[A17] Rainbeau's Mods - Bridges, Backstories, Smooth Walls, Terraforming & More!

[dburgdorf]

These are my mods for RimWorld alpha 17.

The list:

Archipelagos - 9/24/2017 - Adds archipelago (island chain) biomes to the world map, so you can now play RimWorld on islands.

Basic Bridges - 9/24/17 - Allows you to build bridges. Obviously.

Concrete - 9/24/17 - An add-on for "Fertile Fields" which adds concrete to the game. Changes a few existing items to require concrete instead of steel, as well as adding concrete walls and reinforced concrete "bunker" walls and embrasures.

Configurable Maps - 9/23/17 - Allows you to adjust the number of old walls and buildings, the amount of ore, the number of geysers, the "biodensity" of plant and animal life, the size and quantity of lakes and marshes which will appear on new maps, and many other aspects of map generation.

Consolidated Traits - 9/18/2017 - Adds a lot of traits to the game. (This is my "cleaned up" compilation of traits I like from various other mods, as well as a few original ones.)

Editable Backstories - 9/18/17 - Replaces the vanilla backstory database with a completely customizable database of backstories stored in XML files. Also allows you to add new names to the game's name database.

Editable Backstories Lite - 9/18/17 - Allows you to add backstories and names to the game's databases, but does *not* delete or allow editing of the default backstories.

Fertile Fields - 8/22/2017 - Fertilize and plow your farmland, and eventually reshape your landscape! (Has its own forum thread.)

Fishing - 9/24/2017 - An add-on for "Basic Bridges" which lets your pawns fish from bridges, catch shellfish in traps, and cook various seafood dishes.

More Trait Slots - 7/23/2017 - Lets your pawns start with more traits, and makes sure you can actually see them all on the character tab!

Pawns Are Capable! - (collaboration with RimRue) - Replaces pawn "incapabilities" with traits that provide mood debuffs and/or other penalties when pawns are required to do types of work they hate.

Pawns Are Capable! ("No Traits" Version) - 9/5/17 - An alternate version that provides mood debuffs when pawns are assigned to hated work types, but doesn't add new traits to the game.

Rainbeau Flambe - Storyteller - 7/30/2017 - Adds, obviously, a storyteller.

Rascally Rabbits - 8/5/17 - Adds rabbits, carrots, rabbit stew, and a few "rabbit themed" events. Will eventually also add a few other critters (coyotes, ducks, and perhaps even road runners).

Smooth Stone Walls - 7/30/17 - Allows you to smooth and even decorate natural stone walls.

We're All Mad, Here! - 7/22/17 - In time, most everyone on the Rim becomes a psychopath....

Wild Cultivation - 7/30/17 - Allows you to find wild versions of cultivated plants and to cultivate a few plants formerly found only in the wild.

If you're a modpack maker and want to include any of these mods in your pack, or if you're a modder and want to use them as the basis of derivative mods, please feel free to do so. I ask only that you let me know about it.

If you have any (helpful) suggestions for improvement, please let me know!

(For my b18 mods, check this thread. For my a16 mods, check this thread.)

[dburgdorf]

Last update: 9/23/2017

"Configurable Maps" provides you with a number of configuration options that you can use to tailor the way your maps generate. Simply visit "Mod Settings" from the game's "Options" menu. You'll find three different sets of options for the mod.

(1) "Things" Settings:

You can alter the number of ruins and "ancient shrines" that generate on new maps. You can set them low, so you'll no longer find yourself starting the game in an area that looks like it might once have been someone's town square. Or you can set them high, so it seems as if you've landed in what was once a bustling city.

(Regardless of the settings, the mod ensures that buildings will be significantly more common among ruins than unattached wall segments, and that those buildings will be shaped more like rooms than like hallways.)

You can decide whether you want ruins to be constructed solely or primarily from stone types actually available on the map, or if you want them to be constructed from random materials (as in vanilla).

