V0.1.1c
DESCRIPTION
A total conversion mod for v0.31.18 of Dwarf Fortress. In its version 0.1.1c release, it currently offers:
+ 6 Adv. Mode-Playable Races With Unique Languages, Castes, Subraces, And Abilities For A Total Of 12 Distinct Subraces For Playable Characters
+ New Fortress Mode Race With Original Gameplay Mechanics:
- Material Research System
- Biometal Crafting
- 2 Custom Workshops For Research and Crafting
- More Available Items and Domesticated Animals On Embarks
+ 10+ New Materials
+ Many New Weapons and Armor
+ Over 40+ Lines Of New Flavor Speech
+ Numerous New Semimegabeasts and Megabeasts Ranging From The Wild Feralbosams to the Majestically Terrifying Drakoses
+ Adventure Mode Spellcraft
+ Shifting Biometal Weapons
+ Several Prepackaged Worlds For 'Designing With Advanced Parameters'
+ Music Especially Arranged For Saecular
RACES
ASANBOSAM
A race of semi-tantric beings that developed biologically alongside the kajiwi. Unlike their avian counterparts, asanbosam tend more towards temperate, broadleaf and taiga forests. Though not as comfortable outside their forested habitats, they can occupy grassland areas within reason. Some castes of asanbosam, however, seem to tend towards other biomes though the main differences are in combat specialties and slightly different appearances. Different Asanbosam weaponry includes (keep in mind that those listed are subrace-specific):
- Nodachi
- Katana
- Wakizashi
- Scythes
- Magistaffs
The three subraces are: Saecular (very humanlike, the drinking of blood is only ritual, not spiritual), Succubi/Incubi (Spritual, but not fanatical. White hair, bluish/purpleish skin tones), and Reaver (completely given in to the concept of blood rituals and the chaos of life and sin. Black hair, pale skin tones).
ELIRRU
A race of smooth-skinned humanoids whose skin colors vary in colorful hues. They are easily recognizable even if fully covered by a battle suit for their two tentacle-like appendages that hang majestically from their shoulders. One should always be careful when engaging them in combat; though these limbs cannot grasp weapons they have been known to strangle or even gore an unsuspecting opponent. Making this race even more deadly is their advanced technology; making their weapons a good bit more odd and deadly than that which the typical creature of the world wields such as:
- Ballistiarques
- Ballistisnipers
- Arqueswords
- Hookswords
- Double-bladed Staffs
Elirru have three distinct castes: Earth (strong and tough); Water (agile and lithe); and Fire (brave and vicious).
FORERUNNERS
A race of the most ancient beings on earth, these alienesque beings thrive in the mountain ranges, where they are dedicated to the construction and expansion of their fortressed homes no matter their professions. Arguably the most varied group of individuals within any race without the presence of castes or subraces, this is both their strength and weakness. Their technology though not the same by any means is as advanced as the Elirru thanks to their knowledge of biocraft, and they easily surpass all others in terms of a rich culture. Though hardly the most aggressive race, they will fiercely defend their own and all that they believe to be under their ‘divine protection’. Their known weaponry includes:
- Singingswords
- Mutingaxes
- Duskhammers
- Dawnhammers
- Handcannons
HUMANS
A stubborn and ambitious species, humanity is one of the most adaptive of all the races of the world. They are famed for their stubborn survival, abstract creativity, and constant ingenuity. They were the first race to discover such things as tempered steel, domestication, modern architecture, and even musical standards beyond tribal chants and incantations. Human weaponry ranges from swords, to spears, to bows, and their armor is often decorative and protective, forged from the best metals available. Though not varying much physically at casual glance, they tend to divide themselves into two ‘ethnicities’ based on cultural distinctions. Common weaponry includes:
- Gladii
- Spathae
- Semispathae
- Scimitars
- Falchions
The two ethnicities of Humanity are: Caesarians (highly formal in civilian life, ruthless and disciplined in military life) and Empyreans (faith-oriented and excessively 'honorable').
GOLM
A race of giant ogre-esque humanoids. Though not quite as dumb as a typical bestial ogre, they are hardly considered ‘bright’. They make up for this, however, with great strength, toughness, and endurance. Still further hindering them as well is their very low speed and sense of the world around them. Even so, a good bashing from a golm warrior wielding a metalfist is enough to cave-in a lesser being’s skull through even the best of plated armor. Luckily for most other races, the golm tend to stay where it is cold and snowing, and not venture out into warmer regions. They aren’t known to wear much if any armor, or clothing beyond a modesty loincloth, but their thick hides seem to do adequately well in their environment. Their only three weapons are:
- Metalfist
- Pointedfist
- Cleavefist
KAJIWI
The second most ancient race in the world, they tend to inhabit the more tropical and wet climates of the world. As avians, they have held the power of flight for as long as their ancestral memory recalls. Ideal kajiwi armor is composed of full-body form-fitted leather armor, but with nothing covering their wings so as to retain the priveledge of flight. They have mastered the use of a strong, secret metal known as black steel, which they use in their small but effective arsenal of:
- Longclaws
- One-handed Crossbows
- Zweihanders
- Deihanders
There are two breeds of Kajiwi: Opal (colorful. Often more intelligent and spiritual) and Raven (Black. Calculating and decisive warriors. There are never female Ravens due to genetics.)
