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Total Members Voted: 137

[Imp]

unless, of course, you want the whole world to burn

Just the undead part of it 

Thanks for the tips!

[Pan]

Some men just want to watch the

...world to burn

[narhiril]

In case anyone (read: Meph) wants to keep an eye out, here is the bug report I issued regarding the issue with interaction targets.  Hopefully something will come of it.

Assuming that pop ratio tokens are working as I have intended, the odds of a dwarf being born a saboteur are roughly one in a quarter million.

Egads, I hope very few Easter Eggs are -that- rare.  This chance seems entirely acceptable to me (besides, we can always have a 'passport station' somewhere near our meetinghalls and main traffic stations; newboteurs could be pointed out in time to mebby save Mom if we wanted to try.



I've got quite a tale of woe to share, at least to me it's quite a tale of woe.  It involves Emberlights, undead sieges, and the sneakiest kobolds ever...  As well as far more savescumming than I'd usually want to use, but Embers are new to me....  It's longer than most tales so throwing in a spoiler.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So my pop limit's set to 150; despite that I kept getting more and more migrant waves (though smaller ones) until my pop was nearly 200.  FPS sitting around 100 most of the time, so the more dwarves the merrier.  Unlike several of my recent games, this embark has MANY kids with their parents, and for whatever reason many of the 13 year old 'kids' are migrants with their families.... I -like- those, wait a year and put them to work, I've got plenty for unskilled hands.  Weird to be getting migrant waves when my pop's at 190, but dealable.

Was -so- worried about vamps moving in, I never even thought about how Emberlights (and Wavebreakers?  Haven't gotten any of those yet, alas) could appear too.  Weirdly, I didn't get any vamps in all my nearly 200 dwarves...

And then a mysterious kobold appeared deep inside my fortress.  Fort has one entrance, guarded by many, MANY layers of potential observers; trained warbeasts, workers running back and forth to tend farms, and even a 1x1 meeting hall filled with 90+ kids... there's one other entrance, a 'merchant gate' airlock-style path that's never open to both outside and fortress at the same time - and when it's open to the fortress it's already filled with merchants and their guards, not to mention a wall of dwarves hauling stuff - and hadn't been opened to the fort for 2 game months.

So miracle kobold gets in - and even is in deeper than my quantum stockpile with everything and all the artifacts too - what oh what was it looking for or how oh how did it get in?...  .... I'm not USED to mysteries like this....  Seal my fort and order dwarves to cut trees outside the fort, and they cant get there.... how oh how did this kobold get in...

Combat log lights up, and suddenly the kobold's flickering red.  Oddly, -it's- not on fire, it's shirt is.  Despite that oddity, it's body is yellowy-brown, and then my -cook- of all things turns out to be capable of cooking much more than I'd ever thought.  Hurling fireballs about as fast as combat actions normally progress... cruddy aim too, though there doesn't seem to be any splash effect or ignition of things the fireballs pass over.  Fortress prepares to fall in a blanket of flame; even though the fireballs are only setting the kobold on fire, there's stuff and dwarves and beasts everywhere, and very soon fire everywhere too.

Savescum;  A few more tries to figure out how to safely position my firey cook and the sad discovery that I have a -second- firebug in the fortress too; alright, fine, fine fine fine.... more savescums to understand fire better and then redesign of a complete 'beast wall' across the (mostly unused) main gate.... stay hidden friend kobold even as you crawl under the anklysaurs, thank you very much:  And a nearly 200 strong wave of undead walk up to ask to borrow some brains.

I did embark near a tower; this is clearly my fault...  I can easily seal them out but of course, I'd like to win.

Fire's a very traditional weapon against the undead, I've got two firebugs.  Fine;  I call in that wall of warbeasts, let the undead start to near the main gate before shutting it, and let the pitiful field of cage traps absorb what it can - then draft my two Emberlights and send them up onto the roof right overlooking the swarm from 3z up.

