Lua scripting

Research Pending! This article or section is incomplete/under construction (likely due to recent changes) and may still be outdated or missing details. Feel free to do some testing and expand it.

This article is about procedural raw generation. Information on Utility:DFHack scripting can be found at https://docs.dfhack.org/en/stable/.

Lua scripting is an upcoming feature. It is used to create custom procedurally-generated objects that were previously created by hardcoded methods. It was announced in a video, with the stated goal of "supporting future magical endeavors."

Inorganic materials, languages, creatures, interactions, items (currently excluding instruments), reactions, entities, and plants are open to this system.

Code Samples

Divine language

This is the divine language, which generates a bunch of random-sounding words from a set of syllables.

 1languages.GEN_DIVINE=function()
 2
 3    local letters={}
 4    letters.vowel={}
 5    letters.cons={}
 6    letters.vowel.COMMON_NUM=5
 7    letters.vowel.NUM=35
 8    letters.cons.COMMON_NUM=12
 9    letters.cons.NUM=22
10    letters.vowel.lookup={
11        "a","e","i","o","u",
12        "ae","ai","ao","au","ea","ei","eo","eu","ia","ie","io","iu","oa","oe","oi","ou","ua","ue","ui","uo","ah","eh","ih","oh","uh","ay","ey","iy","oy","uy"
13    }
14    letters.cons.lookup={
15        "b","p","g","k","c","z","s","d","t","m","n","ng",
16        "v","f","w","h","j","l","r","q","x","y"
17    }
18
19    for k,v in pairs(letters) do
20        v.common={}
21        v.rare={}
22        for i=1,5 do
23            if trandom(5)~=0 then v.common[i]=v.lookup[trandom(v.COMMON_NUM)+1] else v.common[i]=v.lookup[trandom(v.NUM)+1] end
24        end
25        for i=1,15 do 
26            v.rare[i]=v.lookup[trandom(v.NUM)+1]
27        end
28    end
29
30    local function letter(t)
31        if trandom(5)~=0 then
32            return pick_random(t.common)
33        else
34            return pick_random(t.rare)
35        end
36    end
37    local gen_divine={}
38    for k,v in ipairs(world.language.word) do
39        local str=""
40        if trandom(2)~=0 then
41            str=str..letter(letters.cons)
42            str=str..letter(letters.vowel)
43        else
44            str=str..letter(letters.vowel)
45        end
46        local num_letters=trandom(3)
47        str=str..letter(letters.cons)
48        if num_letters>0 then str=str..letter(letters.vowel) end
49        if num_letters>1 then str=str..letter(letters.cons) end
50        gen_divine[v.token]=str
51    end
52
53    return gen_divine
54end

Identity language

This makes a language called GEN_IDENTITY which is, like. "Abbey abbeyabbeys the abbey of abbeys" - i.e. it's the "English" language you might see occasionally.

 1languages.GEN_IDENTITY=function()
 2    -- just to demonstrate the absolute most basic method of generating one of these
 3    -- also so that you can just mod stuff to use GEN_IDENTITY
 4    local tbl={}
 5    local unempty = function(str1, str2) 
 6        return str1=='' and str2 or str1
 7    end
 8    for k,v in ipairs(world.language.word) do
 9        local str=''
10        str=unempty(str,v.NOUN_SING)
11        str=unempty(str,v.ADJ)
12        str=unempty(str,v.VERB_FIRST_PRES)
13        str=unempty(str,string.lower(v.token))
14        tbl[v.token]=str
15    end
16    return tbl
17end