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I can finally get to make them today, and they're so 'cute'. and they now move on their own doing other stuff like colonists. The shoot/melee stats is rather random and are mostly low (3 ) for me.. Oh, and there's also a 'ghost connection point' from where they're built, even after the Mechanoids moved off.

Yay cuteness Their skills are now set at 8 from the start. They're supposed to be effective shooters, but not as effective as a highly-skilled human. Ghost connection point is fixed.

Issue: When they get incapacitated, there's a fizzing thing on them, and never disappears after they get back to full health. Somehow they can be rescued and be put into an unowned bed but the health regen is the same as when they're moving around... Not sure if any of these are intended.

Oh dear, they're supposed to explode instead of being incapacitated. That's been fixed.

Now I'm intrigued to have a new 'race' that's faster moving (than human) mechanized humanoid and great at everything. hehe

Indeed! One of the things I loved most about Dwarf Fortress was how variable dwarves could be, and how you'd get attached to the exceptional ones. Colonists aren't quite as diverse yet; a high-level shooter is still pretty fragile.

Thanks for Mod, I really like this, being they're not out for our blood like their rogue cousins. Haha.

Regarding the use of electricity for future ver. Maybe let them go to power outlet, or freely connect to any nearby power (like while building) to 'energize' them to regenerate faster (like how colonists repairing buildings/walls). Otherwise, the "slowly generate to full health" applies when they're not connected to any power. Might be a little OP but from where I see, the attack drops will only get bigger (i've got 10+ colonists vs nearly 20 centipede, in cassandra.. ) I even went to test invoking raiders to attack me, so they can fight the Centipedes but all 4 waves died. hahaha.... when Centipedes bunch together, they're extremely deadly.

I'm glad you like it! I had the same sort of idea about electricity; the main thing that's limiting here is I'd need to add new UI for it to work properly and I'm not quite sure how to do that yet.

Yeah... Although I found something interesting though. I went into dev mode so I could give myself some mech parts just to check them out and well, I currently have a mechanoid extracting slag for me

Edit: Actually they are acting like normal colonists. One is currently planting trees for me, another one was just harvesting one of the crops.

This one is fixed. I was missing a call to workSettings.InitialSetupFromSkills() again after changing the mechanoid skill requirements to disable other labors

The RimWorld modding system is already fantastic, but there are some tweaks that would make it even more powerful.

Since C# is not a language that permits monkey patching, the most helpful change would be to mark more methods as virtual and more variables as public. I had to do a pretty hacky thing here to get around the fact that the Drafter class can't be overridden: https://github.com/mispy/Mechatronics/blob/master/Source/Mecha_Pawn.cs#L83

Of course, there's a bit of a tradeoff there between availability to modders and maintaining good structure of the game code. It's also possible there's another way to achieve the same thing that I'm unaware of.

Also, for the sake of mod compatibility, it'd be nice if recipes attached themselves to buildings rather than having buildings list their recipes. This would prevent conflicts between two mods that add recipes to the same building. For example, instead of:

  <ThingDef ParentName="BuildingBase">
    <DefName>TableMachining</DefName>
    <recipes>
      <li>ButcherCorpseMechanoid</li>
    </recipes>
  </ThingDef>

Use:

  <RecipeDef>
    <defName>ButcherCorpseMechanoid</defName>
    <buildings>
      <li>TableMachining</li>
    </buildings>
  </RecipeDef>

Though again there may be a better way to achieve the same thing.

I have found the issue. I think it is because I had mechanoid turrets (the mod) also active and that might have screwed with this mod a bit.

It'll definitely be incompatible with that because we both override the disassembling process. Perhaps I can add a new recipe to the machining bench instead.

Well hold on. Let me start a completely new world with only mechatronics active. I have multiple mods so one of them could be conflicting a bit?

Let me know if you have any luck! I definitely want it to be compatible if at all possible though.

Actually, if you want to send me your save, that would probably be the easiest way to debug

Yeah... Although I found something interesting though. I went into dev mode so I could give myself some mech parts just to check them out and well, I currently have a mechanoid extracting slag for me

Edit: Actually they are acting like normal colonists. One is currently planting trees for me, another one was just harvesting one of the crops.

I downloaded a fresh copy of the game and installed the mod from scratch and I still can't reproduce either of these problems Are there any warnings/errors in the console? (press `)

what skill is needed?

