New features in DF Vanilla-Spice v1.0:
-Vocalizations for a wide array of creatures, with more to come.
-Custom creature classes for certain beast categories.
-Snakes now have MISCHIEVOUS, causing them to pop out of stealth. ("A rattlesnake! Drive it away!")
-Cave creatures now have CAVE_ADAPT, giving you a potential weapon against monsters of the deep.
-Carp, sharks and other hostile fish have CRAZED, making lakes, shores and beaches potentially more interesting.
-Snake-men and reptile-men have grasping tails for combat.
-Animalmen are more person-like, with mannerisms and height/broadness variation, and are immune to curses.
-Metalworking is more dangerous, with syndrome gasses having a chance to spawn from coal mining/processing or smelting of ores.
1.1: Bird Bards and Bloodsuckers! -First pass of unique abilities and stat boosts for animalmen, esp. birds and insects, which are tragically weak.
-Some stronger animalmen, such as Elephants and those based off large predators, receive no boosts. Size is enough.
-New creature variations DWARF_EXACT_SIZE and HUMAN_EXACT_SIZE help apply universal armor sizes.
-New attacks to buff bloodsuckers such as leech men, lampreys, and Hungry Heads.
-Fix to insect VOCALIZATION so they use NONE, which makes them work despite the lack of lungs.
-Birds of prey can be trained to hunt.
-All cat animals can clean themselves (or others) like domestic cats. Can't model realistically painful tiger licking at this time.
-Dwarves are slightly less susceptible to stress, depression, etc. to help with some complaints about vanilla values.
-Some monsters without CAN_SPEAK have vocalizations, such as yeti, ice wolves, dragons, etc. More to come.
-Megabeasts have very loud vocalizations to make them easier for adventurers to find.
-Raw meat, cheese and plants make certain creatures happy when eaten. For example, Elves love raw meat.
HOTFIX: Tried incorporating Taffer's latest fixes to the expanded dictionary, but only caused more problems. Removing it for now until I can solve it.
1.2: Bonus Civs and Armor Sharing! -All stones with a fancy color (cinnibar, cobaltite, rutile, etc.) have MATERIAL_VALUE:2 to reward you for having a fancy fort.
-New mineral: Flint, suitable for rock spears/swords like Obsidian. Since Obsidian is found near magma - which renders stone weapons irrelevant - this gives new opportunities to use the mechanics. Appears in chalk, limestone and chert.
-New mineral: Goethite, or "bog iron." Addresses boom-or-bust distribution of ores and makes swamps more habitable.
Has precedent in many other mods, so should not be an outrageous addition.
-Dwarf civs have fewer domestic animals by default to reduce migrant pet clutter; use only Mules, Dogs, Cats, Sheep, Yaks.
-New auto-processing reaction for Quarry Bushes, courtesy of forum user WannabeHero.
-Crows and Magpies are upgraded from vermin to "real" creatures, like their Raven cousins, and can steal food or items.
-Many more animalmen have either DWARF_SHORT_SIZE, DWARF_EXACT_SIZE, HUMAN_EXACT_SIZE or HUMAN_TALL_SIZE. Most bird-men come in at just shorter than dwarves, while predators like tiger and bear men are slightly taller than humans. Animal-species tags are used to prevent Bear Men from riding Bears and other such weirdness.
-Many more animalmen have custom skills or talents to improve their natural abilities; FELINE, CANINE and URSINE creatures in particular. Bigger creatures get more flavor-skill/mental abilities.
-First inclusion of bonus animalperson civs, found in "entity_beast_bonus." Included in this first pass are Snail Man traders and Leech/Fly/Mosquito/Tick man gobbo-types adapted from Better Bugmen, Spider/Chameleon "Skulking" civs, Warthog/Boar plains raiders, jungle/desert Snake civs, and a Bear/Walrus/Wolf tundra-taiga civ. Each is set to spawn a max of 1 per world and picks from multiple species, so you're not guaranteed to see any of them survive worldgen.
-To try this out, simply drag "entity_beast_bonus" into the "objects" folder before installing as normal.
-Alternatively, check out Meph's Fortress Defense III, which uses all vanilla animalpersons and thereby benefits from
the animalman changes in this mod. (
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=173558.0)