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[Psieye]

Having been inspired by Deon's Genesis Mod and aided by Shaostoul's Guide, I made some time off work to try my hand at modding. Unfortunately, pressure is mounting for me to get back to RL issues so I don't have time to fully flesh out my ideas, but I thought I'd share them in case the community does cool things with them before whenever it is I get more time:

Necromantic Alloys (i.e. Metallurgy using Meat!)

When I saw how to make cheat reactions to get free meat products, I wondered if I could make meat the reagent in reactions. Turns out, you can:

Spoiler: Spleensteel (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[REACTION:SPLEENSTEEL_MAKING]
[NAME:make spleensteel bars]
[BUILDING:SMELTER:CUSTOM_S]
[REAGENT:A:1:MEAT:CREATURE_MAT:WARTHOG:SPLEEN] (doesn't actually care about species)
[REAGENT:B:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:STEEL]
[PRODUCT:100:1:BAR:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:SPLEENSTEEL][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[FUEL]
[SKILL:SMELT]


The game doesn't seem to care what species that spleen comes from. I've tested with (prepared) cow spleens and (prepared) cat spleens and they go in just fine. Of course, there's no way to tell your dwarves not to eat those spleens without careful micromanagement, which just encourages the butchery (or the import deal) to be carried out just before the spleensteel is made.

With this in mind, my train of thought then went to giving each race a unique super-material that only they can produce which rivals or outperforms normal steel. This was what I brainstormed:

Spoiler: Necromantic techtree (click to show/hide)

Dwarves: make spleensteel (steel + spleen)
Goblins: make necromium (iron + brain)
Humans: make exohunger (bronze + stomach)

Dwarves: make wrathheart (spleensteel + necromium + exohunger + heart)


Where the material properties would be balanced to achieve:
Adamantine > Wrathheart > Spleensteel = Exohunger > Steel = Necromium

Thus encouraging you to salvage goblinite and somehow obtain humanite (trade, war or starting in human villages) to form the ultimate (after adamantine) metal. Of course, the humans and goblins' reactions can be cheat reactions with no reagents since dwarves will never see them, but may as well add them for completeness' sake. What of the elves?

Evanescent Plant Fibres (i.e. plants you cannot grow)

I wanted to make some plant fibre that only elves can bring. Given that cloth is defined relative to a plant, I thought of this:

Spoiler: Rhododendron Stalks (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[PLANT:STALK_RHODODENDRON]
[NAME:rhododendron][NAME_PLURAL:rhododendron][ADJ:rhododendron]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STRUCTURAL:STRUCTURAL_PLANT_TEMPLATE]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:10]
[MELTING_POINT:9000][BOILING_POINT:9001] (Yes that's below absolute zero)
[STATE_COLOR:GAS:PINK]
[STATE_NAME:GAS:fae dust]
[STATE_ADJ:GAS:fae dust]
[BASIC_MAT:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
[PICKED_TILE:231][PICKED_COLOR:7:0:0]
[GROWDUR:3][VALUE:10]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:SEED:SEED_TEMPLATE]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:5]
[EDIBLE_VERMIN]
[EDIBLE_COOKED]
[SEED:rhododendron seed:rhododendron seeds:0:0:1:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:SEED]
[SUMMER][AUTUMN]
[FREQUENCY:100]
[CLUSTERSIZE:5]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:THREAD:THREAD_PLANT_TEMPLATE]
[THREAD:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:THREAD]
[MATERIAL_VALUE:10]
[PREFSTRING:evanescence]
[WET][GOOD][BIOME:NOT_FREEZING]
[SHRUB_TILE:58]
[DEAD_SHRUB_TILE:58]
[SHRUB_COLOR:7:0:0]
[DEAD_SHRUB_COLOR:0:0:1]


Aside: I got the name from an RPG game that was itself making a reference. Turns out, "Rhododendron" is an actual name in botany - for a whole genus.

So the thread, cloth and products made with this cloth are ordinary (but valueable) and the seeds are normal too, but as soon as you try to grow any... *poof* it disappears into fae dust. Maybe the thread/cloth can have its material properties boosted to make it better than normal cloth, but cloth by itself is not as useful as metalcloth (based on adamantine). So the elves got their own reaction too:

Code: [Select]

... (other tags) ...
[REAGENT:A:1:PLANT:NO_SUBTYPE:PLANT_MAT:STALK_RHODODENDRON:PLANT]
[PRODUCT:100:5:THREAD:NO_SUBTYPE:METAL:RHODODENDRIUM]
... (other tags) ...
I haven't tested this last reaction, but seeing as it's one for only the elves, it wouldn't matter if it's a cheat reaction. The elves (or a subrace of them) would have to be modded to use metal for this to work. The idea being this "Rhododendrium" would be [ITEMS_SOFT][WAFER] to give elves access to the ultimate (before adamantine) clothes and maybe weapons that stand a chance in combat. It also means dwarves can salvage this elfium by melting items after killing them when they siege.


As I said at the start of the post, I don't have any time in the foreseeable future to understand and then work with the material properties tags to get the desired balance, test if the trade and siege supplies of these racial unique metals work as intended and generally polish it up so it can be used in mods. Here's hoping it inspires something for other modders.

[Lancensis]

You can make a plant impossible to farm, by just not including details about the seeds, y'know. The ones you've got now are going to severely harm any dwarf that plants them, and then doesn't get out of the way fast enough.
And Rhododendrums? You know they're a very common garden plant, right? (I must say, I love Spleensteel, though)

[Psieye]

Actually Rhododendrons are a group of very common garden plants - technically they're multiple species under the same genus. Doesn't change that the name has a nice long ring to it, or that a name can be changed easily without changing anything else - e.g. "Koumimori".


Regarding them vapourising away - the gas is harmless as it's at room temperature. Found that while testing and I tried making pig tail cloth have the same boiling point - all their clothes and bags instantly turned to gas but the dwarves were unharmed by it. I didn't know you could just remove seed information, but this "fae dust" gas is more fun and drives home the point that this is some mysterious plant that only the elves know to work with.

[Wyrm]

I don't see why you're surprised that the boiling cloth does not harm anyone. The resultant gas is at room temperature, it's not poisonous, and neither heat of fusion/vaporization nor the explosive effects of instantaneous vaporization are modeled in DF.

[Lancensis]

And because the effects of superheated gases aren't modelled either, the gas will never get hotter than its boiling point, which is, as you mention in the raws, below absolute zero. Fair enough if the currently-screwy temperature doesn't damage dwarves, but it ought to.

I'm not sure how it's supposed to be used in clothing, if it evaporates so readily. The cloth uses the plant material properties, doesn't it? No way to make it stay solid when the raw plant wouldn't.

[Psieye]

I'm not sure how it's supposed to be used in clothing, if it evaporates so readily. The cloth uses the plant material properties, doesn't it? No way to make it stay solid when the raw plant wouldn't.

That was what I first thought too. But test results suggest what actually happens:

Plant material template loads, then DF notes this particular plant is to have a different melting/boiling point. Then it reads tags to make the thread of this plant and looks up the thread material template - which has its own melting/boiling point. The melting/boiling (and other material property) tags only apply changes to the raw plant, and the thread of a plant apparently has an entirely different material.