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Author Topic: Favourite features of the mod  (Read 14973 times)

Meph

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Favourite features of the mod
« on: September 02, 2019, 07:45:25 pm »

Hey guys,

I feel like I'm repeating myself every few years, but: The transition from 34.11 to 40.01 kinda broke the mod. It also got feature creep, was kinda bloated, and had tons of content by other authors and dependencies on third-party utilities like dfhack; with the scripts and plugins being the main reason for crashes; which are the one thing you the players and I the modder hate most.

The 44.12 to "Villains + Steam/Itch.io" transition will be equally huge, especially re-doing the entire tileset thing and the third-party utilities. And again, the mod became kinda large, with content by other authors; dependencies on dfhack, especially the updates done by Amostubal in my absence; as well as the increasingly large and difficult to integrate Meph-tileset will make the update to "steam DF" difficult.

So...

Let's start from scratch!  8)

My goal is a streamlined mod, that can mostly work without dfhack/third-party content, entirely written by me (people that want to contribute could make drag & drop modules and publish them themselves), with the very best that MasterworkDF had to offer over the years. I want bugfixes, fancy sprites, new industries, heavy focus on Fort-Mode and new playable races that have a unique feel.

The question for you: What would you like to keep? What would you like to have that isn't there yet? Any mod features that are currently in MasterworkDF that you don't like?
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::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
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delphonso

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2019, 08:46:11 pm »

Very happy to hear about this. I've enjoyed every session of Masterwork that I've played, though the crashes were the thing that killed it for me over time.

To keep: I really enjoy the variety of playing as kobolds - zerging things instead of beating them with power. It feels genuinely different than playing as dwarves. I remember my starting 7 became master wrestlers after beating on a particularly beefy horse for a season.

I'd like to see the kobold civ be more cleaned up, a clearer progression, and any sort of deeper flavor that is possible. Expanded traps would be great.

Splint

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2019, 09:50:19 pm »

I liked the warlocks as a concept, but they pretty plainly go against the lack of dependence on dfhack.

Ain't gonna lie, I keep wanting to do a fort centered on them, but being a release cycle out of date makes the prospects of garnering interest in such a project... Small, to put it politely.

I liked the dwarves as they were the last time I played them - a nice mix of everything, but only though to give you a little taste of what the other civs had, and wouldn't mind them sticking to that sort of model.

Didn't care for the hyper merchant shtick the humans had, which feels like a strange thing to say, but I guess compared to other civs it felt extremely forced. Not sure how to describe it exactly.

Meph

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2019, 10:16:03 pm »

Necromancers can be done without dfhack next version, because of the summoning/frankenstein monsters villians create. :)

Humans don't just have trading... they have higher block production for aboveground constructions, muskets/gunpowder, the entire guildhall system... and they dislike cave adaption a lot.
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::: ☼Meph Tileset☼☼Map Tileset☼- 32x graphic sets with TWBT :::
::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
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Splint

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2019, 12:33:18 am »

Took me a while to figure out what I was trying to convey.

I've been trying to type up something for the past hour. Easiest way to put it, they don't feel like generic humans, they feel like merchant humans.

Dwarves feel like generic dwarves. Orcs feel like generic orcs, warlocks feel like generic bad guy spell casters, kobolds feel like generic tribal people. Humans don't feel like generic humans, they feel like a specific kind of human - Genoese, Venetian, the Hanseatic League, whatever. pick your poison on slightly more advanced than typical, money/merchant focused society.

For the record, I don't mean generic in a bad way, just trying to express what I'm getting at.

