Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Arachu]

I'm currently working on a mod that replaces most (if not all) existing creatures with insects and modifies some to be like insects.

Why is this relevant? Because I can't figure out how to make castes determine anything other than gender. As such, larvae are impossible, as they're born with full anatomies.

So, how do I make a creature's anatomy change as it ages? Do I tell the given caste to add the desired part (for example, ants gain legs at adulthood), or subtract it from the other ones (for example, female rhino beetles lack horns)?

The main question is how to work the tags in. Can someone paste an example of, say a child without legs, an adult with legs, and a male with a horn of any species?

(Sorry if that's hard to read...)

[Greiger]

I'm afraid yer main thing of making a creature grow or lose parts as it ages is not currently possible.  It may be something that gets added later, but if I recall Toady couldn't get together a system that intelligently transfers wounds and things like that for when a part disappears or a new one grows off the wounded part that he was satisfied with.  Once a creature is part of a caste, it is that caste it's whole life.

Adding a part to just a specific caste is easy though.  Just copy the body entry once for each caste and place it in each caste definition, then modify the body entry how you wish under the individual castes.

For example from the vanilla raws for Elk:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[CASTE:FEMALE]
     [FEMALE]
     [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE]
     [BODY:QUADRUPED_HOOF:TAIL:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:MOUTH:GENERIC_TEETH:RIBCAGE]
[CASTE:MALE]
     [MALE]
     [BODY:QUADRUPED_HOOF:TAIL:2EYES:2EARS:NOSE:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:MOUTH:GENERIC_TEETH:2HEAD_ANTLER:RIBCAGE]

Note the addition of "2HEAD_ANTLER" near the end of the male caste's body data.  The female's body entry does not have that.  And thus, only the males have antlers.

[Arachu]

So, telling babies to have no limbs and be immobile, children to grow heads and adults to add relevant extremities is possible?

I thank you for this information.

[Shurhaian]

No, what Greiger said is that it isn't possible.

It sounds like you're confusing "castes" with "stages"(of the life cycle). To reiterate: caste is set at birth. You can't morph from one caste to another. You can have one caste that's limbless and immobile, one caste with a head, and one or more castes with differing extremities that are specialized, but they will be like that from birth.

As it stands, DF does not support metamorphosis beyond growth. Which is a shame - at its basic level, this would allow "babies" to be eggs. But having metamorphosis respect wounds was mentioned as being a key problem. Body parts need to be associated as growing from one another(or being shed entirely) before that can happen.