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[nockermensch]

I'm trying to mod in a race of subterranean steampunkish beetle people and I'm having some troubles figuring what we can do with modding:

• Can I make a vertebrate humanoid creature with chitinous wings?
  I added the wings to the creature's body plan without much trouble, but I'd like to have the wings follow a chitin over muscle layer layout and I'm not sure on how to do that. The creature will use these wings as their primary weapons: I did the attacks part and it's working "nicely" on the arena, except that right now they're trying to stab and cut with fleshy wings, which doesn't go very well.
  
  
• Is there some way to add a more resistant material to the wings' edges? The idea is that the warriors of this race would go into a custom workshop to have their wings' edges inlaid with bronze, iron or steel blades, so that they can hold their own against armored opponents.
  
  If the above isn't possible, what about an interaction that swaps the entire chitin of their wings with some other substance?
  
  
• Is it possible to mod some castes for this creature with a 0 natural appearing rate, and then to have an interaction that creates members of this caste? If this is possible, would the creations join the fortress? The idea here would be to mod in some kinds of golems that this race could build in another custom workshop, and these golems could then become citizens.
  
  

[Deon]

Typically, you can do almost anything if it's within the game enginer/XML supported values. And even more with DFHack.

Can I make a vertebrate humanoid creature with chitinous wings?

You will want to create a different body detail plan, i.e. VERTEBRATE_TISSUE_LAYERS_NOWINGSKIN or something, and modify this line:

Code: [Select]

[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:WING:ARG4:25:ARG3:25:ARG2:5:ARG1:1]into this line:

Code: [Select]

[BP_LAYERS:BY_CATEGORY:WING:ARG4:25:ARG3:25:ARG2:5]As you see, by removing ARG1:1, you no longer cover it by skin. You may also want to remove ARG4/ARG2 if you don't want bones/fat in the wings.

After that you can add the chitin material and tissue to the creature definition like this:

Code: [Select]

[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:CHITIN:CHITIN_TEMPLATE]
[USE_TISSUE_TEMPLATE:CHITIN:CHITIN_TEMPLATE]
And layer your wings with it:

Code: [Select]

[TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:WING:CHITIN:ALL]

2. Look at the way the fingers are covered in nails. You can create a custom bronze tissue and layer the front of wings the same way (bronze colossus as example):

Code: [Select]


[TISSUE:BRONZE]
[TISSUE_NAME:bronze:bronze]
[TISSUE_MATERIAL:INORGANIC:BRONZE]
[MUSCULAR]
[FUNCTIONAL]
[STRUCTURAL]
[RELATIVE_THICKNESS:1]
[CONNECTS]
[TISSUE_SHAPE:LAYER]Layer your wings in the front with it (if you don't specify the FRONT, it will be like full cover bronze armor):

Code: [Select]

[TISSUE_LAYER:BY_CATEGORY:WING:BRONZE:FRONT]And then create an attack with it, similar to scratch:

Code: [Select]

[ATTACK:SCRATCH:CHILD_TISSUE_LAYER_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:WING:BRONZE]
[ATTACK_SKILL:GRASP_STRIKE]
[ATTACK_VERB:slash:slashes]
[ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
[ATTACK_PENETRATION_PERC:100]
[ATTACK_FLAG_EDGE]
[ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
[ATTACK_PRIORITY:MAIN]
That would make it permanent though, for each race. What you could do with interaction, is to create custom castes and transform one caste into another. There may be a better way, this is just the first idea.

3. Yes. Meph's Warlock mod utilizes it. However it would be easier to turn existing caste members into new castes rather than "spawn" them. The biggest problem is that if you create an interaction to spawn a creature, there's no sure way to force your creatures to use it. That's the problem I've got in my Dwemer Fortress mod: I wanted to make an interaction which briefly gives ability to spawn dwarven automatons, but the dwemer simply refuse to use it even though they can. You can spawn creatures with DFHack though.

[Deon]

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[nockermensch]

Awesome, thank you. What you suggested worked nicely, and I'll download and read Meph's Warlock mod next.

I'll surely keep the metal tipping on custom castes, because the object testing arena shows that fights between untrained civilians (no military skills) are an absolute bloodbath when they're equiped with what should look like two bronze scythes. Body parts flying everywhere, which should lead to interesting drunken brawls once I'm running a fortress with those guys.