Messages

Free wall.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm working on an update to the mod tonight, anyway, and that should be an easy bug to squash.

Just to clarify, you got rid of the randomization entirely?

I'm afraid that's the case.

What I'd done originally was set it so that any background attached to a normal male or female body type would end up randomized. Roughly half stayed at the default, about 40% became thin, and the others became either fat or hulk. But that obviously wasn't optimal, as there are plenty of cases where you might specify a default body because you *want* a default body, and not because you don't care what body type the pawn has.

What I'd planned to do in the update was just set it so that backstories without a body type definition were randomized, but others stayed as they were assigned. The problem I ran into trying to do that, though, is that when I tried to read backstories from XML into the game's actual database without making sure that body types were all defined, my error log got spammed with "no body type defined" messages. And the game imposed defaults, such that when pawns were actually created, there *were* none with undefined body types.

I'll dig further and see if I can come up with a workaround, but for the moment, yeah, the randomized body types are completely gone.

Editable Backstories and Editable Backstories Lite have both been updated.

Update to "Editable Backstories":

- Pawn body types, if not defined in backstories, will now simply default to "male" or "female," rather than being randomized. (Vanilla behavior has been restored.)

Update to "Editable Backstories Lite":

- It is now possible to create linked name-childhood-adulthood sets.

I could make a Giant tree that takes up the whole map  xD    (If Possible)

Here you have it, folks. InterstellarOrbit has revealed that his next mod will be.... "Yggdrasil, the World Tree." 

Can the traitDefs system be used to reveal all the available traits?

Traits are all defined in XML files, so they're not hard to locate. Vanilla traits are all listed in the new, improved documentation for "Editable Backstories." If a particular user has other mods that add traits, they can find those traits' names in the XML files of the mods that add them.

As far as your question about automatically adding traits to some master list, I'm sure it's possible, but it'd require reading through a lot of files in subfolders of both the workshop and mods folders, looking for anything that adds traits, and probably cross-referencing the sources of those traits against the mods list file to figure out what's currently active and what's not.  Far simpler, I think, to just let users add any traits manually that they actually want to include in backstory defs.

I was kinda hoping this would be more a revival for the mod that just allows us to add backstories rather then, just an easier way to add ours to a mod that edits them.

So, am I understanding correctly that you'd be interested in a mod which allows you to add backstories to the game, without offering any ability to edit or modify the pre-existing backstories? Such a mod would be a fairly trivial to create (perhaps as a "Lite" version of "Editable Backstories")....

In addition to updating the base version of "Editable Backstories," I also just went ahead and released Editable Backstories Lite, which allows you to add backstories and names to the game, but doesn't allow you to edit or delete anything from the default database.

[Steam Workshop Link]

Last update: 4/15/2017

"Editable Backstories Lite" is a trimmed-down version of my "Editable Backstories" mod. It allows you to add new backstories and names to your game, but doesn't allow you to edit or delete anything from the default backstory database.

- Rainbeau Flambe (dburgdorf)

Steam Workshop Link

Dropbox Link

Compatibility:

"Editable Backstories Lite" can be safely added to a saved game, but if you remove it from a game in progress, every pawn in the world with one of your new backstories will end up with a randomly-assigned backstory to replace it.

So far as I know, it should be compatible with any other mod out there.

Is there a way to change the rate at which thin body types show up? I've disabled it from every back story yet still half of my colonists show up with it.

At the moment, no. The body type thing was a change I made sort of on a whim when I started working on this update, then forgot about in the midst of working on other stuff. It doesn't really work as well as I'd hoped it would. If I don't revert it completely, I'll at least make sure that the random body type assignment only applies to backstories with legitimately undefined body types, and not to those with generic "male" or "female" body type definitions, which is what's happening right now. I'll try and get that done tomorrow.

Kind of a major update to Editable Backstories:

- Added the ability to define the relative rarity of backstories. (They can now be common, uncommon, rare, or "Legendary.")

- Added the ability to filter backstories by pawn gender.

- Added the ability to define "sets" of backstories, such that stories which belong to a particular set will always and only be attached to other stories in the same set.

- Childhood and adulthood backstories will no longer be combined if one "favors" and the other "disfavors" a particular skill. (A backstory that adds at least 4 points to a skill will be treated as though it requires the relevant work tag for matching purposes, and a backstory that subtracts at least 4 points from a skill will be treated as though it disables the relevant work tag.)

- Fat and Hulk body types now have a (small) chance to show up randomly, just as the Thin body type already did. (This only applies to backstories for which generic "male" or "female" body types have been defined, or for which no body types are defined. Backstories for which "hulk," "thin" or "fat" body types are defined will always use those body types.)

- Added a TraitDefs file with a revised def for the Pyromaniac trait, making it much less common.

- Any errors in backstory or name definitions files caught by the code will now generate messages in the log file. (Previously, a few were silently ignored.)

- The log file also now prints a tally of the number of backstories and names added, so even if errors in the XML aren't caught by the code, you'll be able to tell if something's missing.

