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What is The Long Night?

The Long Night is a total overhaul mod which takes the game Dwarf Fortress and transplants it into a post-apocalyptic scifi future where the fragmented descendants of humanity struggle to survive in the broken remains of an unrecognizable earth, filled to the brim with genetically-altered monsters, rogue machines, warring states, and countless other threats. Central to the game experience is the use of N-matter; a programmable, infinitely mutable form of matter which forms the foundation of every civilization, and the process of transcendence, through which individuals can cultivate internal N-matter to develop new cybernetic augmentations, and slowly obtain an immortal posthuman body which can survive the chaos to come. Of course, for every such madman who would seek such a thing, a thousand more live as mortal humans and struggle every day to make ends meet. Play a mercenary scoundrel, a village of hydroponic farmers, a biomechanical mech pilot, a posthuman barbarian, and much more. Countless stories wait for you in the far future of pan-humanity.

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If you like what you see, please consider donating to my Patreon so I can continue to work on it: https://www.patreon.com/themodsmith

INSTALLATION:


To install it, drag and drop it into the 'mods' folder in the dwarf fortress main folder. If there is not one, make one. DO NOT PUT IT IN THE installed_mods FOLDER, THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT FOLDER.

This mod is an entirely self-contained experience. When selecting it for world generation, DEACTIVATE all other raw files, including the vanilla ones, from the selection. The Long Night comes with copies of those raws within it, meaning it needs nothing else from any other folder to function. All you need is the mod to be active. Feel free to experiment if you really want, but if it causes problems I can't help.

Also, it comes bundled with custom worldgen and colors data. Copy the worldgen data into the worldgen file in Dwarf Fortress\prefs (if you do not have a prefs folder go to advanced world generation and hit save, this will generate one). You do NOT need to override any pre-existing worldgen templates. When you load the Long Night mod, only choose from these world presets in Advanced World Generation unless you really know what you are doing. If something goes wrong and you haven't used these to gen your world, I won't be able to help you, because that can cause a lot of problems I can't fix. You don't need to delete these if you want to generate a vanilla world, just don't choose them when generating a non-Long Night world. These parameters may change, requiring an update, but I will announce in the changelog if that is done. If you do not have a prefs folder, got to advanced world gen and SAVE the parameters. That should generate one.

The colors are not as necessary, just choose them if you prefer that palette.

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Changelog:



Changelog has been moved to the website.

But is currently here until this is moved to the main branch on steam

8.12
-New ranged weapon branch, plasma weapons. These will throw a gout of molten plasma at foes, inflicting scorching damage over time but not completely immolating targets. Plasma weapons are built around inflicting pain and slowly heating up a target until they expire, with a bit of kinetic punch thrown in as well. This is a rare weapon family so enjoy it if you can find it. However, plasmech civs will always have them if you want to test them out
-Wilderness locations (non-site maps) will not despawn ruins or change appearance when you return to them in adventue mode, they should be wholly deterministic now
-Deviant Cycaste will no longer be overly represented in animal populations
-Additional optimizations in fort and adventure mode

8.11
-fix to floors and walls not being autosmoothed when they should
-fix to the new gigantic tunnels that burrow into the earth not ending in visible floors

8.1
-Avatar class entities should PROBABLY stop showing up for good now
-Super important fix: your posthumans will actually eat packet-ified meals in fortress mode. Remember, they no longer consume normal food and drink. The same resources you use to craft weapons and armor, and sustain N-matter, fuel your most powerful citizens.
-terrain generation vastly improved. Ruin density will vary across biomes, immense towers will dominate the skyline, and rivers will be encased in giant metal pipes. In addition, everything underneath said structures counts as underground, making light harder to come by.
-As a tie-in to the above, all -caste types except cycaste can cave-adapt. In dense biomes, carve out little nooks to remind them of the sun to avoid this, or turn them into posthumans that no longer care.
-Snow will now pile on top of structures, not below them, when wandering around in adventure mode.
-Vast improvement to all the terrain generation. While loading between chunks may lag, moving around once everything is done loading in should work perfectly. Major lag is now confined to starting a fort, starting an adventurer, and exiting fast travel as an adventurer, along with a minor hiccup when traveling to a new chunk as an adventurer. Everything else should be bearable if not completely fine.
-Some fixes to adventure mode predator hunting and corpse retrieval logic, and for prey movement logic. it should be much more consistent now.

NOTE: this update came out a little early due to my discovering the food issue, but I think a lot of this stuff is pretty neat so tell me how it feels to play in. I'm especially interested in how bearable the lag is outside of the aforementioned scenarios, which cannot be helped for now. Also, bear in mind the flora situation is in-development thanks to the new tech I'm unlocking, so it will probably change.


8.05
-weapon-bearing creatures are back, and _considerably_ more efficient to create in worldgen. In addition, they will fire actual projectiles, bullets and such, rather than materials named to be similar. This should make them much more dangerous, and make purchasing WEAPON or MILITARY class organisms more desirable.
-some other fixes to generators, they're at least 30% more efficient as a baseline, so everything should be way smoother overall when genning a world
-plastcrete blocks can also be made into plastic
-tweaks to ore materials, should be a bit easier to get their associated minerals