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RimWorld => Mods => Unfinished => Topic started by: Greep on April 10, 2017, 06:38:08 PM

Title: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 10, 2017, 06:38:08 PM
This is just for placing my thoughts, atm, nothing to download yet :)

What this is

Rimworld is based off dwarf fortress. This is making rimworld exactly dwarf fortress with better graphics, plus whatever I want because I feel like it.

Worded that incorrectly.  "Exactly" is not quite true.  The main purpose of this is to make Rimworld have the same kind of gameplay and flavor as DF.  Specific features of DF itself are going to be done on a case by case basis of what I want or not.  Additionally, rimworld features that I like will stay.
Obviously this isn't a total conversion mod.  I'm not toady, I'm not working on this for a decade, and I'm not paid.

Why

I actually like rimworld more than DF, but I feel the same sense of lost epicness like with the new 2012 xcom series compared to the original.  With too little colonists, combat cannot be built around expendabiilty.  Basically every case that is lethal has a basically required exploit with some exploits being worse than others (kill box exploit bad, sniper exploit okay?), since you can't afford to lose colonists in a raid for a long term fort.

I feel like this seriously dampens the feel of the game.  Adding immigration waves, melee focus, and regular death was the initial reason for starting out on this.  But then I thought, F*** it, DF mod, let's do this.

Roadmap

Most likely, I will not get too far.  My first goal is not on adding DF features, but rather incorporating the feel of DF into rimworld.  The first stage will be just doing the MVP of this, and I'll consider it a success and release a v1 if I manage this.

MVP features:

*Remove all storytellers except Randy, renamed Armok <DONE>
*Remove all difficulties except intense, renamed "dwarfy" <DONE>
*Alcohol addiction on all dwarfs, with luciferium style drawbacks if not sated.  No cirrhosis or cancer <DONE>
*All dwarves are brawlers.  You can give a dwarf a bow or gun, but it's ill advised except to hunt things, and they'll hate it.  Brawlers with ranged weapons get "feels like a damned elf" debuff.  Spray and pray guns removed <KINDA DONE>
*Orbital trade ship removed <DONE>
*Request caravan removed <decided to keep, microelectronics @x20 research takes forever anyways>
*Force colony to start at least 6 hexes from a town. <DONE, and learned a lot of C# for this :D>
*Immigration waves <DONE, just simultaneous wanderer joins.  Bizarre lag spike>
*Pop^2 based incident threat points.  If you have a low population, you are basically just safe.  Population will be aimed at roughly 2.5 times less than vanilla DF.  So sieges start at 80/2.5 = 32 population and critical will be at about 200/2.5 = 80 colonists.
<DONE:  Altered.  Decided on a very "dwarfy" solution here, where wealth is the main factor, but ambushes are size limited whereas sieges are much less so, though sieges start at 30 pop.  Sizes are somewhat small, too, to start.>

*remove animal hauling to encourage more dwarves <DONE: Set all animals at advanced to intermediate>
*increase work times due to higher pop. <DONE: hacked solution>
*Rework incidents so they occur much less frequently, allowing that DF "Builder" feel.  Like phoebe, but with with the possibility of rare back to back like randy. <DONE>
*Integration of research x20 longer mod <DONE:  Did it myself, settled on x2, which is an effective x8 (x2 work time from above, x2 from neolithic start)>
*start in neolithic, but with smithing and brewing <DONE>
*integration of melee rebalance mod <SHELVE, looks like it's in rapid development>
*Adapting A.I. to new system <SKIP, worry about it after v1, just setting all factions to neolithic>
*integration of edb prepare carefully <SKIP, looks like everyone already has this downloaded lmao>
*mechanoids removed, or pushed back to year 6.
*integration of mineral expansion <SKIP, unfinished>

ADDED MVP:

*Start with muffalo (represents wagon) <BUGGED, RARRRR>
*Remove infestations <DONE>
*Reverse cabin fever <DONE>
*Move armor to smithing <SKIP, doing medieval gear first>
*Revamp starting gear <DONE>
*Integrate smooth walls mod
*Integrate medieval times mod that I want<700 XML errors later... DONE>
*Mineral refactor:  I can't add z-levels, but I can seriously increase both mining times and mineral abundance to simulate that feeling.
*Price rebalancing:  Keeping other factions non-neolithic just with much higher prices.  Best way to I can think of to retain rimworld aspects to some degree.
*Remove hi tech research bench from the game.  It forces a bee-line to microelectronics in the tribal era that I don't want.  Research speed increased to offset. <DONE>