INSTALLATION
1) Go to the download page here:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=34952) Click ‘Download Now’
3) Save to your desired directory path (eg. C:\programfiles\Saecular - Tales of Worlds Unseen\)
4) Unzip the ‘Saecular - Tales of Worlds Unseen’ Archive to a desired location with a program of choice, such as 7zip or WinRAR.
IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PROGRAM THAT CAN DECOMPRESS 7Z FILES, 7ZIP IS A FREEWARE PROGRAM THAT DOES SO. YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT HERE: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html OR HERE: http://download.cnet.com/7-Zip/3000-2250_4-10045185.html5) Go into the ‘Saecular - Tales of Worlds Unseen’ (the default name for the decompressed archive) folder and double-click ‘Saecular.exe’ to play
NOTES
+ Goals for the future include:
- Detailed Fortress Mode Research and Shaping System
- New Trainable regular, exotic, and ‘Megabeast’-esque Pets
- A Few New Beasties
- New Mundane and Exotic non-Megabeast Creatures
- New Mundane and Unique Plants, Stones, and Metals
- A few New Clothes, Armor, and Weapons
- New Food, Drink, Workshops, etc. Relating and At Times Not Relating To Any New Research or Materials/Plants/Animals Implemented
+ Known issues:
- Slowish Worldgen after 75 or so years on less-than-high-end systems on even 33x33 maps. If it becomes an inconvenience for players, I’ll do more experimenting with civ/site caps, etc. to solve the problem.
- Forerunners can embark with non-biometal metal items, including metal bars… it’s a bit of a cheat, so for now do it if you want to cheat a little, don’t if you want to play it as its meant to be played.
- Not really an issue, but I know someone will ask. No it is not a bug that ‘shape ___ biometal’ doesn’t show up without having unused research coils in that type of biometal. It’s just how the research system works.
+ Research and Shaping require the ‘Teaching’ skill, so be sure to include a couple of forerunners with points in 'Teaching.'
+ Since Forerunners lack the knowledge (for now; metalcraft will eventually be integrated into the research system, among other things) to produce metal bars, and thus viably craft metal goods, an anvil is completely unnecessary and will free up to 1000 to be distributed for much more useful things. It is much more efficient to stick to biometal.
+ The biocraft research system starts you only with the ability to research basic biometal, producing 'research' items. These are then used to either produce biometal of that tier or to research higher tiers of biometal. All research is preserved after any research or shaping reaction, but it IS needed to do the reaction. All reactions also require certain amounts of stone and wood, some of which is sometimes preserved, and sometimes not, depending on the said reaction. Right now, it's very lackluster with only three tiers of research and thus only three tiers of biometal to manufacture, but this WILL be expanded on in future releases.
+ Be warned that Basic Biometal rots, so treat it as you would food in that respect. It is advised to use your initial Biometal Research to get into Advanced Biometal Research, as it does not rot and has somewhat better qualities.
+ Forerunners are not dependent on alcohol, so the inclusion of alcoholic beverages (other Forerunner beverages and foods will eventually be incorporated) only alleviates the initial problems with your Forerunners having to fetch drinking water from natural sources until you get wells set up (until aqua craft is implemented, if at all, since I’m not quite sure on the workings of that yet). Admittedly, they are still fairly helpful, especially so if you embark in a location without a stream/brook/river/etc.
+ At the start of any Adventure Mode game, only Reaver Blood Prophets have magistaves to craft spellstones for ‘magic’ and only Forerunner Hivers have the proper weaponry for weapon shifting techniques. However, no matter what your race, if you come across any such equipment, you’ll be able to perform the same tasks, if not necessarily with the same level of proficiency at first.
+ In character generation note that while we're used to 'g' simply changing your creatures gender, the way character gen is hardcoded the inclusion of creature castes means that it will cycle through all of those as well, not just two genders of one caste. This way you're not stuck as, say, an earth caste female elirru when you wanted to play as a fire caste male elirru and saves the trouble of 'esc'aping back to civilization/race selection and reentering, hoping to get the right caste.
+ All ranged weapons melee skills are determined by the same skill that determines their ranged effectiveness. Ranged weapon users are no longer totally wimpy in close quarters combat! [In theory anyway]
+ In Arena mode, certain creatures will sometimes be listed nonalphebetically because of the difference between their creature names (what Toady apparently hardcoded to use to sort them) and their caste names (what's actually displayed in the arena creature list).
+ No, this mod is not currently made to be 100% compatible with other mods, due to its nature as a Total Conversion. Though I personally don’t see why it’s needed, if I get enough requests to make it more friendly with non-Saecular mods, I’ll do my best to make it so. At the moment, however, I feel it’d be wasted energy to go through the process, as simple as said process is.
