Since I almost finished the vanilla DF tileset I'm working on, I thought about another way to make the game visually more interesting; or at least more interesting without mod-content that changes the game balance.
This is what I came up with:
- init/worldgen: A collection of world-gen presets. Real life countries, fantasy-worlds from other fiction, themed worlds like volcano or evil or good.
- data/sound: More .ogg background songs. Not my quite métier and probably very subjective. Also redundant since soundsense exists.
- data/speech: More entries for adv-mode talks. Bit silly considering that my twbt-heavy tileset is not really intended for adv-mode and many things look really odd in it.
- A workshop that runs dfhacks "open-legends" from fort-mode. That allows players free access to it without breaking immersion. I actually wrote something like this when open-legends was new, but there was a critical bug when continuing fort mode afterwards. I hope that's been fixed. (?)
- Decorational workshops. I have about 250 different sprites in the tileset that you can only see when you build them as a workshop, using Roses building-subtype-change to keep the list in the build menu short. Lanterns or fountains you can turn on/off, signs for every type of industry, different floor/roof tiles, gardens, etc. I could expand on that.
- Carbon copies of dwarves, elves, humans, goblins and kobolds that use different graphics. For example 5 dwarf_1, dwarf_2, etc. creatures, but one looks like the normal dwarf, another has brighter bears and is taller, another is smaller with black beards, one looks evil, yadda yadda. Aka the design of the main races could be a bit randomized between worlds. Wouldn't change game balance. Visiting races could also get the same treatment, like viking-humans in one world, but arabic humans in another. High-elves, or wood-elves. Hob-goblins or night goblins.
- Longer, more detailed DESCRIPTIONs for creature files. There are only 767 creatures and I'm sure people love to read through repeating text a lot. So... might not be worth the trouble.
- More vermin. Add more variations of vermin, lets say double them. Then reduce the frequency of the vermin by 50%, and the game balance will be the same. Same amount of vermin on the map, but more varied types.
- More entries for creature_fanciful. The mythological centaurs, chimeras and griffons that don't actually exist in the game, but are supposed to show up in engravings and pref_strings. I actually never seen them show up. O.o
- More entries for descriptor_shape. Aka engravings and gem-cuts. There are only 37 in vanilla DF.
- More colors for descriptor_color_standard and eye color. There are already well over a hundred of them, so I think we are good.
- More/different SELECT_SYMBOL for entities. Aka less Urist and Bomrek; rather a larger pool of names for dwarven sites, forts, dwarves themselves...
- More clothing types. Carbon copies of existing clothing items with more descriptive names and adjectives. "Large, puffy vest", "striped shirt", "studded leather jacket", etc. Could also include ethnicity-themed sets, like Mayan, Japanese, Nordic...
- More names for item_food. Simple one, doesn't change balance and I'm sure dwarves can do better than biscuits, stew and roast.
- More entries for instruments. There are currently only procedually generated, weirdly named instruments. One could add a few real-world instruments to DF, lets say 3x for each of the 4 types supported in DF: Stringed, Percussion, Keyboard and Wind.
- Carbon-copies of weapons and/or ammo. A barbed arrow for goblins, a curved sword for elves, a pointy-stick (spear) for kobolds... Same entries and values, just new names.
- More entries for language, symbols and words. This is complicated, but adds a lot of flavor to peoples names, artefacts, locations... you name it. There are currently 2195 entries, so making any large impact would take... a bit of work. I'm also not sure if there are hardcoded areas that might get confused by new words... I kinda remember titans/FBs with empty names when using mods that add new words, but don't add them to symbols. I think.
- More grasses for plant_grasses. Grass is only used for grazers and it doesn't matter which type the graze on.
That's it. All I could think of without adding any new elements or altering the game balance itself.
Please let me know what you think, if you have additional ideas, and if there is an interest for a mod like this.
Cheers,
Meph
PS: I'm thinking about a vanilla-mod. More or less. Tileset with graphics for everything; bug-fixes and balancing like in Modest Mod (Button) / Revised (Taffer), some extra flavor; but all still vanilla DF. Like an anti-masterwork mod.
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Topic: Collecting all the raw changes that add flavor but leave game balance alone. (Read 2795 times)