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[A_Fey_Dwarf]

A major mod replacing the dwarf fortress world in every way possible to an ant's perspective.
Release information:
V-0.1 - http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=861
An incomplete release, still needs a lot more things.

Civilization creatures replaced with:
Ants - The controllable civ, pretty much like dwarves. Fast reproducing, fast moving.
Termites - Faster moving than ants, faster reproducing but generally weaker. Will hopefully compete with ants for territory.
Wasps - A flying Civ, uses it's pointed stinger as a weapon. Fun to adventure with. Will hopefully compete with ants for territory.
Beetles - Slow moving but much larger and better armored. Takes longer to reproduce but does not compete with ants so is a suitable trade partner.
Roaches - The kobolds of the Ant colony world. Large, disgusting, slimy filth. Will steal from you, is well armored, stealthy, slow moving and slow reproducing.

New weapons and armor:
Replaced all weapons with their mandible counterparts. Mandibles are held using the jaw body part to simulate how an insect would attack.
Armor is now called shelling and is made from a new hardened chitin "metal". This chitin is processed at the smelter by using two leather/chitin pieces to create a single hardened chitin bar. However, I currently don't know what effects it will have on the game if I remove all other metals so I shelling and mandibles can still be made from normal metals. My original idea was to have the insect civs replace mining out ore with butchering, tanning and hunting, thus killing wildlife will become much more important.

Things to expect in the next version: Appropriate wildlife, no more metals, appropriate megabeasts, appropriate plant life, a crossbow like spitting mandible weapon.




Previous brainstorming of ideas for mod:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some of my ideas:
Plants
Trees= long grasses
Farmed plants = Fungus

Leaf-cutter ants live in tropical and semi-tropical rainforests in South and Central America. They cut leaves and carry them to their underground nests, where they chew the leaves into pulp. The pulp is stored with ant feces. A fungus grows on the decaying plant matter; this is the leaf-cutter ant's diet.

Gathered plants = Sugar granules, gathered human food?

Domestic animals
Aphids -

Some species of ants "farm" aphids, protecting them on the plants they eat, eating the honeydew that the aphids release

Caterpillar
Grasshopper

Wild Animals
Pretty much every insect you can think of...

(Semi)Megabeasts
Giant magnifying lens, flying, firebreath attack etc.
Anteater, Erm long paralyzing tongue attack, high damblock.
I am sure you guys can think of more...

Minerals
This is where I am going to have to bring in some fantasy elements as ants generally didn't smelt ores... One idea that i have is that all ground layers are dirt like layers, I am not sure if this will work though. I could base it on this chart:
where the top layers are humus and the bottom layer is actually the rock layer. Minerals can be in the middle layers. I know next to nothing about geology or soil so someone else might have to give me a little advice to what these layers could be called.

Weapons/armor
The smelted ores could be used to make little weapons, sheilds and armor. I will probably stick with variations to the hammer (heavy thumper), spear (poker), sword (slicer), axe (chopper) and mace (spikey thumper). The projectile weapons seem a bit to far fetched so I wont be having any.

Other races
Current ideas:
Wasps (goblin like, except flying)
Beetles (Human like)
ladybugs/ladybirds (elf like)
Spiders (another hostile goblin like race)
Roaches (like kobolds except relatively humongous)

[Mephansteras]

Maybe replace turtles with some sort of water bug that you give the HASSHELL tag to. That way you won't lose half your ants to moods requiring shells.

[woose1]

Hm... I am not sure about the whole, "Little Weapon" thing...
Im sure you, with all your modding goodness, can find a work-around.

BTW:
Grasshoppers by every man's/boy's standards should be evil. What, you never saw the movie?

Seocnd thing:
Humus?

[A_Big_Bear]

You could use mosses as cultivated plants.

Edit to the question ask: Humus, degraded organic material, like compost.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

@ A_Big_Bear: Yea mosses would be good I suppose though ants don't generally eat moss.
@woose1: Gees, there is quite a difference between hummus and humus. Also I just put grasshoppers in there because I was out of ideas for a benign insect that an ant might eat. Maybe slugs?
@Meph: Great idea.

[woose1]

@woose1: Gees, there is quite a difference between hummus and humus.

Just messing with you. 

[DennyTom]

Nice idea for funny mod

(Semi)Megabeasts
Giant magnifying lens, flying, firebreath attack etc.
Anteater, Erm long paralyzing tongue attack, high damblock.
I am sure you guys can think of more...

Lens? I am not sure - what if it gets in your anthill underground? Or killed during worldgen? Heroic ant killed lens in duel ...

Weapons/armor
The smelted ores could be used to make little weapons, sheilds and armor. I will probably stick with variations to the hammer (heavy thumper), spear (poker), sword (slicer), axe (chopper) and mace (spikey thumper). The projectile weapons seem a bit to far fetched so I wont be having any.
Roaches (like kobolds except relatively humongous)

What about not making weapons but "upgrades" for mandibles, crusts, etc.?

[woose1]

Lens? I am not sure - what if it gets in your anthill underground? Or killed during worldgen? Heroic ant killed lens in duel ...

This is where the whole "Ignoring" thing comes in.

What about not making weapons but "upgrades" for mandibles, crusts, etc.?

This was where I was going. Possibly special food stuffs to make genetic upgrades? O.o

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

The thing is that my ants will be able to build all the default stuff like workshops, smelters, anvils etc and there is no way for me to mod that out of the game.

[Duke 2.0]

 Perhaps the ants would mine organic compounds they use in hardened carapaces and such? Of course, the ants can only use compounds that have been sufficiently decomposed underground.

 Then there will be bio-waste, which would make mutant compound that has a small chance of making an overpowered bar of metal.

[Aqizzar]

While wasps are cool, and would make a good villain civ in themselves, goblins should be specifically replaced with termites.  They fight ants for the same territory and food, and fight all the time.  They're also bigger than ants, and spit acid, though I'm not sure how you'd model that.

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

While wasps are cool, and would make a good villain civ in themselves, goblins should be specifically replaced with termites.  They fight ants for the same territory and food, and fight all the time.  They're also bigger than ants, and spit acid, though I'm not sure how you'd model that.

Good point. I wanted a few hostile races anyway so I am sure it will be fine if both spiders, termites and wasps are out to get the poor little ants.

[Footkerchief]

The thing is that my ants will be able to build all the default stuff like workshops, smelters, anvils etc and there is no way for me to mod that out of the game.

You might be able to "hack" the exe to change the names of buildings, etc.  You'd need a hex editor, but I think strings are relatively easy to pluck out of an exe.  (if you do, get Toady's permission before redistributing it, of course)

[A_Fey_Dwarf]

I'm not sure if that is what I want to do... I am not to skilled in the ways of programming so I think I might give that a miss.

[Footkerchief]

It's not programming, just trumped-up text editing, and it's really the only way to make a change-of-scale mod work.  Your call though.