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[MaximumZero]

I'm brand spanking new here, and I'd like to start off with two things: Praise to the Toady One for making this last week of my unemployment not so unbearable, and a hearty hello to everyone!

I have two requests, one for knowledge and one for patience. What I'd like to do is modify a starting party profile before I start the game so that I have a slew of Dwarves (I have 20-30 friends that I'd feel comfortable living with and working with on a daily basis, and most of them get along rather well,) and all of their equipment set up. I have several adults of varying ages in mind, as well as several children and two babies, as well as pets that this caravan would set out with.

What I'd like to do, if it's at all possible, is set up everything about these Dwarves. Everything. Skills, mental traits, physical traits, likes, dislikes, personalities, even down to the descriptions if I can do that. I'm a real freak for putting all my friends together in my game, and getting them as close to accurate as possible. I'm not looking to make a bunch of Uberdwarves, even though I have two friends who can carry a van if they work together (and I'm not making that up, it actually happened,) and there is a second degree black belt in the group (that would be me!)

The second part of my request is this: Please, please use wording that is as plain as possible. I'm very new to modding and overwhelming me is no difficult task. Sure, I can build a tower from scratch, and I can gnaw your ear off about advanced tactics for siege warfare and football (American), but XML and Python are foreign languages I haven't learned yet. Also, if it's not possible, I apologize for wasting everyone's time. I just think that this would be really cool (and my friends would probably think it's kinda creepy, to be honest,) even if it's a long, complicated, involved process. Like I said, I'm unemployed, and the area I live in is almost to 20% unemployment. It's not like I'm doing anything else.

Thank you all for your time, and I hope to hear from you soon!

[Shaostoul]

Short answer. Getting down to the level of detail... not possible.

You could do something that'd take many in game years and possibly be save breaking for the changes you'd be doing, but I'm uncertain.

The strength, agility, etc. You could get down pretty well.

The mental attributes mostly the same as physical, but it'd be kinda hard to match them up.

Personalities would be the hardest IMO. You'd have to read through the stuff explaining the personality traits.

You could take the general group personality and set the limits with in that.

The hardest part of it all would be getting the right dwarfs with the right physical, mental and personality traits. Unless there is a save editor out that I have yet to see, it'd be all luck.

You could just do it the easiest way and pick and choose who is who from immigrant waves. It'd take quite a few in game years to get it all down most likely.

Also, you can't increase starting dwarfs from what I recall... there was a mod that you could make dwarfs pets, but I think there were many problems with that.

You can change starting resources.

[MaximumZero]

Rats. I was really hoping I could do this. Ah, well. I don't want to give up, because doing the Immigrant Shuffle is really not as fun as this would be, but hey, I'll take what I can get, I guess.

[Shaostoul]

Easiest question as opposed to everything I was going to type...

How involved with modding and immigrant waves are you willing to get?

Because if you're willing to go to any length to do it... You could get fairly close.

Oh!

You could mod in different castes and call them by the person they are reflecting. I do not know however, how much you could mod the creature with in the castes. Deon would be most helpful there.

[MaximumZero]

I'm willing to get as involved as necessary, so long as it doesn't involve my wife killing me for modding instead of looking for a job. If I could mod the details of Immigrants as they come in, I'd be okay with that, so long as I could get to them and monkey with them.

[Shaostoul]

Well I don't know how much you know about modding... but...

You have your PhyMenPer (physical mental personality attributes) You'd have your base line. Where ever it is you want to set that. Lowest possible = 0 max = 5000

I know the between waves you can change these and the next immigrant wave shows up with the new changes to the PhyMenPer Attributes. I do not know if you could change it as an immigrant shows up...

Like one immigrant shows up with the changes, quickly save and exit, modify the PhyMenPer Attributes and then load the game that dwarf shows up with the new new attributes repeat.

These below are Deon's raws for the attributes. From the way it looks, personality is 0-100 not 0-5000.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:STRENGTH:700:1200:1400:1500:1600:1800:2500]         
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:AGILITY:150:600:800:900:1000:1100:1500]               
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:TOUGHNESS:700:1200:1400:1500:1600:1800:2500]         
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:RECUPERATION:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]       
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:DISEASE_RESISTANCE:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]   
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:ANALYTICAL_ABILITY:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]   
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:FOCUS:700:1200:1400:1500:1600:1800:2500]         
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:CREATIVITY:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]       
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:PATIENCE:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]   
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:MEMORY:450:950:1150:1250:1350:1550:2250]       
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:SPATIAL_SENSE:1250:1500:1750:2000:2500:3000:5000] 
[MENT_ATT_RANGE:WILLPOWER:700:1200:1400:1500:1600:1800:2500]         
[PERSONALITY:IMMODERATION:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:VULNERABILITY:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:ACHIEVEMENT_STRIVING:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:ACTIVITY_LEVEL:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:ALTRUISM:0:50:100]
[PERSONALITY:ANGER:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:ANXIETY:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:ARTISTIC_INTEREST:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:ASSERTIVENESS:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:CAUTIOUSNESS:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:COOPERATION:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:DUTIFULNESS:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:EMOTIONALITY:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:EXCITEMENT_SEEKING:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:GREGARIOUSNESS:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:MODESTY:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:ORDERLINESS:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:SELF_DISCIPLINE:0:45:100]

You could change say... all of the phy and ment to... for base line...
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:STRENGTH:500:1000:1500:2000:2500:3000:3500]

then as you get to an immigrant wave... say you take the strong guys... you go
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:STRENGTH:4000:4000:4000:4000:4000:4000:4000] That way they'll spawn with the highest strength scores and be listed more or less stronger than normal dwarfs.

then say you want to have one of your friends for example a dainty girl who isn't very strong... ie has trouble with pickle jars...
[PHYS_ATT_RANGE:STRENGTH:750:750:750:750:750:750:750]

The problem with this is... you don't know whether the next immigrant is going to be male or female. Unless you decide to savescum or control+alt+delete exit. after seeing what the next immigrant is.