Non-MVP:

These would be nice, but I may not get around to all of them, no specific order

*Scavenge the more successful features I implemented in Rimbalance, such as infinte room impressiveness and component refactor
*Various "dwarfy" atmosphere such as higher beauty for stone and less for wood.
*Customized edb prepare carefully for this mod
*All backgrounds add only one skill, at about +2-3 levels, with all other skills at most at 1 with no passion
*Childhood backgrounds removed.
*Smelting
*Various skill changes
*Candy
*Clowns
*Remove all scenarios except crashlanded, renamed fortress mode, and rich explorer, renamed adventure mode.  Disable construction and recruiting on adventure mode.

Added Non-MVP:

*Remove large revealed areas in mountains.
*Remove dead-man's thoughts, sell factor:  Inferior races will have inferior gear anyways.  Goblinite will not be worth much.

Post-release:

All of these are high work and what I'd consider "extra credit".  I expect to accomplish none of these, but these will be done in order (order weighted by mix of difficulty  and desire).


*Artifacts
*Magma (WIP - Lag issues)
*Levers
*Biome Wildness (haunted e.g.)
*Graphics (actual dwarves, etc)
*Goblins
*Stats (strength, etc)
*Z-Levels (haha, yeah right)
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: SpaceDorf on April 10, 2017, 07:30:03 PM
How may I serve you Master ?

Feature Requests :

*Carp
*Elves
*Animal People
*Quantum entangled Mechanisms
*Drawbridges
*Fortress Inventory
*DFHack

no longer true : Disable construction and recruiting on adventure mode.
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 10, 2017, 07:35:04 PM
Wait really you can recruit in adevnture mode?  Dang I haven't played since 40d (and a little .31), so I didn't even know.   I'd get back to DF binging but I don't think I'd ever mod this if I did >.>
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: The-Eroks on April 10, 2017, 08:46:27 PM
 :D This would be exciting to tinker with for sure

QuoteThis is making rimworld exactly dwarf fortress with better graphics, plus whatever I want because I feel like it.
I always play dwarf fortress with ASCII graphics... and do strongly believe that it is artistically superior to the many all of the tiles ever offered. #myopinion  ;) Please offer an ASCII mode
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 10, 2017, 09:10:11 PM
Well, this isn't going to be as ambitious a mod as everyone is hoping for I think ;)  Someday I'm going to go back to work and have to put this into maintenance mode, so I'm being a bit conservative here.  So an ascii mode just isn't gonna happen, since I'd rank it in the list after goblins, which I will almost defintiely not add xD  MVP graphics will be just the dwarves themselves probably, maybe just beards, or not.

However, I of course will allow dependent mods on my mod if anyone wishes to do the work to extend it, if they want to make an "Armok mod: Ascii mode".

Edit: As for elves, I may just repurpose tribals as elves.  They're really not that different, so it probably wouldn't take much work.  Also, WHEEEE knocked out most of the easy ones.
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: SpaceDorf on April 11, 2017, 09:54:06 AM
I forgot the most important part of my Request list :

*SOCKS - revered holy icons of dwarvdom, for which every dwarf would gladly sacrifice his live.
*Engraving - of Dwarves wearing socks. And Cheese.

DF Fandom aside.
I volunteer if you need help with xml typing ..

--------------------------------- EDIT -------------------------------------

*All dwarves are brawlers.  You can give a dwarf a bow or gun, but it's ill advised except to hunt things, and they'll hate it.  Brawlers with ranged weapons get "feels like a damned elf" debuff.  Spray and pray guns removed <KINDA DONE>

I can't really get behind this .. while Toady is very averse to adding gunpowder to DF ... we are still talking about DF in SPAAAAACE !!! here .. and don't forget about Crossbows, the dwarven Machine Gun.

Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 11, 2017, 02:31:13 PM
Yeah that's a fair point, although you can totally equip ranged weapons as a brawler ;).  Part of the reason of making the mod in the first place, though, was having a mod not focus on guns anyways, but maybe there's some middle ground here. 

