I'll probably do a general release, but it's going to take a while. I'm in the last couple of weeks of the semester here so I've got a lot of school work to focus on first!
Aside from that, my mod is looking more an more complicated the more I get into it. I want to actually make some interesting gameplay mechanics changes, not just a dwarf fortress where the race is mushrooms instead of dwarves. Some planned things:
-Construction resources will be gained by a special common caste of mushroom that matures and dies very quickly, turning into raw logs on death. In fact, most resources will be gained from various types of mushroom, including thread from specialized fibrous mushrooms and so on. The player may seek to dehydrate some mushrooms to death or throw them into battle as easily killed distractions in order to harvest their resources. Ethics and personalities will be adjusted to make this an acceptable state of affairs. This probably means the mushroom kingdom constructed from the remains of the dead will be entirely populated by sociopaths. Unless I figure out how to make them not care about the dead at all while still making them cheerful and gregarious! (Ethics?)
-Mushrooms will be perfectly happy eating grown mushrooms, and will also be able to eat bones (You will be able to use the remains of your enemies as sustenance). I wish I could let them eat wood and mud. The acceptance of weird mushroom cannibalism will be one of the foundations of mushroom society.
-Worker mushrooms will be unable to develop their mining skill. They will be able to dig, but slowly and without leaving any construction resources behind. (Failing in that, will make stone unmineable) They will be capable of basic crafting jobs like carpentry, weaving, and clothesmaking. Worker mushrooms will be able to get 'married' (how I wish there were a way around this) to the large ungainly genome shuffling Sporangium Mothers capable of 'giving birth' to large numbers of young of various castes at a time.
-This mod will probably incompatible with vanilla: Dwarves have been substantially modded to encourage them to be hostile to mushrooms, and dwarven military castes have already had their names changed to 'plant gatherer'. A siege of plant gatherers has arrived at the gates of the mushroom kingdom!
-There will be several castes of defense mushrooms, including weak 'observer' mushrooms that flee from fighting and 'biting mushrooms' that rot dwarven livers and cause pain/tear limbs off. Also planned are thick skinned kicking mushrooms and soft-skinned webbing mushrooms. Defense mushrooms will not have grasping parts, for the most part.
-The military balance will tend towards mushrooms being highly expendable, but there will be several age categories with increased size as benefits for defense mushrooms that manage to survive for very long. An elder Teething Liverbane should be capable of biting dwarves in half, while an elder Pugilist Stalk will be capable of kicking dwarven limbs off. These will be hard to get and will only be able to rely on natural armor. Also: Stinkhorns, Club Fungi, and various other mushrooms taken to their most literal extent with DF modding.