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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:


7.08
-Plasma-based life will no longer boil or melt arbitrarily

7.07
-Final(?!?) fix to homogenization of tissues
-Fix to being unable to start as an adventurer with metal weapons

7.06
-Fix to remaining errors with domestic animal gen

7.05
-fix to the fix to homogenization

7.04
-Fix to crafting hardlight/hyperbiology
-Another fix to domestics in civs
-Fix to tissues not being properly homogenized

7.03
-Released on steam
-DFhack features should now be functional if they weren't before (at the very least it should be more efficient)
-Fix to anarchs remaining on the screen when a higher ranking archon is selected
-Fix to some civs not having domestic animals
-Fix to not being able to start with hyper-tech
-Fix to werebeasts spamming transform ability

7.02
-Fix to some description errors
-Fix to locaste descriptions
-Fix to anvils

7.01
-Fix to hyperalloy crafting
-Fix to some typos and other issues.

7.0
MAJOR!!! DFHACK INTEGRATION! You will now need DFhack to access three important features. Also if something with these is wrong tell me ASAP.
-Megabeasts will eventually leave after a few weeks or months have passed. Gigantic horror stalking the land? Wait it out in your bunker. This applies to both forgotten beast and megabeast variants.
-Stored food decays over the course of a few months to about a year. Prepared food lasts longest. The less ingredients in the prepared food, the longer it lasts. Choose between luxury vs food security.
-If you turn your citizens into posthumans, they do not have a noble position, and their mood gets low enough, there is a chance they will straight up abandon your fortress. You turned them into hyper-evolved supersoldiers, they no longer need to hang out with you to survive and only their personal inclinations and connections motivate them to stay. Turn your whole fort into posthumans and you might collapse arbitrarily if you have a bad few months. However, anything with -caste in the name (except cycaste) can be considered a captive populace, so there are less consequences for mistreatment.

The rest:
-Updated advanced worldgen params, built around the new features
-Many under-the-hood fixes to smooth things over and make life easier.
-Domestic animals are now procedurally generated and assigned to every civilization. Different civilizations will have different strengths and weaknesses. One might have big mounts while another might have a swarm of small war animals, for example. Want more variety? Take animals from other civs.
-Megabeasts are now greatly diversified, divided into various forms and with unique loadouts and abilities.
-A new class, the Avatar rating, will take over civs and act as a living deity and force multiplier in the lands they rule.
-Experiment night creatures added. Militaries will turn subjugated populations into posthuman monsters to fight for their civ. They can also join your fort.
-Werebeasts added. Some entities will wear the skins of humans to infiltrate their societies.
-Magic system radically overhauled and expanded. Divided into Nanomachine, Energy, and Digital techniques, and paired with the "Affinity" system. The higher a creature's affinity, the better it resists undodgeable attacks from that technique class and the easier it is to learn more powerful techniques of that class. Anyone can learn the best stuff, but high affinity means it is cheap to do so.
-Invader civs added. "Demons" and their "goblin" hordes will be procedurally generated, erupting from the ground and doing what these kinds of civs do best, providing an existential foe for the player to contest with.
-Necromancers overhauled, they are worse now.
-Tombs will now spawn their own techno-zombie hordes. They are even worse-er.
-Civilizations vastly expanded and streamlined. There is now a consistent set of rules divided (loosely) between hereditary, appointed, and elected officials, and further split into more niche political groups and survival strategies. Each civilization's name reflects these traits so it should be easy to see where a given one stands.
-Vastly improved creature generation system allowing for randomized, dynamic stats, speeds, weapon configurations, and other traits.
-Descriptions overhauled to maximally convey information as effectively as possible
-The ground is now procedurally generated. All "stones" and "minerals" have in their name a percentage chance of yielding "metals" when smelted. Juggling between using these materials for building and processing them for resources is key. It should also be much easier to construct things. NOTE: Due to a DF bug, this doesn't work. It will be fixed very soon, but for now the minerals don't get added. So I manually genned them and put them in the objects folder. That means the values won't ever change until this is fixed so consider this a placeholder.
-Transformation into a higher being has been made much less rigid. With the affinity system, transformations now have a much greater gameplay importance. If your enemies have a low Digital affinity, for example, then you should turn your citizens into high digital affinity posthumans, cheaply teach them digital techniques, and use them to gain a major advantage. But then, there's a risk of encountering a natural enemy to your own build, so make sure to not put all your eggs in one basket.
-Nomenclature updated. The goal of this pass was to further refine the naming scheme so that it provides maximal information in a clinical and efficient way. However, no particular type of creature was lost, just shuffled around. Deviants, Transhumans, and Replicas can now be found in the biomech category. Biomachines are now demimechs. All robots are cybermechs. Impurities are nanomechs, Engrams are holomechs, ghosts are plasmechs. Sapient specimens get the -morph suffix, domestic ones get the -drone suffix, megabeasts get -calamity, gods and demons get -deity. The rest use the -mech suffix. Shells are now cycaste, degens and neotenates are now excaste, cyborgs are now nucaste. All the -mech archetypes will have 2 to 4 subvariants with different aesthetic and statistical differences. For example, the old deviants are now the "Solar Imperial Era Biomechs with an interaction classification of Deviant (DVNT)". Replicas are "Transitional Era Biomechs with an interaction classification rating of Sophont". Transhumans are "Modern Biomechs with an interaction classification of Sophont." This allows for far more diversity both narratively and mechanically, with the broader archetype classification determining things like tissue layers, affinity ratings, and other special traits.
-We're back to normal parchment books. I really, really tried to make datachips work but they don't. I suppose in a digital world suffused with evil viruses physical mediums are once again pretty tempting.
-tissues are now homogenized. No more 1 million slightly different kinds of kidney.
-No more specific tech. Meta-Alloy or Meta-Technology is now combined with N-matter to make Hyper-Technology, which is used for armor and weapons. Everything else is meta-technology, which should streamline things. Also, ammo is now just energetic compound. "wood" is now Paleo-Technology, so plain mechanical stuff, cogs and hinges.