I definitely do not want large immigrant waves while also having the same power of ranged weapons as in vanilla, I want the battles to involve direct confrontation, not a large fire zone where enemies just melt.  Its kind of hard to find that balance where ranged weapons exist but aren't 100% dominant.  IIRC in DF crossbows didn't scale the way that melee does with skill, so maybe melee rebalaced will just solve this, I could perhaps add dodging ranged weapons if melee rebalanced only has parrying, and get rid of long ranged weapons so the A.I. can't be cheesed.

But miniguns, e.g., are definitely going the way of the dinosaur, I'm not going to have 100% minigun dwarf armies xD
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: SpaceDorf on April 11, 2017, 03:05:20 PM
What about armor ?
In DF thats the weak point for the arrows.

So removing most of the guns sound great, some melee varietee sounds great too.
And improving armor in a way, that ranged is nerfed even more ..
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 11, 2017, 03:10:41 PM
Hmm.. yeah that could work, although it'd be weird if, e.g. charge rifles got blocked by most armor.  So it'd need a lot of work.  I'm also going to increase weapon quality effect on melee damage.  It always annoyed me that legendary plasteel weapons were worse than scyther blades and even power claws.  So in the beginning ranged is great but high quality gear can really mess with the enemy.

In any case, brawler sounds like an okayish temporary solution for internal testing before I release it, I'll think about solutions, though.

Edit: Also, suggestions so far are considered, I just haven't found a place in the priority list for them yet.  Too busy implementing stuff :D

Edit: I've thought about this for a while, and I think the solution I'm going to go with is just that ranged weapons take a very long time to create with much more components than in vanilla, exotic weapons doubly so.  This allows for "space dorfs" in a super long term sense, but cutting a slab of steel to make an axe is much much more practical in the short time.  The only weapon getting the "axe" (hurr hurr) will be sniper rifles for cheese reasons.  This will mean guns are too expensive for raiders, but whatever, gobbies aren't dwarfy enough for guns I guess.

I might end up adding special ingredients for weapons I specifically want to limit (miniguns, e.g.) but not sure what atm.  Turrets should probably require an A.I. core.

Also, seems like I'll have to move armor to forge instead of machining. I don't want guns craftable at start, but having to research to make helmets and vests sounds bad.

Edit: Looks like you're getting socks space dorf :D  Integrating what makes sense from medieval times, and socks is there :)
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 14, 2017, 02:22:24 AM
The early days of magma are.. not so impressive looking, but at least the lag issues are fixed xD

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: milon on April 14, 2017, 08:43:16 AM
RimWorld meets Dwarf Fortress
So for great justice
All my dwarfs belong to Greep

~A haiku commemorating awesomeness​

(Subscribed!)
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 14, 2017, 05:04:57 PM
 ;D

*Magma now inherits from Thing directly rather than Fire.  Colonists won't commit suicide trying to put it out, and performance increase now allows a full small map of lava.
*Magma now instantly incinerates all non Fire-Safe material(, except for solid walls, which take a while to burn away) adding nothing but a bit of fire where it used to be.  Looks slightly uglier since the fire dies down quicker and there's nothing to burn, but whatever.  Considering having random puffs of fire for coolness factor.

Starting work on volcanoes soon :D

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: minimurgle on April 14, 2017, 05:25:53 PM
Looking good Greep. Might wanna find the bit of code that blends tiles (I think it's in with floors). You probably planned on that though.
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 15, 2017, 05:36:06 AM
Yeah, I'll check it out if it doesn't impact performance.  Also, pure black wasn't quite the best color for obsidian, will probably make it like 25,25,25.  Obsidian also probably isn't the best rock to make volcanoes out of. 

But anyways, volcanoes incoming!  Now I don't have to test magma by having it spawn on immigrants xD  And I miiight have put this too far into worldgen judging by the trees in the roofs :3

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: AngleWyrm on April 15, 2017, 03:50:46 PM

(https://static1.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/2/25835/1945052-ladydeathsinful.jpg)
Quote from: Greep on April 10, 2017, 06:38:08 PM
*Remove all storytellers except Randy, renamed Armok
*Remove all difficulties except intense, renamed "dwarfy"

If a mod relies on exclusivity/monopoly the quality of the content is no longer competitive.