You can adjust the "biodensity" on new maps, to determine how thickly populated with plant and animal life the maps should be. These settings are, of course, relative to the base values for a given biome. Even a "sparse" tropical rainforest will have a much higher biodensity than a "dense" extreme desert or ice sheet.

(2) Terrain Settings:

You can adjust the amount of ore which generates on new maps, to make the game more or less challenging. You can also adjust the number of geysers, so that sources of geothermal power are easier or harder to find. And you can adjust the quantity of stone chunks scattered on new maps.

You can adjust the maps' "mountain level," perhaps so that flat maps have almost no rock outcroppings, or perhaps so that mountain maps have little open space.

You can adjust the maps' "water level," which will make lakes, marshes, and the like either more or less common. Note that this will not change the essential nature of a biome. Lowering the water level will reduce the size of marsh areas on boreal forest or rainforest maps, for example, but it won't eliminate them completely, and neither will raising the water level allow marshes to suddenly begin appearing on temperate forest maps.

You can also adjust the "fertility" of soil on maps, to adjust the relative amount of rich soil as opposed to regular soil.

Finally, you can adjust the ocean level on coastal maps. This allows you to control the amount of water which will appear on maps with coasts. At the one extreme, you'll have vanilla-style maps with just a small strip of ocean and a fairly small sandy beach on one edge. At the other extreme, you can now create maps that are almost completely submerged.

An additional checkbox allows you the option to disallow rocky outcrop "islands" from appearing in lakes, marshes or oceans.

(3) World Map Settings:

You can adjust the minimum and maximum number of stone types which can appear in a tile on the world map. You can also adjust the relative commonality of various types of stone, so for example, you could set your worlds to generate with lots of granite but very little sandstone.

- Rainbeau Flambe (dburgdorf)


Steam Workshop Link

Dropbox Link

Compatibility:

Since "Configurable Maps" does nothing but alter initial map generation, adding it to or removing it from a game in progress will have no impact. It should be compatible with any other mods, except perhaps those that also modify terrain and map generation.

Credits:

The mod utilizes Pardeike's "Harmony Patch Library." (No additional download is required, as the library is included with the mod.)

The German language translation file was provided by Ludeon forums user Maculator.

[dburgdorf]

Last update: 9/24/2017

"Basic Bridges," as the name so subtly suggests, allows you to build bridges. (Well, technically, you could also create piers or even a boardwalk. It's really up to you.) No special research is required. All you need is wood or stone. And a bit of steel for reinforcement if you're building over deep water.

All bridges support light construction, so you can, for example, use a bridge to run a power conduit across a river. Additionally, stone bridges will support heavy construction, so you can actually place walls on them.

The fishing functionality which used to be part of this mod has been split off into its own "add-on" mod, so those who want bridges without fish can now have them.

- Rainbeau Flambe (dburgdorf)


Steam Workshop Link

Dropbox Link

Compatibility:

"Basic Bridges" can safely be added to a game in progress, but if you try to remove it from a game in which you've actually built any bridges, you will of course make the map unplayable.

This mod shouldn't conflict with any other mods.

Credits:

The code in "Basic Bridges" borrows a bit from Sulusdacor's "[sd] Bridges" mod. And obviously, the mods are very similar on a conceptual level. I just decided that I wanted a simpler bridges mod, that would be fully compatible with my "Fertile Fields" mod.

The traditional Chinese language files were provided by Steam user Alane.

[dburgdorf]

Quick update to "Basic Bridges." (Yeah, I know. It hasn't even been five hours.) I added boardwalks ("bridges" on land adjacent to water). This will allow you to have more aesthetically satisfying bridges that don't look like they stop before they actually get to shore.