Aha!  Fire is envoked, fireballs fly, walking corpses start to burn and a brushfire starts to sweep outwards from my fortress; no problem there as all I want is safely inside a hastily fire-proofed bridge.  I watch the pretty flicker and clouds of smoke and wait to see the non-walking corpses pile up.

But they don't.  The ones caught in the brushfire are completely unharmed, they had no items to start with but even the ones who still have hair -still have hair-; no burns, no bloodloss, nothing.  The ones directly set alight by the firebugs are producing tons of smoke and are spraying blood from most remaining body parts, which are burned... and they keep spraying.  And keep spraying.  Little blood bags... err really quite larger than they look blood bags... ambulatory, flameproof huge bloodbags... but these corpses seem -very- far from dead again.

Even the ones that had been standing on the cage trap field when it went up in flames (alas for all the burned traps, whaa!)... even the ones that had been IN the traps when the traps burned away are apparently fine; at least my dead/missing list doesn't list a single corpse corpse.

Man I'd really believed that fire would be a perfect weapon in this case.  Who knew undead are also the beloved of Zalkor and he protects them from his servants' wrath?

Don't worry, I didn't make them that rare for them to be easter eggs - I made them that rare to come as close as I can to eliminating them from birth mechanics completely.  I can personally assure you that I haven't added any feature that's anywhere near as rare as that - it would be no fun if nobody EVER saw it.

[Meph]

I personally believe that the only thing worse then a zombie is a burning zombie. Every horror movie teaches you that

But it was not a surprise that your cook was the emberlight, I had to grin when I read the natural skill in the emberlight raws...

PS: Thanks, I did not even know about that bug. After reading it I am so bold to add that it might be the same for transformed creatures. A creature without a tag that has been transformed into a creature with that tag will not be a valid target for the IT_REQUIRES:TAG. This is untested however.
PPS: My english is weird sometimes, after reading the sentence above I confused myself. I hope you understand what I wanted to say.

[narhiril]

I personally believe that the only thing worse then a zombie is a burning zombie. Every horror movie teaches you that

But it was not a surprise that your cook was the emberlight, I had to grin when I read the natural skill in the emberlight raws...

PS: Thanks, I did not even know about that bug. After reading it I am so bold to add that it might be the same for transformed creatures. A creature without a tag that has been transformed into a creature with that tag will not be a valid target for the IT_REQUIRES:TAG. This is untested however.
PPS: My english is weird sometimes, after reading the sentence above I confused myself. I hope you understand what I wanted to say.

Two things.  First, in response to the bold, I've actually tested that and found that this is NOT the case - it works as intended when using a transformation, just not with add/remove tag effects.


---
Now... the really exciting part.

I learned something really, really bizarre through performing some !!SCIENCE!!

I already know how to resurrect a dwarf and restore him/her to full health, but since this relies on a transformation, I figured that the full heal effect wouldn't work on a dwarf that had already been transformed.  However, since the resurrection effect is different, I thought I'd give that a spin.

What I did was create a test interaction that allows a dwarf to permanently turn itself into an emberlight warrior.  I then gave another (fireproof) dwarf a test interaction with only a resurrect effect... and an adamantine great axe.  Controlling the second dwarf, I walked over to the first dwarf after he had transformed himself to an emberlight and lobbed his head off.  After letting the head roll to a stop and stepping back a few paces, I revived the dwarf with the test resurrect skill.  He awoke, arose, and I was able to see that his injuries were still persistant, as was his transformation to an emberlight warrior, and because he was missing his head, he died (again) a frame later.  This is all going very much how I had expected.

Here, though, is where things got interesting.  For the hell of it, I got rid of my test axedwarf (encased in obsidian) and spawned a dwarven spirit binder, which I immediately took control of.

Since spirit binders are a feature of LFR that currently isn't working outside of arena mode, I'll go ahead and explain.  I've since managed to get these working and running in world gen, so you'll see them in the next release, but the gist of it is that a secret can be learned that imparts a sentient creature with the ability to heal itself completely and resurrect/fully heal others.  Here's how that particular interaction works...