Rest assured the content will not be superior to what's already out there,
because if it were then the player would be free to choose their favorite.
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: minimurgle on April 15, 2017, 03:54:48 PM
Quote from: AngleWyrm on April 15, 2017, 03:50:46 PM

(https://static1.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/2/25835/1945052-ladydeathsinful.jpg)
Quote from: Greep on April 10, 2017, 06:38:08 PM
*Remove all storytellers except Randy, renamed Armok
*Remove all difficulties except intense, renamed "dwarfy"

If a mod relies on exclusivity/monopoly the quality of the content is no longer competitive.

Rest assured the content will not be superior to what's already out there,
because if it were then the player would be free to choose their favorite.

While this isn't completely wrong I don't think Greep is making this for other people. I think this is primarily something he wants. Besides it's not like he can't ever decide to add more story tellers.
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 15, 2017, 06:55:29 PM
Quote from: AngleWyrm on April 15, 2017, 03:50:46 PM

(https://static1.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/2/25835/1945052-ladydeathsinful.jpg)
Quote from: Greep on April 10, 2017, 06:38:08 PM
*Remove all storytellers except Randy, renamed Armok
*Remove all difficulties except intense, renamed "dwarfy"

If a mod relies on exclusivity/monopoly the quality of the content is no longer competitive.

Rest assured the content will not be superior to what's already out there,
because if it were then the player would be free to choose their favorite.

This isn't purposely about restricting the player's choice,  I've thought about this a while before doing it.

A)  Dwarf fortress has 1 storyteller and one difficulty, and this is a dwarf fortress mod.

B) The mod is really going to wreck havoc with what storytellers normally control.  Large amounts of incidents are deliberately being suppressed so there's more focus on base management, for instance, and that's mostly what storytellers control.  The kind of thing I'm looking for isn't something I can really do with xml.  Trying to balance and test this on 18 combinations will make me go insane.  Balancing it for additional mods is basically impossible.

C)Single difficulty, single storyteller allows for me to get feedback I can deal with.  This isn't my job, so if people say "it's too hard" or "end game sieges get out of control" I can adjust the flow pretty easily.

D)Difficulty is mostly wealth based, but also somewhat pop based, just like dwarf fortress.  "ambushes" are cosniderably smaller than "sieges" so if the player wants lower difficulty they can always stay under 30 pop, just like in DF they can stay under 80.

I didn't do this with Rimbalance, for instance, because it was meant as a lightweight mod.  This is going to be an incredibly heavy, incredibly conflicting mod.  It's probably going to be the only "major" mod of that save.

Lastly, as with Rimbalance, I will show how to disable all specific features if people want them gone, which a lot of people have done with rimbalance if they really really want (some people only downloaded it for the room features lol)

I may later expand the difficulties, but I first want focused feedback.  Rimworld itself had a single difficulty, probably for this reason, and the first difficulty added was in the form of just another storyteller with a single difficulty.

Edit: Anyways, personal silly rambling aside, more magma screenshots :D  Still working on optimization of magma, and will still be doing that until I can fill a large map.  Working on some factorio style sleep mechanism for magma that hasn't spread in a while, and moving insta incineration checks into pawns as they move into a cell, as well as when magma spawns into a cell.  Sleepy magma will be awakened by removed adjacent magma, or unwalkable tiles becoming walkable.

This means most actual items (non-mobile) that somehow get into magma after spreading won't be disintegrated until sleepy magma gets around to it.  But it's not like the player will care anyways, since they can't move onto the lava themselves.

This screenshot looked too cool not to show.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 18, 2017, 04:43:30 AM
More optimization work on magma.  I think I've finally reached a stopping point where the magma portion is "releasable"  I've finally gotten a standard sized map where, once the magma has settled, there is not a very significant performance hit, although the initial flood can slow things down to where x6 speed is only about 2-3x standard, before picking up again later.  My laptop is a potato, and this little fort at the end of the world shown below is doing quite fine at triple speed. There's a slight more work to be done, I need to do a magma burst in all directions when a magma sleeps or there become unmagma'd tiles occasionally, and I may want to do a bit of optimizing fire and the initial wave.