[dburgdorf]

Last update: 7/30/2017

"Smooth Stone Walls" allows you to smooth natural stone walls, just as you can smooth natural stone floors, thanks to a new option in the "Structure" tab of the architect menu. This allows you to have real walls in the rooms in your mountain hideaway, without needing to mine out rock and then immediately replace it with a wall built from scratch. Smoothing a section of stone wall takes four times as long as smoothing a section of floor, as there's more work involved. (And because it seems about right for balance purposes.) Smoothed stone walls are slightly more durable than stone walls constructed of blocks. When deconstructed, smooth stone walls don't yield blocks, but instead have a chance to drop stone chunks, just as if you'd mined them.

Smoothed stone walls are, as you'd expect, smooth. They don't have the graphic patterning that constructed (block) walls have. The two wall types blend into each other quite nicely, but still, some players prefer to have all their walls look exactly the same. If you're one of them, you can have your pawns "etch" the smoothed stone walls, to give them a pattern that matches the brick pattern in constructed walls. Alternatively, you can have a pawn with artistic skill do decorative etching, in which case some of your wall tiles, in addition to a brick pattern, will end up randomly decorated with pictures.

- Rainbeau Flambe (dburgdorf)


Steam Workshop Link

Dropbox Link

Wall Graphics and Embrasures:

The mod makes minor alterations to the default wall graphics, in order to allow walls and rock of the same stone type to blend into each other seamlessly.

"Smooth Stone Walls" does not add embrasures, but it does include textures for embrasures that are designed to match the revised base wall textures. These textures will automatically replace the textures provided by most mods that add embrasures. If you prefer to use the default embrasure texture of the other mod, simply remove the "EmbrasurePatches.xml" file from this mod's "Patches" folder.

The embrasure texture patching has been confirmed to work with "Cocoa's Embrasures" by LazyCocoa, "ED-Embrasures" by Jaxxa, "Embrasures" by Brunayla, "Matching Embrasures" by Cucumpear and "Rimworld: Medieval Edition" by Bonehead14. It also works with "Medieval Times" by Vindar, though it should be noted that since the ice walls in that mod still utilize the vanilla wall texture, ice embrasures are not modified.

Compatibility:

"Smooth Stone Walls" adds a new capability, but doesn't change any existing things, so it should be compatible with pretty much any other mod. You should be able to add it to an existing saved game without trouble. Removing it from a game in progress, however, will make the game unplayable if you have any smoothed or etched walls on the map.

"Smooth Stone Walls" is fully compatible with stone types added by other mods, meaning that you'll be able to smooth walls of non-vanilla stone types as easily as you can those of vanilla stone types.

Credits:

Most of the images used for wall art came from the flaticon.com Web site.

The mod utilizes Pardeike's "Harmony Patch Library." (No additional download is required, as the library is included with the mod.)

[dburgdorf]

Changes in "Smooth Stone Walls" from the last a16 version:

- Added the ability to "undecorate" walls.

- Pawns now gain artistic skill when they complete decorative etchings.

- Removed the out of date and incomplete German translation file.

[SihvMan]

Great work man! All three of your mods are must haves as far as I'm concerned.

BTW, what's the difference between ruins and shrines?

[dburgdorf]

BTW, what's the difference between ruins and shrines?

Ruins are the empty buildings and isolated wall segments that are scattered randomly around the map. "Ancient shrines" are the sealed buildings that trigger "ancient danger" warnings when your pawns approach them.

[DariusWolfe]

With the smoothed walls, can you run conduit under them?

[dburgdorf]

With the smoothed walls, can you run conduit under them?

Yes, the smoothed walls are "real" walls in every respect. It's just easier to smooth rock that already exists where you want a wall than it is to mine the rock and then build a wall from scratch.

(But no, smoothed walls don't give you stone blocks when you deconstruct them. I stopped the "free blocks" exploit a while back. They have a 25% chance of dropping a stone chunk, just as if you'd mined the rock in the first place.)

[dburgdorf]

Last update: 7/30/2017

Blur the lines between wild and cultivated plants! "Wild Cultivation" allows you to cultivate a variety of plants formerly found only in the wild, and adds wild generation of most of the plants that previously could only be cultivated.