Spoiler: Spirit binder resurrect effect (click to show/hide)

[INTERACTION:REZ_GENERAL_LFR]
   [I_SOURCE:CREATURE_ACTION]
   [I_TARGET:A:CORPSE]
      [IT_LOCATION:CONTEXT_ITEM]
      [IT_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
      [IT_AFFECTED_CLASS:OLD_GOD_LFR]
      [IT_REQUIRES:FIT_FOR_RESURRECTION]
      [IT_FORBIDDEN:NOT_LIVING]
      [IT_CANNOT_HAVE_SYNDROME_CLASS:HEAL_LFR]
      [IT_MANUAL_INPUT:corpses]
   [I_EFFECT:RESURRECT]
      [IE_TARGET:A]
      [IE_IMMEDIATE]
      [SYNDROME]
      [SYN_NAME:revival shock]
      [SYN_CLASS:HEAL_LFR]
      [CE_BODY_TRANSFORMATION:START:0:END:2]
         [CE:CREATURE:WILL_O_WISP_LFR:FEMALE]
      [CE_SPEED_CHANGE:SPEED_PERC:0:START:0:END:1000]

The interaction resurrects the target and immediately turns it into a will o' wisp, healing all of its wounds when it changes back almost instantly (I chose the will o' wisp because it looks damn cool when you cast it).  I assumed, since I was attempting to resurrect a creature that was already under the effect of a permanent transformation syndrome, I would get the same results as before - it would get up, realize it was missing its head, and instantly die again.

Here's the thing though - I was wrong.

Instead of the expected result, the resurrect effect - COMPLETE WITH THE WILL O' WISP TRANSFORMATION - worked.  The dwarf got up, turned into a will o wisp, regenerated all of its body parts, reverted to a dwarf, and then immediately reverted to a (fully alive and healed) emberlight warrior.  In a sense, I had just done a transformation over another transformation - something I was convinced could not be done.

---

Here's how (I think) it works - when a transformed dwarf dies, their corpse reverts to being a regular dwarf despite any transformation syndromes.  However, since syndromes persist through death, the transformation effect is still very much there, but not able to work because the target isn't alive.  When the dwarf was resurrected with the spirit binder's spell, the resurrect effect immediately added the syndrome that turns it into a will o' wisp, turning it into a will o' wisp before the existing emberlight transformation could kick in and turn it back into an emberlight - my guess is that the IE_IMMEDIATE tag was checked first.  So, a frame later, the emberlight transformation syndrome realized that its target was alive again and queued itself back up, turning the dwarf into an emberlight warrior again as soon as the will o' wisp transformation effect ended. 

I had resurrected and fully healed a dwarf already under the effects of a transformation through a loophole in the way the game handles death and transformations.

What does this mean?  It means Paragons of Visthel are going to kick all sorts of ass, for one, but more importantly, it means that you can fully revive a dead transformed creature.  I imagine that this knowledge will prove quite valuable to other modders who want to write their own secrets, curses, and magical abilities.  So yeah, unfortunately, you still won't be able to heal a transformed creature with a short transform interaction while it's alive, but you CAN if it dies.  Pretty sweet, eh?

[Meph]

This would also mean that you could use the will-o-the-wisp transformation without an end and transform the formerly emberlight into a will-o-the-wisp. As in: The immediate effect of the resurrection goes first, and if it never ends, the then second transformation, the emberlight, will not be in effect.

This means that you can transform creatures several times, if you give them a syndrome that kills them first, then resurrects them into a new form. Nice find.

EDIT: btw, you might want to edit this line: [STRANGE_CLOUD:A_D:D_D:P:R] in your anouncements.txt in data/init. If you add a lot of strange weather to all sorts of biomes people might get fed up with the constant pausing. You just have to remove the : P : R  in the end. People still get an anouncement, and if you leave the R it should still refocus on the cloud, but leave the game running.

