Editing 40d Talk:Armor token

i think the SOFT and HARD tokkens are if the item can be worn out with the x-X-XX tags, i often saw this on clothes with the soft tokken, but never on one with the hard ones.
--[[User:Rhenaya|Rhenaya]] 09:48, 4 October 2008 (EDT)
:I'm pretty sure HARD means elves can make it from wood, while SOFT means it can be made from "soft" materials (read:  cloth).  All clothing level items will decay when worn, regardless of the material.  I say this because I remember giving dwarves "hard hats" once upon a time (basically just a renamed copy of ordinary helmets, made only from metal, but with no ARMORLEVEL tag.  Their iron hard hats decayed just like pig tail caps do.  --[[User:EarthquakeDamage|EarthquakeDamage]] 00:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

My guts are telling me, that SHAPED tag affects if the item produced by narrow or large race will be narrow or large. --[[User:Dorten|Dorten]] 02:38, 24 November 2008 (EST)

This is what I've inferred from the default raw files in DF:
Some things are clearly clothing, whether they be made of cloth or leather. They always rot, and are worn by people who aren't in the military. Examples:
* Armor: platemail, chainmail, leather
* Pants: greaves, leggings
* Helm: helm
* Gloves: gauntlet
* Shoes: high boot, low boot.

Some things are clearly armor, also whether they be made of leather or metal. They never rot. They are worn only by drafted people. Examples:
* Armor: shirt
* Pants: pants
* Helm: hood
* Gloves: gloves, mittens
* Shoes: shoes

Other things are either clothing, when made of cloth or leather, or armor when made of metal. These IMO show us which tags are important for armor and/or wear & tear. Only the cap appears to do this, so I think this is important... these are the tags for the "cap", and what I think each does (which sometimes differs from this wiki page):

(I've removed tags that are mostly text or a number, such as material use and weight)
* [METAL_ARMOR_LEVELS]
* [LAYER:OVER]
* [SOFT]
* [LEATHER]
* [HARD]
* [METAL]
What determines if this is armor or not? I don't think it's the SOFT or HARD tags. SOFT apparently only means this can be crafted from cloth. HARD is maybe used for some formula but it's probably not very important, and it can coexist with SOFT. Note the lack of an ARMORLEVEL tag, that means this is normally civilian clothing. The METAL_ARMOR_LEVELS raises the effective ARMORLEVEL to 1, so this becomes part of a leather "set" (so a metal cap is "leather" for equipping purposes). The LAYER tag is used to mix and match many clothes, I think, so you can wear UNDER, with OVER and then COVER on top: I also think that once this becomes ARMOR, the layer stops mattering - unless dwarves use multiple layers of armor which I believe they don't? They however will take civilian clothes off if they're using up valuable armor layers when drafted.

So in conclusion, only the ARMORLEVEL determines who will wear it (soldiers vs civilians), and if it will rot. METAL_ARMOR_LEVELS generally is used to separate one armor type from another: for instance, high boots are always armor, but if made of leather, they're leather armor, and if made of metal, they're chain armor. However, in this rare case, it changes the ARMORLEVEL from nil to 1, making metal Caps unwearable by civilians plus not rotting. SOFT, HARD have nothing to do with this.
[[User:Sergius|Sergius]] 13:56, 3 December 2008 (EST)

== PREPLURAL ==

Apparently, the PREPLURAL token only works with item_armor and item_pants entries, which are also the only unmodded entries that use it. Attempting to use it in an item_helm entry returned the error message, ''Unrecognized Item Definition (Helm) Token: ITEM_HELM_HEADGEAR - PREPLURAL''. The item worked fine after the PREPLURAL tag was removed. Since neither gloves nor boots come in pairs in this game, I feel that it is safe to assume that this token would not work with them either, though I may test this at a later point to be certain. (0.28.181.40d) --[[User:BunnyMind|BunnyMind]] 08:31, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

== Armor materials ==

Here's a summary of my material test results, for how to get races to wear items made from different materials (i.e., randomly generated equipped items, ''not'' caravan contents).

[[Bone]] and [[shell]] are ''never'' used, no matter what.  Even if the race is incapable of either type of farming (and thus have no cloth) and have [USE_ANIMAL_PRODUCTS], an item with only [BARRED] and [SCALED], no [METAL] or [LEATHER], will be made out of plant cloth, and it will randomly pick rope reed or pig tail.

[METAL] overrides [LEATHER] and cloth.  Any item, [HARD] or [SOFT], which can be made of metal, ''will'' be made of metal.  For the Elves, it's the [METAL] tag which determines what can and can't be made of wood; they consider wood to be a "metal" apparently.  I don't know which entity token is responsible for that behavior, but I successfully got them to wear "rope reed wicker armor" which was [HARD] and had no material tokens at all, as well as "birch slatted armor" which had [HARD][METAL].

Note that [METAL_ARMOR_LEVELS] influences whether an item '''can''' be made of metal or not.  If an NPC is not a military profession, they will not wear armor, and thus they '''cannot''' wear metal, and the item will be generated as a lesser material for them (mainly caps).

In the absence of [SOFT], [LEATHER] overrides cloth.  A [HARD] item, or one with neither [SOFT] nor [HARD], which has the [LEATHER] token but lacks [METAL], will ''always'' be made of leather, as long as the equipping race has leather available (i.e., as long as they have [USE_ANIMAL_PRODUCTS]).  If they cannot use leather, they'll use cloth.

With [SOFT], leather and whatever fabric they have available will be used with equal probability.  If they cannot farm, [SOFT] equipment will always be leather, unless they cannot use leather for it at all (due to the absence of either [LEATHER] or [USE_ANIMAL_PRODUCTS]), in which case it will be a random plant fabric.

If neither [METAL] nor [LEATHER] is present, the item will be made out of a random fabric; if no fabric is available, the game will randomly choose a plant fiber cloth.

So, to sum up how to have items of a desired material generated in NPCs' inventories:

*Bone or shell - You can't.
*Metal only - Just use [METAL]. For elves, it will be wood instead (specific tokens for that unknown). [SOFT][METAL] items will ''always'' be metal/wood if they can use metal/wood, and will wear with use. You can use any other material tokens you want, and random equipment will still be metal.
*Leather only - Use [LEATHER], and ''do not'' have [SOFT] or [METAL]. In the entity file, [USE_ANIMAL_PRODUCTS] must be present.
*Cloth only - No material tokens other than [BARRED] and/or [SCALED] if desired. [HARD] cloth products are quite possible. [HARD][BARRED][SCALED] equipment will be generated as cloth.
*Either leather or cloth - Use both [LEATHER] and [SOFT], without [METAL].  For a [HARD] item that can be leather or cloth, you will need two seperate items.

Note that this guide only covers generation of equipment on NPCs (guys in towns, caravan guys, diplomats, ambush parties, siegers, thieves, immigrants, etc.).  I suspect that [HARD] affects whether you can make something out of cloth at the clothier's shop, but I need to test that.

--[[User:Arrkhal|Arrkhal]] 00:19, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
:Caps can be made of both leather and cloth, and I'm fairly certain that cloth caps (and maybe leather ones as well) will wear out while metal ones last forever. --[[User:Quietust|Quietust]] 19:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)