Meph

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #5 on: September 03, 2019, 01:32:39 am »

Oh, yeah, that was intentional. :D

I had to give them some gimmick, otherwise they would play like Dwarves. Just like tribal kobolds, magic warlocks... water naga, if the AI wouldn't have been to stupid to handle water ^^
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::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
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nekoexmachina

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #6 on: September 03, 2019, 01:58:47 am »

I *really* hope that mod configuration utility would be written in something more cross-OS portable then .NET/Basic :)  (Qt for example)
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razorback

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #7 on: September 03, 2019, 04:47:56 pm »

For the flavour of the different races (and of course a little bit more difficulty), I suggest that there should not only be certain things a race is good at, but also rather harsh limitations with what a race is really bad at or can't do at all. The less vanilla a race is playable the more it supports a unique playstyle.

For instance: yes, Kobolds can't create high tier metals and alloys - but that doesn't matter since they just need too farm it from invaders and smelt and forge it into anything they desire.
Would it be possible to restrict certain  races ability to use certain metals at the forge etc at all? Or a certain percentage that the materials are lost during the process because (because humans or kobolds just can't correctly handle mithril or bifrost)

Why are orcs even able to grow crops? They do not sow :D

Gnomes good with animals? I picture them as vegan naturephobic nerds which probably are allergic to animal fur. Also: farming is hard physical work; terrible harvest yields until they develop a technological level with industrialised agriculture.

Dwarves and magic? Heresy. Let magma deal with such peculiarties.



Just the 2 cents of someone who is stil stuck with the glorious 34.11 and hasn't touched 44.
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Splint

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #8 on: September 03, 2019, 05:35:50 pm »

For the flavour of the different races (and of course a little bit more difficulty), I suggest that there should not only be certain things a race is good at, but also rather harsh limitations with what a race is really bad at or can't do at all. The less vanilla a race is playable the more it supports a unique playstyle.

For instance: yes, Kobolds can't create high tier metals and alloys - but that doesn't matter since they just need too farm it from invaders and smelt and forge it into anything they desire.
Would it be possible to restrict certain  races ability to use certain metals at the forge etc at all? Or a certain percentage that the materials are lost during the process because (because humans or kobolds just can't correctly handle mithril or bifrost)

Being unable to make certain materials, and having poorer yields would be a way to differentiate them, certainly.

Quote
Why are orcs even able to grow crops? They do not sow :D

Gnomes good with animals? I picture them as vegan naturephobic nerds which probably are allergic to animal fur. Also: farming is hard physical work; terrible harvest yields until they develop a technological level with industrialised agriculture.
They were made by other people, though granted, it is a little odd for gnomes to be both super advanced and discount elves.

The orcs are also a conglomeration of of different fiction sources and cultural motifs as well (the Uruk caste is implied to be a hybrid of the mongols and Japanese for example.) Additionally, the game doesn't like it if a civ needs to eat and can't farm.

Quote
Dwarves and magic? Heresy. Let magma deal with such peculiarties.

The dwarves' magic is already fairly constrained with just four elemental wizards - with those wizards utility either being working in groups with similar wizards, or in tactical situations: Fire wizards to fight flame using enemies, air ones to fight webbers, water if you expect a lot of fighting along waterways and wet moats. Earth mages meanwhile serve as good shock troop type dudes relative to other dwarves, being bigger and more resiliant along with thier spells.

Comparatively speaking, the orcish dreamwalkers and warlocks had a much larger array of spells available to them, being more directly focused on debilitation of one's enemies.

Arcvasti

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #9 on: September 03, 2019, 05:44:04 pm »

My favourite thing was always Kobold Mode. Kobold Mode was great in that it forced you to think about playing DF in a completely different way, without tons of dfhack shenanigans. Instead of digging a deep fortress, you had to make do with shallow soil burrows and the potentially dangerous caverns if you embarked on a cave. Instead of farming, you instead relied on raising animals and hunting them. Instead of very skilled and heavily armoured troops, you get a swarm of rabble with improvised weapons. And instead of having longlived master craftsmen with expert skills, you have a bunch of shortlived dudes with some innate skill.