Plants which can now be found naturally include corn, haygrass and smokeleaf (most commonly, but not exclusively, found in arid shrubland biomes), daylilies, devilstrand and hops (most easily found in boreal forests), psychoid plants (least uncommon in deserts), cotton, potatoes and roses (most readily discovered in temperate forests), and rice (most easily obtained from tropical rainforests).

The ability to find these plants in the wild provides a few extra resource options in the early game, and also allows those using the "Seeds Please!" mod a chance to obtain seeds for plants they might otherwise not be able to grow.

"Wild Cultivation" also allows you to cultivate cacti (both pincushion and saguaro), agave, astragalus, ambrosia and grass, all of which could formerly only be found in the wild.

You can also now create growing zones on any terrain that's not completely infertile. This doesn't allow you to grow plants on ground that's not fertile enough to support them, of course. The change is primarily intended to allow you to create growing zones on sand for cacti.

Finally, "Wild Cultivation" adds one new type of flower, the geranium. Geraniums are functionally identical to daylilies, and in fact the geranium graphic is simply a recolored version of the daylily graphic. I just wanted a purple flower in the game, to add a bit more variety to garden colors.

- Rainbeau Flambe (dburgdorf)


Steam Workshop Link

Dropbox Link

Cultivated Plant Notes:

Agave grows more slowly and has a lower yield than in vanilla, to prevent it becoming a "superplant" when cultivated. It also takes a bit more work to sow and to harvest than most other plants, though it doesn't take as much work to harvest as it does in vanilla.

Cultivated saguaro cacti grow more slowly and yield less wood than wild cacti, in order to put their wood production capability on a par with that of other trees.

Ambrosia, in keeping with its rarity as a wild plant, is extremely finicky and difficult to cultivate. It can only be grown on rich soil, and requires the care of an expert gardener. It also grows a bit more slowly and yields a bit less fruit when cultivated than when found in the wild.

Compatibility:

You should be able to add "Wild Cultivation" to an existing saved game without trouble, but removing it from a game in progress might cause problems, at least if there are any geraniums on your map.

"Wild Cultivation" changes a few vanilla plant definitions, but mostly just adds new definitions. So while it might conflict with other mods that alter vanilla plants, it also might not. And generally speaking, any such conflicts which do arise probably won't even be noticeable. For the record, it should be fully compatible with "Vegetable Garden."

If you're using "Vegetable Garden," "[T] Expanded Cloth," or another mod that alters the harvest of cotton, "Wild Cultivation" will automatically adjust the harvest of wild cotton to match it.

"Wild Cultivation" is fully compatible with "Seeds Please!" If you have that mod installed, the wild versions of various plants will drop seeds which can be used to grow their cultivated counterparts.

Credits:

The mod utilizes Pardeike's "Harmony Patch Library." (No additional download is required, as the library is included with the mod.)

[dburgdorf]

Changes in "Wild Cultivation" since the last a16 version:

- The mod no longer adds wild healroot, since it's now in the vanilla game.

- The mod will automatically adjust what's harvested from wild cotton to match what's harvested from cultivated cotton, to allow compatibility with any of the various mods that alter cotton's harvest.

[dburgdorf]

Last update: 9/18/2017

Are you tired of running into characters in your game with horribly overpowered or just plain silly backstories? Are you frustrated by the number of colonists you have to feed who aren't willing to work to earn their keep because their backgrounds prevent them from doing manual labor? Does it annoy you when you find a backstory you like with the "Prepare Carefully" mod, only to notice that the gender pronouns or even the pawn's name don't change to fit your character? Do you just hate not being able to do anything about typos that you spot in backstories?

Well, fret no more! Your worries are over!

