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[Granite26]

I'd like to collect a list of 'clever' things people have done with the raws. 

When I say clever, I don't mean something that's player creative, more like programmer creative.  The two examples that convinced me to start this was the zombie creatures that drop poisonous parasites after they are killed, and the exploding 'animals'  In short, it's easy to look at the tags and say 'if I add this, it'll do that', but not so easy to add two or three things to get non-obvious effects.

Part of the eventual goal of this is to throw these into the modding section of the wiki, which is sorely lacking in examples of how to accomplish specific goals.

[Untelligent]

I'd like to take credit (or at least partial credit) for the "exploding animals." I doubt I was the first person to discover this, but I haven't seen anyone else mucking about with suicide bombers lately.

First, make a stone with a rediculously low boiling point (I used this name for a touch of irony):

Code: [Select]

[MATGLOSS_STONE:HIDDEN_FUN_STONE]
[NAME:HIDDEN FUN STONE][COLOR:5:7:1][TILE:'H']
[ITEM_SYMBOL:'*']
[VALUE:1500]
[MELTING_POINT:0]
[BOILING_POINT:1]
[SOLID_DENSITY:1]
You can add environment tags if you wish; if you do, it has a secondary purpose of creating a challenging obstacle for your miners (bonus points if you don't tell anyone about it when you release your mod), but your caravans will occaisionally suddenly explode upon reaching your depot, which might not be "optimal."

Secondly, add this token (or something similar) to your exploding critter:

Code: [Select]

[ITEMCORPSE:STONE:NO_SUBTYPE:STONE:HIDDEN_FUN_STONE]
Kill the creature and it explodes in a cloud of freezing death. Very entertaining.

This is only the tip of the exploding stone iceberg. For instance, the original idea I had for this stone (aside from the miner's bane) was to put it in a smelter reaction (dwarven gas chamber, anyone?). The uses for such a stone are endless.

Actually, now that I think of it, there's probably less than five. Ten at the absolute max. It's still fun, though.


I've also been brainstorming a bit lately, and I think I may be on to something very interesting (and completely unrelated to the rest of this post). I doubt it'll work, but I'll post any results if it does.

[i2amroy]

Something that can be done with that stone is to create gas pockets of freezing death with it. To do this all that you have to do is to make it so that the stone appears exactly the same as the stone it appears in and contains the same name. For example,

Here is the normal stone
[MATGLOSS_STONE:MARBLE]
[NAME:marble][COLOR:7:7:1][TILE:178][REACTION_CLASS:FLUX]
[METAMORPHIC]
[VALUE:2]

and here is the gas pocket stone
[MATGLOSS_STONE:DEATH_MARBLE]
[NAME:marble][COLOR:7:7:1][TILE:178]
[ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:MARBLE:CLUSTER_ONE:100]
[MELTING_POINT:0]
[BOILING_POINT:1]
[SOLID_DENSITY:1]

This stone will randomly appear in marble in clusters of one and is impossible to tell from the marble it appears in. The [SOLID_DENSITY:?] of the gas pocket stone can then be adjusted depending on whether you want your dwarves to have a chance of escaping or if you want the gas to just instantly kill everything nearby.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I was just gonna say what the other guys said.

All my "clever" stuff involves things exploding, often for no reason at all

[Erom]

The hack to get wooden weapons was pretty good (making them ranged with non-existent ammo so the bowyer can make them), and the all-stone-economic hack from Lathan is also super useful.

[Duke 2.0]

 I have yet to test this, but in theory one could make an animal that radiates cold. Then dump them into water for ice in non-freezing climates. Who knows if it will melt a second later, or if the corpse will radiate cold even when frozen.

 Must test...

[Kagus]

The animal will freeze itself into an iceblock and die instantly.  Beyond that, I have no idea what will happen.  I haven't worked much with radioactive critters.

Definitely worth looking into though.  And if you feel the need for message spam, you can also set up something where one of those animals is on a pillar that is surrounded by falling water.  Best case scenario, the water will freeze mid-air and cause an instant cave-in, crashing to the floor with icy goodness.

However, that might suck the critter along with it...  That would make it icy goodness that has been encrusted with blood.

[Duke 2.0]

 Say the creature could survive such conditions, and you have your regular people wear clothes capable of protecting them from the cold, this might work.

 And I plan on the ice being covered in blood. 'tis the only way. Otherwise I would need to set up a system of kittens falling to cover it with blood anyway.

[Cheeetar]

If the corpse also radiates cold (is that possible?) then it would definetely work.

[Flaede]

What about extracts? can an animal extract be given any sort of temperature interaction other than "light on fire" ? if so then dumping "cold-spider-extract" into the water might have an effect...

the subject of temperature in DF led me here... the wiki did not help me riddle through exactly what interacts how temperaturewise.

[Jay]

It's been discussed before.  A long time ago.
The dwarves simply freeze when they go to dump it into the water.

[Flaede]

thanks. that's good to know, but was that if you make it the dwarf fortress equivalent of Absolute Zero? or if you make it just cold enough to make the water freeze. It's those grey areas, that's what I'm trying to get at.

[ItchyBeard]

It's been discussed before.  A long time ago.
The dwarves simply freeze when they go to dump it into the water.

You could get around this by lowering the dwarves colddam point? Then the dwarves should only die if they are in the water when it freezes (encasing them in ice).

I attempted something similar by making naturally freezing cold dwarves (low body temp + low colddam point), but the temperature effect doesn't seem to propagate beyond the square they're in (so no walking across lakes or anything). They would walk into the water and die from being encased in ice. I vaguely recall their pets didn't survive their company either. They also died when it rained .

I was aiming for some sort of decaying material (bones - hoping they would decay and leave no mess) which I could dump in the ocean to create a wall (so I could pump the contents out without having to worry about billions of pumps). I never did get it working properly though.

[Jurassiced]

hmm i think i know what im going to waste the next 5 days doing lol ill see if i can get differant results if i find away around any of these problems ill be sure to post um here ^_^

[Jay]

It's been discussed before.  A long time ago.
The dwarves simply freeze when they go to dump it into the water.

You could get around this by lowering the dwarves colddam point? Then the dwarves should only die if they are in the water when it freezes (encasing them in ice).

I attempted something similar by making naturally freezing cold dwarves (low body temp + low colddam point), but the temperature effect doesn't seem to propagate beyond the square they're in (so no walking across lakes or anything). They would walk into the water and die from being encased in ice. I vaguely recall their pets didn't survive their company either. They also died when it rained .

I was aiming for some sort of decaying material (bones - hoping they would decay and leave no mess) which I could dump in the ocean to create a wall (so I could pump the contents out without having to worry about billions of pumps). I never did get it working properly though.

For that matter, you'd need some container material that can disappear somehow when it's dumped into the water, as you can't specifically dump the extract itself (AFAIK)

Here's a contribution of my own.
It's a spear that, rather then training speardwarf, trains armor user.
The way it works: [RANGED:SKILL:AMMOTYPE] causes the dwarf to pick it up when assigned to that skill, regardless of what the [SKILL:x] tag is.
And you don't even need the ammo in question, just that the ammo type has to exist somewhere in the item_ammo raws.

Code: [Select]

[ITEM_WEAPON:ITEM_WEAPON_SPIKED_ARMOR]
[NAME:spiked bracer:spiked bracers]
[DAMAGE:100:PIERCE]
[WEIGHT:40]
[RANGED:SPEAR:BLOWDART]
[SKILL:ARMOR]
[TWO_HANDED:4]
[MINIMUM_SIZE:4]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:3]Rather neat, aye?
(I don't take credit for the base trickery involved in making this work)