- The mod is now compatible with "Humanoid Alien Framework," albeit through an inelegant kludge. I'll try to clean things up in the next release.

- Expanded and improved the default backstory set.

- Greatly expanded the detail in the mod's documentation.

I saw it stated it would rely on editable backstories, but I'm not entirely sure. Do need to get that? I was kinda hoping this would be more a revival for the mod that just allows us to add backstories rather then, just an easier way to add ours to a mod that edits them.

So far as I'm aware, AngleWyrm's project, if anything actually comes of it, will simply be an XML file editor.

So, am I understanding correctly that you'd be interested in a mod which allows you to add backstories to the game, without offering any ability to edit or modify the pre-existing backstories? Such a mod would be a fairly trivial to create (perhaps as a "Lite" version of "Editable Backstories"), but I'm not quite sure I see the value, myself. But then, my original motivation in creating EB was less a desire to add anything to the database and more a desire to clean up the mess that I consider many of the default backstories to be. 

Anything that's going to be constant across all or most of your trees can (and probably should) be defined in the plantBase, but anything that's different needs to be in the individual plant definitions. Since presumably all your trees will have different items harvested from them, there'd be little benefit to defining HarvestedThingDef in the PlantBase, as you'd be overriding it in most of the individual definitions, anyway.

Having multiple plantBase files, by the way, would just be unnecessarily multiplying your definition files.

As to your second question, I'm fairly certain you can't define where within a map a particular plant is mostly likely to show up, in XML files. It's probably possible if you're willing to play with C# coding, though.

You can use the "wildBiomes" tag to define in which biomes a plant will appear.

Here's an example. (It's the geranium definition from my "Wild Cultivation" mod.)

Code Select Expand


<ThingDef ParentName="RWC_PlantBase">
<defName>PlantGeranium</defName>
<label>geranium</label>
<description>A beautiful cultivated flower - great for brightening up a drab yard. Must be replanted often.</description>
<statBases>
<MaxHitPoints>85</MaxHitPoints>
<Beauty>24</Beauty>
</statBases>
<graphicData>
<texPath>Geranium</texPath>
<graphicClass>Graphic_Single</graphicClass>
</graphicData>
<altitudeLayer>Item</altitudeLayer>
<selectable>true</selectable>
<ingestible>
<nutrition>0.03</nutrition>
</ingestible>
<plant>
<fertilitySensitivity>1</fertilitySensitivity>
<dieIfLeafless>true</dieIfLeafless>
<harvestTag>Standard</harvestTag>
<harvestDestroys>true</harvestDestroys>
<sowWork>400</sowWork>
<sowTags>
<li>Ground</li>
<li>Decorative</li>
</sowTags>
<growMinGlow>0.3</growMinGlow>
<topWindExposure>0.1</topWindExposure>
<growDays>1.5</growDays>
<lifespanFraction>5</lifespanFraction>
<visualSizeRange>
<min>0.3</min>
<max>1.05</max>
</visualSizeRange>
<wildCommonalityMaxFraction>1.0</wildCommonalityMaxFraction>
<wildClusterSizeRange>
<min>2</min>
<max>6</max>
</wildClusterSizeRange>
<wildClusterRadius>4</wildClusterRadius>
<wildBiomes>
<AridShrubland>0.01</AridShrubland>
<BorealForest>0.1</BorealForest>
<Desert>0.01</Desert>
<ExtremeDesert>0.0</ExtremeDesert>
<TemperateForest>0.05</TemperateForest>
<TropicalRainforest>0.02</TropicalRainforest>
<Tundra>0.01</Tundra>
</wildBiomes>
</plant>
</ThingDef>


The numbers attached to each biome indicate how likely the plant is to appear in that particular biome.

Dorf stop taking the b8 m8.

Your point is well taken, and I apologize for my role in perpetuating the, shall we say, "less productive aspects" of this thread. As I said in an earlier comment, as long as I've been participating in online forums, I really ought to know better by now.

Honestly, I already lost track of what is this "mod" is about actually....

AngleWyrm's goal, as I understand it, is to create a tool intended to simplify the editing of backstory XML files that can be used in my "Editable Backstories" mod. Whatever might come of that tool, the actual backstories he's thus far written will be included (with his permission) in the next update of my mod.

Re: "Smooth Stone Walls":

Basically, ignoring hauling, is this more, less, or equal in work value to the vanilla process? I'm guessing it is still much less work, just wondering if you've done the math or not?

I haven't actually checked all the numbers, but I'd assume the work to smooth a wall is noticeably less than the work to mine, make blocks, and build a wall. 

Which is probably another good argument in favor of having the smoothed walls be a new wall type that doesn't provide blocks when deconstructed. 

Completely forgot about the tags, thanks.

No problem at all. I'm also improving the documentation, so hopefully, in the future, it'll be harder to forget about stuff like that. 

Can you make background restrictions based on the pawn's sex?

That's not something I'd thought of, but it should be a simple one-line addition to the code, so, yeah, expect it in the update.