It's also really funny triggering raids with a full map of sleepy magma. 
(raid 3k points).
(1 second later)
The people of X are fleeing! (lots of skull thoughts in a sea of red)

In any case it's nice to be almost done with this part.  Optimization is really boring, even when it's optimizing magma.



[attachment deleted by admin due to age]
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 19, 2017, 07:16:12 PM
Now that magma's released as a side mod, there is one final "feature" for v1 that's going to be coded up before I go back to polish and testing, also as a side mod that I think people will enjoy.

InfiniDrill(TM). Covers all your mining needs.  Differs from the deep core drill mod in that you will get randomized drilling of stone and metal.  Just... be careful.. about drilling too deep.
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: BlackSmokeDMax on April 20, 2017, 09:50:05 AM
Quote from: Greep on April 19, 2017, 07:16:12 PM
Now that magma's released as a side mod, there is one final "feature" for v1 that's going to be coded up before I go back to polish and testing, also as a side mod that I think people will enjoy.

InfiniDrill(TM). Covers all your mining needs.  Differs from the deep core drill mod in that you will get randomized drilling of stone and metal.  Just... be careful.. about drilling too deep.

Clowns?!?? Oh, please say it's clowns!!
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 20, 2017, 03:21:08 PM
.... Maybe   ::).  v1 isn't going to have any new graphics (aside from the red carpet magma and borrowed Medieval assets), so if clowns make it to the first release it'll be using existing art.  That being said, I think clowns will be in a later release.

Anyways, finished and released InfiniDrill :D  Check it out in my misc mods thread if you like.

I'm taking a quick break to actually play some dwarf fortress.  I've done dozens of def changes and over 1000 lines of code so far, think I deserve a rest xD  This isn't going anywhere, but don't expect any updates for a few days :)
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Headshotkill on April 22, 2017, 05:03:50 AM
It was inevitable
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: SpaceDorf on April 22, 2017, 11:17:21 AM
Hey Greep,

I reread your Feature List.

If you removed the Hives maybe they could be a good starting point or base ressource for the inclusion of all circus related stuff.
The fact that mining overhead mountain and them spawning beneath it sounds like a great basis.

If you include the blue Candy which would only be found in deep mountainous areas .. as would be magma tiles ..
you could connect the spawn of Circus Tents to the amount of mined Candy and make them spawn in those general locations ( no clue on how to add this )
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Greep on April 22, 2017, 11:34:36 AM
Ah, yeah I'm pretty confident in my modding abilities to add pretty much whatever I want at this point, so I can make all of this as detailed as a I want without having to piggyback off of existing events.  Honestly artwork is mostly what would hold back new content, so I'll probably do levers/atom smasher, etc before HFS related things.

I am, as I said, though, taking a short break (currently mildly sick, and playing DF :D) and probably not having and more "features" for v1 anyways.  This is going to be ongoing development, though, so I will get to it :)

As for blue candy, I it'd have to be linked to the InfiniDrill, since that's the Z-Level abstraction.  You could get to candy super quick if it was just on the main map.
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: milon on April 24, 2017, 01:25:08 PM
You might be able to get an artist to create custom sprites for you, if you ask nicely enough.  Especially if they're familiar with DF.

Either way, I can't wait!  :D
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: Ouan on April 27, 2017, 02:30:24 AM
I encountered your Armok mod today on YouTube while watching a DF player (Nookrium) playing Rimworld modded as best he could with available mods to be DFy. Someone linked your proposed mod in the comments. I hope your modding time has been good despite illness and look forward to the day you decide to let the masses take a peak behind the curtain of what you are cooking up.

Take care!

You are becoming internet famous!... at least in the niche world of DF players who also play Rimworld for similar reasons as to why you play it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgkrUkkLL38&ab_channel=Nookrium
Title: Re: Armok
Post by: SpaceDorf on April 27, 2017, 10:28:19 AM
It's a DF Mod  .. what do you need Graphics for ?

&&  gg gg

Title: Re: Armok
Post by: faltonico on June 12, 2017, 01:36:06 PM
doctercorgi made a thread suggesting fake Z levels (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=33304.0), that would fit this mod like a globe!