[Stirk]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[spoiler]

I personally believe that the only thing worse then a zombie is a burning zombie. Every horror movie teaches you that

But it was not a surprise that your cook was the emberlight, I had to grin when I read the natural skill in the emberlight raws...

PS: Thanks, I did not even know about that bug. After reading it I am so bold to add that it might be the same for transformed creatures. A creature without a tag that has been transformed into a creature with that tag will not be a valid target for the IT_REQUIRES:TAG. This is untested however.
PPS: My english is weird sometimes, after reading the sentence above I confused myself. I hope you understand what I wanted to say.

Two things.  First, in response to the bold, I've actually tested that and found that this is NOT the case - it works as intended when using a transformation, just not with add/remove tag effects.


---
Now... the really exciting part.

I learned something really, really bizarre through performing some !!SCIENCE!!

I already know how to resurrect a dwarf and restore him/her to full health, but since this relies on a transformation, I figured that the full heal effect wouldn't work on a dwarf that had already been transformed.  However, since the resurrection effect is different, I thought I'd give that a spin.

What I did was create a test interaction that allows a dwarf to permanently turn itself into an emberlight warrior.  I then gave another (fireproof) dwarf a test interaction with only a resurrect effect... and an adamantine great axe.  Controlling the second dwarf, I walked over to the first dwarf after he had transformed himself to an emberlight and lobbed his head off.  After letting the head roll to a stop and stepping back a few paces, I revived the dwarf with the test resurrect skill.  He awoke, arose, and I was able to see that his injuries were still persistant, as was his transformation to an emberlight warrior, and because he was missing his head, he died (again) a frame later.  This is all going very much how I had expected.

Here, though, is where things got interesting.  For the hell of it, I got rid of my test axedwarf (encased in obsidian) and spawned a dwarven spirit binder, which I immediately took control of.

Since spirit binders are a feature of LFR that currently isn't working outside of arena mode, I'll go ahead and explain.  I've since managed to get these working and running in world gen, so you'll see them in the next release, but the gist of it is that a secret can be learned that imparts a sentient creature with the ability to heal itself completely and resurrect/fully heal others.  Here's how that particular interaction works...

[Spoiler=Spirit binder resurrect effect]
[INTERACTION:REZ_GENERAL_LFR]
   [I_SOURCE:CREATURE_ACTION]
   [I_TARGET:A:CORPSE]
      [IT_LOCATION:CONTEXT_ITEM]
      [IT_AFFECTED_CLASS:GENERAL_POISON]
      [IT_AFFECTED_CLASS:OLD_GOD_LFR]
      [IT_REQUIRES:FIT_FOR_RESURRECTION]
      [IT_FORBIDDEN:NOT_LIVING]
      [IT_CANNOT_HAVE_SYNDROME_CLASS:HEAL_LFR]
      [IT_MANUAL_INPUT:corpses]
   [I_EFFECT:RESURRECT]
      [IE_TARGET:A]
      [IE_IMMEDIATE]
      [SYNDROME]
      [SYN_NAME:revival shock]
      [SYN_CLASS:HEAL_LFR]
      [CE_BODY_TRANSFORMATION:START:0:END:2]
         [CE:CREATURE:WILL_O_WISP_LFR:FEMALE]
      [CE_SPEED_CHANGE:SPEED_PERC:0:START:0:END:1000]


The interaction resurrects the target and immediately turns it into a will o' wisp, healing all of its wounds when it changes back almost instantly (I chose the will o' wisp because it looks damn cool when you cast it).  I assumed, since I was attempting to resurrect a creature that was already under the effect of a permanent transformation syndrome, I would get the same results as before - it would get up, realize it was missing its head, and instantly die again.

Here's the thing though - I was wrong.

