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[Apollyon]

And so it was that I sat in my empty room at 8 AM after staying a whole night up; that I once again endevored into the endless possibilities the Dwarf Fortress engine can provide with modding. And I came up with a idea.

Armored Core.

I haven't started work in this project yet. I never made a major mod. I never really accomplished much in Dwarf Fortress, as I grew bored quickly. (I am ashamed to admit that.) Dig stone. Dig metal. Craft Furniture. Craft Sarcophagus. It kinda became repetetive; and so I sticked to Adventure mode. But that too grew tiring to me; and I started using mods. It was too easy to be overpowered and cleave off hands with one mighty swing.

But what if.. what if.. what if my enemies could use a supercharged Karasawa Hi Energy Rifle to drill a hole through my body; And I slashed off their arm with my laser blade; picked up their arm and used their weapon to finish them off?

Needless to say, I nearly had a geek-orgasm.

I cannot do this project alone though; I will fiddle with the most complicated things. Like making a working exploding substance; As well as new metals with special properties, I can make the civilizations (Players will play the Raven's Ark in Dwarf Mode, a Raven in normal mode) But I admit I may be too dumb (Read: Ambitious) to make the Castes work correctly, and I'd need help overhauling the world with the right creatures, every time I tried I failed miserably. And I suck at making races. And I have no idea how to change skills either.

Any input, suggestion, offer to help will be greatly appreciated. As a show of good faith, I will first make the exploding and melting material to prove that I am interested in this concept.

~Apollyon

[Deon]

I cannot do this project alone though

Why? The current DF possibilities are quite limited and easily accessible to any man in teens or even earlier.

I also think that it's much easier to work alone because otherwise you will have to use WinMerge so often that you will hate the program's icon. Believe me, I worked in groups .

Also it's impossible to make exploding materials, and melting materials are as easy as to change one number (MELTING_POINT) so you probably think that it's complex while it's not.

P.S.

To change skills you need to change PROFESSION_NAME.

For working castes check all the mods out there, for example Xenomorph mod or my Genesis mod.

The "overhauling" with creatures is quite simple if you replace the existing ones with the same biomes. I no longer do it, but at first it was easy to learn creature modding.

And what is "Armored Core"?

[Apollyon]

Armored Core is a mecha game; Basically, modulable mechas.. anyway.

I thought if I could make a material that does not exist; but is created (Through breathing for example) on contact with air basically.. burst into flammable gas.

I tested it and well, I was disappointed to tell you the truth; If I mine said material, it works correctly, but if it is a breathing thing; then it doesn't. Heh

[wolflance]

Very interesting Idea, as I am a AC fan as well.

There are some difficulties tho:

- The Modular design of the AC
- Grenade Launcher exploding
- Back mounted weapons
- Missiles spam is hard to mod in. So do missile intercept.
- Boosting and Overboost is almost Impossible with DF, i think.

Here is my two cent:

Since most of the 'Named' ACs in the original game(s) only use certain set of equipments anyway, I suggest just make those characters into different castes. For example, "Jack-O" is a creature with 'Karasawa', 'Dual Missile' and 'Grenade Launcher' as its nature weapon.

[Apollyon]

You are absolutely right actually. Making the game like that wouldn't really be 'armored core'. It would be.. a pathetic attempt to make something that resembles AC but is not it. Oh well, I'll keep working on some stuff though and perhaps post up something that someone might find amusing or downright hilarious (Exploding armor) I got the basics down, now just gotta figure out how to make it not /kill me/

[TomiTapio]

Armored Core.
a supercharged Karasawa Hi Energy Rifle to drill a hole through my body

I played through Armored Core 4. The final challenge-foes I bested using the high-damage area effect ogoto(or such) shoulder mounted heavy grenade launcher.
Vanilla DF's whip already blunt-hits through any armor, ripping spines out. Thanks to area of impact being tiny "1".