I was never really much a fan of kobolds' stealing thing though, since it was pretty clunky due to technical reasons and kind of eroded some of their limitations. You now actually have the ability to steal from other civs in vanilla though so that stuff would be pretty redundant though.

I'd totally be willing to make a new version of Kobold Mode, at least if making an independent module that can be dragged and dropped onto Masterwork isn't too much of a compatibility pain. And if you're ok with me basing it at least partially off the 34.11 version of kobolds for the basic stuff like bone/leather workshops and the kobold race/civilization. And of course if you don't have your own preexisting plans for Kobold Mode.

As for least favourite thing about Masterwork, it'd have to be the extra wildlife. There was a ton of it so it often eclipsed the vanilla wildlife, some of it was potentially very dangerous for a fort just starting out and a lot of them didn't have proper biome tags so it made all the biomes feel basically the same.
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Meph

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #10 on: September 03, 2019, 06:31:58 pm »

Quote
I'd totally be willing to make a new version of Kobold Mode, at least if making an independent module that can be dragged and dropped onto Masterwork isn't too much of a compatibility pain. And if you're ok with me basing it at least partially off the 34.11 version of kobolds for the basic stuff like bone/leather workshops and the kobold race/civilization. And of course if you don't have your own preexisting plans for Kobold Mode.
Mh? The 44.12 version has a fully fledged kobold mode...
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::: ☼Meph Tileset☼☼Map Tileset☼- 32x graphic sets with TWBT :::
::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
::: WorldBicyclist.com - Follow my bike tours around the world - 148 countries visited :::

delphonso

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #11 on: September 03, 2019, 06:53:25 pm »

As for least favourite thing about Masterwork, it'd have to be the extra wildlife. There was a ton of it so it often eclipsed the vanilla wildlife, some of it was potentially very dangerous for a fort just starting out and a lot of them didn't have proper biome tags so it made all the biomes feel basically the same.

This is truly worth noting. Expanded animals are great, especially as you domesticate some, but yeah, with improper tags and giant beasties, I lost plenty of forts just from something bad walking in and squashing the seven.

PlumpHelmetMan

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #12 on: September 03, 2019, 08:17:30 pm »

I personally feel that a bit more cohesion would improve Masterwork DF. What I mean by that is while it wouldn't be Masterwork without an enormous amount of content, I think the content could at least be selected more carefully so that player worlds feel more like proper and unique story settings and less like stitched-together pastiches of randomness (I don't mean that offensively, just as an observation of how the MDF world has felt to me up to this point).
« Last Edit: September 03, 2019, 08:28:02 pm by PlumpHelmetMan »
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Meph

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #13 on: September 03, 2019, 08:40:53 pm »

I personally feel that a bit more cohesion would improve Masterwork DF. What I mean by that is while it wouldn't be Masterwork without an enormous amount of content, I think the content could at least be selected more carefully so that player worlds feel more like proper and unique story settings and less like stitched-together pastiches of randomness (I don't mean that offensively, just as an observation of how the MDF world has felt to me up to this point).
Have you ever played the 34.11 version? The current one is much more cohesive already. ;)
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::: ☼Meph Tileset☼☼Map Tileset☼- 32x graphic sets with TWBT :::
::: ☼MASTERWORK DF☼ - A comprehensive mod pack now on Patreon - 250.000+ downloads and counting :::
::: WorldBicyclist.com - Follow my bike tours around the world - 148 countries visited :::

PlumpHelmetMan

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Re: Favourite features of the mod
« Reply #14 on: September 03, 2019, 08:54:03 pm »

I actually haven't played any version earlier than 43.05, though it's good to know that there have been improvements. My above post seems incredibly presumptuous in hindsight and I apologize for that. I guess players can always make their worlds more cohesive by checking off undesired mods from the starting parameters.

Either way, looking forward to seeing how the villain release will affect Masterwork. :)
« Last Edit: September 03, 2019, 08:57:25 pm by PlumpHelmetMan »
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