Greetings!
It's taken a good piece of forever, but the MMO is finally ready for a beta release. The mod should be completely functional as it is, and I've tested it for compatibility with 40D official, 40D18, and several other versions in between. Inter-mod compatibility is more problematic, so be careful about installing or you might end up overwriting some other stuff.
Still in progress:
- Some of the tiles still suck, I'll either need to improve them myself or find better ones to steal
- Many (not all) of the various minerals/ores/layers still need color assignments
Comments, complaints, suggestions, and bug reports are welcome!
DFFD linkage:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=1900Rochndil, leaving the rest of the original post below...
I've been working on this for some time now, and I've tested most of the key elements (I am SO sick of generating and revealing maps!) and everything works so far. A few elements will require a fairly advanced fort to test, but I'll get there.
In general, I'm trying to accomplish several things:
- Leverage my personal knowledge of blacksmithing and metalworking, in both historical and modern contexts, to improve the realism and workability of the forging process in DF.
- Maintain game balance while adding richness to the experience.
- Reduce clutter where appropriate to streamline playability.
- Where balance IS changed, err on the side of increased challenge.
- Include appropriate fantasy-reality elements.
- Keep it dwarfly!
Much of my work has been built upon the efforts of other talented dreamers and modders. Sean Mirrsen's Minerals mod, Deej's Soil is Fun, and Mephansteras' Civilization Forge all (unknowingly) submitted elements for my current scheme. These elements are used with (presumed) approval of their original creators, and may be withdrawn at their request.
Here is a summary of phase 1:
- All ore-to-bar reactions removed. They didn't make much sense, and were a bit buggy in some cases. (small exploit removed)
- Iron smelting overhauled. All iron smelts to Pig Iron first (requiring flux) and THEN to wrought iron (base iron) without. Also, all iron smelting reactions were combined to reduce clutter at the smelter. Yes, you'll NEED flux to make iron, and even more to make steel. Iron will BURN if you get it too hot, and without some flux you'll destroy your output.
As a brief aside, the traditional method of refining pig iron to wrought iron is so dwarfly it's almost uncanny. In the "puddling" furnace, the pig iron is melted, and then stirred with long paddles as the extra carbon and impurities burn out. The melting temperature slowly rises as the metal is refined, and eventually balls of semi-molten metal are formed, voila! Wrought iron is virtually impossible to find in the modern world, but it has many forging advantages over the "mild steel" that you see these days.
- Steel (Carbon Steel) reaction is basically the same, with batch size increased a bit to preserve your flux/carbon resources. (besides, you don't need all that much of either really)
- Many mineral distribution schemes were altered, most significantly, magnetite, which I changed from large cluster to vein. A resource isn't valuable without SOME scarcity!
Added numerous metals and reactions, including:
- Mithril
- Black (meteoritic) iron and steel
- Monel (cupro-nickel)
- Pot metal (good for toys)
- Cobalt steel (Blue steel)
- Chrome-moly steel (semi-stainless, not that it matters)
- Dwarven steel (truesteel)
- Iridium (cool)
- Osmium (cooler!)
- Graphite to coke. (deej)
- Chromium. Decorative metal. Smelted from chromite (requires aluminum) or from native ores. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Magnesium. Ingredient metal. Smelted from powdered dolomite, requires carbon. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Manganese. Ingredient metal. Smelted from pyrolusite. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Molybdenum. Rare ingredient metal. Smelted from molybdenite, a rare mineral present in chalcopyrite veins in granite and diorite. (Sean Mirrsen)
- White gold. Decorative metal. Smelted from gold and nickel. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Dural. Aluminum hardened with manganese and magnesium. Used for armor and ranged weapons.(Sean Mirrsen)
- Aluminum-bronze. Alternative to iron. Smelted from copper and aluminum. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Patterned steel. Alternative to steel. Made from iron with raw green glass. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Cobalt. A bright shade of blue, this metal is poisonous, but still useful. Obtained from cobaltite, but requires limestone, brimstone, and rock salt to process. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Talonite. Cobalt alloy. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Bone meal flux - a reaction that turns bones and skulls into flux - put those gobbos to good use.
Added the following minerals/ores/gems:
- Mithril. (truesilver)
- Meteoritic iron. (exceptionally pure iron, bypasses pig iron stage, produces Black Iron)
- Boulder. (stone source for soil layers)
- Alluvial Sand (LIMITED sand source for soil layers - and TRADEABLE!) and reactions to turn it into Raw Green Glass, Raw Clear Glass, and Clear Glass Vials
- Amazonite. (nice green gem, interest for Microcline, Orthoclase)
- Peat. (fuel source for soil layers, Deej)
- Geothite/bog iron. (Iron source for soil layers, Deej)
- Woody Debris/Rotten Log/Peat/Anthracite/Forge coal/Magerkohle coal. - fuel sources(Deej)
- Gravel/Sandy debris/Rocky debris/Varmit warren. - local color for soil(Deej)
- Chalcopyrite. A copper ore, but unusable. Added for flavor. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Apatite. Phosphate-bearing rock. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Phosphorite. Another phosphate rock. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Stannite. Complex mineral that yields copper, tin, iron, and brimstone when smelted. (Deon)
- Molybdenite, used to get molybdenum. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Native chromium. It does occur. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Magnesite. Source of magnesium. (Sean Mirrsen)
- Marble variations - black, midnight, celestial, green. (Mephansteras)
- Verdenite, nightstone, bladestone. (Mephansteras)
- Mica inclusions: Lepidolite, Zinnwaldite, Muscovite, Philogophite. (Mephansteras)
Added a waste generation system:
- Nearly all smelter reactions produce some type of ash as a waste product.
- Ideally, the fuel source would determine the ash type generated, but as that's impractical, most reactions generate flyash (coal ash).
- Metal smelting (not alloying, generally) reactions also produce slag.
- Flyash and slag can be further smelted into Crete blocks - which can be used for building.
Changed:
- Altered Magnetite to vein.
- Changed color and frequency of Celestial Marble.
- Changed mica inclusions to CLUSTER_SMALL, to keep them IN the main cluster.
- Removed anvil option from adamantite, it's too LIGHT to make a decent anvil.
- Tweaked many mineral distribution types and chances, seeking balance.
- Changed some gemstone frequencies and distribution.
- Altered Horn Silver so it spawns on its own, it was interfering with truesilver.
- Re-formatted minerals, metals, and reactions files for improved readability.
And that's about it for phase 1. I've been testing distribution of resources, as well as the reactions, and that all looks good. Everything is detailed on my metals/minerals spreadsheet right down to the cost of manufacture - which helps keep me square on what does what.
Now, I'm working on phase 2. Ultimately, I need to create a character set that provides a unique tile for each of the following:
- Soil layers
- Sand
- Stone by type (sedimentary, metamorphic, etc.)
- Ore
- Fuel
- Flux
- Special ores
Each type of mineable resource will then be distinguished by color from others of the same type. For a character set I'll probably start with Flying Mage, and steal, er BORROW tiles from other sets like RantingRodent and ShadowLord. I expect I'll have to create a few from scratch, which will be interesting, since my artistic skills are negligible.
If anyone has comments or suggestions on this project, I'll be happy to hear them. I'm aware that much of this ground has been covered before, but I like to think that I bring a somewhat different knowledge set to the project, which will hopefully translate into a unique user experience.
Rochndil, who bit off a big mouthful for his first mod...