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[Kipi]

So, it's weekend. And weekend means more time to do some modding. 

I have already added Rhenaya's excellent drow mod, which has graphics and everything. Few new creatures, couple of metals and other fun things have been added to DFA due with this mod.

My current task is to rework the caste system. Holy dwarves will stay, as well as common dwarves, though they shall be renamed. Simpletons must go, there never was good gameplay reason to add them, it was just for some giggles at the beginning. Of course, if it's wanted to leave the simpletons to this mod, I can always reconsider it.

So, new castes: We currently have commoners and holy dwarves, next I'm going to add noble caste and warrior caste. Commoners shall be the main group, a bit shorter lifespan but they are breeding like rabbits. They have good physical skills, but are quite bad in mental and social skills.
Holy dwarves shall stay more or less like they are right now, though they learn physical skills more slowly. Holy dwarves will also be the only caste which comes with higher natural skill in alchemy and be the only caste which actually can improve that skill.
Nobles will come with high social skills but have natural skills in mundane work set as zero and can't raise those skills any further. They will also have longest lifespan.
Lastly comes the warrior caste. They learn every other skills except fighting ones very slowly, though fighting skills comes initially higher and are learned faster. They will also heal quickly and feel no fear, though their lifespan is shortest

I have also planned another use for the alchemy skill, which also gives the reason to practice that skill: wands! I'm planning to make custom ranged weapon called wands, which will use alchemy as shooting skill. The ammo comes in forms of scrolls, produced from runes in temples.

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome, please drop in and share your thoughts.

[Kipi]

I have made some progress with the new caste system, so far the max age and attribute levels have been determined.

Bellow is the table of the current attribute system, the numbers under the castes are presented as NUMB1/NUMB2, where NUMB1 is the male and NUMB3 is the female multiplier compared to vanilla attributes presented by Toady in vanilla game:

Code: [Select]

                   | Commoner | Holy     | Noble    | Warrior
PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES| 1/0,9    | 0,8/0,72 | 0,8/0,72 | 1,5/1,35
MENTAL ATTRIBUTES  | 1/1,1    | 1/1,1    | 1,3/1,43 | 0,5/0,55
That table basically means that females are a bit weaker than males while being more "intelligent", or in other words have better mental abilities. Holy dwarves are a bit weaker than commoners, while nobles are somewhat wiser than holy dwarves. Warriors are less wiser than commoners, but have greater physical abilities.

Next I'm going to focus on skills, after which I will give the warriors the specific tags and template modifiers, and then I think the castes should be more or less done. Lots of work to do still.




EDIT: I have finished with the castes, and I'm going to tantrum spiral if someone mentions [SKILL_LEARN_RATE]. I think I added several dozens of lines to the creature file just to determine the specific learning rates for each castes...

I have already spent some time with wands and spells. Wands can be produced same way as any normal weapon, from metals in forges, while the "ammo" of the wands require temples, one piece of leather and specific rune. Wands themselves use mace skill in melee combat, being somewhat weaker than normal maces. The spells have varying effects, from igniting the target to paralyze and necrosis. Basically each spell has only one effect, though the sheer damage caused by the hit is considerable. Casting the spells (read: shooting spell ammos with wands) require alchemy skill. This means that, while every dwarf can use the wands and spells, only holy dwarves can become better in it.

I will spend some more time with spells, perhaps few more could be made, then I will turn my attention to other things. For example, I have considered of including archeology to the mod. This means that there will be special "gems" placed in certain stone layers, which can be turned to bones, skulls and shells. My current idea is to create a extinct creature, which does not appear anywhere as living creature, for the purpose of bone/skull/shell material. Of course, the material value should be higher than of normal animals you can find in the game.

[Kipi]

New major update has been uploaded!

As I have stated in my earlier posts, the caste system has experienced total revamp. Now we have four castes, each one different from another.

I have also fixed some of the reactions, basically those which were meant to raise skills. This is because the current version of DF requires all the reactions to have a product before raising a skill, so I had to fix the training reactions. I have also added nifty feature which gives the training reactions very slight chance of not reproducing the reagent, simulating the breaking of equipment. Unfortunately I had to remove both dodge training as well as study item reaction tied to Display case as I haven't been able to figure out good reagent/product to those reactions.

Nagas also have graphics now, thanks to NW_Kohaku for excellent work!

I have also included Rhenaya's Drow mod, adding three new entities, several new plants, creatures and metals to the game. And everything has proper graphics!

I have tweaked the values of different runes. Now all the basic runes have value of 5, while "runetotem" runes have value of five times the number of runes required to produce the totem plus 5. So no more runes with value of 1.

I have also added one new weapon and type of ammo. The weapon is called wand and the ammo is spell. Wand can be used both in melee as well as ranged, though the prime purpose is in ranged combat, as it uses spells as bullets. The melee uses mace skill while ranged attacks use alchemy, making it mostly suitable for holy dwarves. There are three different spells right now: fire spell, paralyze spell and necrosis spell.

Finally I have updated the manual to contain all the features in the mod. There are still some work to do with it, as for example all the creatures are missing descriptions and there are several tables I would like to make to it before calling it finished. But at least the current version is, in my opinion, good enough so that I was finally able to get rid of the text file I have been using.

I know that there may be some balance issues and some minor issues can come up, haven't been able to do extensive testing out yet. At least the game didn't sprout out any errors for me. As always, bug reports, ideas and general opinions are more than welcome! 

[Kipi]

Version 0.3.1 has been uploaded!

Did two small fixes. First of all one the naga creature token was broken under the SUBTERRANEAN_ANIMAL_PEOPLES -entity, causing nagas not to appear as small groups inside caves.

