Topic: Dangerous Wilds Mod (Read 21010 times)

jester · « **Reply #135 on:** May 06, 2009, 04:48:30 am »

Been playing with the Darkelves for the last few days, year 3 and I have been getting seiges pretty much every season since my first summer. Ive got something like 8 pages of kills and still no sign of any immigrants. Is there any chance of help arriving for my starting 7 (im having to swap my elves off crossbow duty as they approach elite status) or should I just abandon and reclaim? My fort is one of the better ones ive built with magma, tree farm, 4 differnt types of execution pits and a massive complex of bunkers on the edge of the map to protect myself from the constant seiges. Ideas? comments?

Shoku · « **Reply #136 on:** May 06, 2009, 08:56:46 am »

For races that have the same body shape but different colors you can get away with using the magic wand tool and just shifting each of the colors used in the hair and skin. Kinda hard to get it to feel right but after long enough the 'depth' will still be there and it should be acceptable. Kinda tacky just having them palette swaped but better than nothin~

For the rest just get yourself a, maybe 10x10 image for each weapon and then throw it on top of the same armored body. You can do a pretty terribly job of that and still have it be good enough for now.

-When you're on the embark screen you should press tab to make sure you've got contact with your civilization. On certain glaciers and such a lot of the time you won't. It could also be that they died out in worldgen but either way you're not getting any new dwarves except the kind that are useless for 12 years and then pop into some profession with high talk skills.

You could try abandoning during a siege and then reclaiming so you get a pretty big group to move back in with. Since most of the food will go rotten and you prolly don't want your precious reclaimers diein you'll need to spend a lot of points on food and wardogs- so it'd probably be a good idea to prepare some useful stuff in front of your place for the little army to reclaim with.

Unfortunately this means the loss of those no doubt legendary dwarves but you can't maintain the fort like that much longer anyway.

Oh, and make sure you don't have anything in the process of construction- there's a bug where the stone assigned to it will become an obstacle that, well, is best cured with magma.

Vigilant · « **Reply #137 on:** May 06, 2009, 11:08:41 am »

You only need one or two people on crossbow duty to hold back even a medium sized siege. You could just make two of them your champions and let the rest run around doing work. Maybe mod the creature files so children grow up faster.

Shima · « **Reply #138 on:** May 06, 2009, 11:24:43 am »

Well, that is very true, Shoku. For instance, Wood Elves are basically done (Regular elves from Mayday). High Elves would just be them in fancy clothes and with a much larger ego (Which we will enjoy cutting off, of course, like all of those animals). I've already got the base for the Drow done, the dark skin and white hair. Although, like I said before, I love in jokes and references, so I'll probably make two kinds of Priest - regular, and Drider, with instructions on how to switch for people who want the joke (Even though it would take Catoblepas to actually make them function as if they were Driders).

The problem more comes from I need to make at least partially distinct looks for each class. And then each zombie and skeleton for each of the combat classes (Although thankfully with those it's just recoloring alot of cut and paste while keeping the moderate distinction - weapons).

A further problem arises from this, while I can get the list of the classes, it's annoying to have to do that for each one, and possibly even moreso because I can't guarantee everything will work. So to speak, if a mod is always a Beta, then graphics for it are Alpha until it can be confirmed that every creature and creature variant works. Hell, I don't even know what particular beasts show up as Undead in this mod, making it double-hard there. Might have to come back to some as time goes on because of that. For now, I'm assuming that all creatures treated as "animal" but above "vermin" have children and undead versions. Can't be sure with the 'Men, so with them I assume they have children and then undead at a later date if necessitated.

As for doing a cheap job, I personally take too much pride in it to let myself release something I feel as being too low quality. But that, of course, doesn't stop me from starting with quality and then doing alot of copy/paste, or from doing quality palette swaps

EDIT:
Progress for creatures is coming smoothly. I've cataloged as many creatures as I can find in the .txt files, and I just finished all sharks (except for the hammerhead due to needing to think up a better angle to showcase that type). Overall I'd say I'm 20-25% done. That status might change depending on how many undead I might have to end up doing.