Will there be four weapon-arms on some mecha castes?
And of course, the flying mechas should be represented by speed:500 and the land-bound ones the regular 900 or 1000.
You gotta have area-effect stuffs, like nausea(energy leak) and dizziness(gyro instability). Copy dizziness toxin from Genesis' mind flayers.
Too bad the ranged weapons cannot have Rate of Fire or Range changed in DF, I guess might do that with high/low agility caste. I think range goes up with higher shooting skill.

Should be nice to have different civs having different rifles(crossbows) with varying penetration power.
And one civ being armor-heavy ranged-only, other civ high-speed, one high-speed melee-only, one slow but very regenerative shields (forceshield tissue's healing rate).
What would the PAIN and passes out from pain be in mechas? Out of energy? But can't edit the "gives into pain" text. Can hide the text using announcements.txt.

ps. some civ that dont have any hand-held shields, are more vulnerable to arrows/bolts/bullets/beams.
pps. dragonfirebreath = the winning weapon; but... they use it like every 20 time-ticks. Maybe speed:8000 auxiliary tank that is sloooow but has the dragonfire.

[wolflance]

Or we could make it something like the zombie survival mod, but instead of zombie, we are using ACs to defend against countless swarms of suicide drones (from Nexus)

[Apollyon]

Ok, I had some time to sleep on this and I found my enthusiasm again.

As for various weapons shoulder mounted and such; I am thinking of using one weapon that can fire more types of ammo. I am still thinking how to deal with grenadelaunchers being explosive; but I am getting some progress on some detail things.

There will be no Lynxes. I know, but a Armored Core goes 250 km/h if they're lucky with overboost, and a Lynx goes.. 2500 km/h? For now, I won't put them in; but the player will be pitted against Corporations; and each one (Doh) will give the Raven Missions in Adventure Mode, and in Dwarf Mode... try to kill him.

I will keep you updated on how things work out. I only wish Toady was here to tell me how I can recreate Dragonfirebreath with creature tokens. It literally seems impossible.

[3]

I only wish Toady was here to tell me how I can recreate Dragonfirebreath with creature tokens. It literally seems impossible.

It is, essentially. Besides DRAGONFIREBREATH itself, making big area-effect attacks is pretty much impossible. But from my experience of AC, that shouldn't be too much of an issue anyway.

Going along the way of making caste types out of specific configuations, wouldn't it be possible to have a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher as a bodypart, and then make a material breath attack using a material with an extremely high FIXED_TEMP (higher than its own boiling point) - it'll boil on release, thustly affecting an area. It may or may not actually burn things, but you could always give it a syndrome effect.

Multiple ammo types... I can't remember if that's possible or not.

If you need any help on anything specific, make sure to post the raws here and we'll try to help out.

[Apollyon]

I have tested out Material Breath Attack with every possible way. And what I've found was startlingly annoying

It does not care what the materials fixed temp is. Literally. It doesn't give a shit.

If you set it as TRAILING_VAPOR_FLOW it will burn; only then it takes into account fixed temp

If you set TRAILING_DUST_FLOW it doesn't give a shit

And to prove my point; I will set the fixed temp to something sub zero and give it TRAILING_GAS_FLOW and I half expect it will still burn instead of freeze. I will update in a moment after I test this.

[3]

Yeah, I suspected as much, as I've had occasional trouble with this sort of thing as well.

Not sure what to do then.

[Apollyon]

I have tested it out; and here is what I found

No matter what the MAT_FIXED_TEMP is set to; breath attack will burn. Either that or I am screwing something up.
BUT
There is good news

It strives to go to the temperature you've designated it to be at; So, I am at first melting; but the temperature is dropping fast. I'll try to set SPEC_HEAT to a much lower number and hope that the transition is simply faster then what it is at right now, and hopefully, I'll be able to see some progress. If I can work that out; then I can also create a material that explodes.

[Deon]

You can freeze people with breathe attacks. Just don't set it BELOW zero, it's impossible and probably causes some errors.

[Apollyon]

What is considered above zero and below room temperature?

[Deon]

10000 = 0* Celsius

10045 = 25* Celsius

So > 10000 is above zero, and < 10045 is below room temperature.