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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. For older changelog entries, check the changelog on the home website.

8.17
-Monks will now be eliminated during worldgen, not after it. This will hopefully fix a lot of backend world sim logic.
-To avoid biological citizens stalling when edible packets are available, -morph life will just straight up eat metal bars now in fortress mode (of the appropriate type). Simpler.
-Civilizations will now spawn with a set amount of population unrelated to their original race. What this means is all those races that get made all get tied to civs now, ie they will be histfigs, show up in gameplay and worldgen, invade you, etc, all while allowing for a smaller total amount of civs containing proportionally higher diversity of content.
-Worldgen files adjusted. The default Large world had way too many sites. You should find it much more bearable now.

8.16
-All those annoying monks that do nothing but wander around adv mode sites will be removed when you start a game. It turns out they will take up 20-50% of the total population and this vastly improves performance. This may change if the vanilla game fixes this issue.
-Historical figure families will now have consistent last names, carried matrilineally. Experiments will have their last names changed to that of their creator, however, reflecting the creator's control over them.
-Nucaste humans will have random combinations of cybernetic limbs in addition to their species-wide augmentations. Nucaste are intended to be low-tier cyborgs across the board, so this fits their aesthetic better and differentiates them further from the other caste types.
-Intelligent biomachines will produce additional castes that have additional heads and limbs, and wild variants have a chance to have a certain amount of additional limbs.
-Hardened the script against a certain kind of crash involving pointers, hopefully.
-More optimizations for the light logic. Minor but should be felt in more complex areas.

8.15
-Fixed a bug where NPCs holding a flashlight would be compelled to investigate their own flashlight, causing them to endlessly wander the map
-NPCs will turn off flashlights in friendly, civilized sites so as to avoid confusing and flashbanging their fellow citizens
-Made underguards make you go way faster, you should be zipping around the map with these things.
-Monstrous entities with built-in guns will be more accurate. There's a reason you want underguards.
-Headguards (helmets) come with sensory systems that will illuminate your surroundings as a lantern, but without alerting enemies. less range, but better for stealth. In an ideal world armor would be gatekept more but for now its just expensive.
-The new scripts for predators noticing your light sources overrode their stalking, pack hunting, and threat assessment logic. This should stop. They'll still notice your flashlight, but they will go back to being spooky about it.
-Fix to prey animals getting caught in a "check out the light, run away a bit, check out the light" loop. Startling a critter with your flashlight will make it scamper properly.
-Should be less pathfinding errors in the errorlog

8.14
-Flashlights and lanterns added to adventure mode. In a world overshadowed by abandoned superstructures, light is key for those unblessed by night vision. While navigation in the dark is trivial for posthuman life, normal humans benefit considerably from these tools. I hope they provide a fun addition to early-game adventure mode. Campfires will also emit light as a large lantern.
-In addition, all light has been overhauled for adventure mode. If you are in a dark area, you can see lit areas independently of your default vision radius. If you are in a light area, you cannot see into a dark area with a flashlight. In light you are exposed, in darkness you are blind but hidden, unless you have a light source or are some kind of inhuman nightvision-having creature. This applies to monsters as well. If you are playing a relatively normal human, a flashlight or lantern is a must.
-Underguards now possess considerable advantages! They will increase speed, endurance, and strength. The biggest are the strongest, the lightest are the fastest, and the ones with the best endurance are right at the middle. But even the slowest will make it as if you are wholly unencumbered, even as you use cannons and greatweapons.
-Significant speedup to worldgen
-Glowtiles added to all creatures. Some will be murky shadows, others will properly glow. I think you ought to be able to see something if it isn't stealthed or otherwise hiding, even if it is outside the vision area proper. Especially if there are so many places hide now. Getting a glimpse of something scampering across a gap in the wall feels fun to me.
-Ammo types are now visually distinct. Bullets are small dots while missiles are larger triangles, for example.
-Flamethrowers added. These are very lethal, but nerfed compared to vanilla flame damage. Humans are not bundles of straw, they can burn but won't go up instantly, especially with armor on. Even so, they are good for controlling swarms. They also have very robust anti-friendly-fire AI, so let me know if they keep torching your own troops. Tactical positioning is key for using these weapons. All civs have a small chance to spawn with them.
-Beam weapon family added. While plasma guns deal heat+concussive, beam weapons deal heat+piercing, favoring accuracy over hosing targets down. However, they require a relatively long time to charge up, creating openings. Also, stronger beams like those from sniper or cannon weapons can penetrate multiple targets, though bigger ones may not be penetrable.
-Ruins will be made of boulders (chunks) rather than blocks. Keeps things simpler.
-In fortress mode, ruins should not regenerate after saving and loading.

NOTE: all armor in a civ is now procedurally generated. However, due to the need to fix a reported bug, I had to ship this before the descriptions could be finalized. As a result, the descriptors are not visible. This will be the next big update. However, you should be fine as the weight class is what matters mechanically, which is sill visible in the item's name.