As well, with some species - the sharks in particular - I might use just a couple of interchangeable sprites for the fry/young. All pends on how close they are, and really, alot of sharks are quite close physically speaking.

catoblepas · « **Reply #139 on:** May 06, 2009, 09:42:28 pm »

In case it helps:
I streamlined the combat classes, so there is no need to make graphics for lashers, pikemen, or bowmen. knifewielders are still in, but rare outside of gnomes, as they are the only ones whose thiefs willl actually show up with them. I'm not sure if thieves use the same sprite as knifewielders, because thieves of other races will show up barehanded.

when doing high elves, they are pretty much roman-themed, hobgoblins are basically uruk-hai from lord of the rings, bugbears are pretty much horned, intelligent (though still prone to violence) bears. kobolds are dog-lizards, malus were inspired by this picture: http://innoxist.brinkster.net/cassowary.jpg when I picked up a national geographic, try telling me that Isn't evil. goblins, wood elves, hobbits, and dwarves are pretty self-explanatory, gnomes are pretty much garden gnomes, except instead of being jolly and pleasant, they will torture, kill, and eat you before wearing your skin as a cloak, if you are lucky. (looking forward to how you portray them) Whitescale lizardmen are pretty much just white veloceraptors with opposable thumbs. Anathema are a bit harder to describe, but I guess the closest thing I could find that looks like them is http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/lonewolf/images/c/c6/Gnaag_entrance2.png just make sure it dwarf stature and give it four pseudo arms.

And on a side note, there used to be driders in the mod, but I removed them because they tended to rack up even bigger body counts then bear spiders ever had. There was one that actually killed off TWO of my legendary masons and a few migrants before a bugbear siege killed it.

Shima · « **Reply #140 on:** May 07, 2009, 12:56:56 am »

Heheh, oh those silly spider-elves, always killing off the wee Dwarves.

I hopefully should have the fish complete within a few hours, breaks and food included. It would be done if not for sleep (7pm to 1am just isn't as good a timeslot as you'd think, but I gotta keep from my usual 9am to 4pm, jury duty later in the month).

Kobolds, Dwarves, Humans, Wood Elves, and Goblins are all technically done, since I can confirm that Mayday, which works with those races, still works with your mod. Although I should look into the Kobolds, since sometimes, even with graphics, they'll show up shaded blue or dark green, which can get hard to spot. As well, I need to make the necessary adjustments to the Wood Elves. Krell, Whitescales, and possibly Bugbears will be fairly simple, as the Krell and Whitescale will have relatives working as Beastmen, and Bugbears I can modify from a few other Beastmen - possibly even using the Bearmen I've already made.

Part of the reason I don't look forward to it is, well. All animals take between 1-4 spots, adult, youth, zombie, skeleton. Here's the graphical entries for Dwarfs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Shima · « **Reply #141 on:** May 07, 2009, 06:14:49 am »

Hmm, that's not good. I've hit a wall - even though the settings are right and it has graphics, Pegasus Stallions (And possibly other Pegasii) are still showing up as just a 'P'.

Shoku · « **Reply #142 on:** May 07, 2009, 07:09:57 am »

How many times have you tried just completely rewriting the line that refers them to their graphic? It's almost easier to catch your typos that way.

Shima · « **Reply #143 on:** May 07, 2009, 09:00:32 am »

A few times. I've also tried setting it up to see if gender was the issue, but no-go (And that Adventure game is over, so I can't properly test again until I happen upon one).

Shoku · « **Reply #144 on:** May 07, 2009, 09:19:21 pm »

Is the graphic on the bottom line of the image file?

Shima · « **Reply #145 on:** May 08, 2009, 08:21:17 am »

Naw, it's in the section with all the other creatures (Which -are- working). It's needlessly strange. I've checked spelling, I've combed the creature files, and everything else I've seen that I put in works.

