Various questions on mutations and Lua

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So I’ve been wanting to add a few mutations for a while now, but I’ve run across a few interlinked problems:

Some of these mutations don’t really fit C:DDA’s style, although they could be explained realistically - should I add them as a mod?
One set of mutations I wanted to add was breath attacks, as per fantasy-oriented roguelikes. These could obviously be pretty dang powerful and ruin the game for some people otherwise; I can’t decide whether I should implement this as a mod or not.

If implemented exclusively as a mod, I need to be able to create fields and assign actions to ‘active’ mutations with Lua - is this supported already?
These mutations need to create fields (and detect when they’re being used from the [ menu) to really work right; all I know how to do with Lua is create terrain. Are field creation and mutation activation implemented in Lua, or would I have to get them added?

There seems to be a group ‘in charge’ of mutations - should I leave mutations to them?
I haven’t seen any mods that add mutations, and I’ve also seen a few forumgoers that seem like the authority on mutations. Is this something that I shouldn’t be messing with?

…Possibly for a good reason - how do mutations work beyond ‘drink mutagen, get posthuman’?
Also, I don’t completely understand a few aspects of mutations. What exactly do the pts/vis/ugly numbers mean? (As in, what does -one point- in each do and how should I assign them?)

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That would be me. I’m a bit territorial about mutations, true.

Breath attacks, yeah, likely a non-starter for mainline. If the word “fantasy” could apply to your addition, it’s mod territory. Cf. Rivet’s class mod.

I don’t think we support Lua setting hooks in the C++, but I could well be wrong there. I’m not familiar with Lua and have no time ATM to fix that.

Feel free to post in the Mutation category expansion thread if you’ve any questions about a proposed mutation, category, etc: that’s where I generally handle requests. Currently Horse and Turtle are under consideration for going in once 0.B lands, FWIW.

Mutations don’t even work that way, technically: if you want to really go Post-human, you’d probably need to inject some at some point to breach the threshold.

Point balance: “points” are a best-fit for how much chargen points the trait/mutation* would be worth. Since most mutations aren’t available at chargen, the field is basically a question of whether the trait/mutation should be considered positive or negative for game/display purposes.

*The only difference is that a “trait” can be taken at chargen, and if it is, it’s considered baseline human for that character (whether it would be or not, in the event of lab-experiment characters). If you mutate away from a chargen-chosen trait, Purifier will attempt to set you back to it, rather than to (no trait), and traits taken at chargen don’t score for any mutation categories. For code purposes, all traits are mutations, but not all mutations are traits.

Vis and Ugly are interrelated, but not fully implemented. Ugly is how significantly it worsens/improves your looks (negative Ugly means you’re more attractive) but Vis is how visible the mutation is (and therefore should modify the amount of Ugly that comes through, but that might not yet be implemented). A Stubby Tail that can be hidden under a trenchcoat is much less noticeable than a Shell on your torso, for example.

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Yeah, KA101 is the mutation-man.

He already wrote himself, but taking abilities that some being coorrupted by the goo already have (spitting acid, electricity) and rarely make them available to the player as well should be fine imho.

Now that we kinda have active mutations, I believe we can do many more thing with that. Although there are probably more pressing issues.

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[quote=“Snaaty, post:3, topic:7838”]Yeah, KA101 is the mutation-man.

He already wrote himself, but taking abilities that some being coorrupted by the goo already have (spitting acid, electricity) and rarely make them available to the player as well should be fine imho.

Now that we kinda have active mutations, I believe we can do many more thing with that. Although there are probably more pressing issues.[/quote]

Acid, perhaps. Electric, no, as that’s the goo taking bionics installed in the body pre-zombification and kinda-sorta making a Lightning aug from 'em. An electric-eel shock generator would be the best one could do with biological/mutation upgrades.