+ Yes, I realize Fortress Mode is fairly broken by most standards. Bare with me, as this was originally a primarily Adventure Mode mod and will remain so for some time. I will, however, continue development on the Fortress Mode features as well, and definitely consider any concerns or suggestions with it in future releases. Also note that I will be doing many (hopefully) releases of this between now and the release of DF31.19, and once that is released, I will definitely be converting up to it. I’m only hoping that there won’t have to be too much reworking of the raws for that when the time comes.
+ Yes, I am also aware the my custom workshops are fairly large. That is done on purpose. Unless it becomes a massive annoyance, they will stay at their current sizes.
+ For the record, I did NOT take the idea of black steel from Deon's Genesis Mod. I can neither prove or disprove this officially, but I hope people take my word on it. Besides, the raws are fairly different. To be honest, I wouldn't know if there is a real world metal known as black steel, so mine's obviously much different than that as well, should it exist. Expect a modder to do research? NONSENSE I say.
(If anything actually NEEDS research, I really will do it. Just saying.) That said, don't expect to see 'red steel' and the like in future releases, I'm trying to be as original as I can be.
+ Version syntax is as follows: The v0=final release number. Won’t likely be ‘1’ anywhere near soon, as this will only be something other than 0 when Dwarf Fortress hits v1.0 itself… which will be far enough in the future it’s barely conceivable. The .1=‘major’ release number, in this instance, the very first. Will probably only be used when the system is MAJORLY overhauled or rewritten, such as new feature systems or updating to new versions of DF. The .0=‘minor’ release number which will indicate that a new batch of material has been released. Somewhat common, and resets anytime the ‘major’ release number is increased. The a=patch version, when a patch is released (always released as lone, edited files, not .7z archives as with minor and major releases) it gets a new letter. This could be anything from very rare to very often depending on balancing issues and any errors I happen to miss (hopefully very rare).
+ Please provide as much feedback and reports for bugs/ issues as possible; my goal is to provide a fun, possibly innovative, and somewhat original universe to replace the slightly mundane Vanilla Dwarf Fortress experience, so a lot of what that means and where this project heads hinges on the players.
+ Remember, I don’t mind hearing some positive feedback along with all the negative. Just saying.
+ Lastly… have fun!
IN ADDENDUM
Let’s just say I give credit where credit is indeed due:
The custom music is heavily based off of existing Final Fantasy MIDIs, themselves based off of the original, copyrighted musical works. The original music is copyright SquareSoft/Square Enix and/or Nobuo Uematsu respectively. The original MIDI files downloaded from MIDIShrine, and whatever applicable copyrights go to their respective owners. What minimal (if any) copyright for the present arrangements of said music (converted to .OGG from MIDI) belongs to me. If you want to use them outside this mod, ask and obtain permission first.
You ARE allowed to:
1. Play this mod.
2. Link to this mod.
3. Distribute this mod to your friends.
4. Enjoy this mod.
You ARE NOT allowed to:
1. Claim this mod as your own.
2. Host this mod anywhere other than it has been hosted by its author (me) without my express permission/consent.
By downloading and playing this mod, you agree to the above terms and conditions, and understand its binding nature.
Many thanks to the DF Community, for playing and helping wherever needed.
Thanks to Shaostoul’s Modding Guide and Zared’s Custom Workshop Workshop Utility for making my reactions and custom workshops a little (read: lot. Like, tons and tons.) easier.
Cheers to cephalo for the PerfectWorldDF Utility, the only reason I was even able to design ‘prepackaged’ worlds for Saecular. (I suck at editing the parameters by hand
)
Many thank you's to Igfig for the DFLang Generator, without which unique languages would never have been possible.
+CHANGELOG+v0.1.1c - Fixed the research system, no clue how that got broken. Fixed typos in mod documentation. Probably a few other fixes I lost track of as well.
v0.1.1b - After a huge oversight on my part, finally allowed the military to actually work by adding (back in) releveant positions. Also fixed stats preventing anyone from equipping a fauld and a cuisse simultaneously; something that should definitely be possible.
v0.1.1a - added in some new mega/semimegabeasts, weapons, and armor. Changed Bleeders to semimegabeast. Once again nerfed forerunners' ichor toxin syndrome, and took away their ability to be bandits. Added tiers to Adv Biometal and Omega Biometal research. Simplified skill/class names to be a little to be more intuitive, keeping the epic-sounding names for 'master' leveled skills/classes. Several other minor rebalances/additions/changes to weapons and races. New color scheme. New world gen parameter set, reintroducing vanilla parameters as well. Added in credits_saecularmod.txt and changelog_saecularmod.txt to the folder.
v0.1.0b - Slightly nerfed forerunners' ichor toxin syndrome, made research system perform more as intended, and clarified plain 'asanbosam' as 'saecularians'
v0.1.0a - Initial release
+PATCH+For those who downloaded the v0.1.1a release, here's the patch so you don't have to download the entire archive again. THIS ONLY UPDATES TO v0.1.1b. Follow the instructions on the same page to install. THIS WILL NOT UPDATE v0.1.1a or v0.1.1b to v0.1.1c, YOU WILL HAVE TO DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE .7Z FILE FROM ABOVE.
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=3496
Author
Topic: †++†SAECULAR†++† [Tales of Worlds Unseen v0.1.1c] (Read 21007 times)