Bay 12 Games Forum

Hello, Toady, have you come up with any new monsters or creatures randomly as you've been working on the adventure mode stuff? Also thanks for making such an amazing game

By "randomly" do you mean more procedurally-generated creatures? Because randomizing more creatures has definitely been one of the things Toady's talked a lot about in regards to Myth & Magic, but I personally doubt such elements will make it into the first adventure mode release on top of everything else that needs to be done (not for me to say, of course).

I think by "randomly" they mean something like an unexpected inspiration. Something more like "oh an ancient djinn would be a good addition since I'm touching up vaults".

Wait, why don't logs just float? Sunken logs are so annoying.

All materials have a density, including water (1000) and magma (2000) so why isn't buoyancy a thing? it seems like something easy enough to calculate.

Axolotl's are known to be able to regrow portions of their body, so a tag to regrow limbs would be a cool addition to giant axolotls and axolotl people (and for modding).

It seems like flying is often brought up as a problematic issue in general. Has there be any thought put into ways to address the way flying currently works? I'd be interested in seeing the results of profiling flying creatures behavior.

Edit - limiting creatures in some way will likely have to be part of the updates to adv mode since you can't really even go into a lot of cities or pits without the game becoming unplayable. So maybe that kind of change will work out for fort mode too.

Will portraits work with non standard races? For example experiments, angels, gorlaks etc?
How will the portrait system work with modded creatures?
Will there be a way to add/modify the sprite layers used to build the faces?
If none are provided will there be some kind of stand in?

The basic idea is to be able to make walls path-able and climbable for anyone (probably barring some disability) under normal circumstances, just like stairs or ramps. The reason I'd like to carve these into walls is because I don't want there to be a limit to how high they can go and with a movable ladder there will be more limitations.

There are a couple reasons I'd like this, I tend to build in caverns and I think it would be a good way of restricting traffic in and out (because you can't lay down to let another person climb over you), and I think it would simplify pathways in complicated multi z-level natural areas. I also think some ladders here and there would look more natural and ascetically pleasing feel than digging stairs into the walls.

It would open up creative new defense measures, like forcing a sieging army to climb ladders down a deep pit to enter your fortress while being exposed to marksdwarves, and it would also help squads stay in a position that is more easily defended. Right now I usually place a squad at the bottom of a staircase the siege is descending, but as soon as the first goblin pops out the dwarves run up the stairs in to the mix, with ladders they would be more forced to hold the positions

Bonus - useful for elven treehouses though I guess they'd 'grow' the ladders into the trunks instead of carving them.

I imagine it working like any engraving/fortification, the people are just stuck to the wall standing over air. No need for downladder/upladder stuff, and they should be able use the ladder below or above to carve the next level.
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These would be great in fort mode

Scale max age for giant animals/animal people in a similar way body size is scaled. It doesn't have to be totally realistic, but larger animals in real life tend to have longer lifespans than their smaller counterparts. Right now giant animals seem to have the same MAXAGE as their smaller ones (at least in the animals I've checked like rats, flies, and other insects). I think it would be better if this scaled up with the same (or similar) curve used to determine size, so an insect made bear sized will increase its lifespan more than a elephant made giant. I don't have strong feelings about exact numbers, but for example if giant insects could increase 8-10x (1 year to 8-10 years) while a giant elephant increasing only a fraction like .5x (70-105 years)

Animal people seem to all have a 60-80 lifespan. I think it would be more interesting if their age scaled the same way body size did, (human MAXAGE + animal MAXAGE / 2). So tiny fly person would live about half the length of a human
- 1:1 + 60:120 / 2 = MAXAGE:30:60

But a giant tortoise person would be:
- 100:200 + 60:120 / 2 = MAXAGE:80:160

Most of this is just flavor I think would make the world feel more interesting, but the extremely short lived giant insects do have practical reasons to live longer. I had a siege once where a lot of elves on giant flies left fly corpses everywhere, I'm guessing cause they died of old age while waiting me out.