Instead of the expected result, the resurrect effect - COMPLETE WITH THE WILL O' WISP TRANSFORMATION - worked.  The dwarf got up, turned into a will o wisp, regenerated all of its body parts, reverted to a dwarf, and then immediately reverted to a (fully alive and healed) emberlight warrior.  In a sense, I had just done a transformation over another transformation - something I was convinced could not be done.

---

Here's how (I think) it works - when a transformed dwarf dies, their corpse reverts to being a regular dwarf despite any transformation syndromes.  However, since syndromes persist through death, the transformation effect is still very much there, but not able to work because the target isn't alive.  When the dwarf was resurrected with the spirit binder's spell, the resurrect effect immediately added the syndrome that turns it into a will o' wisp, turning it into a will o' wisp before the existing emberlight transformation could kick in and turn it back into an emberlight - my guess is that the IE_IMMEDIATE tag was checked first.  So, a frame later, the emberlight transformation syndrome realized that its target was alive again and queued itself back up, turning the dwarf into an emberlight warrior again as soon as the will o' wisp transformation effect ended. 

I had resurrected and fully healed a dwarf already under the effects of a transformation through a loophole in the way the game handles death and transformations.

What does this mean?  It means Paragons of Visthel are going to kick all sorts of ass, for one, but more importantly, it means that you can fully revive a dead transformed creature.  I imagine that this knowledge will prove quite valuable to other modders who want to write their own secrets, curses, and magical abilities.  So yeah, unfortunately, you still won't be able to heal a transformed creature with a short transform interaction while it's alive, but you CAN if it dies.  Pretty sweet, eh?

[/spoiler]

So basically dwarves are now a race of immortals? I still am curios about this whole "Back from the dead" thing. Can dwarves be brought back if they died of old age? Does this mean that to defeat a fortress, you must murder every single dwarf?

I could see a ton of balancing issues with this. How expensive is the ceremony going to be?

I could see something playing out like this:

"Sir! Every race in the world has teamed up against us! Our military is being devoured and our people don't stand a chance!"
"Pull the bar of soap!"
"But sir that will..."
"I KNOW WHAT IT WILL DO! PULL THE BAR!"
(Bar gets pulled and the whole fortress crashes down)
"Sir...Everyone is dead!"
"Not exactly..."
(Vampire in a corner some where comes out of the door that just gets unlocked and revives all 200 citizens of the town)
"...."
"Back to work Sargent".

[DustanH]

"Sir! Every race in the world has teamed up against us! Our military is being devoured and our people don't stand a chance!"
"Pull the bar of soap!"
"But sir that will..."
"I KNOW WHAT IT WILL DO! PULL THE BAR!"
(Bar gets pulled and the whole fortress crashes down)
"Sir...Everyone is dead!"
"Not exactly..."
(Vampire in a corner some where comes out of the door that just gets unlocked and revives all 200 citizens of the town)
"...."
"Back to work Sargent".

ROFL that is great! too bad its too big for a sig...

[narhiril]

I have no intention of making normal dwarves resurrect at the moment - if this is ever implemented, it will be on a VERY long cooldown (on the order of years).  The only units that are readily available for resurrection are paragons of Visthel, which will be one of the last tier three ritual units.  Creating a paragon will be both expensive and dangerous.  While elemental ritual units are simply expensive to make, the more powerful units of the primary Old Gods will carry inherent risks in their transformation ceremonies.  Plagues, demons, death, and other horrors are all possible outcomes for a priest seeking to become a paragon.


Paragons of Visthel will be effectively immortal as long as...

1) Their corpses are not destroyed.

2) You have a Bringer of Mercy (an upcoming tier four ritual unit) to revive them.  These units are both very expensive and very dangerous to produce.

Paragons and Bringers of Mercy will not ever die of old age.  It will be entirely possible (though very rare) to find a thousand year-old paragon in worldgen.  They live until their bodies are utterly annihilated.

[Stirk]

Sounds balanced enough, especially when you consider one of the biggest threats in this mod is fire.