Urist McDetective · « **Reply #146 on:** May 09, 2009, 07:44:37 am »

I just rng'ed a Dark Elf group name - 'la la la ne la ra' : The Patterned Tomb
(spaces added)

And I'm convinced cassowaries don't look evil from any other angle.

jester · « **Reply #147 on:** May 09, 2009, 10:28:01 am »

cassowaries look scary as shit in that brainless way that all giant birds have, trust me. They look at you like they cant decide to run away, eat you, mate with you or just kick the shit out of you.

My starting 7's group was called the golden suicide. Pretty apt considering they are going to get eaten by lizardmen after they build a giant fortress for me to reclaim.

Ive been looking at the voidstone reactions in the smelter and they are great, the only problem is voidstone itself is a bit too rare and I dont have the plebs to waste when Im getting seiged every season. it wouldnt fit in with the dwarves but the darkelves could have something like the bloodstone reaction in blakmane's Darkdwarves mod maybe? (it uses animal chunks in the smelter to create a bloodstone)

catoblepas · « **Reply #148 on:** May 09, 2009, 01:37:14 pm »

good point on the voidstone being too rare. It IS a bit irritating to obtain on many maps, so I'll probably adjust that to some extent. As for using animal chunks to make magical reagents...that could be interesting. I previously tried to make reactions that used bones and skulls to produce a reagent known as 'soulstone' , but they failed miserably, particular the skull one. But if animal chunks work, then I might try that. I'll also be expanding some of the reactions to make some of the more obscure metals easier to get, such as alternatively being able to make blessed galvorn from star mithril instead of having to commit living sacrifice. Also, I'm still working on trying to get my darn test elves to wear all of the new armors at once. For some reason they seem to be adverse to wearing the two new types of armor, gorgets and pauldrons, altough now that I'm out of college for the summer, I'll finally have some time to work on those things. And cassowaries do to look evil, just look at that thing! it has a messed up flaking beak that twists back into a pterodactyl crest, plus it has that creepy stare. It's like someone spliced together a pterodactyl, a veloceraptor, and a vulture and painted it blue!

sonerohi · « **Reply #149 on:** May 09, 2009, 09:54:53 pm »

I have to say that this is the best mod I've played yet. I had invaders off until I had 77 dwarves and the fort foundations set out. No traps, no militiary, but I did have some sentries. My fort had a large, open air entrance ramp with the ground as level one and the four layers under it as 2 - 5. On the three underground layers inbetween the bottom I had small platforms with ramps going up on the left and down on the right, leading to the trade depot. On each platform there was a copper war golem on each side. They've yet to actually hit anything, but they scare thieves away pretty well.

I turned on sieges and immediately got a siege of about 12 krell macemen and a warg-mounted axekrell. They moved around pretty slow, so I figured I could have a recruit peg them all with an arbalest before they could even close a tenth of the distance. I was only kind of right. I stationed him northeast of the krells and he fatally wounded about 6 of the macemen before the warg sprang forward. He put his attention on it but it literraly ran a circle around him and all his shots were just behind it. He ran out and ran forward, bludgeoning the warg hard enough that if flew into the air and died. But he was done for as the six living macekrells and the now-walking axekrell turned him to many pieces. After that, I did a fortwide draft on my metalsmiths, miners and woodcutters. For flavor purposes, I had made mallets for all my smiths, and a set of scalemail and a buckler for every dwarf in the fort, albeit this was only copper gear. Needless to say, 18 dwarves were more than a match for them and I got off lucky with only one miner receiving a hand injury. I did get a little help from the dwarf caravan though. They had two marksmen pounding the krells once the fight ensued, and though they didn't get any of the kills, I'm sure they were instrumental in the victory. This is the only mod I've played that has managed to make me lose a dwarf through actual cunning and vicious enemies. Other mods just have the "LOILZ, BEAT THIS SIZE 80000 DRAGON". The balance is amazing, even if it's a headache to figure out what metals can do what and what plants are which.

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Author Topic: Dangerous Wilds Mod (Read 21010 times)

jester

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Shoku

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Vigilant

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Shima

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catoblepas

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Shima

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Shima

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Shoku

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Shima

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Shoku

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Shima

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Urist McDetective

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jester

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catoblepas

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sonerohi

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