"Editable Backstories" replaces RimWorld's default backstories with a completely editable set of backstories contained in convenient XML files. Yes, that's right. It doesn't just add editable backstories to the vanilla database. It completely replaces that database.

You can use the mod "straight out of the box," so to speak, as I've included a set of "cleaned up" basic backstories which will be used if all you do is just install and run the mod. None of them are unreasonably powerful or, in my opinion, lore-breaking, none have hard-coded pronouns or names, and only a handful disable manual labor, though some include forced "lazy" or "slow" traits.

But the real point of "Editable Backstories," of course, is that it allows you to edit and add stories yourself. In the "XML Raw Data" folder within the mod's directory, you'll find files containing the full collection of backstories from the vanilla game. In the "Documentation" folder, you'll find detailed instructions to help you put together your own "perfect" backstory collection.

As I already noted, the mod removes all vanilla backstories from the game, so no pawn bios will ever again include material that you don't have the option to edit. This means that you won't meet any of the "pirate king" characters, those characters created by RimWorld Kickstarter backers, whose childhood and adulthood stories are linked. However, "Editable Backstories" allows you to create your own linked stories, so if you happen to like a particular "pirate king" pawn, you can easily add him or her back into your world, complete with any edits or fixes you deem appropriate.

Additionally, while it doesn't remove any potential pawn names from the game, "Editable Backstories" does let you to add as many new names (first names, surnames, nicknames, and/or full names) to your game as you desire.

- Rainbeau Flambe (dburgdorf)


Steam Workshop Link

Dropbox Link

Compatibility:

"Editable Backstories" requires a new game. If you try to add it to (or remove it from) a game in progress, every pawn in the world will end up with new randomly-assigned backstories.

The mod is compatible with both "EdB Prepare Carefully" and "Verify Start."

It should also be fully compatible with any mods that utilize Erdelf's "Humanoid Alien Races."

I strongly encourage anyone using "Editable Backstories" to also use one version or the other of RimRue's and my own "Pawns Are Capable!" Those mods change the way pawn "incapabilities" are handled, so that instead of simply refusing to do certain types of work, pawns suffer mood and/or speed penalties when doing work they don't like. This allows you to have any pawn do any type of work when it's necessary, without completely eliminating the problems that arise when some pawns are lazy or simply hate certain activities.

Special Note:

I completely understand why backstories aren't editable by default. And I mean absolutely no disrespect to those who backed RimWorld on Kickstarter back in 2013 and got their stories written into the game as a result. But at the same time, I'm a modder. Changing things I don't like about the game is what I do. And the fact that backstories can't be edited, even though I understand it, is something that I don't like.

Credits:

Some of the C# code in "Editable Backstories" derives from code in Erdelf's "Humanoid Alien Races."

The mod utilizes Pardeike's "Harmony Patch Library." (No additional download is required, as the library is included with the mod.)

[dburgdorf]

Last update: 9/18/2017

"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 vanilla backstory to replace it.

So far as I know, it should be compatible with any other mod out there, including mods that utilize Erdelf's "Humanoid Alien Races."

I strongly encourage anyone using "Editable Backstories" to also use one version or the other of RimRue's and my own "Pawns Are Capable!" Those mods change the way pawn "incapabilities" are handled, so that instead of simply refusing to do certain types of work, pawns suffer mood and/or speed penalties when doing work they don't like. This allows you to have any pawn do any type of work when it's necessary, without completely eliminating the problems that arise when some pawns are lazy or simply hate certain activities.

[dburgdorf]

Important note regarding "Editable Backstories":

If you're updating from an a16 version of "Editable Backstories," you'll need to make a couple of minor edits to any custom backstories you've created.

First, the WorkTag "Scary" no longer exists, which makes sense, as it merely duplicated the "Firefighting" WorkTag, anyway. So you'll need to change any references to "Scary" to reference "Firefighting" instead.

Second, the skill "Research" has been renamed, so you'll need to change any references to "Research" to reference "Intellectual" instead.