6.1
-Fix to autogun tablets being named cannons
-fix to missions not being possible
-fix to core programs not being craftable
-a bunch of under the hood code tweaks to make future stuff easier.

6.09
-Fix to N-cores being too costly
-Also you can scrap other forms of tech for N-matter now

6.08
-fix to world generation


6.07
-fix to biomass thread creation

6.06
-fix to meta-alloy not being usable for chains/furniture. May not need to start a new save for this but not sure.

6.05
-fix to some positions not appearing where they should.
-fix to error with civilization generator code.
-fix to NPCs not using the special attacks of their weapons appropriately.
-change to N-core possession frequency in a civ, it should now still be rare, but no longer vanishingly so.

6.04
-N-core crafting now works again, creating a given N-core does what it should, transforming your creature into an enhanced version or doing something else entirely.
-Some other small fixes

6.03
-hardlight creatures and sciclade get strange moods
-standard, fortified, and advanced architecture can be used for building again. They're also much cheaper to make.
-legacy colors will be available in the mod from now on
-The manufacturing block now costs 1 wood to make, allowing you to get right at domesticating architecture.
-All custom profession names are matched to their vanilla equivalents in Website>Gameplay>Labor
-some other fixes

NOTE: there is an issue with edible N-cores not working anymore. I am in the middle of fixing that but the architecture situation was enough that I wanted to correct it first so the rest of the mod can be enjoyed in the meantime. I have also enabled slabs to be produced which will transform you, so you can find those out in the world as an adventurer and read them to be transformed. There's probably some other stuff I missed as well and I'll be fixing that too. I'm very locked in on the N-core thing so if there's something else that's pressing do remind me.

6.02
-Names shortened to be cut off less
-All languages are now procedurally generated per world, respecting particular sets of aesthetic principles. This may also fix a rare crashing bug. Let me know how they feel!
-In addition, drone archetypes are added to the wild, serving as rare, tough encounters and powerful megabeasts.
-Creatures of the impurity archetype (besides intelligent variants) will leak corrosive fluid that will melt/devour most organic life. Feedback on this appreciated.
-I have TENTATIVELY introduced TTN (Titanic) scale organisms as true megabeasts. These are the size of giant sperm whales and adult dragons. Real crazy stu