are not just a spike, but more of a arrow/leaf head) the slash and stab will have the same prepare but the slash will recover much quicker, but the slash can't cut that deep but could provide that cutting strike to maim a limb. Also adding in a shaft strike, shaft push (like a quarter staff, holding each end and pushing/striking with the middle portion), and the butt strike (blunt poke) all with prepare and recoveries and boosts that reflect how that weapon would put you at a disadvantage or leverage more force. Like a butt strike/prod would take some time to prepare (assuming they're flipping it over from pointy end to blunt end) but would allow for a low contact heavy vel strike, and then the recover would be longer due to the force used + flipping it back to pointy end.

Any thoughts on this? or just leave attacks alone.

[voliol]

That's pretty interesting. I think I'll just have one version of elves for now. But maybe split the goblins similar to your elves (mountain goblins, forest goblins, desert goblins) I know I may do the same for humans (ocean, desert, tundra, plains/forest) things like nords, Asians, African, European. Only gripe is they wouldn't interbreed. But may see diversity via immigration. Just no interracial relationships  


I like your suggestions.

Pretty sure they’d still interbreed as long as you keep them as one species, only changing around the entity parametres. It’d be relatively rare though as they only change civs when conquered (I believe).