How the the corpse-eaters doing? They sound powerful enough to take down a civilization easily with a siege, and I would assume that if they are common enough for immortality to be uncommon? I would assume that a huge force eating all the corpses of the dead would effectively keep immortals...mortal. Almost as well as the punishments for failing would.

[Meph]

Corpse eaters ? I foresee an army of ghosts

Since the boiling stones dont work 100% of the time I will do the following to balance the reactions:
1. Create a special tool/toy/item out of many, expensive materials
2. Make the transformation reaction use that item, but preserve it.
3. Add a negative effect with the same chance as the transformation.

This way people still need to set up everything with the expensive stuff, but they dont lose it if the reaction is unsuccessful. The negative effect is added to stop people spamming it. I havent quite figured out everything, but this is the theory behind it. As you know I have 3 kinds of magic, I though black magic goes berserk/demon, fire/stone petrifies or sets on fire, and white magic... no idea yet.

[Pan]

Ooh! New version! Will the files in this one be compatible if i copy and paste?

[narhiril]

Ooh! New version! Will the files in this one be compatible if i copy and paste?

I'm foreseeing that the entity_default file is going to need some updating to accommodate the changes to the dungeon master, but since that's an incredibly minor issue, I think things will work fine for now if you just copy them over.  If you really want, I think you can remove the entries for dungeon master and tax collector entirely.  Also, successors should actually work now, in case you ever get that far. 

Personally, I can't even play until Dwarf Therapist is updated.  I've gotten that reliant on it.  >.<

[Imp]

Some very interesting undead lizardman behavior at the end of that huge undead siege I had - I'd reverted to a 'before I decided to burn the world to destroy these corpses' point and was dealing with them in a slow and steady manner through controlled pathing.

Finally, most of them were 'gone', except for some few... about 15 or so... who were not choosing to approach my temptingly open gates.  Thinking that was really weird I finally zoomed to one - and saw them all lurking in various murky ponds.  All the others had either wandered off the map (if they do that) or wandered into my trap/kill zone... but these lizardmen were maintaining the siege from semi-concealment (they were all quite visible, once accounting for z-level change) - very smart for some undead!

So I started designating jobs nearish the occupied ponds - the undead lizardmen would charge out and give chase, eventually following their prey back into the killing fields or else giving up the chase and heading.... back to a murky pond.

Until a goblin siege came.  I ordered my dwarves to end these luring games and bottled up to see what would happen - still 10 or so lizardmen hither and yon...

The goblins went for them after my gates closed, and all but one were fairly rapidly laid to rest... that last one deciding it had had enough, and it -fled- the goblins, successfully pathing around the groups converging on it to reach the edge of the map and escape.

An undead, fleeing.  After having hidden in a pond.

I'd thought the voidwalkers were your 'strange evil stars', a race of mystery and weird power.  The meowkin seem at least distantly related to nyan cats to me; cuddly more than strange and definately friendly and just flavorful, but there's nothing really 'inexplicable' about them that I've discovered yet (probably because I've never made them mad...); the 'weirdest' thing I know about voidwalkers is how discovered thieves initially flee about 10 rooms, then turn around and head -determinedly- towards some goal inside my fortress, even running past dwarves and warbeasts hitting them sometimes as they try to reach this mysterious but clearly very motivating goal...

Lizardmen, however, are this huge ball of odd behaviors.  I rarely see them; I'd written them off as a primitive race of fairly low significance and expected no real strangeness or unusually behaviors from them; an 'animal race' given the tools of civilization and told to attack others.  But... they are the ones who use poisons against me; they are the ones who seem 'sentient' even when undead; they are the ones you see fit to use as the source of crafty and dangerous deeply subtle spies in the future...

These lizardmen have taken top place in my list of enemies to watch and expect surprises from at last, thanks to this.  How extremely odd and delightful - their unusual behavior so slowly exposed is almost like watching a dark and unsettling flower unfold!

[Man of Paper]

That was beautiful.