Sorry for the long delay. Life got in the way. Finally made the change to the convert tag method for better compatibility with other mods. I tested upgrading this in an active game and found no problems, but there's also no reason to upgrade a world. Unfortunately, the compatibility checking system is still broken, so there's no way to keep everyone from being prompted. If someone does get crashes or something from the upgrade, let me know. I can either show you how to revert yourself, or if it's bad enough, I may revert everyone, and then make the new version as a separate mod. The plan, though, is that this will be the final revision.

Thanks! I haven't gotten to play in a few weeks, so I'm going to sit down and enjoy the game for an hour or so, and then next time I'm going to start testing this. Last time I wanted to do an update, it was a breaking change, and the 'earliest compatible version' tag didn't seem to work correctly, so I'll be giving that some testing. If it still doesn't, I may have to create a separate version so people don't unknowingly 'upgrade' to a version that will cause crashes.

BTW, if you want to know how I ran tests to confirm it worked (requires latest V of DF Hack)

1. Load up arena mode with just this mod active.
2. Spawn a single dwarf (side doesent matter)
3. in DFHack use the following command:
modtools/add-syndrome --target 0 --syndrome "cave spider bite"
4. Enter the next command:
gui/unit-syndromes
5. A window will pop-up and from there select: All Units - Dwarf 1
6. You should see something like this: https://i.imgur.com/RG0pAUj.png

You may need to pause the game first to see the syndrome and make sure it doesen't disapear by the time you open the window (I think 200 ticks go by fast). Also ignore the warning when using the modtools/add-syndrome command, it works fine. Finally, as long as the Dwarf is the first and only unit you spawn after loading Arena, it is guaranteed to have the unit-id as 0, saving you time from having to look it up with other DFhack tools.

It actually took me a fair bit of attempts to figure it out lol, but a lot of different posts on the forums and experimentation is basically what led me to this, and yeah, most of my attempts did what you said and added a second syndrome. This link was probably the most helpful of all: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Creature_variation_token

One thing I noticed during my messing around was that these functions seem to have been in the game for a while, it's just not very well documented or known about as I saw many posts saying that doing this wasn't possible.

What I was trying on Day 0 was SELECT_TAG, btw, the only thing of that sort documented at the time.

Hot dang! That's what I wanted to do from the start, but experiments showed that what I was trying just created a second syndrome instead of replacing the first. CV_CONVERT_TAG is news to me. Where did you find that info? Has more finally been posted on the wiki or forums?

Hey! I have been learning about DF modding and how to make minimal edits to improve compatibility, increase load times, reduce bugs and so forth, and managed to compress your mod down to just a few lines of code that alter the Dizzyness syndrome line without touching anything else from the vanilla raw. This way the mod will basically never need to be maintained, and it can coexist with other mods that change the cave spider in other ways or replace vanilla creatures or basically just about anything that doesen't specifically change the exact thing this mod does!

https://pastebin.com/y1ZCigEM

You can use this code to update your mod if you'd be so inclined, and in fact, I would appreciate it too since I'm subbed to this lol. Also I can explain further what the code does but basically it just does a "search and replace" function in the original raw instead of cutting and replacing the whole creature.

:D

Link removed. Sad. But, at least you got me to make something.

Fair!
I was mostly going for goofy as to not trigger arachnophobia (something you pointed out might be a problem).

The joke wasn't really intended to imply what your mod actually DOES so much as to just give a chuckle and draw attention to it.

Here is a stock image you could use, it has the same joke but it's a little more applicable.

{LINK REMOVED}https://s3.amazonaws.com/lowres.cartoonstock.com/medical-doctor-gp-illness-disease-spider_bite-rron1081_low.jpg

LOL That's great! But for me to use it would be both theft, unless I obtained permission, and also deceptive, since that's not what I changed the syndrome to do. Fun idea for a different mod, though. Change cave spider bites to give dwarves super-powers. Bit cheaty for my way of playing, but certainly funny.

How about this one by Irgmir Lokhammer ( https://www.instagram.com/lok.arts ) :

https://i.redd.it/lr3b3iq7j1c21.jpg

I was looking for a picture of a spider's fangs to put little 'no' symbols on, but I realized that a super-close-up of spider fangs would probably be quite upsetting to some people. If anyone's got a better idea, let me know.

It's just a cosmetic thing, but a mod this useful really otta have a nice graphic to go with it for the shop.

If anyone else has problems, please try the troubleshooting steps in the bug discussion, and let me know if you're still having a problem. The new modding system is not well documented, but I have bug free (haha) gameplay, and I want everyone else to, too!

12/31/22: Just posted a Bug Report in the Discussions section.

awesome. ty

Yes

do this work?

does this work yet?

Genius!

Last version bump, v2.1 was to change v2.0 incorrectly showing as compatible with v1 and prompting for upgrade. It is not, apparently, and I hope no one found that out the hard way.

I'm afraid I haven't seen that done, Aki865. If you eventually find instructions for it, all this changes is the end of one line in creatures_subterranean.txt, and you can see the mod itself in your /mods folder to use as an example.

Because of problems I noticed implementing another mod, I updated this with a more brute-force way of doing the change that I can be sure will work as expected. In doing so, I noticed that Steam didn't download the new version immediately. I had to unsubscribe/resubscribe to get it to download.

awesome mod! anyone knows how to add a mod in current world? I don't want to abandon my dwarf

Awww . . .poor thing! :(

this brings solace to a peregrine falcon in one of my older forts who was bitten up to 5 times by cave spiders

Praise the miners! Always had the cats enter the caverns first as spider munchers, but this will save some micromanagement.

thank you!

Nice!