I hope this is making some sense.

[Grimlocke]

The caste thing could work. You can set a fixed personality, gender, set of atributes and even profession names for each caste. Even hair color, voice pitch, etc should be possible.

Basically you should start with one caste, and copy all the traits you want to mod into that caste. Mod them to fit one character, copy, paste, mod that, etc. It would be a very lengthy raw file but most of it would be copy paste work.

You will still need to do some immigrant shuffle as the dwarves are given a random caste, and you can only start with 7 at first. You will also inevitably have many duplicate castes, which will lead to having to kill them off. Cant imagine thats what you had in mind.

I did hear of some method allowing you to bring dwarves as pets on embark, which could then be turned to normal dwarves by removing some tags. Not sure how this worked though. If this works though you could use population ratios to make the chance immigrant become duplicate 'friends' neglectable.

All in all this would cost a quite some time even if you allready knew how to mod.

[Deon]

Wow, that's a lot of effort for such a thing. I would just wait for a Dwarf Companion or something like that, then you could do it within two clicks. I am not sure if it's being developed still though.

And Shaoustoul is right. Attibutes are 0:5000, I think that 1000 is a median; and personality goes from 0 to 100 with 50 being a median.

[MaximumZero]

@Shaostoul: I know absolutely nothing about modding, as I've been a player of DF for about a week. So, unfortunately, I have no idea where to even get at the data you guys have posited upon this forum, but I'm still willing to learn...I'd imagine it's part of the Raws folder, but I haven't really delved in there yet.

@Grimlocke, would there be a way for me to make a caste with a maximum allowed of 1, like for a king?

@Deon: I'm willing to expend the effort if it can get done what I want done. Also, I have never heard of Dwarf Companion. If it's being developed, I'll wait, but not patiently.

[Grimlocke]

The raw folder is where all the data we can mod is in. The rest is hardcoded into the game.

The raws are plain text files. Each file has one or more raw entries that make up a creature, bodypart, item, etc. Entries are composed of tokens/tags. Theres an awful lot of those, though most of the names are self explainatory. You can modify any of these entries, and add/remove and number of them. You will have to generate a new world for most changes, and for all additions/removals.

Since its realy not something I can explain in a single post, ill just point you to these:
The DF wiki can be found here: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
And its modding section here: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Category:DF2010:Modding
The modding section should have most of the basic info, and a description for most tags. Beware though as the wiki is notorious for being incorrect and difficult to navigate ever since the latest version came out.
Shoastoul has a guide here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55259.0
Theres a wiki version somewhere in there too.
And theres the raws themselves. With DF having as many creatures as it does you can get examples for allmost anything from there.
You can use the games arena mode to test creatures. You might have to turn that on in the Init file (one of the files in the init folder) first; I dont know if its on by default.

It takes some time and coffee to get the basic stuff down but after that modding can be pretty fun.

On the king-thing: You can mod in custom nobles, good idea actualy. Give the nobles the specific names, that way the 'duplicate' dwarves at least wont have duplicate names.

[Shaostoul]

In my signature is the link to the forum guide and to the wiki guide.

Your best bet as deon says is to wait for dwarf companion to come out (3rd party editing program)

I used it back before the 1+ year update.

I'll help where I can, but even I am not the expert.

[MaximumZero]

I'll have to take a look and see if I can figure out how to make new nobles. Until then, I guess I'll just keep my eyes open and learn as much as I can while I wait for Dwarf Companion. You guys have been a major help, thank you all!

[Ilmoran]

I know the between waves you can change these and the next immigrant wave shows up with the new changes to the PhyMenPer Attributes. I do not know if you could change it as an immigrant shows up...

Like one immigrant shows up with the changes, quickly save and exit, modify the PhyMenPer Attributes and then load the game that dwarf shows up with the new new attributes repeat.

Just so you know, you would not be able to do that.  As soon as the immigrant wave shows up (pause on immigrant arrival) Dwarf Therapist knows every immigrant in the wave, so they're generated together, not as each appears on screen.

[MaximumZero]

That's ok, It'd actually be easier to edit them all in one go anyway, that way I can get more people done at once and get back to the game.

[Shaostoul]

I know the between waves you can change these and the next immigrant wave shows up with the new changes to the PhyMenPer Attributes. I do not know if you could change it as an immigrant shows up...

Like one immigrant shows up with the changes, quickly save and exit, modify the PhyMenPer Attributes and then load the game that dwarf shows up with the new new attributes repeat.

Just so you know, you would not be able to do that.  As soon as the immigrant wave shows up (pause on immigrant arrival) Dwarf Therapist knows every immigrant in the wave, so they're generated together, not as each appears on screen.

Thanks for this confirmation, I didn't think it'd work either, but I wasn't sure.

@MaximumZero, I see you post on the thread about Dwarf Companion 2.

I guess the "new one" is going to be called Runesmith. I suggest keeping an eye on that.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59056.0