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[Kay]

Okay, so I've occasionally delved into the modding scene for this game, mostly back in 40d when modding races was (essentially) just changing a name, body size, and some ethics in a text file... and I've found it kinda hard to get into modding in races and creatures in 2010.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's simple once you know how, and for people who already do this sort of thing in situations other than Dwarf Fortress modding, but for a guy like me who's pretty much terrible at coding, even something simple like Dwarf Fortress looks a little daunting once I see all those crazy appearance modifiers and such cascading down my view.

So to get to the point, I'm just here asking for general help modding races into the game. I kinda wanted to convert the default game so that it used the demon-esque races from a world of mine, but I don't even know where to start with modding it so that all these little appearance details, like varying heights, differing horn arrangements for the different races (which are more like castes in the setting of mine anyways, but buuuhhhh)... let alone actually modding the other races in the setting. So I figured here would be the best place to ask for help.

I was wondering, since I'm horrible at modding but have plenty of ideas, if either I could A) get someone to explain it to me like I'm a total idiot, because I probably am, or B) Get somebody bored who's willing to actually help me make the races themselves. I mean, I DO have whole descriptions and quick vector images of them all, so I could easily just plop a race down and have someone help me make them. They're all humanoid, so it's probably pretty simple for anyone not an idiot like me.

Thank you all for your time!

[Necro910]

I'm good at modifying (such as adding limbs and such), but I'm horrible making things from scratch. A veteran should be here soon to help you with your satanic urges dwarven needs!

[3]

Blah standard link

The following assumes you know what tissues are. If you don't, see the page linked above.

Descriptions (appearance modifers) are little more than a bodypart or tissue described in one of however many predefined ways: "its horns (bodypart) are splayed out (description)". The description itself varies based on the defined ranges (slightly splayed vs. extremely splayed, etc) and a random factor. Furthermore, there are color modifiers that work in a similar manner (refer to the hair/skin/eye colours in the DWARF entry and you'll probably get the idea). On that note, said DWARF entry is full of comments that may help you on your way, especially concerning this sort of thing.

[Kay]

Hm, yeah, that takes a step in helping me out. Ideally I'd see if I could work with castes, though, which adds a whole new level of "What is this and can I even do this with this" to the whole thing. I'd basically just need to work out how to get a race with red skin, yellow eyes, and horns - then have a small chance of them making tougher versions with tall horns or weaker versions with down-turned horns and tusks. If I can't do that with castes, then they'd have to be separate races I guess.

[3]

You can do that with castes. The modding guide should be able to help you with that as well (in a vague sense).

One thing to note: When you make a new caste, everything prior to the first caste defined will be copied over. This includes bodies (I really should get around to mentioning that in the guide). Defining a body early on and then defining a new, overlapping one within a caste will result in bizarre game-crashing creatures: instead, define any bodyparts universal to all castes first, then add the caste-specific bits on in the caste definition. The same applies to things like descriptions, attributes, personalities and such.

[Sutremaine]

Attributes and personalities can be set at a racial level before castes (not sure how creature personalities interact with entity personalities, if they do at all), and then modified on a per-caste basis. Anything that a particular creature can only have one of will be overwritten by the last relevant entry in the raw, but what can and can't be doubled up isn't necessarily obvious.

As a general rule, things that make up a creature can be doubled (as with body parts and tissues), and things that modify a creature can't.

When you're making a creature, leave the modifiers until last. Bodies can be tricky to make up in the right order, and the less text you have to scroll through looking for errors the better.

[3]

I only say "define attributes/personalities once and no more" because I swear I've seen attribute-based descriptions double up at times.

[Sutremaine]

Hmm. Will have to take a look at that then.

[Kay]

Gah, even with the help, I just don't seem to have a head for this. I know exactly what I want, and I know it's possible, I just can't for the life of me figure out how to do it. 

As always, I get up to any of the new features (like stuff that specifically codes skin-tone, eye-colour, etc) and I'm just not sure what to do. I know this is 'simple', and I know I really should get it, but I've never been good at this sort of thing. I could mod fine in 40d, back when it was pretty simple, but now there's a buttload of more stuff I just don't understand how to use.

[NW_Kohaku]

Maybe you could download something like Genesis Mod and look at how Deon handles castes for pointers.

Basically, castes aren't very complicated.  You can do anything on a caste level you could do on a creature level, with a number of exceptions you can count on one hand - no [MEGABEAST], no [BIOME], no graphics. 

The only thing is you want to avoid duplicate definitions - declare the universal stuff up first, then declare each caste in order and add their special things, then use the SELECT_CASTE:ALL tag to go back to defining the last few universal things (like hair color).

If you want to have virtually identical male and female versions of castes, while other castes have wildly different bodies, you can also just declare the male caste, declare the female caste, and then [SELECT_ADDITIONAL_CASTE:whatever you named the male].  That saves you the trouble of having to duplicate-define portions of the raws, although there isn't really anything wrong with just copy-pasting a huge mess of code, either, if you're intimidated by the control functions.

Honestly, I'd recommend taking things one step at a time.  Just copy-paste dwarves down, and start working on altering one feature at a time, like body alterations or whatever.  Get those all lined up, then work on the next section of the raws.