Secondly I did some tweaking in dwarven castes, modifying the pop-rations so that commoners become more common.


EDIT: Sorry, zipped the wrong folder, which didn't have the naga fix. The correct folder has been uploaded now.

[Kipi]

Okay, I created a new poll as I need some feedback. My question is, which major feature should I concentrate on next? The list includes four major features that I know as possible and I was going to include this mod sooner or later. Also, if you have any other ideas please submit them. 

For now I'm doing some testing and balancing, perhaps throw in some minor things like new creature or plant, it depends what I come up with and in what mood I am. For example I think I should tweak a bit the farming overhaul, relate the growing time to the value of the plant/sub-product. That would make more sense than just having all the base plants of having same grow duration.

[Deon]

I voted for adventure reactions because they are fun, but I would say "work on all of them from time to time", they all sound fun!

I am especially interested in your culinary findings, I've already added bread baking (originally by Vattic I think) and made a candy making industry using the same mechanic, and now I want more .

[Kipi]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes, I could work on all of them simultaneously, though I try paying attention to one, or perhaps two, features at time, which usually gives better result. Adventure reactions are good because those are fairly easy to implement in smaller packages, so I think I could work with them alongside other features. Archeology is another, as it's one of the smallest, if not smallest, feature in the list.

On a side note I have so far tweaked the grow durations of plants, everything grows faster now but still not as fast as in vanilla game. The duration bases on several factors, like how value the plant is and does it have some other products besides alcohol.
I have also given wild dogs the graphics of normal dogs and added another megabeast, Hexas. Hexas is something like naga god, so beware of it. 

[Deon]

Ah, I saw its sprite in the naga thread, great .

[Kipi]

Version 0.3.2 has been uploaded!

This update includes tweaks for plants grow duration, new megabeast Hexas and graphics for wild dogs.

Next I'm going to concentrate on the four features in the poll. You can still vote about which one I should concentrate on most, but I will begin working with some of them already, mostly fleshing out the basics. So, unless there are some problems with the latest update, it may take some time before I upload another version, depending on totally which features are going to be implemented in it (one? two? all?) and how long it takes to make them work properly.

It may as well be that the 0.4.0 is going to contain all the four features in basic level, and 0.4.x version are expanding those, haven't decided it yet.

[Kipi]

Interesting...

It seems that there are some problems with the Hexas, I just noticed that the creature file generates error about HUMANOID_JOINTS, could not connect. Strange thing is, the body structure works with normal nagas, but in Hexas it doesn't. Haven't figured out the reason why this happens yet.

[narhiril]

Block factory is the best idea I've seen in a while.  If you are willing to give permission, I'd like to include a similar feature in my upcoming mod.  Or if you'd rather keep it unique to your mod, I'd understand, but I'll probably still grab it for personal use.

[Kipi]

I'm okay with people borrowing ideas and features from my mod as long as credit is given. I really even can't say no because I have been borrowing ideas from other mods as well... 

[narhiril]

I'm okay with people borrowing ideas and features from my mod as long as credit is given. I really even can't say no because I have been borrowing ideas from other mods as well... 

Awesome

Credit will, of course, be given.

[Kipi]

Okay, I think I have located the problem of Hexas. The joints the raws are using only deals with two arms, not four. The strange thing is why it works with nagas but not with Hexas? Still, I think I should be able to fix the problem.

I have also located another minor problem: Mithril nuggets are listed under metal, not under stone. This was caused by the fact that mithril stone used metal template instead of stone template. easy to fix.

Third thing I noticed, while not being a bug precisely, was that the drows aren't actually aggressive. What I mean is that you have to be extra lucky to have a world where drows and dwarves are in war. I fixed that as well, giving drows the babysnatcher -tag. So now we have something like four visible siegers and at least two smaller aggressors. 


During testing I have come to a conclusion that the castes should be balanced enough now in terms of popration. In fortress of 37 dwarves I had 1 noble, 4 holy dwarves, 4 warriors and 28 commoners. During embark I had six commoners and one holy dwarf. So the fortress should now have mainly commers, while other castes not being too rare. Of course, all of this is decided by RNG, which may or may not like the player.

Speaking of the castes I have decided to add some NATURAL_SKILL -tags to different castes. Mainly what I want to achieve is that nobles have at least some knowledge of the skills they are going to use, like appraising or managing. Soldiers MAY get some fighting related skills, though not much.


So, after releasing 0.3.3, which will have all the above tweaks and fixes, I continue on the new features. Currently the poll states that Archeology is most wanted feature, while Adventure Reactions and Perchaments And Books sharing the second place. Culinary didn't get, at least so far, any votes, so I'm going to ignore it for now. I have perchament production partially fleshed out, so I'm going to finish it first, then move on to Archeology and do some Adventure Reactions when I feel so.

The poll will be closed when 0.3.3 is released, so you can still affect where my attention goes! 

[Kipi]

Version 0.3.3 is out!

Several fixes and on tweak was introduced in this version. While the 0.3.2 is still totally playable the nagas and hexas were broken, nagas even never appearing in the game. Nobles and warriors now have some natural skills as well.

Changelog:

Code: [Select]

v. 0.3.3
   - Fixes:
      -> Mithril nuggets appearing under metal
      -> Hexas joint –problem
      -> Drows not being aggressive
      -> All the problems relating to nagas (not appearing, graphics and so on.)
   - Tweaks:
      ->Nobles and warriors now have some natural skills

The poll is now officially closed. The winner was Archeology, Adventure reactions came as second and Perchament And Books came as third. Culinary didn't get any votes, so I'm ignoring it for now. Thanks for voting everybody!