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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:

8.0
-Bug fixes to some generation tables and experiments
-New color set. I have struggled a lot between mood and readability but this might be The One. Feedback is appreciated and remember, the old versions exist as legacy options if you prefer bright colors, earthy colors, or something else.
-New worldgen files. Due to some things outlined below, changes made this new configuration optimal. Nothing has been lost, but I have shifted stuff around to take advantage of cool new features. The main thing was that I needed grass and trees to make pretend buildings, but now I don't. This opens up new opportunities for aesthetic cohesion.
-Change to civ spawning. They will now more commonly be of caste species. The reason is because I have devised a mix of animal person equivalents, transformations, experiments, and other tricks to turn every civ into a diverse assortment of posthumans, mutants, and various other sophonts, and thus I need less individual civs overall to have the same amount of playable races available. If you want to play a fort of a specific posthuman species, turn your citizens into that species.
-Intelligent species will now spawn in the wilderness as well as civs. However, unlike vanilla animal people, they will be fully equipped with weapons and armor. They can also be recruited as adventuring companions, giving you a way to replace fallen allies even in the depths of the wilderness.
-New tools can be crafted that allow you to scavenge resources from the wilderness in adventure mode. By handing them to an adventure mode companion, they will produce specific resources for you periodically, incentivizing accumulating noncombat followers and keeping them alive. The longer you travel or wait while a follower holds one of these items and has a backpack, the greater the odds of getting something. This is also impacted by the Forager skill.
-Guns now have magazines, explosives, and so on. Cover and maneuver mechanics have also been implemented. NPCs will use cover and try to flank you if possible, and overall guns should be way more fun to use and play with.
-Terrain vastly altered, much of the map now consists of a sprawling labyrinth of plastcrete or superstructure. No more renamed grass tiles and tree towers. The world is now a multilayered quasi-architectural landscape which incentivizes melee fights, sneaking and flanking, and vertical maneuvering.
-Predator behavior altered. DNGR-class organisms will not mindlessly kill, they will try to pull away individuals or run off with their corpses.
-Predators and other monsters will hunt your adventurer by sound. Go into stealth mode to sneak away.
-Posthumans will need to consume three specified materials or they will die. N-matter can function as a substitute for any and fulfill all needs simultaneously. The frequency of needing to eat corresponds with affinity levels and size class. Bigger size+more affinity= more frequent consumption of the relevant material. In adventure mode, posthuman party members will also need to eat, so don't forget them!
-Metals changed. There are now seven core "metals"= N-matter, meta-alloy, computing substrate, energetic compound, hyperbiology, nanite condensate, and hardlight. These can be combined into six technological paradigms: heavy and defensive onco-tech, lightweight acro-tech, brittle but strong dura-tech, aggressive and powerful nano-tech, keen-edged and ultra-light holo-tech, and generalist, adaptable biotech. Each civilization will have access to one type, which will determine your default strengths and weaknesses. If you want a different one, you need to trade or raid to get it. This information is available in more detail on the website.
-Armor will self-repair over time
-Adventurers can dismantle most items for their base components in the crafting menu.


7.13
-fix to tissues

7.12
-Final(?!) fix to plasma life melting under particular circumstances
-Ghosts will no longer appear
-Generic rock blocks will be replaced with a plastcrete material

7.11
-Fix to caste lifespan discrepancies

7.10
-Fix to hardlight organisms being too strong when big.

7.09
-Plasma-based life will no longer be unhittable

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