Ive killed a mechanodoid, its stored and i have the table installed to make my own.. yet i cant force any of my habitants to make one?

It's constructed as a building under the Security tab. The table is just for extracting the parts you need to make the building. (also, make sure you have Mechatronics researched!)

I think I'd rather a robot, not a pile of pudding.    Just a thought.  xP

They're the game's textures, not mine But yeah, it'd be nice to have other forms. I might look into cybernetically upgrading colonists or something; I'd prefer to avoid duplicating work with the Droids mod (I'd nearly finished this by the time I realized that existed).

Mechatronics



Overview

This mod allows you to build your own giant robot centipedes! Colony-built mechanoids can be controlled in the same way as human colonists, but differ in other respects:

• Much more durable than humans, but slower-moving
• Do not require food, rest or psychological maintenance
• Immune to fire
• Can be permanently drafted (you can use them like mobile turrets)
• Limited to combat, firefighting, hunting, hauling and cleaning jobs
• Slowly regenerate over time, and explode when killed (less violently than turrets)

Basically, they're big reliable endgame tanks intended to protect and support your fragile but flexible human colonists. They have sensible backstories and try to integrate into the setting without breaking immersion.

Making a Mechanoid

To construct a mechanoid, you first have to defeat one and disassemble it at the machining table. You'll also need the research prerequisite, and some metal:

• Research Machining and then Mechatronics
• Build a Machining Table
• Disassemble an enemy mechanoid to produce 5 Mechanoid Parts
• Acquire 500 metal
• Build "Mechanoid Centipede" as a building under the Security tab

As soon as your shiny new mechanoid is connected to a power supply, it'll become mobile. Currently it won't use any power after this; in future versions this may change.

Downloads

• Mechatronics 0.1.4.zip

Compatibility

Mechatronics has been tested on Alpha 4F, and appears to be compatible with existing save files. The only existing def it overrides is the ButcherCorpseMechanoid recipe; unfortunately, this means it is definitely incompatible with Mechanoid Turrets.

The code is available on GitHub, feel free to submit bug reports or pull requests there. You're welcome to dissect and otherwise use this mod for your own purposes

Known Issues

Mechanoids can't talk or think but they still get happy thoughts from people talking to them. Not sure if bug or feature.

Changelog

• 0.1.4

 
• Mechanoid shooting/melee skills now start at 8
• Fix mechanoids being incapacitated instead of exploding
• Fix ghost power connector after building mechanoid
• 0.1.3 - Fixed a bug with starting mechanoid job settings
• 0.1.2

 
• Decrease required Mechanoid Parts from 10 to 5
• Mechanoids now spawn with a random mechanoid weapon
• 0.1.1 - Mechanoids regenerate slightly over time to compensate for lack of sleeping
• 0.1 - Initial release

Just a heads up for anyone else trying to mod in new kinds of colonists: standardBodyGraphicPath currently doesn't apply to humanoid races. (and if you try to make a non-humanoid colonist it'll throw an error) Here's the relevant part of the game code:



It is still feasible, but you'll need to do some C# trickery to get around the hardcoded stuff. Proof of concept: https://github.com/mispy/DwarfColonists/blob/master/Source/DwarfColonists/DwarfPawn.cs#L17

Hopefully Tynan will make the defs more flexible at some stage. (I wish this were OSS so I could do it myself, it's kinda frustrating looking at all the lovely decompiled CIL I can't alter )

You should probably only be setting the graphics once at the beginning though, instead of every frame.

Ah, it was your mod I dissected to figure this out Indeed, it's a bit hacky. Ideally the XML defs would be flexible enough to allow this kind of thing by themselves, but I couldn't get standardBodyGraphicPath to work at all with the colonist pawns. Nor could I find a way to uh, remove their heads.

I haven't benchmarked it but it should still be very fast, since it never instantiates anything in the Tick, just assigns the address of one of the two existing static Graphic_Apparel objects.

Dwarf Colonists



Overview

Replaces colonist graphics with good old-fashioned code page 437 dwarves from Dwarf Fortress. Creatures from other factions are unchanged, but will become dwarves if you recruit them. Drafted dwarves change their appearance accordingly.

You'll also now start with three ☼steel crossbows☼ instead of the default weapons. They're similar in effectiveness to Lee-Enfields.

This is a silly mod for learning purposes, not planning on a DF total conversion or anything

Downloads

• Dwarf Colonists v0.2